That’s me 🙂

I’m a big fan of what you’re doing – keep it up, the games industry needs more people who are willing to think about it on a deeper level.

I’m pretty sure I’m the only person on the planet that enjoyed Time and Eternity, haha. Looking forward to your alternative opinion!

Hey Matt,

Thanks for the articulated discussion and I appreciate that you like the content on our site. You’re the EiC of Digitally Downloaded, right? As I’m sure you know, it’s always awesome when we get great comment discussions and compliments like this.

Thanks again! You should keep an eye out for my review of Time and Eternity soon, it is definitely a much different opinion, haha

Well, publishers demand more sales.

When wasteland 2 looked for a publisher, every publisher wanted to turn it into a shooter.

Also they put so much money in voice acting, story writers, soundtrack, reserach and all that to somehow get high sales.

They basicly see this as invenstors, if x amount of money as spend in the game, x amount of sales will be reached, its riddiculus. At a rough estimate dead space 3 could have costed more than the film Avengers (juding by the 5 million slaes requirements) thats just riddiculus.

Thats not how it works damn it, you dont spend x amount of money expecting to get sales. You need good games with talent and dedication in what they do, just like developers did in the 90s and became the tycoons they are today.

On the whole storytelling and gameplay thingy i got to say that we see games playing alike and focusing too much on storytelling and narrative, lets face it bioshock infinite and the lat of us gameplay is average, not amazing or revolutionary, yet these games got high scores for story. Makes sense on the walking dead series but in such big budget games, you need good gameplay. So essentially we overrate game with an emotional bias focused on story and how story and characters made us feel rather how good the gameplay is.

Then you see ubisoft massive saying “all games in E3 were tech demos,i would like to see more focus on narrative side”

Which begs the question when did games become about narrative and not gameplay?

The industry is shifting towards narrative and essentially movie games, focused around dialogues and tv like experiance kinda like what quantum break tries to do. That is how games will be in the future where Alan wake falied badly in sales by using what essentially bioshock infintie and the last of us use today in order to sucseed.

If this is how its gonna go, “expect interactive experinces” in the next gen and not actual “games”.

I remember a time that games were long, complicated with replay value and variety. Apparently games keep degrading in those things since 2006.

I have to say I agree with you on a lot of points. I am one the biggest opponents of casualization on the site. If you will note, I never said that expecting anything about expecting a game to have a good story or depth. I would argue that the expectations listed in the article are a major part of your problems with modern games.

It is hard to tell investors that you are not trying to sell a game to as many people as possible, and even harder to let go of the chance of massive profits. Some of this might be greed, but some of it is also just pragmatically trying to be as successful as possible. What I think gets lost on many developers is how to be successful.

They think they can have better graphics, better voice acting, or just review well enough to generate momentum for the game. This stems from large amounts of money spent on R&D, focus groups, ect. and comes from trying to win over the holy grail casual gamers have become. That is why in this article I urge gamers, casual or hardcore, to let go of needing graphics and extensive voice acting to be the forefront, while gameplay and storytelling take the backseat.

Thanks for your feedback man, heres to hoping eventually some developers “get it” and gamers start demanding more substance, less flash.

1) As I said above I admit it is strained, it is not the only reason for the resignation but it seems to be a big one. Tomb Raider was specifically highlighted because it sold so well yet still was a failure, falling in line with the narrative behind the article. An external link has been added to lead readers to a more detailed look at the resignation but that is not this articles focus.

2) The article I linked was to show that not only the information about parallel import, but that it is a general consensus supporting that game prices are too high in Australia. I appeal you to look at their own government officials such as Stephen Conroy, the Federal Minister for Broadband, Communications, and Digital Economy, who opened an inquiry into the matter talked about here. (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117433-Australia-Asks-About-High-Game-Prices)

While you can argue that it is untrue that they are too expensive, it seems unfair to criticize bad journalism as the reason the article mentioned high game prices in Australia.

Regardless, I thank you for your thoughtful and detailed feedback.

Seriously enough already.

So bioshock was dumbed down. Damn, sitll games are so crap nowdays that if bioshock infinite offers more bioshock ill be happy.

Nope, they just turned it into a linear 2 weapons shooter with limited interaction.

Damn it.

So here i am hoping for a decent game, yet the game that is decent gets 9.5s and 10s everywhere, yes i am talking about the las of us.

So kingdoms of amalaur tried to be a huge game and actually deliver a huge rpg at the range of skyrim, sadly that costed too much money and they had to get alot of sales they couldnt recouple their spending. Also the “Critics” gave this game 7-8 which didnt help much.

