next »

[J-Snake]

If someone would claim minecraft will get its own minecon before it was released everyone reactions would be just:

But now it is there. I agree about certain points whith Paul. It depends on what a certain group of people does expect from a game. For example my games are more sports than a chill-out tour. So if someone expects a hand-holding chill-out experience he will be disappointed. BUT I think if one is honest to oneself he will realise that it is not necessarily a bad game what doesn't meet ones preference! There are some objective facts about what is a bad game for sure by measuring the standards the game does intend to provide and how it lives up to them.

[Painting]

Good is meaningless. Games are good if they're interesting for some reason.

MDickie's games are awkward, ugly, aggressively obnoxious, stupid, evangelizing, and not very fun to play. They're just complete messes. That doesn't mean I don't love them and prefer them over Retro Platformer WITH A TWIST #30994920. RPWAT is still more interesting than Hey Guys Buy My iPhone Zombie Game.

OP, aspire to be interesting for some reason. You don't have to be remarkably good, just remarkable. but don't be that Adam flytrap guy

[J-Snake]

Smartphone-games is the definition of bad.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

That is indeed interesting to see how ff13 got that high score in japan. I wonder what the standards are and whether many of them are otakus. Or perhaps they do value the story and the presentation most, which is surely impressive in its own merit.

i think it's the story thing (visual novels are one of the best selling genres in japan, equivalent to FPS games here), but also even in mechanics ff13 did some interesting things with its paradigm system. for instance, healers could not attack at all: their role was to heal and that was it, unlike healers in most rpgs. similarly, a "tank"'s role was to absorb damage, and that's it, tanks could not attack. this made parties much more reliant on each other and on the composition of "classes" in the party than in most rpgs

it also added class-changing *in battle*, which ffx-2 had but not to the same extent: you have to change classes about 100x as often in ff13, in ffx-2 you could change classes in battle but you never really needed to because every class was more well-rounded. whereas in ff13 it was more like this: boss about to unleash a super attack? change class to tank for everyone to absorb it. are you heavily damaged or someone dead? change someone's class to medic to heal, then change back when the healing is no longer needed

so it required more strategy than just the 'press A repeatedly to win' battles of most of the recent final fantasy games (basically ff7 through ff12). so i can definitely see the appeal in japan, even if i personally didn't like the total lack of exploration, towns, customization, weapon variety, mini-games, puzzles, and so on ("streamlining" they called it)

regarding sales rates, here's sales total, not sales by week:

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy

final fantasy 1 = 0.4 million
final fantasy 2 = unknown
final fantasy 3 = 1.4 million
final fantasy 4 = 1.44 million
final fantasy 5 - 2.45 million
final fantasy 6 - 2.55 million
final fantasy 7 - 9.8 million
final fantasy 8 - 8.15 million
final fantasy 9 - 5.3 million
final fantasy 10 - 6.6 million
final fantasy 10-2 - 3 million
final fantasy 12 - 5.2 million
final fantasy 13 - 6.2 million

so it sold better than ff12, and almost as good as ff10, and far better than ff9. it didn't equal the heights of ff7 or ff8, but sold far better than final fantasy 1-6, which we usually consider the classics. so basically it's the 4th best selling final fantasy game out of all 13

in any case, maybe ff13 isn't the *best* example of what i meant, but it's still *an* example of a game that some people believe is a good game and love it and some people swear it's one of the worst games they ever played

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

trapthem reminds me a little of digdug.

WOW, RESPECT. Now I need to elaborate on how everything started: Some time ago I gave DigDug a shot and I just got a magical flash after watching the trailer.

digdug has a trailer? the 80s arcade digdug? i didn't know trailers existed back then

[J-Snake]

It was some sort of remake and just by coincidence I found a demo of it on my xbox360.

