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The Death of Immersive Sims?

Ash

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The Immersive Sim died with the release of Invisible War and Bioshock.
 
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Burning Bridges

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Immersive Sims Pfff :lol:

this label is the joke of the century. Most of these games are just first person movies with some interactive sequences and dumb, boring plotlines.
 

anvi

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Codexers: These commercially unsuccessful games would have succeeded if only the developers had made them more hardcore, because us PC gamers are elite people who want smart games

Also Codexers: PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has been the top-selling game on Steam for five months straight, the world is full of morons
All that is true though. They are dumbed down games and yet they didn't sell, so clearly the hardcore argument is true? It seems obvious that dudebro tard gamers would much rather play CoD or Battlefield or whatever, they would never want an "immersive sim". But hardcore elite PC gamers would want a game like that, but not if it is dumbed down and console-ified. So when they make dumb console tard sims and they don't sell well, everyone should know why it happened.

DoS2 and the System Shock games are going to show all these morons how it should work.

p.s. if you don't like codex logic, why are you a moderator? Go moderate on reddit or something, and take that faggot Jaeson with you.
I rate this post "Edgy"...

But am I right or wrong?

Immersive Sims aren't going to disappear, they will just become VR games.
They are doing ok I think because Arma3 is successful and that is the nearest thing gaming has to a big budget simulation nowadays. There are others out there too like DCS, and maybe Elite Dangerous.
 

AwesomeButton

Proud owner of BG 3: Day of Swen's Tentacle
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Ease it with edgelordism, not even around here are Arkane's games or new DE titles viewed as bad or unworthy.
Oh, I'm sorry, I did't know I should consult with the opinion of the majority in order to know whether I'm right or not.
I rate this post "Meh"...
I rate you a retard who's talking out of his ass because he hasn't played the old good games and can't compare them to the drivel that is Dishonored to Thief or new DeusEx to the original. There you are.
Strawmen are bad, OK.
I, and most other folks here, played and loved those games... and at the same time, we also love the new games in that vein. Heck, you have people here who have been modding Thief games for ages, and yet they adore Arkane's new stuff.
(Adressing Dishonored 2) Sorry, I get in a bad mood when a developer namedrops a classic in the hope of attracting sales for a game that shares no more than a passing resemblance as far as gameplay/mechanics is concerned, with that classic, and then turns to excuses like his game being niche. I'm too sophisticated for the world to understand my work, you see. Oh man, I tried to replicate a niche game with my niche game, and now my sales are low, wtf!?

Sure, you will attract more audience with a shooting game than with a sneaking game, but isn't that the reason you added all the overpowered killing techniques, and related to them or not, you butchered the sneaking elements? So, when the game bombs, the sneaking elements are bing blamed indirectly, but when the first game was a moderate success that was just you being good. Maybe, after all, it's not the game that's niche and the audience small?
 

Burning Bridges

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Codexers: These commercially unsuccessful games would have succeeded if only the developers had made them more hardcore, because us PC gamers are elite people who want smart games

Also Codexers: PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has been the top-selling game on Steam for five months straight, the world is full of morons
All that is true though. They are dumbed down games and yet they didn't sell, so clearly the hardcore argument is true? It seems obvious that dudebro tard gamers would much rather play CoD or Battlefield or whatever, they would never want an "immersive sim". But hardcore elite PC gamers would want a game like that, but not if it is dumbed down and console-ified. So when they make dumb console tard sims and they don't sell well, everyone should know why it happened.

DoS2 and the System Shock games are going to show all these morons how it should work.

p.s. if you don't like codex logic, why are you a moderator? Go moderate on reddit or something, and take that faggot Jaeson with you.
I rate this post "Edgy"...

But am I right or wrong?

Immersive Sims aren't going to disappear, they will just become VR games.
They are doing ok I think because Arma3 is successful and that is the nearest thing gaming has to a big budget simulation nowadays. There are others out there too like DCS, and maybe Elite Dangerous.

There a few genuine sims yes, but they have problems of their own.

