BioShock Infinite

[Roderick]

NOLF2 was so good. I gotta make it a point to replay that.

[TychoCelchuuu]

  On 12/3/2012 at 8:08 PM, SiN said:

Ah okay, just checking. It's easy to blame publishers, but a bunch of the blame is ours too.

But yes, this is sad. One solution is that taking risks is easier on smaller games. I hope in the next gen we see more price points. Ideally there'd be $5-$15 and $25-30 downloadables, and $50-$60 retail games. A game like Overstrike could exist at $30 with a budget of $10-$15 million, where the profit (as a % of revenue) is higher due to the lower overhead on digital.

Certainly. Indie games already do this sort of thing on a shoestring budget, and I feel like indie films are a good template for where games should start heading - those movies get made for like, a million bucks or something, so they don't need to sell 40,000 tickets in every theater just to break even. But for some reason game development has gotten to the point where lots of publishers seem to want every game to be a huge AAA production with a massive team and a massive budget, as if they can't make money on a game like Hotline Miami or Mark of the Ninja or The Walking Dead. So Overstrike has to turn into FUSE to recoup its costs.

Of course, the IDEAL situation would be one where people bought NOLF instead of Generic Manshoot #7, but for whatever reason, that doesn't happen.

[I_smell]

  On 12/3/2012 at 9:13 PM, TychoCelchuuu said:

But for some reason game development has gotten to the point where lots of publishers seem to want every game to be a huge AAA production with a massive team and a massive budget, as if they can't make money on a game like Hotline Miami or Mark of the Ninja or The Walking Dead. So Overstrike has to turn into FUSE to recoup its costs.

It's the same reason games on Kickstarter went from $3,000 to $10,000 then to $100,000 in the space of a month.

Cos why settle for small when you CAN HAVE BBIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Edit- Oh wait this thread's about Bioshock Infinite. So- anyway... how about that... Ken Levine, right?

[TychoCelchuuu]

Have we seen a dropoff in the small Kickstarters? I would imagine what actually went on was that Double Fine Adventure earned a zillion dollars and larger players saw they could also do this sort of thing. I don't think the small games have dried up, whereas for most publishers, making a small game doesn't even seem to be on the radar. Look at the spread of recently funded Kickstarter games: lots of smaller budget games are packed in there among the $10k and $100k games. Heck, No Time to Explain got $26k which is hardly $3k, right? And that was a while ago.

Incidentally people have talked about this before so we're not really cool for whining about it, and until the AAA game bubble pops I'm happy to play all the wonderful indie games. Not to mention those big budget Kickstarters you mention are actually the sort of small budget games that I wish publishers would be funding in the first place. So maybe we're seeing the transition RIGHT NOW with this first round of successful big Kickstarters. If games like Shadowrun Returns, the Double Fine Adventure, Wasteland 2, Project Eternity, Star Citizen, and so on succeed, then maybe publishers will decide that they can get in on the action too and start making games with budgets in the low millions of dollars.

[I_smell]

One studio I'd like to see make a round of short games: Bioshock Infinite developer, Irrational Games.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Or even just ugly games. I imagine a lot of the budget in AAA games is making them look more like BioShock than System Shock.

[Twig]

Yeah I have zero interest in playing games that look like System Shock in 2012+.

Low-poly can be done, but you still need to make up for it in other areas. SS wouldn't cut it today.

[TychoCelchuuu]

I definitely meant "look more like System Shock" in terms of low poly, not in terms of art direction. Obviously it's not cheaper to have System Shock's art direction that it is to have BioShock's art direction. It's just cheaper to make System Shock 2 spec art assets than it is to have BioShock spec art assets.

[Twig]

I mean, I know that's not what you meant, but there's still more to it than just reducing the number of polygons and creating a better art style.

Definitely cheaper in the long run, though, of course!

[melmer]

So, whats the chances that irrational picked up Guillermo del Toro's inSANE? Would Irrational pick up someone's half finished game?

Guillermo del Toro: We were going to go to a lot of developers after THQ, but it seems like we’re going to be developing it after the first meeting we had. I can’t disclose where it was, but we went to a great developer on the first meeting and it seems that they’re picking it up because they love the package.

http://uk.ign.com/ar...-the-halo-movie

There was a lot of mutual admiration going on in the irrational podcast (well worth a listen)

[ThunderPeel2001]

DoubleFine?

[elmuerte]

Bethesda?

[I_smell]

Sillicon Knights?

[TychoCelchuuu]

Lucasfilm Games?

[Twig]

Ubisoft?

[melmer]

Free radical?

[SiN]

ELECTRONIC ARTS of It's in the game fame

[melmer]

There's a teaser trailer of a trailer teaser just popped up on the VGA website. GET HYPE!

[Frenetic Pony]

Looking Glass?

Random Words?

King Kong?

Am I buying a chair?

Am I buy a chair?

[miffy495]

Chair interactive?

[ThunderPeel2001]

Interactive Interactive?

[melmer]

Software from software?

[elmuerte]

THC

[I_smell]

3D Realms.

[melmer]

A snooker table?