World of Darkness Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 from Hardsuit Labs

[NecroLord]

Don't open it.

 

[Harthwain]

I don't know why you are confused.

Or am I?

I intentionally didn't bring this up before because I thought it would be too obvious, but on rare occasions the big publishers make the same mistake with something like Battlefield V by creating a disabled black woman as their protagonist for a historical war game. The entire market of gamers wasn't enough. They thought they could convince women who don't buy games to purchase it as well.

This still supports my point: they are trying to use a trend (or what they think is a trend) to generate money, not burn money to "send a message".

 

[J1M]

I don't know why you are confused.

Or am I?

I intentionally didn't bring this up before because I thought it would be too obvious, but on rare occasions the big publishers make the same mistake with something like Battlefield V by creating a disabled black woman as their protagonist for a historical war game. The entire market of gamers wasn't enough. They thought they could convince women who don't buy games to purchase it as well.

This still supports my point: they are trying to use a trend (or what they think is a trend) to generate money, not burn money to "send a message".

At least we figured out your confusion. My posts aren't about ESG scores.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

universe is so rich

Any universe can be rich. Potential is infinite, but ultimately irrelevant. What matters is execution. Most people have little in the way of autonomy or creativity, so right there you already have barriers. And even if you are creative and can maintain a coherent vision, you don't necessarily have relevant skill or sufficient funding.

You want a game where an organization hunts down various monsters and monkey's paws to lock them away in boxes? You already have games like XCOM or Phoenix Point to provide some idea of the logistics involved. Find a way to fund and produce it. If devs aren't already making it, then that can mean that the IP doesn't attract those kinds of devs, there's not much of a market, or it is prohibitively expensive for indies to make.

Like, I have this idea for a game about various organizations of monster hunters. You have vigilantes, freelancers, chosen ones, amateur online communities, government task forces, deranged big game hunters, heartless corporations that harvest magical creatures and employ bioengineered killing machines, professional ghost fumigators, assassins, templars, secret wings of the Vatican that employ antichrist candidates, philanthropic institutes secretly run by well-intentioned Roswell grays, etc. But unless I can realize it and find an audience, then it will never be more than potential.

 

[Herumor]

Don't open it.

And yet I keep coming back to this thread.

 

[Caim]

Don't open it.

Don't open, [redacted] inside.

 

[Tyranicon]

If devs aren't already making it, then that can mean that the IP doesn't attract those kinds of devs, there's not much of a market, or it is prohibitively expensive for indies to make.

It's because of the creative commons license that SCP is under. That's why nobody serious wants to work on the setting, myself included. Not that I'm a serious person or anything...

SCP is under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 license, which is so interesting that it's basically like a SCP itself. In super basic terms, anybody who uses SCP content to produce media, that media is now also shareware under the same terms.

It's an infectious license. It makes it hard to protect "your" IP. I've been told that people can literally put your game up on another storefront and they would have decent legal grounds to do so.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

If devs aren't already making it, then that can mean that the IP doesn't attract those kinds of devs, there's not much of a market, or it is prohibitively expensive for indies to make.

It's because of the creative commons license that SCP is under. That's why nobody serious wants to work on the setting, myself included. Not that I'm a serious person or anything...

SCP is under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 license, which is so interesting that it's basically like a SCP itself. In super basic terms, anybody who uses SCP content to produce media, that media is now also shareware under the same terms.

It's an infectious license. It makes it hard to protect "your" IP. I've been told that people can literally put your game up on another storefront and they would have decent legal grounds to do so.

Probably. I didn’t mention that because I don’t know how that intersects with software licenses. For example, there are games with open source code but privately owned art assets. You can recycle the code, but have to replace the art assets.

I don’t like creative commons because it makes your work poison to corpos, which our civilian runs on for better or worse. And lets unscrupulous people steal your profits if you ever get popular. Wikidot being able to monetize such content is a fluke and it will probably become impossible in the near future once scammers use AIs to automatically scrape creative commons content and use SEO to direct hits to their stolen copies. Even legitimate storefronts like Amazon have problems with stolen content. Copyright is the only way for artists to protect their profits.

