OT where have all the good games gone?

[geofflambert]

I have only played the IJ twice so far. I've played 6 or 7 PBEMs now and I've never thrown in the towel. I wouldn't do it but I haven't found an opponent, and I'm only interested in Allied opponents, who would stick it out.

[SheperdN7]

Silent Hunter 4 is the first entry I ever played in the series and I loved it, even without any installed mods. It led me to getting SH3 which is even better and the graphics (IMHO) still stand up today. SH5 is very avoidable, it had such great promise and potential but utterly failed mostly with the DRM debacle and it is more buggy than an ant hill.


I think the gaming world has turned into Hollywood. Very rarely is there a legendary project or undertaking that lands a special place in our hearts anymore, if it does happen its like a generational player in hockey- once every ten years.

I think a big problem is that developers just aren't willing to gamble on a project anymore. They have to make it appeal to the most players possible thereby making the game more accessible.... Something that I am truly convinced has GUTTED the Hearts of Iron series.

[geofflambert]

Silent Hunter is borked. If it were realistic to the extent of WitP-AE you would have to putter around for at least a month (real time) before you even had a chance to acquire a target. Ship's log: Day one: nada. Day two: saw a pelican. Day three, Seaman Second Class Lambert put one of his boogers on a hook and caught a grouper! I hope the USS Neon Tetra survives so I can report this to HQ. Day four: ...

[Anachro]

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

Silent Hunter is borked. If it were realistic to the extent of WitP-AE you would have to putter around for at least a month (real time) before you even had a chance to acquire a target. Ship's log: Day one: nada. Day two: saw a pelican. Day three, Seaman Second Class Lambert put one of his boogers on a hook and caught a grouper! I hope the USS Neon Tetra survives so I can report this to HQ. Day four: ...

I agree with you that in the base game this isn't the case, but some of the realism mods (for instance the Trigger Maru Overhaul mod or the Run Silent Run Deep mod) can make what you describe actually happen.

It can take weeks or months in-game (you can speed up time because at x1 speed you are headed for a very long game given the accurate in-game distances involved) for you to spot convoys or task forces; and even if you do, it can be quite a feat to get in proper strike position and successfully pull off an attack without being scared off by ASW.

And if you play with the full realism provided by these mods, you have to input things in manually. Identify the ship through your binoculars or scope (not always an easy thing), figure out its speed and distance, its angle on bow, set your torpedo speed and depth, put this all in the computer.

Lots of fun.

A simplified manual for targeting with realism at 100%

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: warspite1

ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury

long time passing?

I think the biggest problem is the complete lack of creativity/ talent. Very few new developers are now coming with new ideas, instead they just recycle old concepts in better interface or "eye candy" graphics.

There are of course some exceptions, but few

warspite1

I suspect its not a lack of talent - its a lack of money/reward i.e. good old fashioned economics.

A few comments I have seen on forums here in recent weeks pretty much confirms what most have suspected for a long time. The hobby is niche and the returns are probably just not there for spending time/resource on experimenting with new games/concepts and different subjects (that may or may not sell).

Look at World In Flames. It's not like someone had to invent a game. An award winning, brilliant, beautiful game was there and ready. It just needed someone to bring it to the computer in a way that was economically feasible.....[:(] Well that's where the problems began.

Look at DC: Barbarossa. Decision cards may not be for everyone (and fair enough) but here was something a little different, a little exciting - perhaps the start of something. But the economic reality is that is unlikely to be the case.

There is a period of WWII that screams out to be war gamed. A game that is genuinely winnable by both sides without having to insert faux balancing items, a game that could appeal to the naval war gamer, the air man and the land war devotee in equal measure. One problem. The War in the Mediterranean is not the Battle of the Bulge, The Soviet / German war or any of the other 'staples' that cost conscious developers need to concentrate on. As was pointed out the other day in the DC:B forum, if it doesn't sell in the US then forget it, the returns are just not there.

No, I suspect there is a world of talent and creativity out there. But this is the wrong area of the gaming world to get their attention.

Many years ago there was an editorial in the Avalon Hill magazine The General about the size of the wargame hobby. I believe the writer was one of the head people at AH and knew the industry well. He pointed out that a mega hit in the wargame industry like Advanced Squad Leader would sell around 10,000 copies over its entire lifetime. The popular games sold by Hasbro all sell more than 100,000 copies a year. Hasbro drops games that don't meet that threshold. When Hasbro later bought AH people were scratching their heads because AH was such small potatoes compared to everything else in their line up, but they were looking to the rights to some of AH's more popular multiplayer games like Diplomacy to turn them into online games. That never really happened, but that may have been their thinking.

