I think his problem is he has a really lousy pickup story for Asian women. That's sufficient to explain it without the need to add politics.

I think it's worth noting that the futuresight mechanic isn't keyed to specific attacks - it's keyed to toward any attack that deals a certain amount of health damage or has some combination of status effects and injury. If you're super high level bosses won't trigger it, and when you're badly wounded it'll pick up on even trivial attacks from minor enemies.

Later in the game you encounter abilities that can't simply be blocked by one of the Monado's powers, or will target multiple characters and force you to prioritize, or enemies will use attacks when your Monado isn't fully charged forcing you to charge up the Monado quickly, or use attacks with your allies to slow down or redirect the attacks. Contrary to how it appears, fights late in the game get really hard despite the futuresight mechanic.

I do agree, though, the sidequests are the worst kind of fetch quests, made worse because you often have no indication of where you're supposed to go to do them. Worse yet is that they do have neat outcomes by filling out your affinity chart thing and sometimes the quest chains reward you with new skill trees for your characters. Giving good rewards for completing bad content is a cardinal sin of game design.

J-Snake posted in it.

As guidelines they seem reasonable and I'd encourage developers to follow them when they can. As rules that will be enforced with punishment for failure to comply, no, they're too vague and could lead to honest developers being punished for the weakness of others. As rules they are unreasonable.

Where we don't see eye to eye, I think, is that you (and perhaps Muz) seem to believe that the unethical behavior accounts for a plurality of the money being earned by any of these developers. I'm basing that assumption, in part, on your example of the Clash of the Clans guy who you presented as an example of addiction/exploitation despite the fact that he appeared in control the whole time and he leveraged the experience to his benefit in the end (without suing the developer, to boot). All the evidence of widespread wrongdoing so far has just been circumstantial evidence, like Muz's post.

My concern is that you're assuming guilt (whether for illegal or simply unethical behavior) far too quickly and often, and that you're liable to support formation of regulatory bodies that will spend public funds, interfere in the business of honest developers, and ultimately fail to solve the problem the body was formed to solve.

Do you think that developers (developers in general, I would support going after a specific developer with some evidence) should face punishment for failing to follow any of the rules provided in the opening post?

xenoblade chronicles seems really promising so far but the english accents weird me out so i switched to the japanese VA pretty quick

ok this plot is incredibly generic and shitty so i'll stop now

Xenoblade's plot is pretty traditional at first, but later on it gets more complicated and interesting. Don't let it fool you.

Play the game for the cool combat mechanics and the gorgeous level design. Those are where the game is way, way above average. Especially the level design, since the game is really good about treating you to more and more strange, beautiful vistas as you progress.

You should also make another go at Dark Cloud 2. The game is only cutscene heavy during the first chapter - past that it lets you be in control pretty much nonstop. The world building mechanic is pretty much unique among games, and you owe it to yourself to play at least through building the first town.

You're missing out on some really good games!

I interpreted that as his frustration is with the infamy that comes with owning such a successful game, not that he hates the game or success or money itself.

I can't blame him. If I saw a comments section filled with angry rants about how terrible was something that I did, it'd bother me too. The $50k per day would help me feel better, though.

J-Snake, I think you're mistaking "controls" for the game itself. Learning how to operate the gun in Receiver is the game, and it's stacked on top of the exploration and shooting because operating the game is, by itself, not enough to deal with.

It's the same way how some games ignore your player needing to eat and drink, while others demand this. The whole point of those games is the resource management. That's the game.

If you applied that same logic, you could claim Trapthem is inferior to games where you can point and click and your character will automatically navigate to his destination. One of the challenges in your game is knowing where to move, the right path to follow, and when to move. That's the game.

The argument against manually operating the gun in Receiver, if you were going to make one, is that the mechanic of manually operating the gun is too simple, or uninteresting, or detracts from the rest of the experience. Complaining that manual operation of a gun is by nature an outdated game mechanic makes no sense at all: anything can be a game mechanic. The question is only whether it was executed properly and in a game that supports it.

Games like Yume Nikki take suspense to the extreme by having very nearly no threatening elements at all.