I do support open source licenses and reducing absurd copyright lengths for ethical and economic reasons. There are so many obscure works locked behind copyright that are in danger of being lost forever because they’re owned by evil corpos that don’t care or their authors are dead.

 

[The President]

If you're an independent studio you're torn between paying the bills and doing the kind of things 'you want', or rather that fit your workplace culture. You have people like Larian who play the long game, working within niches and doing mercenary jobs here and there. You have subsidiaries like Obsidian and BioWare, who work within the corporate culture of their larger publishers. And then you've got people like Troika, who reportedly could have stayed afloat for a while longer but refused to do contract stuff they didn't jive with.

Yeah in theory a modern day studio could just play it smart and make mobile titles and streamable games. They are bound to strike gold eventually. But if the actual people involved are like the bunch of Troika and they'd rather make Arcanums and VTMs, what do you do then? A dignified death seems to be the answer.

I will give it to Swen Vincke, the guy has a ton of passion and has navigated the industry very well. They've never been the studio most people could name, but he's survived and managed to get the things done he's wanted. I couldn't tell you the number of people I know who dreamed of the chance to make Baldur's Gate 3. However, he is acutely aware of what they do well and what they don't. It's not really easy to just shift and make products that are very different than what you normally specialize in. Just ask the people of Hardsuit.

That is technically what happened to Troika but at the end of the day Troika couldn't get a game shipped that wasn't bugged. They had the vision but always screwed up on the technical side, many places I've seen have the opposite problem. Troika went down before my time, but you got to remember it's closing in on 20 years now. The industry is so different and there's so many more options and platforms now. I think a place like Troika might have done better now, they just got unlucky in the early 2000's. Or not, as I will say the technical side hasn't gotten less complex since 2005.

Any universe can be rich. Potential is infinite, but ultimately irrelevant. What matters is execution. Most people have little in the way of autonomy or creativity, so right there you already have barriers. And even if you are creative and can maintain a coherent vision, you don't necessarily have relevant skill or sufficient funding.

You want a game where an organization hunts down various monsters and monkey's paws to lock them away in boxes? You already have games like XCOM or Phoenix Point to provide some idea of the logistics involved. Find a way to fund and produce it. If devs aren't already making it, then that can mean that the IP doesn't attract those kinds of devs, there's not much of a market, or it is prohibitively expensive for indies to make.

Like, I have this idea for a game about various organizations of monster hunters. You have vigilantes, freelancers, chosen ones, amateur online communities, government task forces, deranged big game hunters, heartless corporations that harvest magical creatures and employ bioengineered killing machines, professional ghost fumigators, assassins, templars, secret wings of the Vatican that employ antichrist candidates, philanthropic institutes secretly run by well-intentioned Roswell grays, etc. But unless I can realize it and find an audience, then it will never be more than potential.

Don't take this as an insult but if you really don't like what you see offered, then try your hand and make something you think is good. If it's good there's a very small chance you'll get noticed and if you're bad you'll get humbled very quickly. Though I have to be honest, most of the narrative people I've worked with were hacks and haven't had an original idea in their lives, so your competition isn't exactly elite. I'm not a narrative writer, but I like to describe good writing the way Justice Potter Stewart described pornography "I know it when I see it". Most of these writers today are checking boxes and writing stories around them and are following by the books styles and dialogue writing. None of them want to take risk or try something unorthodox, they just put unorthodox identities in as a substitute. If any of them had any balls at all they might get somewhere, but ultimately all the great writers tend to have things that can't be taught.

 

[Bester]

However, he is acutely aware of what they do well and what they don't.

He's not. He has no recognition that their writing is shit. I know people who spoke with him. When prompted about it, he'll say "what do you mean bad writing? we had good reviews". Pure cope.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Don't take this as an insult but if you really don't like what you see offered, then try your hand and make something you think is good. If it's good there's a very small chance you'll get noticed and if you're bad you'll get humbled very quickly. Though I have to be honest, most of the narrative people I've worked with were hacks and haven't had an original idea in their lives, so your competition isn't exactly elite. I'm not a narrative writer, but I like to describe good writing the way Justice Potter Stewart described pornography "I know it when I see it". Most of these writers today are checking boxes and writing stories around them and are following by the books styles and dialogue writing. None of them want to take risk or try something unorthodox, they just put unorthodox identities in as a substitute. If any of them had any balls at all they might get somewhere, but ultimately all the great writers tend to have things that can't be taught.

