tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327484429725532216.post2990719923526960415..comments2023-11-05T03:25:53.239-08:00Comments on Drake's Flames: General Gaming Rant - Gaming GluttonyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327484429725532216.post-62732601377053829852011-05-06T20:09:57.535-07:002011-05-06T20:09:57.535-07:00Wolfie, maybe I'm just biased because I see a ...Wolfie, maybe I'm just biased because I see a disproportionate number of bad games. Sometimes people buy bad games, play them and send them to me just so I will review them. That happens a lot, actually. So I know that there are an awful lot of games being produced that never should have existed. I can think of half a dozen off the top of my head.<br /><br />Like I said, I don't expect publishers to change their ways. Their ways are making money, and let's face it, that's what it's all about. More power to 'em. It's up to consumers to be smart about what they buy, play the games they like, and not churn through games without getting their money out of them.<br /><br />If consumers made smarter buying decisions, practiced more self-control, and played more of the games they already owned, publishers would have to spend more time making better games.<br /><br />Publishers haven't always flooded the market with a never-ending release schedule. There was a time when publishers vetted their games more carefully and worked harder to make sure they were making games that people would like. The current gaming market is not typical, historically speaking. <br /><br />We live in sort of a golden age of hobby games, especially for publishers, and many gamers have bought into it part and parcel. Look at all the people at BGG who post pictures of their game collections, just to brag about how many they own. If you need a moving van to transport your 'collection,' when could you possibly play all of them? Publishers are smart to release dozens of mediocre games instead of three or four good ones, because no matter how pathetic, someone will buy your game.<br /><br />I'm not really trying to tell publishers to change. I'm trying to tell people to modify their buying habits. Buy what you like, and play what you buy. Get your money out of your games.<br /><br />Or just spend it on hookers and blow. That would be cheaper.Matt Drakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10293720777403743376noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327484429725532216.post-59464317580158337052011-05-06T09:45:17.053-07:002011-05-06T09:45:17.053-07:00Okay I'm trying again.
First off, I'm som...Okay I'm trying again.<br /><br />First off, I'm someone who doesn't buy $100s worth of games every month, and I try to play games that I like over and over again because i like them.<br /><br />That being said, while the idea of "only create good product" is a nice one, it's not realistic, because it's not really economically sustainable.<br /><br />There are several major problems that inhibit this, most of them coming down to money. The first is this: a company large enough to produce games with the high production quality you demand, market the game so people know it exists, and print enough copies to be available to anyone who wants one, simply cannot afford to produce only 1 game every few months or so. The time needed to bring a game from conception to final product, including mechanic design, testing, graphic design / art, writing, editing, parts design, and finally physical production - would realistically cost more money than the income of a game would provide, unless it sold really, really well. A small company can focus on one game, but these companies tend to have less ability to provide the best in production quality, not to mention producing enough copies to sell to everyone who wants one.<br /><br />Another thing is risk - if a company pours all its eggs into 1 game a year to make sure that that game is really really good, well... what happens if they get to the end and realize, okay, this game isn't as great as we thought it would be. It's impossible to know at the start if an idea is going to be good, but by the time you get to the point where you realize it's not going to cut the standard, you've already poured a ton of money into it. Do you just abandon the project and start over? You could, but then you not only wasted all the money you spent in developing the product as far as it got, and then you didn't sell any of that product to recoup the cost. Unsustainable.<br /><br />One tends to forget that there are a lot of people that go into the creation of your favorite games, and those people need to get paid if they're going to spend all their time working on it. For a large company maintaining a team of people dedicated to designing games, its going to require putting out a decently large number of games every year.<br /><br />Another thing is taste- someone mentioned in a previous comment that they didn't like Agricola. I happen to like Agricola, as do many of my friends. A lot of people like Agricola - so now, how do you determine which games are good or not? If it's up to someone who doesn't like Agricola, Agricola doesn't get made - but then what about the people who want to play Agricola? Just because two people disagree on the quality of a game, doesn't mean one is wrong - they just have different tastes.