The computer game industry is a bit different from the physical game industry, but the same scale of economics apply. Games like Grand Theft Auto sell millions of copies and the studios that create those games have lots of cash to invest in new games. Though they still do all they can to recycle the old game engines because creating a game engine from scratch is not easy and once you get something right, you milk it for all you can. Games that can be played on multiple platforms are also desirable in the industry. Games limited to one platform are limiting their market from the start.

In the gaming business real time games sell better than games that take time to play. Those who don't play real time games, tend to be on game systems like iWin or play Facebook games that have fairly simple game engines compared to what it takes to run the sort of wargame Matrix releases. The sort of people who have the patience for a slowly unfolding game like AE are few and far between. And of those people, there is some percentage who wouldn't be interested in the subject, and another percentage who never heard of Matrix.

I can't go into details, but having seen the extent of the guts of AE, it would be a pretty daunting task for anyone to build an all new engine that did the same thing better. For a lifetime sales of 10,000 if you're lucky, the payoff is not worth it to most developers. Playing in the mainstream game arena where a big hit can bring in millions vs a niche game that might make $100K-$200K over its lifetime of the entire engine, only those who are doing it for the love of the game are going to bother.

AE was developed by a handful of people who were fans of the game. If we did it for the money we'd all be living in cardboard boxes now.

Bill

[szmike]

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

Silent Hunter is borked. If it were realistic to the extent of WitP-AE you would have to putter around for at least a month (real time) before you even had a chance to acquire a target. Ship's log: Day one: nada. Day two: saw a pelican. Day three, Seaman Second Class Lambert put one of his boogers on a hook and caught a grouper! I hope the USS Neon Tetra survives so I can report this to HQ. Day four: ...

it felt that way in old Silent Service I played on my Atari [8D]

[geofflambert]

A cardboard box isn't good enough for you? It was good enough for Stratego and Monopoly. Even Scrabble wasn't too particular to reject cardboard boxes. I think I once had a Scribbage game that came in a cardboard box. It didn't have a full bath or a garage, but it didn't take any guff from any of the other cardboard boxes.

[geofflambert]

Remember jig-saw puzzle boxes? They came with artwork you could hang inside. Very hoidy-toidy.

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

ORIGINAL: warspite1

ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury

long time passing?

I think the biggest problem is the complete lack of creativity/ talent. Very few new developers are now coming with new ideas, instead they just recycle old concepts in better interface or "eye candy" graphics.

There are of course some exceptions, but few

warspite1

I suspect its not a lack of talent - its a lack of money/reward i.e. good old fashioned economics.

A few comments I have seen on forums here in recent weeks pretty much confirms what most have suspected for a long time. The hobby is niche and the returns are probably just not there for spending time/resource on experimenting with new games/concepts and different subjects (that may or may not sell).

Look at World In Flames. It's not like someone had to invent a game. An award winning, brilliant, beautiful game was there and ready. It just needed someone to bring it to the computer in a way that was economically feasible.....[:(] Well that's where the problems began.

Look at DC: Barbarossa. Decision cards may not be for everyone (and fair enough) but here was something a little different, a little exciting - perhaps the start of something. But the economic reality is that is unlikely to be the case.

There is a period of WWII that screams out to be war gamed. A game that is genuinely winnable by both sides without having to insert faux balancing items, a game that could appeal to the naval war gamer, the air man and the land war devotee in equal measure. One problem. The War in the Mediterranean is not the Battle of the Bulge, The Soviet / German war or any of the other 'staples' that cost conscious developers need to concentrate on. As was pointed out the other day in the DC:B forum, if it doesn't sell in the US then forget it, the returns are just not there.

No, I suspect there is a world of talent and creativity out there. But this is the wrong area of the gaming world to get their attention.