No offense taken. I'm currently trying that, thanks. Unfortunately, I don't have skills relevant to making video games so it's coming along very slowly. I wouldn't call myself an original or good writer, either. I just have the benefit of foresight from seeing a ton of other attempts and the market itself is unexploited. I just want to put something out there, to show people that it's possible if nothing else.

The problem isn't a lack of opportunity or skilled devs. There are plenty of games like Hunt the Night where you play a vampire in a dark fantasy setting. Devs who could make urban fantasy simply aren't choosing to.

This article claims:

Another possible reason could be the lack of an easy to reference template for less creative products. As previously mentioned, anyone who wants to phone in the story of a high fantasy game can easily crib notes from Tolkien, Warcraft and numerous others. Similarly, if writing a sci-fi game, Star Trek, Neuromancer and others provide straightforward baselines for each given branch of sci-fi. Urban fantasy, while a prolific genre, does not have what you might call an archetypical example of the genre that serves as a sort of ‘generic’ template for anyone wishing to do a story in that genre.

In truth, this might actually be a boon for any future urban fantasy games, insofar as said games are more likely to be individually creative, as opposed to simply taking elements from pre-existing properties to make an easily marketable game. Of course, by the same token, it may take until such a property impacts on the collective consciousness for urban fantasy to get its due in gaming.

Perhaps if that ever happened, urban fantasy might even suffer the same fate of other genres of becoming largely homogeneous near-identical releases with the occasional spark of uniqueness in the rough. But even so, at least there’d be even more types of identical games to choose from, making the game industry as a whole that little bit more varied.

This speculation isn't what I would call accurate. Urban fantasy is actually very easy to write (it's oversaturated in prose fiction) and has several templates to choose from. Harry Potter and Bloodlines, for example. HP inspired numerous clones on the YA scene. After Bloodlines almost all the few vampire crpgs that were made, like DARK or Vampyr, used the plot outline of "you become a newbie vamp, abandoned by your creator, manipulated by dark forces to cause the apocalypse, etc". At least one visual novel I tried was a shameless ripoff that copied several plot points verbatim, like "blowing up an enemy coven's warehouse full of weapons" or "a whole clique of vampires who are arbitrarily crazy because Bloodlines did it." The DARK manual includes a shoutout to Bloodlines by saying the minor NPCs April and June are sisters to Therese and Jeanette Voerman who run The Asylum in Santa Monica (this is completely irrelevant to the plot and isn't mentioned in the game itself).

I admit that my outlines included a general tone and some plot points inspired by Bloodlines, mostly because imitation is flattery and attracts fans of that game. But even then I want to do my own spin on the clichés and tropes.

Just off the top of my head, one way to change up is to give the vampire PC a relationship with his creator that persists throughout the game. The creator acts as an exposition fairy who teaches the PC about the magical world and orders him on various errands. Let's add some depth to the creator: what's the creator's reason for vampirizing the PC in the first place? Hmm... maybe it's been hibernating for a while due to immortal angst and isn't acquainted with the modern world, so it vampirizes the PC to learn about the modern world and offload some of its emotional baggage by transferring unneeded memories to the PC. Vampires magically feed on life via blood, so it stands to reason that they absorb the soul/memory of victims. You could use this as the basis for a PST-esque flashback mechanic where the PC can remember things about the master's past victims that can come in handy or add to the atmosphere.

Maybe take some cues from BloodRayne or Castlevania and make the PC some kind of half-vampire who doesn't suffer stereotypical weaknesses like sunlight, fire or running water as acutely as full-fledged vampires. Maybe add some lore where the magical people are racist against halfies and see them as slaves/pets barely above mere mortals on the totem pole, which colors interactions with different covens. The decadent high society coven sees the PC as simply an extension of his master's will, while the downtrodden social justice coven treats the PC as a peer.

Add some magicians and shapeshifters and whatever to the milieu of characters to make it look less like a clone of Bloodlines. Go wild and add characters like fallen angels, tall sexy leprechauns, dragons, demon clowns, elves, animated mummies, possessed puppets, etc.