<br /><br />It's true that some companies make cheap, bad games just to take advantage of the collector mentality, or to dupe less-informed consumers, but I think this is the exception to the rule. <br /><br />In general, companies tend to put out a lot of cheaper games with smaller target audiences to sustain the ability to produce their frontline products. It's just not sensible to expect every product to make to sell ridiculously well, and so you can't invest resources into every product you make equally.<br /><br />It's a nice sentiment to think that game companies (or book publishers, or movie producers, or any kind of product really) should just put out the good stuff. But beyond lazy, dishonest, money-grubbing companies, sometimes you have to put out something of less quality to keep doing the good stuff.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16943069743769638883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327484429725532216.post-82861992218658521002011-05-06T09:26:48.135-07:002011-05-06T09:26:48.135-07:00crap, I just wrote a really long comment about the...crap, I just wrote a really long comment about the economic sustainability (or lack thereof) of this idea. And when I submitted it, blogger bugged out and the comment didn't go through. Annoying!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16943069743769638883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327484429725532216.post-6905253279661039862011-05-05T15:19:58.939-07:002011-05-05T15:19:58.939-07:00"And consider this - the games that sell the ..."And consider this - the games that sell the best are the games that ARE the best"<br /><br />This isn;t true in any other entertainment genre (books, music, films etc). Why should it be true for games?100%Bladenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327484429725532216.post-17025217830302470432011-05-05T12:50:26.659-07:002011-05-05T12:50:26.659-07:00I agree with everything you said except "At t...I agree with everything you said except "At this point, we don't need another Agricola clone"<br /><br />The truth is we didn't even need Agricola. Derivative dross. The king (or at least the farmer) has no clothes.Steerpikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10651282486675534271noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327484429725532216.post-70299825323936085332011-05-04T10:24:12.929-07:002011-05-04T10:24:12.929-07:00"While failed designs will always happen, a l..."While failed designs will always happen, a lot of buyers are rewarding companies for focusing on presentation over substance."<br /><br />It's even worse than that. We're rewarding quantity of production over quality. Look at the Dice Tower's nominees for best production. Both Horus Heresy and Earth Reborn are in there, and both have strikingly poor production. But both also have a metric assload of plastic, so people think that's quality. It's not. If the physical design of a game makes it more difficult to play, then the production was actually BAD. What are we, third-graders? We don't care if something works, as long as it looks neat? So if we dip a dog turd in chrome and give it a coat of high-sheen car polish, that makes it an award-winning production? Horus Heresy looked amazing, but try to have a battle in the palace, and it turns into Jenga. And the visuals in Earth Reborn were so bad that we frequently found ourselves saying, 'Wait, that was a door?'Matt Drakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10293720777403743376noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327484429725532216.post-39062836101732301382011-05-04T00:45:31.554-07:002011-05-04T00:45:31.554-07:00THanks Matt for agreeing or disagreeing. Sometimes...THanks Matt for agreeing or disagreeing. Sometimes it is also hard for me to judge the issue in other countries. Here in Germany we are in country with around 1000 new releases each year. Just from my mental view I ignore 900 of them, and only concentrate on the rest. And even of that rest I buy less than half to test it out.<br /><br />And then comes the pint where I like around 10 to 20 of these games and the rest are not bad games, bad not worth my time, so they go on the shelf or on eBay.<br /><br />And then I take my time, having no TV but 3 board game nights a week, give me the luxury to play a lot and a lot of games. Having played so many bad games in my life, also give me the personal feeling to see if a game is bad, I would have found great some years ago.<br /><br />I never heard of a company like Twilight creation, but I'm sure if they put something awesome out, I will read about it in the Spielbox or the Fairplay.<br /><br />So I stick to the rule, that I don't care how many bad games come out, the bad companies will not survive or if they survive I don't care. As long as good games come out, I'm happy. And releasing more games give me access to better games.