Many years ago there was an editorial in the Avalon Hill magazine The General about the size of the wargame hobby. I believe the writer was one of the head people at AH and knew the industry well. He pointed out that a mega hit in the wargame industry like Advanced Squad Leader would sell around 10,000 copies over its entire lifetime. The popular games sold by Hasbro all sell more than 100,000 copies a year. Hasbro drops games that don't meet that threshold. When Hasbro later bought AH people were scratching their heads because AH was such small potatoes compared to everything else in their line up, but they were looking to the rights to some of AH's more popular multiplayer games like Diplomacy to turn them into online games. That never really happened, but that may have been their thinking.

The computer game industry is a bit different from the physical game industry, but the same scale of economics apply. Games like Grand Theft Auto sell millions of copies and the studios that create those games have lots of cash to invest in new games. Though they still do all they can to recycle the old game engines because creating a game engine from scratch is not easy and once you get something right, you milk it for all you can. Games that can be played on multiple platforms are also desirable in the industry. Games limited to one platform are limiting their market from the start.

In the gaming business real time games sell better than games that take time to play. Those who don't play real time games, tend to be on game systems like iWin or play Facebook games that have fairly simple game engines compared to what it takes to run the sort of wargame Matrix releases. The sort of people who have the patience for a slowly unfolding game like AE are few and far between. And of those people, there is some percentage who wouldn't be interested in the subject, and another percentage who never heard of Matrix.

I can't go into details, but having seen the extent of the guts of AE, it would be a pretty daunting task for anyone to build an all new engine that did the same thing better. For a lifetime sales of 10,000 if you're lucky, the payoff is not worth it to most developers. Playing in the mainstream game arena where a big hit can bring in millions vs a niche game that might make $100K-$200K over its lifetime of the entire engine, only those who are doing it for the love of the game are going to bother.

AE was developed by a handful of people who were fans of the game. If we did it for the money we'd all be living in cardboard boxes now.

Bill

warspite1

I'm pretty sure I read once (but sadly cannot recall the source) that World In Flames - voted Game of the Year, best wargame ever and other such awards etc etc - and which has been going since the 80's, only ever sold 60,000 copies in total. So we live with the economic reality.

Another Bulge game anyone? [8|]

[Olorin]

ORIGINAL: patrickl

Agree with TS. Just AE is not enuff to occupy us. I have just bought Hearts of Iron 3 from Amazon to play. We can only hope Matrix can quickly come up with another superb game like AE.

You made the right choice. HoI4 is a "streamlined" (=dumbed down) game that is lacking in almost every respect compared to its predecessor.

[Zigurat666]

I must be old...most if not all of these are computer games. Nothing beats head-to-head with some beers and a friend. This Sunday Im having a game of Civil War by Victory Games with a buddy. Takes two days to play at around 6-8 hours a day but much fun.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Zigurat666

I must be old...most if not all of these are computer games. Nothing beats head-to-head with some beers and a friend. This Sunday Im having a game of Civil War by Victory Games with a buddy. Takes two days to play at around 6-8 hours a day but much fun.

You have friends? Hmm . . . [:'(]

My PC never talks back. Or drinks all my beer.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: SheperdN7

Silent Hunter 4 is the first entry I ever played in the series and I loved it, even without any installed mods. It led me to getting SH3 which is even better and the graphics (IMHO) still stand up today. SH5 is very avoidable, it had such great promise and potential but utterly failed mostly with the DRM debacle and it is more buggy than an ant hill.

I have all the SHs through 4. SH5 lost me on the DRM, and I don't regret it.

SH4 was a big disappointment to me. The European team (Romanian I think) just had no idea of the USN culture.

SH3 with the Grey Wolves massive mod is by far the best IMO. I don't like driving U-boats per se, but technically it's the best of the series.

[chemkid]

.

[Anachro]

You can get some wacky results with Black Ice (I'm looking at you Western Front where I can grind down the German juggernaut along the river lines of France and Holland, massive disparity in casualties due to crazy defensive bonuses).

That said, it can be a lot of fun too! Nothing like encircling tons of enemy troops. In an MP game, I encircled millions of Chinese troops at once through a massive encirclement (not the one in the picture below). Satisfying.

[Jaroen]

For people who enjoyed Close Combat and/or Combat Mission there is this, Graviteam Tactics.
See their website http://graviteam.com/ and a review on Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

I haven't played it but it certainly is on my list.

[asurob]

I have been playing WITPAE...since it was called WITP. In fact, I am pretty sure I was one of the first people to get the game (a friend of mine here picked it up at a gaming convention in Ohio and overnighted it to me...I was a big Uncommon Valor player as well) and play an opponent.