Arma still has nothing to offer for people who want to play a game, only simulates military training in semi-retarded futuristic environments. DCS development is completely intransparent and development measured in decades. You may not believe it but I first saw a screenshot in 2000, and it looked almost like today (which was also the reason no one could run this game at anything by low medium settings for the first 10 years). I am also not sure that DCS is financially healthy the year 2017 seems to be a disaster for them, and the whole thing may collapse one day (paying 50$ for 1 fucking plane is ok as long as you get it, but no continuously pays such money for beta versions full of bugs that get delayed and delayed and delayed until the delay becomes the normal development time, and then that gets delayed too). Right now the reality of DCS is that you wait 5 years for one particular plane or terrain to be completed and then start waiting for 5 years for fixes/patches that make it enjoyable and by then a new program engine comes out that requires conversion of old modules, which again takes 5 years + 5 years fixing and so on.
 

vonAchdorf

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Codexers: These commercially unsuccessful games would have succeeded if only the developers had made them more hardcore, because us PC gamers are elite people who want smart games

Also Codexers: PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has been the top-selling game on Steam for five months straight, this world is full of morons

It would be interesting to see how game ownership overlaps. Are you more or less likely to buy Prey if you own PUB compared to the average Steam account.
 

Dev_Anj

Learned
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Immersive Sims Pfff :lol:

this label is the joke of the century. Most of these games are just first person movies with some interactive sequences and dumb, boring plotlines.

While I do agree that the term itself is ridiculous, there is some meaning behind it. It was a buzzword coined by Warren Spector or Harvey Smith and over time has come to represent the philosophy behind the games they made, like Deus Ex and System Shock 2. Personally I'm not a big fan of it and would rather just refer to them as games that seek to be immersive while still being very clearly bound by traditional game limitations.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
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Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Codexers: These commercially unsuccessful games would have succeeded if only the developers had made them more hardcore, because us PC gamers are elite people who want smart games

Also Codexers: PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has been the top-selling game on Steam for five months straight, this world is full of morons

It would be interesting to see how game ownership overlaps. Are you more or less likely to buy Prey if you own PUB compared to the average Steam account.

Not much overlap according to SteamSpy:

sBcH5vH.png


(Account required) http://steamspy.com/audience/578080/480490
 

DeepOcean

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Messages
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Codexers: These commercially unsuccessful games would have succeeded if only the developers had made them more hardcore, because us PC gamers are elite people who want smart games

Also Codexers: PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has been the top-selling game on Steam for five months straight, this world is full of morons
Niche focus vs mass market focus is a silly discussion. A better way to think about this is: One thing is to promise an audience they won't be frustrated, another is to sell an audience WHY they should play your game? Accessibility is a given these days and name dropping Deus Ex or System Shock won't do you much favors with the average gamer.

To me, what I ultimately buy a Deus Ex/system shock game for is to buy a sandbox for me to play with it using alot of different tools, all those modern immersive games suck at it, they offer you a sandbox without the tools. Sorry, I don't find exciting to hack a door when I could find the key card for it, if all you are allowing me to do is to have slightly different ways to get the same result like opening a door, don't get surprised with my lack of enthusiasm for your shallow gameplay. No, I don't give a fuck if I can kill a guard with an arrow on his head or if I possess him to be shot by his own bullet, this convoluted and unnecessary shit, doesn't make for satisfying gameplay.

For all talk talk of freedom, all those games try to shoehorn you into some generic stealth or mediocre FPS gamelay, you can't play like a cyber ninja, or a cybernetic minigun totting tank or an elite hacker or any truly different gameplay style that isn't just different ways to open a door. I would argue that a well made, polished version of EYE with a clear vision could sell well.
 
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Junmarko

† Cristo è Re †
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Immersive Sims Pfff :lol:

this label is the joke of the century.
While I do agree that the term itself is ridiculous, there is some meaning behind it

No idea why people keep scoffing at the term like this.

It's a tag coined purely for convenience. No different than "Blobber", "Metroidvania" or "Souls-like". Slapping "RPG" on something, pretty much tells you nothing about a game these days.
 
