Videogame Panel Discussion: This Sunday!
AADL-GT: Ann Arbor District Library Game Tournaments
The videogame industry is teetering on the precipice of the next console war. With Microsoft's Xbox 360 already established in the market, all eyes are on Sony and Nintendo, and what they'll announce at E3 in just a few short weeks. Sony's PS3 will be powerful and fast, but also embroiled in a disc format war could be disastrous for a product that may launch above $500. Nintendo's console, still codenamed 'revolution', has a radical new controller that offers intuitive play to a larger audience, a possible $199 pricetag, and a downloadable back catalog of 20 years worth of classic games. The all-important holiday season is fast approaching. Who will emerge victorious from the wreckage of the next console war? And, define 'victorious'!
COME SPECULATE WILDLY with a panel of gamers at Malletts Creek Branch on Sunday, from 1-3, featuring AADL-GT Season 1 Champion and Season 2 Runner-up, [gtplayer:143] (Stephen Savage), seasoned GT commentator and Season 2 comeback-story finalist [gtplayer:288] (Daniel Burgener), Lansing-based adult tournament competitor and gaming enthusiast Omokusaki (Zach Lark), and yours truly as your host and resident tattoo-bearing Nintendo Fanboy!
It will come to shouting! I'm certain of it. Hope to see you all there for some spirited, well-informed discussion of these important concerns.
Comments
"If this one isn't then in many ways Nintendo is charging me for something that I already have."
Except that they're really not, because I can guaran-darn-tee you that nobody's going to make very many motion-sensitive games for the PC ever. And certainly, nobody is ever going to make a Super Smash, Mario Kart or even Mario game for the PC (at least not legally). Just because a console doesn't have better graphics than your PC doesn't mean a darn thing in the long run, because about the only thing that the PC will be good for is FPSs and World Of Warcraft-esque games.
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"OK, next year we're going to change the tournament name from AADL-GT to AADL-GR... "Goat Rodeo!!!" - Eli
5000th comment poster![gtlogo:VMC]
I'd also put RTSs and TBSs but thank you for saying what I thought tom. Also you people have to notice that as graphics increase release speed decreases. Good games with top of the line graphics once only took a few months to produce now they take years, what’s next a decade between games. I’m sorry that dog won’t hunt. I'd much rather play a good squeal for a game while I still can remember what it was like playing it. Good graphics are the most complex and tedious part of the programming of a game because they require an artistic touch: When you have greatly improved graphics you have to deal with way longer production time. If they don't spend longer to get those better graphics then you can bet they cut corners on other aspects, gameplay and storyline suffer the most but it's not limited to them. Do you really want to just look at it like you do a movie or do you want to have fun. Half the time I play a game I don't pay attention to the color and texture of my surroundings but my current gameplay situation. Frankly I like to have a challenging game that makes me think then one where I just sit in a stupor watching while repeating arbitrary button sequences over and over again.
Tom you missed my point. I said that Nintendo is charging for hardware I already have. Not for an experience I already have. What I said is that my computer will probably be about as powerful as a Revolution. The box they are making will cost money. The box itself is hardware that I already have. Therefore Nintendo is charging me for something I already have.
I agree with you that a graphics don't make the game. I run most of my games on low to get a high frame rate because I care more about gameplay than graphics, but occasionally great graphics will add to a game's experience.
Duck the flooding of the gaming market with sequels isn't a good thing. Earlier I heard that innovation was very important to the gaming world so I would assume that sequels are less likely to innovate since they are generally the same as an old game, but with new graphics and a few gameplay changes.
By the way a lot of companies license a graphics engine so it really isn't the most tedious time of development. I'm playing America's Army at this very moment. This game represents why PC is better (for me at least). The game has great graphics, but can be turned down low so that almost anyone's computer can handle it. It is free (Nintendo shutters at the thought of releasing a free game). It has excellent online multiplayer. It has honor levels allowing you to feel like you aren't just wasting your time. It licensed the Unreal 2 engine which means that the developers aren't wasting time on a new graphics engine.
I understand where you guys are coming from because I used to be a Nintendo fan boy too. Then I started playing PC games at a friend's house when I was 13 and I haven't gone back. I own close to 20 games for gamecube, but for some reason I only play one of two or three games for PC. Why? Because the replay value offered by online play combined with the modding community (which I don't think will ever appear on consoles) adds to the replay value of PC games.
I have Star Wars: Empire At War which has great graphics. Using an innovative feature called the battle cam, I can watch the battle go on in a cinematic view. This combined with fraps (a program that allows me to record my gameplay and sound (this type of thing costs a lot of money on consoles). Because the graphics are so good I could create my own reinactment of a star wars movie.
Duck if you have ever heard of the UT series (not everyone knows about these, but should) they popped out games frequently, but they realized that they needed something fresh and that is why it was UT03 then UT04 and now UT07.
By the way storyline is only important in some games. I don't think that the lack of storyline in BF2 hurt its game play at all. Nor did the lack of story in AA ruin it. However, the story in SW:KOTOR2 sucked me in and made that game good.
Duck the last thing I have to say to you is that if you are saying that FPSs or RTS are just repeated button sequences please throw away your copy of melee and MK:DD. I have found MK:DD to just be button sequences. Sure there is strategy, but very little. I just played a game of AA where my team was outnumbered 2-1, but we still fought them off using smoke grenades and having our AR fire into the smoke holding them off while we flanked them. Tell me that that is repeating an arbitrary button sequence over and over again.
Also I probably won't make it to the tournament tommorow because of a conflict in my schedule.
Wow this was long. I hope I got my point across.
"TORTURIS EXUVIAS EUNT"
Hello everyone, and by the way picwik-you promised to change your name, so get to it!
Hi Duck-kun, you seemed happy yesterday!
Well I don't even know what ya all have been talking about, I just want to say Hi and hope that everyone has fun at the tournament tonight!!!
It's a good thing that Miniblin signed me in, because I can't find it.
Oh well maybe cheese rabits will hit picwik, and that would be funny.
P.S. Picwik talks to trees!
He will hate me now, but I don't think he'll see this by tonight, so I shall not worry.
I hate to ask but what doesa RTS stand for i just can't seem to remember (praobably becaues i didn't kno that oin the first place)
I wish that the tournament wasn't to day i was planning on seeing the da vinci code but i cxan do that any day so im coming to the tournament instead
holder of the 6168th post
RTS = Real-time Srategy
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"OK, next year we're going to change the tournament name from AADL-GT to AADL-GR... "Goat Rodeo!!!" - Eli
5000th comment poster![gtlogo:VMC]
Eli for the nect melee tourney can u give more qualifaction rounds. that would help for more playing time and dont do one on one until there are 16 people 4 ffa 2 move on :) going back ddownstairs
"If you don't offer them something that has value to them now, you're going to be irrelevant to them for the rest of their lives. It's not a risk we can afford to take."
Eli