Those don't tend to hold up well in multiple playthroughs, though, especially if the game is designed such that you can figure out when you're safe and when you're in danger. That's where Survival Horror has an advantage over other games, because the danger carries through in the form of limited supplies. In Resident evil especially, getting caught by a zombie while fleeing, or missing and using one more bullet than you'd planned to can make even predictable fights seem threatening on account of the relative weight of making even one mistake.

Dead Space for the most part is predictable, with a lot of encounters where you could ambush the enemies effortlessly by memorizing their spawn points and placing trip mines or hiding in a defensive position. There were several notable parts, though, where you knew you were going to fight but didn't know exactly where the necromorphs might spawn, or even what kinds would appear. There's an early fight in Dead Space 2 where you're ambushed in a laundry room. You know what enemies are going to spawn, but they can appear from either end of the room and one particularly dangerous enemy spawns at a randomized interval so you have to be ready to quickly hit him with stasis and kill him while dealing with the other enemies. Even knowing what is coming you feel threatened and weak. The threat keeps up over multiple playthroughs because you can't simply rely on memorization to carry you through.

I'm iffy on jump scares. While I agree they're a bit cheap, they're also effective. They can especially be effective if you're careful to make them things that wouldn't necessarily frighten a person normally (as opposed to just surprise them), like a light going out or an engine starting as you pass by. Sometimes you can ride the middle of the road where the player is anticipating a threat, and they have to stay calm and spot the fake outs from the real thing, like perhaps listening for telltale sounds to recognize the difference between ambient effects and an alien sneaking up behind them.

I think so long as you're not relying on jump scares exclusively to make the game frightening, and you're clever with them so that they don't amount to sudden screaming aliens jumping in your face every time, they can be used as an appropriate tool.

Being inspired by flappy birds is okay.

Copying the mechanics almost exactly is the dilemma.

The ice pillars could use something to make the top and bottom edges seem like edges, instead of arbitrary stopping point for the tiles. Maybe make them pointed, or add a little snowy drift on the top or icicles down on the bottom.

I feel like you really need to add something else to the game to make it stand out from Flappy Bird. This isn't bad if you just did this as a project to practice your coding, but as a standalone game it's pretty bland, especially if you've already played Flappy Bird or a clone. Some more variety to the obstacles, or maybe some additional mechanic to consider (perhaps collecting items for momentary power-ups or to fiddle with score multipliers) would show a little more effort and give players a reason to switch up and play your game instead of one of the dozens of clones that will inevitably be released in the coming days and weeks.

Video games are already regulated, though. The same consumer rights laws that govern cars or tools govern video games. Content in particular is regulated very heavily. The argument here isn't against any regulation, it's about more regulation than already exists.

What I disagree with specifically is your assumption that "these games are designed to exploit the minority of people who are prone to addiction, just like slot machines.". This isn't a fact. Many of the players who drop large amounts of money are perfectly happy with their decision to do so (as evidenced in the link I provided). Many developers are designing these mechanics because players demand them. Many people spend weekends in Vegas, play slot machines, make money for the Casino and leave happy and financially sound (I've done this on more than one occasion). I've played subscription based MMOs where players argue strongly for grind-heavy, randomized mechanics because they enjoy being able to beat other players by expending time.

Demon's Souls, for example, uses the technique of taking away your souls when you die, forcing you to keep playing if you don't want to forfeit them. This technique is described as Reward Removal in the article I linked and is referenced obliquely in the article you linked (Where the player played over weekends to recover lost trophies), and is used in many games to coerce you to spend money or keep playing. Is Demon's Souls designed to exploit a minority that is prone to addiction and needs regulation? Other games use psychological manipulation techniques, but do it with the intent to make the game more fun instead of more exploitative (Finding random weapon drops in an RPG, for example).

It's one thing if you want to make a case for punishing a particular studio or casino because there is evidence they've been exploiting players on purpose. I could be easily persuaded to join that cause with a little bit of evidence. I'm a lot less easily persuaded towards creating new, permanent, powerful regulatory bodies that can be wasteful, corrupt or nuisances just because of a couple bad apples. I worry that a lot of people lack that skepticism and accept regulation because they simply don't consider the possible (and often probable) consequences or have never actually dealt with a regulatory body before and just don't realize there exist consequences. It's often the same logic that people use when they justify wars in third world countries because of anecdotes that they're populated by bad people who blow things up.

I'm just asking to approach the call for regulation with a lot of caution, and to maintain the assumption of innocence until proven guilty.