<br /><br />Can you agree that the number of better games have increased as well?darkpacthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07297767592611218068noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327484429725532216.post-91498803546173012992011-05-03T18:08:18.620-07:002011-05-03T18:08:18.620-07:00Funny coincidence, Matt. I just wrote something ab...Funny coincidence, Matt. I just wrote something about this on the I've Been Diced! blog. If the collapse comes, the cause won't be too many games, but too many crappy games. So why do people buy them? Because they're purty. Seriously. <br /><br />I get a stomach cramp every time I see yet another "I just opened the box, and it looks fantastic!" review at BGG. It's my least favorite thing in this hobby. It leads to a whole lot of games that get opened, played once or twice, and because they're mediocre, shoved to the back of the closet. While failed designs will always happen, a lot of buyers are rewarding companies for focusing on presentation over substance.Kingdaddyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18365657233577708332noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327484429725532216.post-1635226090697389622011-05-03T16:42:47.921-07:002011-05-03T16:42:47.921-07:00Matt, you're right on as usual. I personally ...Matt, you're right on as usual. I personally have way too many games and out of all those games only three see action each game day (Cosmic Encounter, Heroscape, Summoner Wars) and maybe another 15 that occasionally come out. So I'm really cutting down on my game purchases this year at the same time I put some up on e-bay. <br /><br />Of course it would help us unwashed masses turn a blind eye to new games if respected reviewers were a little more critical ;-)<br /><br />P_J_KellerAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327484429725532216.post-4345410068844320182011-05-03T09:25:47.639-07:002011-05-03T09:25:47.639-07:00"Do you also think there are too many movies ..."Do you also think there are too many movies coming out? Too many TV Shows? Too many books? Too many Comics?"<br /><br />Sorta, yeah. Spend more time making good TV, and less resources on Dancing with the Real Housewives of Jersey Shore, and we could have better television. Hell, even if you leave those really popular but really stupid shows, there are still absolutely worthless TV shows that have a miniscule viewing audience and yet still drain resources off programs that could have been better with a little more scrutiny and oversight. They eventually wither and die, but consider this - if Fox had spent less money on crappy sitcoms that got canceled halfway through the season, maybe they could have had more Firefly.<br /><br />"Can we agree that we need to advance?"<br /><br />Sure, and if a game adds something interesting to the market, then I'm all for it. But for every game that does something new and cool and progressive, there are 50 that add absolutely nothing. At this point, we don't need another Agricola clone. Hell, Twilight Creations is responsible for a regular release schedule full of retread, boring, incomprehensible garbage that brings no innovation or professionalism to the market. We don't need that. That's not evolution. That's not advance. That's just dragging along on the coattails of people who are advancing, and by purchasing their games, we simply encourage them to NOT evolve.<br /><br />Your comparison to cell phones is actually very apt. Do we need 25 different touch-screen smart phones? I say no. The innovation came from Apple. The rest are just playing catchup. If nobody bought their crappy clone phones, those companies would be forced to come up with something interesting if they wanted to survive. Instead these copycats get by because everyone has to have a phone these days, and there's some market somewhere for nearly anything.<br /><br />"Saying there should be not bad games can't work. We need bad games, as we need bad movies and bad commercials."<br /><br />On this point, I tend to agree. Steinbeck once said, "what is warmth, without cold to make it sweet?" So I take your point, and concede that without the ugly, we cannot appreciate the beautiful.<br /><br />The problem is, because so many gamers are simply rabid consumers, the bad games don't fail like they should. Nearly any game can sell, because people get excited about absolute garbage and buy it regardless of whether it has any redeeming value. They toss it into their humongous bi-monthly gaming order and play it once at their Thursday night gaming club in the book store before taking a picture of it stored on a shelf for bragging rights and then trying to trade it away.<br /><br />The glut of horrible games also leads to a disturbing amount of digging necessary to weed out the bad games from the good. You have to dig through article after article, flipping past countless reviews, and practically become an industry insider just to decide what you want to play. All these bad games make it more difficult for new gamers to enter the market without being immediately put off by having to read confusing rules for a boring game. This results in stagnation, not progress, and a sort of inbreeding that prevents that market from growing, and therefore, from allowing for more innovation.