We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

I mean, they could just follow the lineage of someone besides Desmond Miles. It's not like he's even slightly important, except as a framing device.

They all sound kinda different. Also they took away what was special about Pokemon Yellow's Pikachu :(

I love Lairon's cry.

It's dubious how canonical the pokedex itself is because it also has such informative nuggets as Alakazam having an IQ of over 5000 and Magcargo's measured temperature being in the region of 10,000 degrees celsius (hotter than the surface of the sun).
Also one of the entries for Gastly mentions the existence of regular old indian elephants.

While some people take it as "in game, must be true" other people come up with their own excuses like "well, it is presumably written by the ten year old protagonist because that's supposed to be the whole reason for their adventure, so half of it is probably made up".
Although unless they are monsters in the pokemon world's equivalent of pokemon games, that still doesn't really explain the elephants.

yeah, i'm gonna pretend this guy ordering steak is just ordering a uh

berry steak?

bring pokemon colosseum back

(and make more pokemon mystery dungeons never stop)

e: i guess basically what i want to say is that there will always be an unique experience in the spinoff games, and some of those are hits. like pokemon conquest, that game was the shit. but they will always be spinoffs, and the main series will always stay formulaic. its a strategy that works and i have no problems with it.

It would be really cool if Nintendo realized that they have a pretty substantial audience for Pokémon composed of people who are now adults and who would turn any Pokémon game with "mature" themes and so forth into an instant hit.
They won't, for a million reasons, but it would be cool if they did.

Maybe I'm giving them too much credit but I've always seen Nintendo's strategy as maintaining their stable of cookie cutter titles that reliably sell so that they can then use the profit to fund any riskier stuff. Like... the Wii, which turned out to fund itself anyway, and the Wii U, which didn't.

Widely panned as they may be for being derivative... if you look at the sales info for sales of mario titles vs distance from basic platformer formula they're basically in an inverse ratio. Luigi's Mansion, Sunshine, Paper Mario and even Mario 64 were risks and while most people here would probably regard them as the more interesting titles they were still not actually as popular as the games that scroll from left to right and chiefly have you jump between platforms.
Keeping the Pokemon games that don't use standard mechanics as spinoffs protects The Brand, as it were.

A small game developer's basic goal is usually "I need to make enough money with this game to fund the next game", which is a terribly scary thing. What you ideally want to do is make enough money to fund the next three games so you aren't constantly living by the skin of your teeth, because gaming is a terribly fickle world and it takes a year plus for what you are making to actually come to fruition so you can't necessarily trust what the climate looked like when you started.
When you're a big company, with a lot of employees and many buns in the oven at once, this doesn't actually get a lot easier because people just expect you to spend more money per game by increasing production values. You're juggling earning back what you're paying people while building up enough to fund the next title to an even greater extent.

Gotta make money to spend money to make money to have enough spare to take risks without being in any actual danger.
If you try and make something weird every time then yeah you might get a bit less flak on internet forums but you're also far more likely to strike out with a title and suddenly realise that you have very little by way of a safety net.
Capitalism.




Unforgivable that they haven't made Pokemon Snap 2 yet though.

I vaguely recall reading something somewhere about Game Freak initially wanting to take Pokemon in a more subversive direction or something, but now Nintendo keeps them on a very short leash.
But I could be wrong about that.

According to the Entertainment Software Association, as of 2013 the age breakdown of video game consumers is actually rather topheavy:



I expected to find about half of game players as under 18, but it turns out only a third are. That said, video game companies (especially Nintendo. Well, mostly Nintendo, I think) will likely continue to primarily target younger consumers; as long as they don't overly infantilize them, their games will appeal to younger AND older consumers (as well as being largely non-objectionable to the 42% of Americans who do not play video games), while making more adult-oriented games will alienate a large portion of their audience (as well as potentially drawing unwanted controversy from that same 42%). Why do that? There really is nothing more from major companies than making shitzillions of dollars; individuals within those companies and even development groups within them probably care about making good games as an end unto itself, or making games that send a message or provoke thought, but those people will always have to take a backseat to their finance-oriented bosses and mission statements and investors.

Not a lot of profit to be had in idealism or art.

I don't think an emotionally complex Pokémon game would work, because it's impossible to tell a complex story without sidelining the Pokémon themselves (i.e., focusing on human characters).

Have you played Pokemon Mystery Dungeon?