And, like I said earlier in the thread, the best way to combat this is still, by far, to educate the consumer to protect themselves.

I agree gambling addiction is a problem. I don't agree that casinos are entirely or even largely at fault for that problem.

It doesn't mean that casinos are unethical, or need to be to make a profit. Punishing a casino because some (even very few) patrons can't control themselves is putting the blame in the wrong place. Or perhaps you do feel that gambling should simply be illegal?

I got the impression from your post you might think that F2P games are making their profits by hurting vulnerable people, and I don't think there's a strong case that this is true. I think the majority is people voluntarily paying for products and getting what they were offered. But maybe somebody's done a study - not just accumulated anecdotes - and proven the opposite?

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/195806/chasing_the_whale_examining_the_.php?page=2

This Gamasutra articles suggests that's the case, that an undefined "good portion" are voluntary buyers. It also suggests that despite this, it's worth regulating the industry to protect that vulnerable minority who just can't help themselves. That's an ethical judgment I think you could argue for or against pretty rationally.

I think you'll find these results skewed heavily towards multiplayer competitive games because these, by design, draw in players and keep them playing. Where did you get the numbers in the first post, or are those just your guesses?

Even harder to evaluate would be games like Farmville that attract huge numbers of people, but you don't actually sit down and "play" so much as check in periodically to hit a button and come back later. Games that aren't online (eg, Angry Birds, Candy Crush or Flappy Bird) won't have any better results than number of people who bought the game, which could exclude some serious contenders.

Did you have an end-goal for this, such as to write a report for school or to try and solve some question?

A great deal of F2P money actually comes from "whale" buyers who spend ridiculous amounts of money on the game, making up for other players who spend nothing.

http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-ghost-story/chapter/2/

I'd be interested in seeing the breakdown, but I suspect that accidental purchases (like the ones suing the apple store) account for a pretty tiny amount of F2P money spent while the majority is voluntary purchases.

Also, that Clash of the Clans article is a pretty poor example. That guy was doing a lot of crazy stuff, but he seemed in control of his life. When he was low on funds he found financiers to pay for him to play (somebody bought him a bunch of ipads!) he worked to cultivate a likable online personality and then quit at a good time and used his exit speech to land a relevant job. His experience was more akin to sleepless weekends studying for exams in school than the guy who lives on the street because he went into debt buying lottery tickets against the laws of probability.

Addiction is pretty complicated, because in many cases it's impossible to tell the difference between voluntary action that you don't want to stop, and a real addiction. I suspect that if you look across the people participating in microtransactions the number of people who are actually addicted is such a small number that it wouldn't hurt the developers to lose them.

But then again, without data who knows for certain?

I've personally found that scarcity of supplies is a major factor in good survival horror. In most games you frequently come across checkpoints or health refill stations you can fall back to if things get rough. In Dead Space or Resident Evil, you have to keep pressing forward to find new supplies. If you aren't careful and conserve your ammo and health, you can wind up in a situation where you get stuck because you need to defeat some foes to advance, but you lack the supplies to defeat them.

The other major factor is the relative power of enemies to the protagonist. In Resident Evil, when you're out of ammo defeating a zombie means taking damage. In Dead Space, the Necromorphs can inflict a lot of damage, and even basic kinds can kill you in one or two hits if you let them close in on you. As a result, you have to be alert all the time or risk dying.

I disagree that the clunky controls are a necessary element of what makes survival horror good (although I think the "weight" of the walking and shooting does help). Dead Space 2 improved the mechanics for looking and aiming, but the game remains difficult because of the novel concept of enemies that are weak in their limbs. The result is that the player has to be fast and precise to kill the enemies (or waste ammo while failing to harm them), while the enemies can inflict damage anywhere.

Dead Space also offers a Hard Core difficulty level that does away with permanent checkpoints. That creates a lot of stress for the player as they realize that a single mistake can end your game and have you start over. You have to pay attention at all times and you only can relax when the game is over.

The downside is that survival horror can become grating if you play it too much - many people play video games to relax, and most survival horror demands that you never relax.

go to a library

We already know how this ends

http://gunshowcomic.com/ac/part1/

It resembles the logic puzzle Hashi (the "eastern puzzle" you allude to), though only very basically. It does seem like you can just keep drawing lines until the molecule works or you hit a dead-end, which seems like a good design for an action/puzzle game without being a match-3-er.