<br /><br />The overabundance or games also leads to a market in which some really fantastic games end up completely ignored. Nostra City is in my top 20 favorites of all time, and yet almost nobody has heard of it, because there is simply too much noise. That's not the only fantastic game to be drowned out by the constant flow of crappy games, but it's a good example.<br /><br />Thanks for your comments. While I more-or-less disagree (obviously), intelligent debate is impossible without a dissenting opinion. Your arguments are well-considered and well-stated. Thanks for reading, and thanks for bringing more to the table than was here before.Matt Drakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10293720777403743376noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327484429725532216.post-19666431683759970852011-05-03T07:17:40.969-07:002011-05-03T07:17:40.969-07:00Thanks for the post Matt. I think you're righ...Thanks for the post Matt. I think you're right - publishers aren't going to try very hard to fix something that isn't broken (from their perspective.) I'm right there with you wondering how some games make it to production.<br /><br />Consumers apparently are the key, like you said. Personally, my purchasing of new games has slowed to a trickle because I feel like I already have enough great games. I don't want to spend more money - I want to spend more time playing the games I already own and enjoy! <br /><br />Thanks for taking the time to play different (and sometimes subpar) stuff and give us your opinions. May you always have time to bust out your favorite games after slogging through the "carboard diarrhea."Matt Nnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327484429725532216.post-35451402632591961642011-05-03T06:55:10.990-07:002011-05-03T06:55:10.990-07:00We need bad games, comics, movies? That's stu...We need bad games, comics, movies? That's stupid. We put up with them, sure, we use them for bad jokes and memes, but the world WOULD be better without the crap. <br /><br />Matt, I almost want to pay for your Viet call girls this month for this great entry, but I have to buy three Dominion expansions and the new Cosmic Encounter. Sorry bud, guess you're on your own.Enriquehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07013606211851487172noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327484429725532216.post-41796464273285717832011-05-03T02:28:35.962-07:002011-05-03T02:28:35.962-07:00I think Matt is right. We have far too many games ...I think Matt is right. We have far too many games which will ultimatively lead to a collapse. In my experience, some publishers produce new games like it's an evolutionary process: Bad games die, good games survive. And maybe you get the golden pot by winning Spiel des Jahres. But that's a view from the hard-fought german market.<br /><br />Alas, this seems to work well and be a viable strategy to test a games' impact on the market. If it sells: Keep and reprint it, if not, dump it and go on.Guidohttp://de.trictrac.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327484429725532216.post-46877132538125485632011-05-03T01:51:38.209-07:002011-05-03T01:51:38.209-07:00I couldn't disagree more.
1. Do you also thin...I couldn't disagree more.<br /><br />1. Do you also think there are too many movies coming out? Too many TV Shows? Too many books? Too many Comics? There are a lot of things that come out in numbers higher than one person can consume. But each has their own target group. If anyone thinks they have to get them all, they will fail. You couldn't care less.<br /><br />2. Can we agree that we need to advance? Do you still want to use a mobile phone that came out ten years ago? That we are were we are with a lot of technical stuff is only possible, as we improve on the stuff that is out there. The more board games release the more we can advance in board games as well. And looking back ten year ago, most games are crap today, but that is not bad, as they were fun at that time. But the games have advanced.<br /><br />3. Saying there should be not bad games can't work. We need bad games, as we need bad movies and bad commercials. How do we even mark something as good or bad without comparing them. If you stop doing all the games which are called bad today, a lot of the games which are good today are bad tomorrow. The bad ones give us the knowledge to chose the good ones. And it helps to show who advanced, and who did not.<br /><br />It's all evolution. And the board games move in the correct direction imho.darkpacthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07297767592611218068noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327484429725532216.post-32785500401165591652011-05-02T19:04:49.925-07:002011-05-02T19:04:49.925-07:00That story sucks like a, er, I mean it blows like ...That story sucks like a, er, I mean it blows like a, well, I mean it rocks like the best monster chord at the best rock show you ever went to with your best girl. Pure fucking awesome genius, if I may say so (may I?). Totally agree, and about time. Best evah.<br /><br />The word of the day is Lometrus, what's with that?Alan Rnoreply@blogger.com