But yeah I get what you're saying. The thing is though, Nintendo appears to be all about formulas and repetitions. Pokemon isn't the only franchise that exhibits that. Look at the Legend of Zelda series. Heck, look at the Mario series.

Actually, the Mario series is a pretty good example, because I know there have been complaints (from myself as well) about the same-y approach the series tends to have. But then again, there's Paper Mario, and Mario & Luigi. Both are different, and breaks away from that mold, while also telling a good story (Mario's dullness as a protagonist notwithstanding).

I mean, it'd be nice to just kind of toss aside the norm, yes, but that simply isn't the way Nintendo does it, for better or for worse. Sad as it is to say, money matters.

The above is not an argument, just a thing that I'm putting out there.

Anyways, re: Pokemon, there are still plenty of ways they could pragmatically adapt the core idea. For example: Pokemon need to trust you, or they will simply break out of their Pokeballs and run away. Being trained holds a certain sort of honor within the "wild pokemon society", as it will certainly make you stronger, plus you will be taken care of. Survival instincts, and all that. Hence the whole battling to catch them thing. Show 'em you're strong, and they will grow to like you. Just an example, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that the "evidence" within the canon games are loose enough to allow for plenty of interpretation. I say this mostly as a Pokemon fanfic reader/writer.

The kind of games you're talking about would be cool, but they would also certainly be branded as a spinoff, to protect the tradition/formula. Like I said, I'm okay with that! Sometimes spinoffs can form their own series, and become a mainstay.

(i dont think the 8 leaders thing is boring at all. its pretty much a given at this point that a main pokemon game will have the same story/layout, and i dont think abolishing the system would be guaranteed to improve the game. fans WILL complain that it's too different therefore it sucks, regardless of whether the game is any good.)

A democracy-based gaming company would be interesting, to be honest.

Also, it's not like Nintendo has a total monopoly over what they put in their games. I feel like there is definitely some input from the consumers, in terms of what games are the most popular. Like, the only reason they keep mass-churning out New Super Mario games is because they are consistently best-sellers, regardless of the long-standing fans that clamor for 64-era games. In other words, majority rules. I feel like the people who want differences are firmly in the minority, as opposed to the people that apparently like their products and are giving them money.

Then again, they are most likely only listening to people who buy their products. Something something survey fallacy. So... in order to make changes, we would have to somehow convince people to stop buying their games until they decide that the same old stuff is not going to cut it anymore? That is certainly one option, but it can't be the only one.

Twitch Plays Game Development

I'm a little late but i've made up my mind about Oh8's art. I never really paid much attention to it because it was borderline kink-ish to me, but it is indeed fucked up.

I'm not defending it! I said it was kinda cute sometimes, sometimes. Also, this was drawn by JunkPuyo not, Oh8.

At least that woman actually has an entire torso.

Though half of it is concealed behind a cake.

Does he just have something against waists?

damn, if only zero suit samus wasnt in a skin tight suit or had a personality

I actually like Female Armor Rhetoric Bingo better, somehow

By which I mean it makes me sadder

OH MY GOD. Some of you may know that I have always wanted Dillon to be in SSB4. Well, here he is! Unfortunately, he's most likely an assist trophy, not a playable character.

I really hope the site is just late with putting his character page up.

I don't want to disappoint you but the screenshots are always accompanied with captions on miiverse and https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMH...UqF6psy0BQ

still very cool

good times

I am increasingly ashamed to own my Oculus Rift dev kit. Ye gods, even if you set aside the fact that this MMO plan is banana-in-your-ear bonkers, what you're left with is a VIRTUAL WORLD RULED BY FACEBOOK. They already control your social life - why not give them the power to control everything else, too?
Yeesh.

Okay, for the people who actually enjoy playing games with their friends, Destiny looks really exciting. Bungie has a strong resume and tons of players both Halo fans or non are justifiably hyped for the game. It's a new IP from a trusted company taking full advantage of next gen power, and it's a co-op RPG. I'm sure you have some sort of gripe with this idea but for the life of me I can't see it.

I offer that now is the time for everyone who was sucking Oculus' dick a year ago to step forward and defend them.

You mean whose dicks Oculus was sucking?

Confirmed.

Not sure how I feel about it, in all honesty. Definitely not planning on buying the remakes, since I thought Gen 3 was pretty weak. I think I saw someone suggesting it was a sequel, but I wouldn't count my chickens before they hatched.

well, at least i won't have to buy a really old game to play it again