In response to “What’s in a Name?” from The Escapist Forum: I probably know even less about marketing than the author, but it seems to me very apparent that the reason of Sega’s troubles is the good ol’ greed.
That explains the fast moving forward and cutting off anything left behind tactic (“we don’t need anything that doesn’t make us money”), as well as the clinging to the Genesis system (“it made us more money than any other attempt, so we must try and milk it for all it’s worth”) and expensive(-ity of) add-ons. It’s a greedy game company’s smart move to allow autonomy for the developers, since that will produce best games which will establish a base for success (and thus – money) in the long run (think franchises), it’s too bad they didn’t think of others – customers and 3d party developers – more.
– shadowbird
In response to “Uwe Boll and the German Tax Code” from The Escapist Forum: The fact that game company’s continue to agree to let Boll make these movies must also demonstrate the huge amount of payoffs going on behind the scenes. Let’s face it: if you’re a small-time development studio struggling to make it, it’s got to be pretty tempting to accept a large sum of money from Boll’s company. Plus, it’s publicity for the game, no matter how much the movie ends up sucking. I mean, does anyone actually think Postal will be anything but a trainwreck?
– Quintin Stone
In response to “All Hail Sonic!” from The Escapist Forum: Sonic is odd for me. I loved the fast movement that came from the Genesis games, but I was SNES kid back then, so I didn’t play it much. The first time I really got into it was Sonic Adventure 2: Battle for the Gamecube. Initially, I was “is this what Sonic turned into”? But as I played, I found that it was fun, at least when I was playing as Sonic(or Shadow). Alot of the game, though, I got the thoughts “why did they bother with this”? With the story, I felt that they were trying to make things too epic. With the gameplay, I felt that they were trying to do too much. It seemed like the developers went into this trying to create the biggest game ever, without the time or resources to pull it off. Everything felt like it could’ve been done better, and everything else felt like the game was better off without it.
When I got the game, I was assuming I was going to get a new(from my perspective) Sonic game. What I got was a half-assed attempt at something more.
– Meophist
In response to “Killjoy” from The Escapist Forum: Anyone else remember the ‘good ol days’? On the original Bard’s Tale (C64), the manual told you to use your favorite copy program to copy your characters. If your party wiped in the game, they were dead. Your latest game save loaded up with a party or corpses. Now, you could revive them by creating another character, getting enough gold, and then taking each one to the temple, but it wasn’t easy or fun. It did, however, make things much more tense during big battles, especially when you realized that it had been a while since your last backup.
it’s hard to say what the ‘right’ solution is here, but something that would bring that level of risk/reward/punishment back seems to be the place to start.
– Boucaner