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Freddie

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Something I think is funny, latest Deus Ex game is a good example. Publishers and developers has better tools than ever to gauge their focus group. Online polls, forums, and the best of all, achievement system and statistics gathered from the games which are always online. Yet giant screw ups like preorder crap in DX: MD happened. I haven't bought the game, but they had data that ending of DX: HR was not that well received, and word is that DX MD's ending is even more meh. Even if there aren't that many gamers who actually finish their games, it's something people think when they purchase a game.

There are quite a few things I'm curious regarding market today, time and money invested are things I have touched in other discussions, but I have a weird feeling that despite all the data marketing and design has in their hands in these days, some issues might be because of some sort of image of a customer, which isn't real.
 

Archibald

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I haven't bought the game, but they had data that ending of DX: HR was not that well received, and word is that DX MD's ending is even more meh. Even if there aren't that many gamers who actually finish their games, it's something people think when they purchase a game.

Do people really buy big budget storyfag games to fool around for couple of hours? I'd think that usually most people think that they'll finish the game that they buy its just that most of the time they get distracted by something else.
 

Infinitron

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Before you blame anything else for DX: MD's lack of success, it's worth considering the most straightforward explanation - loss of momentum. Developing Thief in between the two games was a huge mistake.
 

fantadomat

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Before you blame anything else for DX: MD's lack of success, it's worth considering the most straightforward explanation - loss of momentum. Developing Thief in between the two games was a huge mistake.
Lack of success is because the game was shit and the marketing was even worst.
 

Ranarama

Learned
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Dec 7, 2016
Messages
604
Not much overlap according to SteamSpy:

No!

To say *anything* meaningful here you need a baseline of what sort of overlap you'd expect between games. I suspect the prior probability of anyone owning any individual steam game is so low that you'd expect a somewhat low overlap even between fairly related games that aren't sequels.

That's almost *half* of Prey players that own PUBG. Compare it to either Deus Ex game, their overlap with PUBG is lower, something like a 1/9th of Deus Ex owners having PUBG, and 2 in every 9 of DX:HR owners. Prey actually seems to have decent player base share.

Point is, you have to actually compare it to the average steam account.
 

Freddie

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I haven't bought the game, but they had data that ending of DX: HR was not that well received, and word is that DX MD's ending is even more meh. Even if there aren't that many gamers who actually finish their games, it's something people think when they purchase a game.

Do people really buy big budget storyfag games to fool around for couple of hours? I'd think that usually most people think that they'll finish the game that they buy its just that most of the time they get distracted by something else.
I don't have quotes but I recall several big studios saying about 30% of players ever finish their games. That's correlates very well with what I have noticed trough Steam achievement system. So it's a good question, main reasons why people drop their games, how many do that because they get distracted, how many because they heard ending was shit, or got plain tired and watched ending from youtube, and so on.

Before you blame anything else for DX: MD's lack of success, it's worth considering the most straightforward explanation - loss of momentum. Developing Thief in between the two games was a huge mistake.
That's actually a good point, but overall I think it's combination of this and bad marketing decisions (that said, shuffling release schedule can be based on marketing decision too).
 

Infinitron

I post news
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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
http://www.pcgamer.com/games-like-dishonored-2-arent-going-anywhere-says-harvey-smith/

Games like Dishonored 2 aren't going anywhere, says Harvey Smith

[...] With Death of the Outsider, I feel a familiar worry. The expansion is beautiful and inventive, but I’m afraid that might not be enough.

The immersive sim genre has waned before, and weak sales for games like Prey, Dishonored 2, and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided has us worried that they might be about to disappear again. Dishonored game director Harvey Smith tells me that he’s noticed the dip in sales, but thinks that there will always be enough of an audience to keep immersive sims in development.

"And there's always the talent and the resources to make [immersive sims]," says Smith. "The question is, does one particular budget support the audience? What that means is, even if immersive sims speed up or slow down in terms of production, there's always the indie version of immersive sims like—this year you have Tacoma and next year you'll have something else. I think the demand will drive things."