Urban fantasy is not a genre lacking in inspiration.

 

[Tyranicon]

Most of these writers today are checking boxes and writing stories around them and are following by the books styles and dialogue writing. None of them want to take risk or try something unorthodox, they just put unorthodox identities in as a substitute. If any of them had any balls at all they might get somewhere, but ultimately all the great writers tend to have things that can't be taught.

You have to see what kind of writers dev studios are hiring. I can say flatly that no-name writers are treated as absolute bottom rungs in most media production, including video games.

Writing is one of the most important elements in anything. If you treat it like a low priority, your shit is going to suffer. if you don't pay attention to the quality of writer you hire or cheap out, your writing is going to be bad.

This is only going to get worse once companies start having ChatGPT write stuff.

... although it might actually be an improvement over some video game writing.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Writing is one of the most important elements in anything. If you treat it like a low priority, your shit is going to suffer. if you don't pay attention to the quality of writer you hire or cheap out, your writing is going to be bad.

p. much

Video games as a multimedia creation require good work in all departments, whether it's gameplay, visual design, music & sound (including VA where it applies) more broadly or writing. Whichever elements are to be emphasized depends on the game in question and the sort of experience it aims to provide to the player, but narrative design matters regardless of how storyfaggy a game is supposed to be.

 

[Cricket McBangle]

Don't take this as an insult but if you really don't like what you see offered, then try your hand and make something you think is good. If it's good there's a very small chance you'll get noticed and if you're bad you'll get humbled very quickly. Though I have to be honest, most of the narrative people I've worked with were hacks and haven't had an original idea in their lives, so your competition isn't exactly elite. I'm not a narrative writer, but I like to describe good writing the way Justice Potter Stewart described pornography "I know it when I see it". Most of these writers today are checking boxes and writing stories around them and are following by the books styles and dialogue writing. None of them want to take risk or try something unorthodox, they just put unorthodox identities in as a substitute. If any of them had any balls at all they might get somewhere, but ultimately all the great writers tend to have things that can't be taught.

No offense taken. I'm currently trying that, thanks. Unfortunately, I don't have skills relevant to making video games so it's coming along very slowly. I wouldn't call myself an original or good writer, either. I just have the benefit of foresight from seeing a ton of other attempts and the market itself is unexploited. I just want to put something out there, to show people that it's possible if nothing else.

The problem isn't a lack of opportunity or skilled devs. There are plenty of games like Hunt the Night where you play a vampire in a dark fantasy setting. Devs who could make urban fantasy simply aren't choosing to.

This article claims:

Another possible reason could be the lack of an easy to reference template for less creative products. As previously mentioned, anyone who wants to phone in the story of a high fantasy game can easily crib notes from Tolkien, Warcraft and numerous others. Similarly, if writing a sci-fi game, Star Trek, Neuromancer and others provide straightforward baselines for each given branch of sci-fi. Urban fantasy, while a prolific genre, does not have what you might call an archetypical example of the genre that serves as a sort of ‘generic’ template for anyone wishing to do a story in that genre.

In truth, this might actually be a boon for any future urban fantasy games, insofar as said games are more likely to be individually creative, as opposed to simply taking elements from pre-existing properties to make an easily marketable game. Of course, by the same token, it may take until such a property impacts on the collective consciousness for urban fantasy to get its due in gaming.

Perhaps if that ever happened, urban fantasy might even suffer the same fate of other genres of becoming largely homogeneous near-identical releases with the occasional spark of uniqueness in the rough. But even so, at least there’d be even more types of identical games to choose from, making the game industry as a whole that little bit more varied.

This speculation isn't what I would call accurate. Urban fantasy is actually very easy to write (it's oversaturated in prose fiction) and has several templates to choose from.

It's not easy to write anything good. Stating otherwise is naive at best. Really doesn't matter what the genre or niche is, there's a reason 99 percent of any medium trying to tell a story is forgotten by the wayside even if most of it can be boiled down to hacks who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a narrative department in the first place.

