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The Death of Immersive Sims?

TC Jr

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Why buy dishonoured when Thief does it better?
Nu Deus ex, again the the original has more going for it.

Who are these games for? It seems as if they want both the gamer crowd and casual crowd, and if a game is easily accessible to a casual player, can it really offer deep gameplay mechanics that rival older games that have already done it?

People give games like these slack because the other releases are even worse but they're still very simple games that seem fun but their just tedious and oversimplified.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Gamers are the ones to blame, as they have voted with their wallets. Latest Deus Ex sold poorly, Dishonored 2 did poorly, latest Hitman didn't do too well and it looks like Prey will be no exception. Industry is reacting to market, and market obviously isn't interested in systemic SP games. Multiplayer and co-op games are selling (not to mention that they are cheaper to make and that it is easier to milk them with new content), Pavlovian open worlds are selling, cinematic shoters/adventures are selling. Customers had their chance to change that, had a bunch of them after Dishonored and Human Revolution actually, and each of them was wasted.

It's kind of weird. In many ways, Bethesda's open world RPGs are more complex than Arkane's games. They've got stats. They've got inventories. They've got dialogue trees. They've got big open worlds that you need to navigate, with lots of downtime.

Immersive sims are more similar to classic crowd-pleasing shooters than Bethesda's games are. They should be more accessible. Yet they're failing to break through. WTF is going on?
 

Lyric Suite

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Gamers are the ones to blame, as they have voted with their wallets. Latest Deus Ex sold poorly, Dishonored 2 did poorly, latest Hitman didn't do too well and it looks like Prey will be no exception. Industry is reacting to market, and market obviously isn't interested in systemic SP games. Multiplayer and co-op games are selling (not to mention that they are cheaper to make and that it is easier to milk them with new content), Pavlovian open worlds are selling, cinematic shoters/adventures are selling. Customers had their chance to change that, had a bunch of them after Dishonored and Human Revolution actually, and each of them was wasted.

I haven't spent a dime on any of those games, because i'm not going to waste my hard earned cash on some glorified dumped down System Shock clone and the like. Maybe the fact those games weren't good enough to succeed in their intended niche had something to do with it.
 

Lyric Suite

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Why buy dishonoured when Thief does it better?
Nu Deus ex, again the the original has more going for it.

Who are these games for? It seems as if they want both the gamer crowd and casual crowd, and if a game is easily accessible to a casual player, can it really offer deep gameplay mechanics that rival older games that have already done it?

People give games like these slack because the other releases are even worse but they're still very simple games that seem fun but their just tedious and oversimplified.

Beat me to it.
 

Falksi

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Boom, bang on TC Jr.

If anything it's an insult seeing quality games with such originality stemming from the likes of Morrowinds world, put through the generic-ifier and shat out as Oblivion or Skyrim. It's like kidnapping a mint wife and giving you a plastic pussy & a microwave in return.
Make good games and we'll buy them, it's simple. Stop market researching & trying to snag every player, instead empower creative & talented devs.
 

Zenith

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Apr 26, 2017
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Yeah, I don't know.
On one hand, I'm a complete LGS fanboy and would like to have some Shock/Thief/DX. After 20 fucking years of nothing I'm ready for some compromises as well.
But on the other hand, the journos are responsible for the dilution and decline of the genre not much less than the publishers. In 2003 the devs apologised to their PC base for prioritizing consoles and admitted some mistakes. In 2008 they didn't have to because the journos apologized for them. By 2012 the journos were attacking the fanbase, and in 2013 Bioshock 3 and Gone Home were apparently the pinnacle of "immersive sim" genre. Well shit, how come these young gamers don't appreciate the genre? Truly a mystery.
 

Roguey

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I'd be buying most of these if they actually put the entire thing on discs instead of expecting me to download 20+ gb. Not even upgrading my rig this year like I usually would because there's no point. :rpgcodex:
 
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What a thing it is to live in a world where we’ve had a new Deus Ex, a new Dishonored, a new Hitman, Prey, The Witcher 3, even Mass Effect: Andromeda, for all its stumbles, all within the space of a couple of years.