Will you be incorporating real microtransactions or fake microtransactions? It seems like a lot of what make Candy Crush and Farmville so exploitative are connected to microtransactions, and not including at least fake microtransactions will rob you of that opportunity.

I'm also kind of worried that if you simultaneously reward the player with information about being exploited while exploiting them, you'll reach a point where the player wants to stop playing, but also wants to learn more about these exploited games. Will you be designing levels so that the exploitative behavior can be turned off once it's understood (eg, once the player understands the logarithmic score bar, give them a normal score bar that tracks their progress linearly)?

Microsoft stops manufacturing the XBox and exclusively makes games for the Nintendo WiiU.

The balance of the video game world is upset threatening the destruction of all nations and four warriors of light must defeat Satya atop his dark, twisted tower to release the last existing XBone and save the world.

Maybe I'm missing some nuance but I'd sum up Christian's opening post (and add my own comments) as

AAA games can offer big budgets to make huge worlds, lots of content and use market research to find tune mechanics over multiple sequels, pushing game development vertically.

Indie games can explore new mechanics, art styles, genre combinations or new genres altogether without much risk (especially as freeware titles). These expand game development horizontally.

Both of these are useful overall, and some people may prefer one over the other (a casual player may prefer AAA titles because they benefit from the good content/cost ratios with good graphics to boot, while a advanced gamer may turn to Indie titles because they've grown bored of playing each minor iteration after the other and want more varied experiences even at the expense of unpolished graphics or low amounts of content). I suspect most people on this site play an above average number and variety of AAA titles and tend to prefer new experiences over existing, well-polished experiences.

As far as pricing is concerned, I'd always assumed it was just supply and demand - in modern times it doesn't take a lot of effort to create a game with the same level of quality as games you'd see in the 8 and 16 bit generations, and game development is easier than ever (anyone can download Klik and Play and make a Space Invaders clone in a few minutes). With a huge supply of games available only top quality titles that offer a lot of content and have brand recognition can demand top dollar and expect to make lots of sales. Digital downloads have also eliminated shelf space as a limiting factor - you're competing not just with other new games but downloads of classic games that modern gamers may have never played. If you're lucky, you might make a freeware game like Flappy Bird that gets attention and then you'll have the opportunity to make a proper sequel for sale.

I don't think it's a race to the bottom so much as the natural result of how media works.

I picked up The World Ends with You based on suggestions from this forum.

I'm surprised nobody has talked about the odd (but clever) difficulty system. Letting the player turn up the difficulty to unlock better tiers on drop tables is a pretty good compromise to give players incentive to play on higher difficulties. It lets you increase the challenge for immediate rewards if you want them, or keep it low until you're comfortable enough to turn it up later. The ability to reduce your level to boost drop rates is nice too - I can turn up the difficulty by reducing my level so I don't suffer from problems like in Xenoblade where the game gets too easy after you spend some time trying to get all the item drops in an area. Giving pin points for quitting the game for a while is also a nice way to let me level up pins that don't fit my combat style and reward me for taking the game in smaller chunks.

I'm still iffy on the combat system. It seems like it's just impossible to keep track of both screens well enough to try to match the cards on the top screen. I've found that mashing left or right to do combos as fast as possible while keeping your attention on the bottom screen gets me through four reduction fights on hard without much trouble. I might be able to equip pins that don't require me to watch the bottom screen while I use them, but that seems like too much to bother with when I'm trying to level up all my different pins.

It also features what appears to be the single most progressive equipment system seen in any game ever - all equipment, even equipment like miniskirts or bikinis, can be equipped by both genders. The only thing holding you back is your bravery score (which appears to be naturally higher for female characters), and that can be fixed by eating some dietary supplements from the health food store.

These seem like a good list of guidelines in general, and for the most part I'd suggest developers would be wise to follow the suggestions, if only to be clear what they're selling and why.

It'd be great if somebody at the office of fair trading took this document and rewrote to be a guide to consumers to teach them about common tricks to help educate them, since ultimately the best security is for individuals to be looking out for themselves.

The example about the game where you feed seagulls sardines and ice cream was great. If that game doesn't already exist, hopefully somebody will pick up on the cue and make it.