GamesBeat's Stefanie Fogel recently chatted with Robotoki president, and former Call of Duty creative strategist, Robert Bowling about his company’s support of Ouya, its new game, and about his departure from triple-A game development.
From systems that could keep your beer cool, to oddities trying to get in on the popularity of VHS and laserdisc, you’ve got some very, very weird video game consoles out there.
I had the LaserActive... it was a nice collectors piece but not very practical. Especially when it came to needing recapping. I think i paid all of about $50 for the floor model from an incredible Universe back in the day. I ended up selling it many years later for $300 at the time due to it needing a new laser and the aforementioned recapping.
An honorable mention not on the list would be the VM Labs Nuon. It basically looked like any regular DVD player but it had ports on it for controllers to play specific games. one of which is still exclusive to it with Tempest 3000. It also offered nuon enhanced DVD movies with extra content not accessible by regular players.
"We need more than iteration, we need revitalization."
You can say that again. Game has become repetitive and stale. Nothing new same and old story. The franchise also needs to move into future settings.
I disagree on the World War setting. I’d much rather see future settings going forward.
How about..Call of Duty "Samurai Setting" or Call of Duty: Middle Age Setting instead of more future / scince fiction settings?
Some drastic changes sometimes could be awesome.
They already take alot of liberty with the "history" as it is. It's a reskinned Hero shooter.
Absolutely not a future setting, they need to do what they do best make it somewhat relevant to what's going on in today's wars and conflicts. Make a game that relate to that. And for God's sake a new engine. That's the main problem along with the lag of love for the game.
No one wants future settings. Each time they do it aside from Bo2, it’s a complete disaster.
This is part of their dilemma WW2 is played out and they don't know how to do a CoD set in the future. They will inevitably add jet packs again and people hated those. If they are going to be futuristic only the weapons and killstreaks should be affected but they got rid of all the good developers so they will not balance it properly and put out some overpowered gun and everyone will complain again. So they have to stay in a modern setting or slightly future setting but remain modern but they don't know how to innovate. It's the same guns every year, bad maps, and more shitty skins. CoD is dead i have no faith even if they got rid of yearly releases that they are competent enough to make a new one that is great. The multiplayer will keep losing players so they will eventually just make Warzone the focus for CoD for the battle royale gamers.
I want one set in the future as well, but CoD has been at its best with modern warfare (no pun intended).
I never played Infinite Warfare, so I can't speak on that. But I really liked Advanced Warfare. The campaign was also super solid.
Remember when we got like 5 years of purely future only settings nothing modern and or historic it became very stale.
They need to balance the settings better one year it's future the next modern the next historic 40s to 90s etc
They did future settings multiple times already and people hated it. It's not just the fact it was in the future, it's the fact that all 3 devs used the same setting back to back while using some new movement system nobody liked. Right now the 3 studios are stuck in this position where each of them only sticks to one era so they don't overlap. Infinity Ward with Modern era, Treyarch with Vietnam/Cold war era, and Sledgehammer with Old war.
Changing the era does absolutely nothing different to the series as they've demonstrated. What needs to change is how the game is played with the same exact pacing and mechanics every game. Even with the new engine used for MW19, it didn't change the fact the maps were god awful and contradicted the fact the game is a fast paced instant kill game that pushes people to camp. The entire game feels like it wants to be played slower paced with the movement and animations, but it does nothing like that at all. I don't think they'd ever change that fact in the series, but at least start by not trying to appeal to both sides at once and screwing up both.
Call of duty franchise is like Pokemon franchise or even Madden. Every fan of the franchise want better games, better story, better graphics, but everybody else buy the crappy yearly release anyway. Why would Activision change anything to Call of Duty when it's the best selling games every year?
Exactly, and if they change up the formula too much fans will be pissed, so they stick with small changes to say they tried something different when really they took no risk. This ensures profits and that’s all it’s about.
I'm just over CoD. Vanguard was the first CoD I didn't buy since I started playing in 2006. I don't plan on buying into the game franchise again
I only bought 2 COD games after Ghosts (Black Ops 3, Modern Warfare) so I haven't played that much of the franchise in the last 8 years.
As much as I'm over the franchise, I do think this year will be a big year for them though. This one's Modern Warfare 2 (2022).
We'll see. I did enjoy the MW 2019 campaign so maybe I'll buy it just for that
Same, never missed a cod since cod 1 on the pc and the ropey ps1/2 ports. Vanguard did nothing for me. Also, go woke go broke. (You too marvel)
Well I didn't buy it because it "went woke"... I didn't buy it because I got bored of the same thing for years. Plus, I don't want to support any current Activision title until Kotick is gone
As much as we few like the first one, Singularity 2 ain't happening.
Check the actual story, it has a bad rep at Activision and was once nearly cancelled.
https://www.polygon.com/201...
Hypothetically, lets say there's a possibility or hope of a new Singularity project.
Then I'd want the actual Singularity game which was envisioned. With massive time manipulative gameplay concept and accompanying complex story.
Not the cheap Soviet Bioshock clone they had to eventually resort to shipping (again, check the above link, excellent read if you're unaware).
Just 11 months to turn around a wreck from development hell.
Virtual Boy, Sega Nomad, Ouya and the other troubled game systems that nobody bought.
How has this article missed out Sega's Dreamcast and Nintendo's Wii U, two consoles that were actually superb devices in their own right, but were seen as failed due to lacklustre sales at the time of release?
Wonder how long before Stadia appears on the list surprised the Ngage is not on that list
Talk about a blast to the past.......I remember trying the virtual boy at Toy R Us and it was cool but I did feel slightly disoriented afterwards......good article.
There's no reason interesting things can't happen on Ouya.
This guy sounds like he truly gets the new landscape of game devices and design. Nice interview!
robert shoots straight.
I love Robert Bowling! His transformers movies are bad ass.