From these, only Deus Ex, Dishonored and Prey can be classified as modern versions of the immersive sim design.

In the case of Mankind Divided and Dishonored 2, both of them were sequels. So it's possible that either the people who bought the originals ended up not liking them, or they just got fed up with them and weren't looking forward for more .

The author talks about a golden age of immersive sims, however we only have two franchises and Prey, so it might very well be that these are individual failures of certain games and don't represent a failure of the genre as a whole.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Related discussion on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/prey/comments/6aztog/arkane_bethesda_i_need_moar_possible_dlc_or/dhixlya/

Yeah buddy hate to say it but this IP is now dead again. Prey is selling much worse than Dishonored 2 which was selling like crap itself. DLC is possible if they already made good progress in working on it before release, but a sequel is not very probable at all.

Not only is Prey selling badly, it's selling badly when there's almost zero competition in terms of new big budget releases.

You may be getting downvoted but you're not wrong. Unless there is a massive turnaround in the game's sales, Prey seems to be a commercial failure. We don't have full numbers yet, but early signs are unmistakably unfavorable. Not only are we unlikely to see DLC or a sequel, but this will probably be the last AAA immersive sim for a very long time. Excluding System Shock remake and System Shock 3. Mankind Divided, Dishonored 2, Hitman 2016, and now Prey have all failed to turn a profit. Although I'm at least a little bit hopeful that the Switch will help to bring mid-tier development back, which would benefit projects like this one that are falling out of the AAA space.

It seems like we're going through a second great die-off along the lines of what happened early in the Xbox 360 generation where skyrocketing development costs drive out all but the most accessible and marketable projects. Or at least drive them to indie but that's hardly a flourishing scene either, from a consistent profitability perspective, and a good immersive sim is very hard to do on that low of a budget.

This guy's posts are pretty depressing: https://www.reddit.com/user/epeternally

You either have to accept games that appeal to mainstream tastes, which means accessibility is paramount, or you have to accept games with smaller scopes, lower production values, and less polish (and be willing to pay more for them). Those are the only options. Contrary to your remark about CEO's going to the Bahamas, AAA games are an extremely high risk business. With 150 million dollar budgets and a fairly fixed base of extremely fickle customers, big companies can't afford to take risks.

We created this market by demanding bigger games with better graphics, by begging for a Mirror's Edge sequel and then letting it bomb, by elevating trivial issues like the facial animations in Mass Effect to comically out of proportion levels. If we want these companies to feel comfortable taking more risks, we need to dramatically change our behavior as consumers to make that viable. We need to accept less and be willing to pay more for it or we won't get niche games. Massive photorealistic open world games shouldn't be $60 when Chrono Trigger launched for $100 (which is $160 in today's money).

I don't think I agree with this. There absolutely are undeserved genres where good games are a rarity, but indie game market as a whole is viciously competitive. Even if you take out everything rated less than very positive, that's still a huge number of games. People are habitually buying more games than they need or can use (the backlog phenomenon) just because there's so many available and, with how competitive the market is, they're usually very cheap. My backlog isn't all mid-tier 2D platformers, it's full of top notch games like Satellite Reign, This War of Mine, and Kentucky Route Zero. Games which I may never actually play.

Obviously not every potential player has to buy your game for it to be a success, but we've created a market that is selling people products they won't realistically use justified solely by the fact that cheap games are still novel to those of us who grew up in the 90's. That isn't sustainable. And I think if we keep pushing down that road, we're going to run into mass consumer burnout. You could argue the first threads of that are already here.

