Hi Dark, You are certainly right about the direction of accessible games changing over the last few years. Mostly it was a good thing.
Like you said from 2000 to 2004 most of the games were arcade affairs like DynaMan, Aliens in the Outback, Troopenum, Dark Destroyer, Pipe, Pipe 2, Hunter, Tarzan Junior, etc that were a throwback to the 1980's style of gaming. One reason there were so many game releases back to back is an arcade game like Troopenum is relatively easy to create compared to some of the games we have seen over the last three/four years or so. For instance, in 2006, I believe it was, Che mentioned to the list his idea to create Rail Racer. When he finally released 1.0 in 2007 or so it totally changed the way VI gamers think of racing games and raised the bar considerably. I litterally had to rethink Raceway from the ground up because of it. What I mean by that is that the original plans for ESP Raceway was for a racing game on par with Poll Position. You'd have like 8 different tracks, and up to four cars on the track. There was no season mode, no points, no upgrades, and all and all just a plane Jane racing game. I realized with games like Rail Racer coming out and free games like Topspeed and Mach1 already out there Raceway wouldn't do well financially. So I decided to rethink the game and use something like Nascar Thunder as my basis which is a mainstream game with a lot more features etc that would be selling points. Then, of course, there is Entombed. Again this is a game right up there with mainstream RPG games, and has totally redefined what I and others are willing to pay for in terms of games. People know I've been thinking of an RPG game for a while now, perhaps one like Sryth, but I've realized that a text-based game alone is not going to sell. Now, days there is this expectation of fighting sounds, weapons, background ambience, some music, etc followed by some narration voice which means a strict paper and pen style game isn't probably in demand any more. Something more roguelike such as Entombed is the style accessible RPG games will most likely take. Last, but certainly not least, is Time of Conflict. Once again GMA has amazed me, as well as everyone else, with something new and revolutionary. It reminds me of the various Civilization games were you build an army and then proceed to take over the planet by whiping out the enemy forces. It is a game with no parallel in accessible gaming and even SoundRTS, which is a decent real time strategy game itself, doesnt' quite compare to Time of Conflict in the RTS genre. I've litterally spent more than a week fighting a single campaign in Time of Conflict. So I agree that expectations for commercial games do get higher and higher as time goes buy. Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