Anyone, I mean anyone, can make sweeping broad ideas about how to make a good story but unwritten stories are always good if they remain in your head. There's a reason writers consider"re-writing" the actual part of their work. The first ideas they come up with are always shitty or never work out the way they expected to in their head.

Execution is all that matters. Literally, it's all that matters. Good execution is what justifies the ideas. Insisting that high-concept ideas are in the same place of actually writing out a script that you expect people to experience will never turn you into a good writer. At best, you can expect to become just another shlock peddler who spends too much time on TV Tropes instead of analyzing good writing and why it works.

 

[Delterius]

Looking forward to the Malkavian DLC pack. After the Nosferatu Portrait DLC pack, the No-More Sunlight Damage Because We Couldn't Balance It patch and the Additional Romantic Background Option DLC pack of course, but it's fine, my backlog ensures I've got time on my side.

haha jokes on you and your extreme optimism

this is my first in a series of depression posts

 

[RaggleFraggle]

It's not easy to write anything good. Stating otherwise is naive at best. Really doesn't matter what the genre or niche is, there's a reason 99 percent of any medium trying to tell a story is forgotten by the wayside even if most of it can be boiled down to hacks who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a narrative department in the first place.

Anyone, I mean anyone, can make sweeping broad ideas about how to make a good story but unwritten stories are always good if they remain in your head. There's a reason writers consider"re-writing" the actual part of their work. The first ideas they come up with are always shitty or never work out the way they expected to in their head.

Execution is all that matters. Literally, it's all that matters. Good execution is what justifies the ideas. Insisting that high-concept ideas are in the same place of actually writing out a script that you expect people to experience will never turn you into a good writer. At best, you can expect to become just another shlock peddler who spends too much time on TV Tropes instead of analyzing good writing and why it works.

Maybe you missed it, but I just wrote a post saying that ideas are cheap and execution is what matters.

I never said it was easy to write anything good. Urban fantasy is oversaturated in prose fiction, but most of it is repetitive crap. What surprises me is that we don't see many attempts period in video games, much less ones that are good. I already expect that most of what we get will be bad due to Sturgeon's Law. I've tried out several that have turned out terrible.

I fully understand that any given story will need to be revised several times to get good and that TV tropes gives shit advice. As the adage goes: those who can, write; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach, criticize.

Writing is one of the most important elements in anything. If you treat it like a low priority, your shit is going to suffer. if you don't pay attention to the quality of writer you hire or cheap out, your writing is going to be bad.

p. much

Video games as a multimedia creation require good work in all departments, whether it's gameplay, visual design, music & sound (including VA where it applies) more broadly or writing. Whichever elements are to be emphasized depends on the game in question and the sort of experience it aims to provide to the player, but narrative design matters regardless of how storyfaggy a game is supposed to be.

Yeah. There's no shortage of games with shit writing that were wildly successful due to good gameplay. As that one dev said, "story in video games is like story in a porno."

I've had so many frustrating arguments with delusional idiots online who think badly written drek is amazing and that I'm a hater for not seeing the genius. I learned the hard way to avoid those sorts of people.

Anyway... Even if they'd be mostly crappy, I'm surprised there aren't more urban fantasy video games period. If nothing else, then it would be mildly entertaining to mock bad writing.

 

[Tyranicon]

"story in video games is like story in a porno."

... but I like this.

story in a porno.

... and I really like this.

 

[NecroLord]

As that one dev said, "story in video games is like story in a porno."

A dev and OG programmer - John Carmack.
Also, he wasn't referring to games, but first person shooters, to be more specific.

 

[KateMicucci]

What Doom really needed was NPC companions, speech checks and a morality meter.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Video games as a multimedia creation require good work in all departments, whether it's gameplay, visual design, music & sound (including VA where it applies) more broadly or writing. Whichever elements are to be emphasized depends on the game in question and the sort of experience it aims to provide to the player, but narrative design matters regardless of how storyfaggy a game is supposed to be.

Yeah. There's no shortage of games with shit writing that were wildly successful due to good gameplay. As that one dev said, "story in video games is like story in a porno."