For me personally, it's become increasing difficult to justify buying indie games even though I love indie games and the indie game scene. Most of my purchases are to support the art rather than to play the game itself. There are more video games in my library than I will likely play in the rest of my life. How is anyone supposed to compete with that? Even people without massive Steam accounts are apt to have 20 great games they haven't touched at a given time. Having a large pile of content at any given time makes the decision to wait for a sale trivial. Buying a game at launch is an actively irrational decision when it will be discounted long before you ever play it. Acquiring players in that hyper-competitive market requires an emotional investment, not just interest in the game itself, and there's only so much of that to go around. Again, I think this is unsustainable.

Call it what you want but if you think that there isn't strong competition between high quality games right now, you're in denial.
 

Mynon

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Yeah, I agree with that too.
People vocally demand specific types of games, or sequels to specific games, then either fail to buy them or savage them for reasons that are far removed from what they claim to be the main appeal of those games for them. If some indie dev was to release say a Thief clone, and if flaws like poor voice acting or lack of animation polish were present, very Thief fans who are asking for such games would mock and attack it for those reasons.
 

TC Jr

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Yeah, I agree with that too.
People vocally demand specific types of games, or sequels to specific games, then either fail to buy them or savage them for reasons that are far removed from what they claim to be the main appeal of those games for them. If some indie dev was to release say a Thief clone, and if flaws like poor voice acting or lack of animation polish were present, very Thief fans who are asking for such games would mock and attack it for those reasons.
And rightfully so, why is that we still haven't gotten a better Thief game than the first two, what was dishonoured or Thief 4 trying to do to evolve that gameplay? Nothing, both games regressed stealth mechanics in favour of cinematic shit and combat.

Its mental but all these genre defining games released 90's /early 00's still haven't been beat in terms of mechanics, thats why I don't buy the next dishonoured or the next game that promises to be like a classic but its just prettier with stripped backed features.
 

praetor

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when you think humans can't get any dumber, when you think "gaming journalism" can't get any lower, when you think the world is at an end and Grimoire will really be released next week, just read a RPS "article" and everything will make sense again. goddamn are those idiots the epitome of stupidty
 

Reinhardt

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Call it what you want but if you think that there isn't strong competition between high quality games right now, you're in denial.
lolwut. High production cost =/= high quality.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Of course many of you are wed to the idea that all contemporary big budget games are popamole console crap that's unforgivably worse than <insert 90s game here>, and the use of the term "golden age" is triggering you. That's okay, but this thread isn't talking about consumers like you, and the reasons you don't like these games aren't why they're failing. If they were, Skyrim and Fallout 4 would have failed too.

AAA gaming has come a way from the dark age of "Call of Duty and Oblivion 10/10 bro!!" and although I don't think things will ever be that bad again, it's sad to see it regress on some fronts.
 

vonAchdorf

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Maybe people just have less time to play and if they are "core gamers", they spend much of their time in a single game's multiplayer? Wasn't there an article about how today's gamers aren't really gamers (as in playing lots of games) but rather play a single game excessively?
 

Mynon

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Some of you apparently like to pretend that Dishonored was aiming to be a Thief clone and is thus directly comparable to it, when that game is quite a bit removed from Thief in spite of some obvious inspirations.

Are we also to argue that original Deus Ex is inferior to Thief (Dark project) because its stealth, and only its stealth, is mechanically inferior to that of Thief from which it took its inspiration? You direct comparison of Thief and Dishonored exists in same league.

You can compare classic Thief games to their reboot, and none will argue for latter being worthwhile successor. You can also compare Prey and System Shock 2. You can compare Arx Fatalis to Ultima Underworld.
Thief and Dishonored... not so much.
 

TC Jr

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Of course many of you are wed to the idea that all contemporary big budget games are irredeemable popamole console crap that's unforgivably worse than <insert 90s game here>, and the use of the term "golden age" is triggering you. That's okay, but this thread isn't talking about consumers like you, and the reasons you don't like these games aren't why they're failing. If they were, Skyrim and Fallout 4 would have failed too.

