Not always. Remember starwars battlefront? What ruined it wasn’t because of it being starwars related, but because ea gave up on it. Even in a broken state, people were still having fun.
“Originality” is overvalued. Yes, it’s an important aspect, but even near-clones can be great. Just look at Stardew Valley vs Harvest Moon.
Imo, the real key to making a great game (along with skill) is heart/care. If a dev is only making a game to make bank, it’s going to come through. And when a game is made with care and attention, that comes through in spades. All of these games have creators that clearly care about the game itself and, while they are being rewarded for their efforts, that wasn’t and isn’t their primary drive in developing or maintaining the games.
Counterpoint, “originality” almost never really refers to something that has never been done before. Instead it refers to something that the intended consumer has no, or little, reference for. Prime example is stardew valley and Helldivers.
Harvest moon has existed for awhile but few potential consumers have reference for it when playing stardew. So it succeeds. Helldivers is an alt version of many games but earth defense force is one of the genres it’s in. They’re very similar games at the core. Yet most people have no reference for it so it can still be “original” to them.
While I agree these games have heart and care, the success is largely to do with having a genre that already works with some audiences and then polishing it up and adding that heart factor to reskin it and try a new audience.
This is what indie games are great for. Take core ideas from big studios that work. Then don’t skip the part where the heart is ripped out for profit. And bam it’s a good game.
Instead it refers to something that the intended consumer has no, or little, reference for.
I’d argue that’s novelty, not originality, though you may be right in that it’s what was meant. I’d still say that’s not the critical piece in a successful game. Passion and care matter much more, imo.
Yep, it’s usually passion that drives a game (or any art) to greatness. If you’re passionate about it then you’ll see the flaws. If you’re just doing a job then you only care about completing goals and getting it done.
It doesn’t matter the domain, on a long enough time frame, humans will take the fun activity they made and, in their quest to maximize/extract fun from it, destroy it.
Professional sports/games are oxymorons. When no one playing is having fun, the point is lost.
Our addiction to making everything in life into a serious competition against one another will be our species’ end. We claim to be intelligent animals, we get drunk on the idea of our own self-importance as a species, but if we were intelligent, we wouldn’t shun mutual cooperation for mutual benefit as much of civilization, and American society to be sure, does. We can’t even have interactive fun without it being turned into some hyper-serious struggle for dominance by some assholes.
… We’re talking about video games. People can have fun being hyper competitive or have fun being casual. I don’t know what the fuck is up with this site all this hyper dramatic “absolutist” type bullshit, as if shades of grey for any situation simply don’t exist. Damn bro. If anyone is getting self important, it’s you writing this comment.
Don’t even get me fuckin started on the professional athletes bit, Jesus Christ
Warcraft 2 was actually a really great game. If Warcraft 3 and StarCraft never came out and utterly eclipsed it, it would have been an all timer. Warcraft 1 was also good, but inferior to 2 in basically every way and never got time to shine.
Witcher 1 was incredibly tough to play through, but Witcher 2 was great.
WC1 was iconic at the time and we thought nothing could top it. Then WC2 absolutely blew our minds, and SC destroyed them as (I think) the first popular RTS with highly asymmetric but balanced factions.
Blizzard was absolutely on the top of their game then.
Of course nobody (including myself) realized that both games were just Warhammer / 40k in disguise, because those games were only for true nerds at the time. Only in the last few years as 40k has become mainstream did it become obvious where Blizzard got the lore and aesthetic to create such iconic games.
Same I never played much WC3 we mostly stuck to StarCraft and AoE2 in that era. StarCraft for a quick weeknight game and AoE2 for prolonged LAN party wars
I heard (so feel free to go down the rabbit hole and try to varify it, cause I am struggling to find a definitive source) that Blizzard was actually trying to make a 40k game but the deal fell through so they went for legally distinct lore. And one of the reasons all the cerabrates were killed between brood war and wings of liberty was because games workshop didn’t feel they were legally distinct enough and blizzard didn’t want to get in a protracted legal battle over them.
I’ve heard that it was Warcraft that was supposed to be a Warhammer licensed game but I don’t believe it. I don’t know what the armies looked like at the time when Warcraft 1 was being designed, but the Humans certainly don’t look like anything in 5th Ed - TOW.
StarCraft is clearly inspired by WH40k, but it came out after they should have resolved any licensing issues with Warcraft.
I looked into it this morning because I was curious and it’s all very blurred lines. However apparently Blizzard and GW do have an agreement about allowed content going forward so something happened between them.
It’s like… There’s only so many ways to draw a space marine but Terran marines are clearly Space Marines, right? And the Zerg and Tyranids are just too similar for it to be a coincidence.
Appropriate actually. Hanzo main is essentially saying someone thinks they're the protagonist, as they believe they'll single handedly wipe the other team on a flank. That describes someone who steals your pencil. Smart kid.
Nerd powers activate… (And yes, the redraws are really quite ridiculous. But tiddies sell microtransactions, I guess.)
As a side note, I never quite understood why Fio is wearing glasses in the Metal Gear Slug 2 character select screen except, possibly, so the artists could have this gag where they shatter for a quick freeze-frame when you select her:
I honestly am surprised i’ve made it this far. I fully expected to forget one day or just straight up not have time at all at some point along the way. I’m happy i’ve been able to make it this far.
It would be a real shame if abuse@dtnt.com (the domain registrar of brandshield.com) were to get a bunch of reports about scams and illegal activity found on the website. Bonus points for copying legal@dtnt.com.
Yeah I don’t really buy pc games before they fall below a certain price point, anyway. So I don’t really care about these limited exclusive periods.
I wonder how much these deals are paying off for epic. Outside of exclusives and the weekly free games I’ve basically never even thought of buying a game on EGS. Definitely the worst launcher experience. Easily ignorable.
I don’t buy hardware until it drops below a certain price point, so when I finally have a PC capable enough, the game price is coincidentally also lower.
Not even just ignorable. I literally don’t even hear about them until they release on steam and people talk smack in steam reviews. It might as well not exist unless it’s on Steam or GOG.
Apparently Alan Wake 2 came out on PC awhile ago, and I literally had no idea until someone bitched about it on Lemmy, lol.
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