Damn.

Then we got a crapazillion of games flopping

EA:

Crysis 3, moh warfighter, dead space 3, syndicate

Neither reached the required sales.

Thq failing along with darksiders 2

Square enix:

Sleeping dogs (1.5 million, pfff) hitman absolution, tomb raider

Reached their goals 2 monhts ago.

Capcom

remember me, dmc, resident evil 6

None reached their goals

What you see here is games getting rebooted, dumbe down and streamedlined trying to reach a wider audience and failing to do that.

People have finally woken up and reallized how publishers treat games like low life span money makers and they simply dont buy their games.

The one who needs to lower their expectasions is publishers and developers and focus on less sales and a smaller audience. They need to up their game and make better games.

We need to ask for better games and less streamlined movie-game experiances. Also stop overrating games like the last of us and bioshock infinite.

If we dont, next gen will be a disaster from every possible perspective, sales, industry, games, gamers.

Tomb Raider, which despite selling over 3 million copies…. ended up failing so bad that Square Enix president Yoichi Wada was forced to resign.

You did not mention Hitman: Absolution or other games (and there were many that ultimately underperformed and cost Wada his job – FFXIII-2, Dragon Quest X Wii U edition, FFXIV). You quite specifically said that Tomb Raider, and only Tomb Raider, cost Wada his job. This is factually wrong.

I’m not in any way saying it wasn’t a factor, and nor am I saying the game didn’t meet expectations. Your thesis is generally correct. I was objecting to your inaccurate wording.

2) That’s a bit of cherry picking there that you’ve done, and it was a very flawed part of Mark’s article (all due respect to Mark though, I’ve known him a long time and we’ve been working around the same traps for quite some times), as it fails to take into account the fact that it’s possible to parallel import PlayStation 3, PC and PlayStation Vita games into Australia, and yet these are subjected to the same “Australian price hike” as the consoles that are region-locked.

Here’s some alternative math for you: The average wage in Australia is roughly $72 800. In the US, it’s $46 326. So, the fact that Americans only earn about 2/3rds of what Australians do impacts on the entire country. At the very simplest level, it’s more expensive to sell stuff in Australia, and so prices need to be higher, but thankfully we all earn more so we can afford it.

Having spent time in the US, almost everything is “less expensive” – especially luxury objects. That’s in no way a reflection on the relative financial burden involved in buying the product though, and that’s the metric that’s important.

So, even if you’re right and properly adjusted the Australian price of games is more expensive. It’s not going to be that far ahead of the bell curve, and certainly not enough to be called “outrageous.” Outrageously more expensive is something like Brazil where the prices are inflated to something like $150 for a new game, and the people still live within a developing economy.

Once again, this is an accuracy thing – I don’t disagree with your general point, but if you’re going to claim a fact, you need to be able to support that it is an actual fact.

Don’t take these criticisms as criticisms of your writing. I’ve read quite a few pieces on here in the past, and you guys have more potential than most sites out there. It’s just that if there is one thing the good gaming websites out there need to champion, it’s good journalism. And good journalism starts in being accurate.

While I respect your opinion, I humbly disagree with you.

1) Yes it is true that Tomb Raider was just part of the the losses the company endured which led to Youchi Wada’s resignation, with Hitman: Absolution and others. But to quote “slow sales of major console game titles in North American and European markets” was one of the major reasons. Seeing as it was one of the biggest flops for the company recently the correlation, while admittedly strained is fair on face.

2) If you would really like to know why they are expensive I would recomend reading this article: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2010/…. “One of the main reasons things like books, software, and DVDs cost more in Australia than overseas is something called ‘parallel import restrictions’,” claims Mark. “These rules stop someone buying the product cheaply – but legitimately – overseas and importing it themselves to sell locally at a higher price, but still less than what current suppliers charge.” The rest of the article goes more in depth.

1) You imply that the failure of Tomb Raider was directly responsible for Yoichi Wada’s resignation at Square Enix. It might have been part of the reason, but you’ve worded it as though it’s the only reason. That’s incorrect.

2) You seem to think game prices in Australia are “ridiculously” expensive. If you do the economic modelling about how expensive it is to sell games in Australia, and you take into account that the average Australian wage is close to twice the average American wage, then game prices in Australia might be slightly more expensive than the adjusted norm across the world, but if it is, it’s not by much.

Lemme guess, you saw “$80 for a new game” and immediately thought about that price in terms of the perceived and real value of the US currency. Which is incorrect.

You’re a games journalist. Please understand that it’s your job to be precise and accurate in what you write.