Davaris said:
Eldritch said:
My only hope is that when the much more capable 3d game engines of the future become available at the disposal of guys like VD and his Iron Tower, that dumbass kid won't cry at the "blocky animations" of the combat video and actually play the damn thing and realize Oh god, that shit really is HEAVAN... I think that's what it'll take to break the cycle.
Even with engines like that, Indies still couldn't afford to get the fancy art that they'd need to have any hope of competing with the AAAs.
I think I should've explained what I meant there more clearly. You don't exactly have to "match" the graphics quality of AAA titles. I know 3d art assets are tedious work. I know it requires talent. But as the tools of the trade become more and more available the already talented people who can use them pretty adequently also becomes much more prevalent. The key here is just overcoming a certain threshold in quailty to make it look "good enough" for the unwashed masses to just notice your game. You don't have to have the top-notch art, you don't have to hire teh Leonard Boyarsky. M&B has extremely average looking low-poly graphics made by a couple of nerds of the garden variety from my third world country which manages to look just "cool enough" in action to make even the dumbest of fucks to notice and play the damn thing and get addicted. I've never seen anyone no matter how retarded graphics whores they are to refuse to play that action game with stats because of how it looks. And action games REALLY have to look good, much more than rpg's and you know what? M&B looks good enough not because it has the top-notch high-poly graphics made by the slave labour of three hundred boyarsky clones locked in a dusty old ottoman dungeon in Ankara. It looks good enough because it manages to at least look "cool" thanks to its average horsie animations and battlefield sceneries which looks fun and not sucky enough to repulse the average joe when first seeing it. It's innovative gameplay making up for its crude graphics even got the game a publisher and they're now working on a sequal with I hear a much bigger team. And because its publisher happily realized now an innovative game design actually sells, it'll probably be something in the same vein and hopefully bigger in scope and more complete thanks to the bigger team and the financial support it EARNED.
Age of Decadence isn't just an action game with stats and much more difficult to make than a game like M&B. It has a collossal amount of content compared to M&B which probably requires a lot of work. They chose to make their game with the Torque engine because it provides the necessary ease of use to graphically convey the amount of content present in such a game in 3D. A guy called Oscar VD found in a forum who is just one of the legions of extremely talented young people who are found in the modding scene, just one of those talented motherfuckers from the first world to the third world putting the "professional" artists to shame whom all of them aren't necessarily graduated from some faggoty high society art school of pleasantville expected from a "professional" designer who'll suck the benjamin franklin out of you. This Oscar squeezes the fuck out of the torque engine, worked wonders with what he had to work with which is no small feat but it just isn't enough. It doesn't break the threshold of looking cool enough necessary to get the industry-brainwashed average joe to at least try it out. I don't care if the animations are a little blocky or the graphics don't look that good but the average joe is conditoned to care. How many of you didn't have a dumb brother or a friend at one point who scoffed at an old game like fallout he saw you playing based on its looks alone and became rabidly addicted to the thing when you "persuaded" the little bitch to try out the "good stuff"..? Of course, as a developer, everyone isn't your little brother or friend you can physically intimidate to try out the game you have to make it look at least cool enough to make them notice the game while the gameplay of the like they've never seen before works its magic and shows em' heathens the light once they've tried it out themselves!
The whole thing kinda works like a trap.
M&B-/This game looks a little shitty but oh look it has horsies in it you can ride lemme at least try the demo out.....holy fuck I can't stop playing!
(Success!!! -because you lured the bastard to try your game thanks to some innovative eye-candy that caught his attention despite your painfully average graphics and the good gameplay has already blown his fragile little mind.)
AoD-/BAWWWW the animations are blocky, combat looks so boring *pre-orders dragon age*...
(Fail!!! -because like expected from this particular species' infinite capability of superficial prejudice using their visual sensory organs the little bitch didn't even try the game and the superior gameplay had no chance to work its magic.)
Future AoD!-/Hmmm... The graphics are a little meh but the cool looking assassin dude choosing to target various body parts looks really fun, lol groin shot! lemme at least try the demo out......holy fuck I can't stop playing! *future dragon age rots in a corner*
(Success!!! -because of a visual gimmick or a magical gestalt achieved by a much more capable cheap/free future game engine the game at least catches some attention and starts spreading like a virus because the game has superior gameplay people have never seen before while the future dragon age with much more superior graphic assets fucking tanks despite all the six figures spent into "art" because it is realized that the same boring fast food formula that never changes no matter how tasty it looks wasn't really that tasty at all.)
Maybe it's not that impossible for future indies with creative ideas making really good games to eventually achieve unexpected successes to break the cycle of mediocrity by changing peoples expectations, forcing the publishers to match their standards. Maybe Armagan shouldn't have caved to the publisher and worked on M&B a bit more and perfect it, to achieve an even greater impact on the industry with much more success. A M&B with a much more complete content being developed would have never been outside the radar of a publisher anyway. I didn't buy the released version of M&B yet partly for this reason but I'll make sure everyone I know and their dogs buy AoD because every Oscar in this planet doesn't get a chance to work at bioware and there's no telling what wonders future Oscars can achieve with the more advanced tools of the trade they'll have at their disposal. They might just trigger a golden age of crpgs! Even if this strategy fails in getting us more good games with a bigger scope and a more free atmosphere for the talented Boyarsky and Avellones who ask for a lotta monies to hire to create us things, we'll still keep getting good games at least. win-win.