Sure, but that's in spite of their shit writing and not due to it. And narrative design extends beyond just writing the plot and characters. It's what ties the aesthetics of the game together, akin to a blueprint for the audiovisual design. So a game with a serviceable underemphasized story, but with cool factions and environments I'd label as having a good narrative design (that was translated into good audiovisual design). Same as in an action flick whose story only serves as a pretext for going from scene A to scene B. The quality of the action itself matters, but it can be all that much cooler depending on the various sets and props being employed.

 

[Cricket McBangle]

It's not easy to write anything good. Stating otherwise is naive at best. Really doesn't matter what the genre or niche is, there's a reason 99 percent of any medium trying to tell a story is forgotten by the wayside even if most of it can be boiled down to hacks who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a narrative department in the first place.

Anyone, I mean anyone, can make sweeping broad ideas about how to make a good story but unwritten stories are always good if they remain in your head. There's a reason writers consider"re-writing" the actual part of their work. The first ideas they come up with are always shitty or never work out the way they expected to in their head.

Execution is all that matters. Literally, it's all that matters. Good execution is what justifies the ideas. Insisting that high-concept ideas are in the same place of actually writing out a script that you expect people to experience will never turn you into a good writer. At best, you can expect to become just another shlock peddler who spends too much time on TV Tropes instead of analyzing good writing and why it works.

Maybe you missed it, but I just wrote a post saying that ideas are cheap and execution is what matters.

I never said it was easy to write anything good. Urban fantasy is oversaturated in prose fiction, but most of it is repetitive crap. What surprises me is that we don't see many attempts period in video games, much less ones that are good. I already expect that most of what we get will be bad due to Sturgeon's Law. I've tried out several that have turned out terrible.

I fully understand that any given story will need to be revised several times to get good and that TV tropes gives shit advice. As the adage goes: those who can, write; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach, criticize.

Writing is one of the most important elements in anything. If you treat it like a low priority, your shit is going to suffer. if you don't pay attention to the quality of writer you hire or cheap out, your writing is going to be bad.

p. much

Video games as a multimedia creation require good work in all departments, whether it's gameplay, visual design, music & sound (including VA where it applies) more broadly or writing. Whichever elements are to be emphasized depends on the game in question and the sort of experience it aims to provide to the player, but narrative design matters regardless of how storyfaggy a game is supposed to be.

Yeah. There's no shortage of games with shit writing that were wildly successful due to good gameplay. As that one dev said, "story in video games is like story in a porno."

I've had so many frustrating arguments with delusional idiots online who think badly written drek is amazing and that I'm a hater for not seeing the genius. I learned the hard way to avoid those sorts of people.

Anyway... Even if they'd be mostly crappy, I'm surprised there aren't more urban fantasy video games period. If nothing else, then it would be mildly entertaining to mock bad writing.

John Carmack said the story in video games is like story in a porno thing while developing DOOM to Tom Hall, so he was correct insofar as DOOM was concerned.

As far as there being a lack of urban fantasy, I don't really see how that's the case. Persona 5 is urban fantasy. Devil May Cry 5 is urban fantasy. Neo: The World Ends With You, Ghostwire Tokyo, Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children, these are all urban fantasy titles. Some of them are quite good but if your metric is just Bloodlines/World of Darkness and "Bloodlines is the only notable urban fantasy game", I can see how someone would think that in addition to not jiving with Japanese stuff.

 

[SlightlyRadioactive]

Benevolent hyper intelligent architect of the post singularity simulation we all live in - John Carmack.

FTFY

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Benevolent hyper intelligent architect of the post singularity simulation we all live in - John Carmack.

FTFY

Don't open it

 

[NecroLord]

Benevolent hyper intelligent architect of the post singularity simulation we all live in - John Carmack.

FTFY

Don't open it

Reject modernity, return to monke?

 

[SlightlyRadioactive]

As far as there being a lack of urban fantasy, I don't really see how that's the case. Persona 5 is urban fantasy. Devil May Cry 5 is urban fantasy. Neo: The World Ends With You, Ghostwire Tokyo, Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children, these are all urban fantasy titles. Some of them are quite good but if your metric is just Bloodlines/World of Darkness and "Bloodlines is the only notable urban fantasy game", I can see how someone would think that in addition to not jiving with Japanese stuff.

Sorry to tell you but weeb shit doesn't count as true games.