A long time and a lot of games both against humans and solo.

Easily the best purchase I have ever made and I still have a couple games going now.

There will never be a game that is it's equal...which makes me sad...because I would love to find something out there that has such a devoted following.

[adarbrauner]

ORIGINAL: wdolson



Many years ago there was an editorial in the Avalon Hill magazine The General about the size of the wargame hobby. I believe the writer was one of the head people at AH and knew the industry well. He pointed out that a mega hit in the wargame industry like Advanced Squad Leader would sell around 10,000 copies over its entire lifetime. The popular games sold by Hasbro all sell more than 100,000 copies a year. Hasbro drops games that don't meet that threshold. When Hasbro later bought AH people were scratching their heads because AH was such small potatoes compared to everything else in their line up, but they were looking to the rights to some of AH's more popular multiplayer games like Diplomacy to turn them into online games. That never really happened, but that may have been their thinking.

The computer game industry is a bit different from the physical game industry, but the same scale of economics apply. Games like Grand Theft Auto sell millions of copies and the studios that create those games have lots of cash to invest in new games. Though they still do all they can to recycle the old game engines because creating a game engine from scratch is not easy and once you get something right, you milk it for all you can. Games that can be played on multiple platforms are also desirable in the industry. Games limited to one platform are limiting their market from the start.

In the gaming business real time games sell better than games that take time to play. Those who don't play real time games, tend to be on game systems like iWin or play Facebook games that have fairly simple game engines compared to what it takes to run the sort of wargame Matrix releases. The sort of people who have the patience for a slowly unfolding game like AE are few and far between. And of those people, there is some percentage who wouldn't be interested in the subject, and another percentage who never heard of Matrix.

I can't go into details, but having seen the extent of the guts of AE, it would be a pretty daunting task for anyone to build an all new engine that did the same thing better. For a lifetime sales of 10,000 if you're lucky, the payoff is not worth it to most developers. Playing in the mainstream game arena where a big hit can bring in millions vs a niche game that might make K-K over its lifetime of the entire engine, only those who are doing it for the love of the game are going to bother.

AE was developed by a handful of people who were fans of the game. If we did it for the money we'd all be living in cardboard boxes now.

Bill

how many copies-issues of WITPAE have been sold up right now?

And I'm still dreaming of an evolution; with smaller hexes, and a more detailed land combat model (plus some other enhancements); I'd pay; maybe even 100 bucks,or maybe more; you pay for quality;

You can get some wacky results with Black Ice (I'm looking at you Western Front where I can grind down the German juggernaut along the river lines of France and Holland, massive disparity in casualties due to crazy defensive bonuses).

I've stopped playing HOI3 BICE after having been stuck for already 4 YEARS (!!!!) in Ethiopia as Italy around the mountains of Addis Abeba in spite of having the majority and best of the Italian army all around; that was excessive, it should be tuned down or better configurated (and it could be done);
and in any case the basic lacks of HOI 3 are missing painfully, especially when you see the good new ideas so much required by the users badly employed or distorted in the 4th version (horrible, PDX is placing the stone cover on the coffin and perpetual grave of HOI3);

[SheperdN7]

For people who enjoyed Close Combat and/or Combat Mission there is this, Graviteam Tactics.
See their website http://graviteam.com/ and a review on Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

I haven't played it but it certainly is on my list.

GREAT GAME I got it about a year ago, and it plays very well. Would not recommend it for fast paced players though, it sometimes can take an hour just to get contact with the enemy (I guess that's why the time acceleration is there but still) VERY challenging scenarios, especially the German ones.

AE was developed by a handful of people who were fans of the game. If we did it for the money we'd all be living in cardboard boxes now.

Bill

Bill, when development started, did you ever have any idea that the end product would be this special?

[wdolson]

AE was developed by a handful of people who were fans of the game. If we did it for the money we'd all be living in cardboard boxes now.

Bill

ORIGINAL: SheperdN7
Bill, when development started, did you ever have any idea that the end product would be this special?

I joined fairly well into the development. The other 3 programmers had been at it for a while. When I got a chance to beta test the new AE, I knew it was going to pretty much kill off the original WitP. There was talk at the time of selling it as an expansion pack, but it was so much more.

Considering how Beyond Valor and the original WitP has held up, I expected AE would have a pretty good run.

Bill