Wait, where does it say that Walmart and Best Buy wanted to change Psychonauts? Since when would they have had any say over the creation of the game? I'm not saying it didn't have crappy marketing, but I wanna see proof of this.

That's the reaction I wanted to see. It was in a game magazine. I was shocked too and would also not believe it if I heard it on a message board. lol I'll see if I can find anything on it on the internet.

[Clover Studios]

The big problem, from an industrial perspective, is that the large producers have no use for this. A mass-market audience (in their perspective) are not interested in anything beyond what they've already done, just a little more and prettier. Also, the same producers with a very few exceptions simply do not have the mindset or aptitude to accomplish anything along your lines.

The market is replete with examples of this: Psychonauts, sonderful game, utter market failure, Mr Grumpy Gamer couldn't even find new publishers for his other game in spite of being an icon. Clover Studios: loved by critics, sold very little, shut down. Looking Glass Technologies: died.

There was an altogether different scene a decade ago. LOOM, that's beauty, concept, metaphors and story in a packet for you, but guys like Brian Moriarty aren't allowed to express themselves in the games industry anymore.

So yeah, I'm pessimistic.

Well Clover split from Capcom and became PlatinumGames so its not all bad. But it is sad what Tim Schafer had to do. Wal-Mart and Best Buy wanted to completely change Psychonauts because they didn't 'get' it so when Schafer and his team didn't, they gave the game some terrible marketing. This is the kind of thing that's holding games back.

Have you ever played the card games that infest the Final Fantasy series from 8 onwards?

Those games seem even MORE grindy than the RPG itself!  It's very easy to do card-game-based advancement wrong, that's for sure.

I haven't played any FF games, but you do make an excellent point.  If there's only one way in the game to get a particular ability, and it takes grinding, that could be worse than XP-based levelling where several different routes will get you the same effect (more XP to put into the same skills).  Shannara did it right, in my opinion.

I played Final Fantasy 8's card game countless times and its not bad at all. I used it to get the second strongest weapon in the game at the beginning.

I enjoy making content, if by content we mean music, sounds, graphics and level design.

But writing a storyline is pain in the ass. Especially if storyline is branching.

Things are even worse in my cockpit entry where I have to write storyline and design the interface for each level.

I bet that's a pain. I've barely gotten any story details for projects of mine and I've been trying to think of a good story for a game I just thought of a few days ago.

Well I actually meant things like: Are you in one big sidescrolling city? (you know with cops and gangsters?) What's the sandbox mission structure? (Do you go to cops and gangs places in the city? Do you do missions with the sandbox city? Is there even a city? lol)

Before saying anything else I have to ask this: What exactly are the sandbox elements of this game.

The list of winners was superb! I was glad to see Night Game, Zeno Clash and Cortex Command listed/win prizes.

These are screen shots of the game I'm working on.
the game is  the story of misterious creature living on fallen earth.




Iam gonna expend the style of Silhouette.

This looks amazing!

Today I created a spell that throws gigantic poisonous ghost snakes at your enemy.

That looks sooo beautiful.

INSPIRATION

I almost never get good game ideas.

I have almost too many good ideas for games but I SERIOUSLY lack inspiration.

Planet Hulk is incredible. My very first Hulk book I might add.

World War Hulk sort of was, too, if only because it was the followup for it. The end of WWH WAS pretty intense though.

My two favorite Marvel series.

I plan on getting World War Hulk too. I'll see how it is myself.

I recently went and read every issue of X-Men from the beginning to the early 90s, when they unfortunately became all srs bzns and doomgloom. Repeated the process for Excalibur and New Mutants.

Why did the 90s have to ruin everything? Turning things 'dark and edgy' - especially with Excalibur, which was always light and fun - doesn't actually make it better.

I've been wanting to do that. Mostly thanks to the incredible '90s X-Men cartoon.

Planet Hulk is incredible. My very first Hulk book I might add.

[To that original point, I would say that, yes, you can make a violent mature game, but it's a lot harder and not recommended until you're very good at making games,]

I feel like that's missing the point of gunswordfist's original hypothetical goal of a violent game that appeals to mature audiences.  Your answer is to keep the violence off-screen or abstract--but, isn't that instead making it a non-violent game that just hints at violence?  Not that that's not a valid or interesting way to talk about violence, but would it really be a "violent" game?

Yeah that's right, I wanted to know about how to make a mature violent game. Thanks for reminding me.

Yes, I've gone somewhat away from that original point. To that original point, I would say that, yes, you can make a violent mature game, but it's a lot harder and not recommended until you're very good at making games, because it's kind of tricky to do, and also won't help the perception of games being immature: No matter how many violent mature games are made, they won't be accepted as mature until they go beyond violence. Just like no matter how many superhero comics like Watchmen you make, comics won't be accepted as mature until they move beyond just superheroes.

Now I realize that it's not necessarily our responsibility to make games into a real artistic medium, and I realize that a lot of folk believe they already are, but those who don't think they are yet and do want that to happen can't do it by adding some philosophical dialogue to a gory FPS or an RTS game.

Agreed, I would be a mad man to tackle something like the right away. I just want to have some clue what to expect and do.

Also, how many people think that nVidia will be PISSED if this flies?

They're money hungry?! Sorry, not a PC gamer.

Though we don't really know how much will the games themselves cost.

That's also what I've been wondering. I doubt they'll average out 60 bucks though.

"Like the orangutans that burst into flames for no reason."

lol I don't even know what this sh!t is about but I'm going to rush to get some issues.

I seriously doubt the cost will be an issue. Assuming it's actually around XBL's subscription fee, I doubt the cost of the service and high speed internet bills would cost more than yearly PC upgrades, an expensive gaming PC, 3 consoles and tons of $60 games.

Now all you need to distribute your games is a server that's more powerful than Roadrunner and your own dedicated internet backbone (not that EA couldn't afford it).

Edit: Oh, I see. It's OnLive's servers. Still, if the service is popular, it's going to take a tremendous amount of computing power to handle all those games being played simultaneously.

That's my main concern and a lot of people are sharing that. Hopefully OnLive will have Fortress Of Soltitude servers. lol

Amazing.

But why did that post sound like an ad?

lol Ask Kotaku, not this thread.

You may never buy a new video card ever again. Actually, the only PC gaming hardware you might ever need will cost you less than a Wii, should OnLive's potential live up to its promise.

OnLive is a new video games on demand service that may just change the way you play PC games. The brainchild of Rearden Studios founder Steve Perlman, formerly of Atari, Apple, WebTV and more, and Mike McGarvey, formerly of Eidos, the technology looks to revolutionize the way computer games are brought home. Instead of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on the latest video game hardware that will make games like Crysis playable at nearly maxed settings, let OnLive's servers handle the processing. All that's required is a low cost "micro console" or a low end PC and a broadband internet connection.

Yes, even your sub $500 netbook or MacBook can play processor intensive, GPU demanding PC games. In fact, that's the whole point. How does it work?

Full article from Kotaku is here: http://kotaku.com/5181300/onlive-makes-pc-upgrades-extinct-lets-you-play-crysis-on-your-tv

EDIT: Watch OnLive in action on the video here: http://www.gamespot.com/shows/on-the-spot/