AAA gaming has come a way from the dark age of "Call of Duty and Oblivion 10/10 bro!!" and although I don't think things will ever be that bad again, it's sad to see it regress on some fronts.
I am or at least was one of those consumers, I'm honestly not a guy that thinks modern games are automatically rubbish it's just when some of the highest praise for prey I've seen is "closest to ss2 clone we'll get", I think, ss2 isn't even that amazing to begin with, the potential for an improved version of a thief or system shock is what we all want but that's not what we're getting, we get games based on those titles that don't even try to improve the core mechanics of the game, instead removing them for the consumers that wouldn't touch the game otherwise.

You are right though, it's not as bad as it was a few years ago, I just think it's too late now, too much money involved, I hope I'm wrong though.
 

Gord

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Basically what Infinitron said. "Golden Age of Gaming" is of course stupid for anyone who was playing games during the 90s, but nevertheless:
If I get a couple of decent-enough games with AAA-budget once in a while it's definitely better than seeing nothing but yet another CoD, Ryse, whatever retard-popamole-game-of-the-hour, which I'm not interested in at all.

And as such I do agree that it would be a loss if AAA publishers went back to making only the same lame shit once again simply because it sells better than those other (even if just) slightly more cerebral or inventive games.
 

vonAchdorf

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The CoD/Oblivion/MoBa market is saturated as well, why do you think the publishers made the new generation of "sysslikes", certainly not to please old-school gamers, but because they needed to branch out into new niches (or downsize). Making Prey was likely a less risky move than adding a third shooter (in addition to Wolfenstein and Doom) to their portfolio. Their take on a different, very popular genre, a Hearthstone-like, wasn't exactly a resounding success either.
 

Gord

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Quite possible, but if that doesn't turn out profitable enough, there is a realistic risk that they'll stop experimenting with those niche-genres again.
 

Roguey

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by begging for a Mirror's Edge sequel and then letting it bomb, by elevating trivial issues like the facial animations in Mass Effect to comically out of proportion levels.

What's this cuck on about, I don't believe there was anything particularly ambitious about either of these except for Andromeda's scope (certainly not its content or gameplay).
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Bubbles In Memoria
by begging for a Mirror's Edge sequel and then letting it bomb, by elevating trivial issues like the facial animations in Mass Effect to comically out of proportion levels.

What's this cuck on about, I don't believe there was anything particularly ambitious about either of these except for Andromeda's scope (certainly not its content or gameplay).
He is worried about ad money.
 

Outlander

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Divinity: Original Sin Wasteland 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
this thread isn't talking about consumers like you, and the reasons you don't like these games aren't why they're failing. If they were, Skyrim and Fallout 4 would have failed too.

Not really, Bethesda games sell because they have, by far, the best marketing dept. in the industry and because of mods, period.

Usually, people who found Morrowind to be an overall p. good game, don't hold Oblivion and Skyrim in high regard. Even F3 fans were somewhat disappointed with F4. But they still sell millions upon millions because of huge hype and a HUGE mod base.

I don't think the AAA portion of the industry has come a long way. You have Ubisoft releasing the exact same games year after year, Activision releasing the same CoD year after year, EA releasing the same games year after year. It's kind of sad to rely on ZeniMax to deliver the 'best' the AAA part of the industry has to offer in the form of arguably passable stuff that doesn't come close to the games they took inspiration from like Wolfensteins, Dishonoreds and Prey. I hear Doom is actually good so that's one exception.

With Square Enix it's the same thing, their new games are mostly passable (except for Thiaf which is outright shit) but don't hold a candle to the old games. Now, your're saying that young audiences who never played Deus Ex or Hitman 2 should be able to appreciate the new games more but when you deliver a watered-down, simplified experience, that's what those games are in essence, regardless if you know the old games in the franchise or not. The fact that the new games are average in everything and not exceedingly good at anything, is enough to lock you out of the slam-dunk tier of sales.
 

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