Plus, there's a lot more to be done with the genre. Though he says he's "not the biggest fan" of the author, Smith muses about David Foster Wallace's idea that fiction's purpose is "to aggravate this sense of entrapment and loneliness and death in people, to move people to countenance it," and wonders what the purpose of games like Dishonored is. "Why do I like breaking and entering in games?" he asks. "Why do I like having the power of death? Why do I like being in a shitty situation?"

"The number of subjects that would be cool to tackle with games like this are endless," continues Smith. "First-person, very coherent world where you're looking for resources and combining things and inferring from environmental storytelling and you're free to do any one of several things. You can just imagine all the different settings and problems that could be approached that way. There are a hundred I'd love to see that don't have anything to do with space stations or cities during plagues or assassins or whatever."

As much potential as there is for the genre, Smith acknowledges that it’s frustrating when a game wins awards but the sales don't match that critical enthusiasm. He thinks it's partially down to the world we live in. In a great world, one with "endless food and power" where "your clothes are 3D printed," he imagines people would be more attracted to violent, simulated struggles, games that help us "feel human." As it is, though, what's popular in our turbulent world is not necessarily what's challenging from his perspective.

“What's that fucking show that everyone loves? Big Bang Theory, yeah,” Smith says. “I have this terrible reaction to seeing a clip of that show—I'm just angry. It doesn't work, it isn't funny, why is it so universally loved? It's upsetting because it might mean that what people really need at the end of the day is to eat in front of the TV, chill out … and just have something told to them that is soothing.”

If that’s true, we might be in for a long drought of immersive sims. But Smith believes that trying to predict the future of these things is a fool’s game, anyway. “One of the funny things about games is, if you stay around long enough, you hear everything,” he says. “I've had people say to me, if you're not making a free-to-play game, you won't have a job in five years—and that was ten years ago ... People who predict the future, man, I don't know. The roads of history are paved with the bones of prophets.”
 

GrainWetski

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Isn't Tacoma just a "walking sim"? I know we're calling everything "immersive sim" these days, but this is getting silly.
 

Garrettt

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Before you blame anything else for DX: MD's lack of success, it's worth considering the most straightforward explanation - loss of momentum. Developing Thief in between the two games was a huge mistake.

The teams at eidos montreal who worked on Thief and Deus Ex were two different teams with little to no overlap. The DX team started work on DX: MD straight after DX: HR was finished.

I think if you asked the "average gamer" they would have no idea who eidos montreal even is so I doubt it's a bad reputation that hurt them by the poorly recieved Thief game. And those in the know already knew to avoid those games anyway so there's no lost sales there.

DX: MD sold like crap because it was so long after DX: HR, they announced it way too early and the terrible pre-order idea they rolled out (as well as micro transactions in a single player game) was not well recieved by the gaming community at all.
 

Garrettt

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DX: MD sold like crap because it was so long after DX: HR

Yes that's what I said.

No you said that "developing thief in between the two games was a huge mistake" implying that was the reason why there was such a long delay between the two. However it was two completely different teams so the development of Thief had nothing to do with the development on Deus Ex Mankind Divided. I have no idea why it took so long to develop DX: MD but I know it had nothing to do with Thief being developed.
 

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
DX: MD sold like crap because it was so long after DX: HR

Yes that's what I said.

No you said that "developing thief in between the two games was a huge mistake" implying that was the reason why there was such a long delay between the two. However it was two completely different teams so the development of Thief had nothing to do with the development on Deus Ex Mankind Divided. I have no idea why it took so long to develop DX: MD but I know it had nothing to do with Thief being developed.

I don't think it's plausible that it was really "two completely different teams". The team leads were obviously different, but most of the rank-and-file personnel in the studio must have transferred from one game to the other.
 

fantadomat

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Well all those games aren't particularly good.They are decent enough to finish,but not good enough to replay every few years(like deus ex and thief).But they failed because of combination of problems.Deus ex failed because its developers were/are fucking idiot sjws,the writing was shit tier sjw drivel,the game is unfinished,there was press-ganging pre-order bonuses,lots of game breaking bugs,poor optimisation and the fucking micro transactions.
 

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