The Business Side of Video (Space) Games EXCLUSIVELY ON IDLE THUMBS

[Dewar]

Yeah, I played that for a while. Never got very far.

 

Edit: The alien game I mean.

[Cleinhun]

I knew a bunch of people who were into neopets, including some good friends, but for some reason I don't remember ever touching it myself. I think I maybe didn't have reliable internet access until I was old enough to no longer be interested.

[Merus]

Zero Escape 3 was announced.

 

I don't know what's crazier, whatever the plot ends up being, or the fact that it exists at all.

[Sno]

That is something i had completely given up hope of seeing. I am happy to be wrong, definitely super excited.

Also, Namco's putting out Tales of Zestiria on Steam. I guess that's fairly in line with the growing japanese games presence on Steam, but fan-favorite Tales of Symphonia is being offered as a pre-order incentive, which is fairly odd both for the obvious reason and that it's also never been on PC before. (Well, it will be offered as a pre-order incentive. It isn't yet, it's one of those dumb FILL THE PROGRESS BAR schemes.)

 

I have to imagine that Tales of Symphonia will also be available individually at some point. I guess i think this is a cool thing though, that these games are coming to the PC, I've always rather liked the Tales games despite their many shortcomings.

 

Japanese developers being so PC averse was one of the reasons i mostly stuck with consoles last gen, seeing stuff like this show up on the PC is making the XBO and the PS4 look increasingly less appealing.

[Valorian Endymion]

  On 7/4/2015 at 12:02 PM, Sno said:

I have to imagine that Tales of Symphonia will also be available individually at some point. I guess i think this is a cool thing though, that these games are coming to the PC, I've always rather liked the Tales games despite their many shortcomings.

 

Japanese developers being so PC averse was one of the reasons i mostly stuck with consoles last gen, seeing stuff like this show up on the PC is making the XBO and the PS4 look increasingly less appealing.

 

It will, the game even have his own page on steam but its date is around 2016. This waves of jrpgs and Visual Novels coming to steam is great. I mean remember when pretty much all we had was Last Remnant? (not that was a bad game, once you got the hang of it was ok), given that console can be really expansive where I live (in comparsion to pc)  I welcome with open arms all this japanese games.

There is one more, coming Grandia II HD (but I kind wish they bring Lunar I and II, this where some of my favorite jrpgs on ps one).

[Sno]

So Comcept and Keiji Inafune just announced a project called Red Ash, meant to be a spiritual successor to Megaman Legends, and it's showing a not inconsiderable list of development talent returning from those games.

 

The Kickstarter page.

Oddly, there's a second Kickstarter page for a Studio 4C tie-in anime.

The game project's a little slim on concrete details, it's all very high-concept. The way this thing was launched is a little unusual too, there was no lead-up or announcement as far as i'm aware, it was just sort of put out there. It's also happening too early to receive any real bump from Mighty No 9, which it is ostensibly tied into.

 

I mean, but if this has the potential to more or less be the game Keiji Inafune has been trying to get made for years and years, that's exciting, i'm excited. The Legends series has always seemed to be the thing that man was personally super passionate about.

[Henroid]

So everyone knows about the Arkham Knight kerfuffle where the PC version was shot to shit right? There's an update on the situation from internal emails from EB Games in Australia (retail outlet). The PC version won't be ready until spring. As in almost a year from now.

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/batman-arkham-knight-wont-be-finished-this-season-according-to-source/
 

  Quote

Batman: Arkham Knight will not release this season, according to an internal email reportedly circulated at Australian retailer EB Games. In the email acquired by Kotaku Australia, it's indicated that the necessary updates aren't expected to roll out until the Australian spring, or fall in the Northern Hemisphere.

 

“As previously advised, we have stopped sales of Batman: Arkham Knight PC while Warner and Rocksteady work on addressing performance issues with the game," the email reads.

 

"The latest information from Warner is that the updates won’t be available until Spring. Due to this we have made the difficult decision to recall all PC stock from stores to return to the vendor until an acceptable solution is released.”

That means we're unlikely to play a properly finished Arkham Knight for at least six weeks, assuming the update rolls out as soon as autumn / spring arrives – which it probably won't. Rocksteady already issued one patch in late June, but it wasn't intended to fix all of the game's myriad problems.

 

In case you've been hiding in a batcave this past month, you might have missed that the PC version of Arkham Knight was a bit of a disaster. The ensuing outrcry forced Warner to remove the game from sale, which resulted in all PC DLC being delayed also.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Henroid that says 'Australian Spring' which is American 'Fall'. It also says it'll probably be 6 weeks.

[Henroid]

  On 7/16/2015 at 8:18 AM, SuperBiasedMan said:

Henroid that says 'Australian Spring' which is American 'Fall'. It also says it'll probably be 6 weeks.

Well, that's awfully silly of me.

