Xbigy Games' Kamran Draeger writes:
"After teasing us with a trailer yesterday, Galactic Café have announced that The Stanley Parable: HD Remix is in development."
What happens when you get a couple of casual players to try out the totally unique experience that is The Stanley Parable? Victor finds two “unwitting” subjects to find out.
Hardcore Gamer: In game development terms, a “vertical slice,” is a gameplay segment of finished or near-finished quality that showcases all the planned features of a game to potential investors. At the start of a project, these are a massive sink for time and effort, since they essentially involve doing all the hard parts of finishing a game to complete one 10-minute section. Generally, they’re seen as a bad practice. However, toward the end of development, it’s a lot easier to pull assets together for a vertical slice. Of course, if you’re shopping your game around to publishers at that stage, you’re probably in a lot of trouble, but a standalone “vertical slice” can also serve as a strong alternative to a traditional demo.
Totally agree. It's so nice being able to try out a game without spoiling any of it. Bravely Default was genius in doing this and sold me on the game.
Doing a vertical slice as a VC/Publisher demo is an extremely risky move but it really is the best way to show off the talent of your studio and show a strong proof of concept. I believe SOF is doing this with H-Hour...
A vertical slice as a consumer demo really is a great way to show off a game and drive sales. Too many publishers would rather the advertising do the work and show only enough to lure people in. They seem to have it in their heads that demos will hurt their sales. (which it does... if you make a bad game/demo)
Publishers are so pathetic and risk adverse these days... how are consumers supposed to be confident in your games if you aren't confident enough to truly show them off in there purest form?
Why do video games often make the odd transition from hobby to habit? Why play something if you no longer enjoy it? Here are three games that raise these questions through their writing and mechanics.
Call of Duty is one of them. It's not even fun, has no strategy, requires no real skill, is ugly and has crappy unbalanced maps. Yet people keep buying and playing it
Yea I've stopped getting "good/great" at games or trying to at least.
You get to a wall/point where if your not doing great, you start getting angry and frustrated because you know you can do it, it's just not happening.
You start to get these false expectations that your somehow better than you are, and it just ruins the "fun" of the game.
It's not longer a game, it then becomes almost like a "chore" or something you do because but not because it's the thing you want to do most.
* Lots of FPS games are like this, DOTA and other MOBAs are as well.
* I've learned to just have fun and play at whatever level I'm comfortable with.
Because of this though, I've noticed my lack of drive for wanting to play " just one more" though so it has it's ups and downs and I guess that could be a benefit as well.
I feel like a slave when I find myself staying up late to do pointless stuff with other slaves just to get a silly trophy in hopes of getting a virtual platinum that still equals nothing in real life. I think I'm done trophy hunting.
World of Warcraft....glad I left several years ago. It required time to compete. In CoD a person can kill a pro on day one. WoW was such a grind.
While I agree that video games CAN be art, the mass majority of games available is not. I also agree that many games nowaday feel like a chore than a fun hobby. Games used to be a fun thing to do. I would received the same amount of satisfaction from a ten minute play session as I would from a weekend gaming binge.
Some people can play a game for months at a time - that's cool. I'm not like that. I plow through a game and I move on. Sad point is, I'm so back logged (as far back as PS1) that I have to force myself to play a game. I feel like I'm obligated to play a game - like a second job. Which is something that puts me in an odd place - I LOVE video games...but everytime I think about the hundreds of games I need to playthrough, I turn on netflix and let a several seasons of Futurama run as background noise while I curl up in a corner and sob.
As long as you're taking something away from the experience, I don't see it as a bad thing. :)