Regarding game-sales in general, I wonder how many of the people know what they are buying though. I mean you don't know what you are playing until you buy it, the first impression can always fool you. That is what marketing is trying to exploit.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

games do have demos now, so often you can know what you're buying before you're buying it. but that was less true in the past

but i'm not saying a lot of sales makes a game good, they're just the measurements we tend to use. if you want a more interesting metric, maybe we could consider using how much fanart or fanfiction is made for a game as a metric; the greater the amount, the more die-hard fans that game has. that metric is biased towards story-focused games, of course, but within the story-focused game world you can roughly tell how much people like a game by how many fan works that game has

here's fanfiction.net's list of fanfics by final fantasy, from http://www.fanfiction.net/game/

Final Fantasy I-VI (2,679) [combined]
Final Fantasy VII (36,360)
Final Fantasy VIII (12,297)
Final Fantasy IX (3,036)
Final Fantasy X (5,454)
Final Fantasy X-2 (3,562)
Final Fantasy XI (431)
Final Fantasy XII (2,622)
Final Fantasy XIII (2,168)

but it's also probably biased by ff13 still being new (not enough time for fanfics to stack up), it'd be interesting to see a 'per year' metric for this. it's also interesting that ff7 has more fanfics than all the other final fantasy games combined

[baconman]

Well, I guess it's time for the real brain-tickler.

Is Final Fantasy VII truly the shining example of "what makes a good game?" And what about it does or doesn't?

There's indisputable evidence that it makes for an incredibly popular and successful game, but is that the same thing? Is that perhaps a defining thing thereof?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

it's an example of what makes a good game for a large number of people, yes. but, and i think derek said this many years ago when the forum was just starting up, don't try to make a game that you yourself wouldn't enjoy just because some audience enjoys that type of game, since you never really know what makes games good and bad for people who are not you (you can have some idea but the details will elude you). all you can do is make a game *you* find good, and try to find people who share your tastes who also like what you like, no matter how few those people may be

the biggest sin a game developer can do is to make a game that that game developer doesn't enjoy on some theory that x, y, and z in games makes games "good" or popular. unfortunately that sin is all around us, even on these very forums

[J-Snake]

The main reason I want to make games is that there are no games out there I would like to play. They fail when it comes to game-mechanics.

[baconman]

The reason I'm making the genre-bending, borderline-insane-scale projects I do is because gaming experiences feel really enjoyable but fragmented to me - like genres or titles of gaming feel like a small piece of an incomplete puzzle. Fighters are a battle system. Platforming and Shmup is a navigation system. RPGs are a (mostly formulaic) story system, and so forth.

Scaling is a particularly tricky spot for me - while it takes fundamentals to make each kind of game and it's qualities work, it also takes some unique merits and depth to keep their appeal lasting; and some really really creative framework to tie it all together in a way that *doesn't* feel inconsistent or fragmented.

[Dragonmaw]

FF7 is good for numerous reasons which I can't detail while I'm at work.

[s0]

a lot of ff7's success was being in the right place at the right time imo. it was released on the psx during the height of its popularity, was technically impressive for its time and introduced "cinematic" storytelling to jrpgs. it was also the first main series ff (and i guess the first high profile jrpg) to be released in europe.

[Dragonmaw]

It's also a smartly designed game, which I didn't really realize until I actually started working as a game critic. Granted, I don't think most people consider how it's designed, just how it looks, so...

[J-Snake]

It looks bad, so it must be greatly designed.

[DavidCaruso]

FF7 is good for numerous reasons which I can't detail while I'm at work.

I don't know if you meant this in the way I read it, but LOL.

[Dragonmaw]

FF7 is good for numerous reasons which I can't detail while I'm at work.

I don't know if you meant this in the way I read it, but LOL.

i just love aeris so much 

[ink.inc]

FF7 is good for numerous reasons which I can't detail while I'm at work.

I don't know if you meant this in the way I read it, but LOL.

i just love aeris so much 

do you want to impale her with your masamune

[Theophilus]

masamune. context clues make me understand.

[i wanna be the guy]

its a peen joke