 

That said, that's still a long time for what's already been a long time. How did the PC version get the OK for release?

[itsamoose]

  On 7/16/2015 at 1:43 PM, Henroid said:

That said, that's still a long time for what's already been a long time. How did the PC version get the OK for release?

Most likely due to a lack of needing to pass a cert process, and it didn't crash in some automated and cursory testing. In terms of testing a game, you generally have a lead platform which you do most of the testing on (maybe 75%) and then run the game on other platforms just to make sure you haven't created a crash bug.

Also, somewhat related to this, I don't think the word "port" really describes a version of a game anymore (most stories about arkham knignt seem to use this language). In modern game engines the porting process is just making some platform specific changes to assets and code, and then going through the exact same build process as with your lead platform. The purpose of having a lead platform is to have a consistent basis to test against, and to create a control to evaluate performance.

[Sno]

So that Red Ash kickstarter has not been performing as well as one would expect of a kickstarter for a spiritual successor to Megaman Legends.

 

Lots of accusations are being tossed around about how Comcept has mishandled that thing.

Certainly, i don't think there was some grand misreading of the internet, there's definitely a lot of people who desperately want another game in the vein of Megaman Legends.

[Justin Leego]

But so soon after Mighty Number 9?

[Sno]

Well, that's one of the points that's been frequently raised, people think this needed to happen after MN9 was out and over with.

[Henroid]

Razer has acquired the Ouya. Software, tech, and dev teams. And it was an all-cash deal. Ouya founder Julie Uhrman has bowed out.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/27/razer-confirms-ouya-acquisition/

 

Edit - And apparently the devs that were promised money to develop for the Ouya are being left hung out to dry. No money for them.

[JonCole]

Re: Henroid's comment on devs losing out on money, here's an article -

 

http://www.polygon.com/2015/7/28/9055441/ouya-money-owed-free-the-games

 

Super shitty.

[Bjorn]

Shitty, but not particularly surprising.  I'm sure any banks, investors and the executives all got paid something out of the purchase.  It's always the contractors and suppliers who get fucked in these situations. 

[Henroid]

  On 7/28/2015 at 4:01 PM, Bjorn said:

Shitty, but not particularly surprising.  I'm sure any banks, investors and the executives all got paid something out of the purchase.  It's always the contractors and suppliers who get fucked in these situations. 

But what kind of recourse do they have, if any?

[Bjorn]

If Razer doesn't offer them something, probably file lawsuits against individual executives for Ouya, and against Razer.  Even with the contract, since Ouya didn't actually file for bankruptcy, it's possible there's a legal claim for Ouya's debts to have been taken on by Razer.  That shit can get pretty complicated through. 

 

As part of the disclosure in lawsuits against executives for Ouya, they might be able to shame some of them if they can show that investors and executives were well paid, while other contracts were abandoned.  Or if they can show that executives continued to sign deals after they knew payments would be impossible to make, then you're crossing over into fraud territory.

 

But most of the devs who took these deals were desperate for cash, which of them will have the money to fund suits like this?

[Henroid]

Turns out Razer is going to fill the gap Ouya left and pay the devs the money they are owed.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/7/28/9059341/free-the-game-fund-ouya-razer

 

So there's a happy ending afterall.

[Gaizokubanou]

To clarify, Razer is effectively buying copies so that they can distribute them however they want.

 

So say, a dev previously had deal for $10,000 to make exclusive title on Ouya (which then dev could earn profit off of).  New deal is that Razer will buy $10,000 worth of copies from the dev for Razer's own Cortex platform but the dev would also be free to sell the game elsewhere.

 

As pointed out, much better than previously feared outcome since now devs will have an option.  Heck, the new deal might actually work out better for most devs but just wanted to point out this important difference.

[osmosisch]

Razer has been mostly excellent at dealing with ethical conundrums from what I've seen so I'm glad they're keeping that streak.

I have to wonder why they'd even pay money for what is essentially a dead platform though.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I'd guess they're trying to just strip out some possibly useful tech? I'd be surprised if it had anything to do with the Ouya name itself.

[SecretAsianMan]

A new crowdfunding site has been launched, but this one's a little different.  Fig was founded by Justin Bailey, formerly the COO of Double Fine.  He's teamed with Tim Schafer, Brian Fargo of InXile, and Feargus Urquhart of Obsidian to create the site.  The difference between Fig and other crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter is that Fig will be curated, specifically for games, and backers will also be able to buy equity in the game or developer meaning that they can actually make money if the game does well. 

 

Gamesbeat interview with Baily and Urquhart

[JonCole]

... huh. I wonder how legal that is. And like, if you "invest" do you actually have to file it as an investment in your taxes? Can people in other countries "invest"?

[SecretAsianMan]

In order to invest, you have to be an Accredited Investor as well as investing a minimum of $1000.  I assume it's taxable, kind of like selling stock.  Don't know about other countries.