Author Topic: Game Journalism  (Read 127527 times)

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Offline UncleBob

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #325 on: February 11, 2010, 09:13:52 AM »
Any game that is quickly and easily ported to the PS2 and PSP isn't a "best effort" by any developer.

We all know the Wii isn't a graphics powerhouse - but it's not a last generation system or a handheld either.  If a developer wants to be lazy and throw something together for the lowest common denominator , that's fine.  But I'm not going to be interested in buying it.
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Offline NWR_DrewMG

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #326 on: February 11, 2010, 09:24:07 AM »
Wow.  That is really shortsighted, Unclebob.  Sorry, but it is.

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Offline Deguello

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #327 on: February 11, 2010, 09:28:43 AM »
Wish Konami made that game before Target Terror or Scene it? Twilight.  Regular people might think they were competent.
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Offline KDR_11k

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #328 on: February 11, 2010, 10:09:41 AM »
Any game that is quickly and easily ported to the PS2 and PSP isn't a "best effort" by any developer.

That depends on how you define "easily".

Offline NWR_Lindy

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #329 on: February 11, 2010, 10:23:13 AM »
Overall, this thread is a success.

No Deg, this thread is an outright failure.  The only thing it has served to do is, once again, start a massive argument - not debate, argument - which drags down the forums as a whole and generates nothing but negative feelings.  If you consider that to be a success in any regard, then please, leave these forums.  This whole thread was basically the anti-third party brigade puffing out their chest and saying, "Who dares challenge me?"  It was flamebait right from the start, serving no purpose but to stir up a hornet's nest by provoking those that disagree, and then piling on them when they do voice their opinions.

I'm this close to locking it, since there is really no debate going on here.
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Offline Deguello

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #330 on: February 11, 2010, 11:26:47 AM »
I vehemently disagree.  Nobody was "arguing" until page 11, a good 12 days later, with the first shot being an indictment of the people who participated in this thread for so long.  I saw debate (actually, mostly agreement) until then.

Quote
This whole thread was basically the anti-third party brigade puffing out their chest and saying, "Who dares challenge me?"

No it wasn't.  If anything it was a demonstrative effect of shovelware on shelf space, brand name, and market strength, and a debate on whether third parties' libraries, taken as a whole, could be reconcile with intellectual consistency their claims of "X not selling."  I don't think people supporting the conclusions drawn by the first post are "anti-third party" just because third parties made those games and most of them are pretty bad and they agree that they are pretty bad.  It's not any more "anti-third party" than bringing up Carnival Games, Wii Fit, and "casual gamers" is "Anti-Nintendo."  It's just supported by the facts, right?

Quote
It was flamebait right from the start, serving no purpose but to stir up a hornet's nest by provoking those that disagree, and then piling on them when they do voice their opinions.

Flamebait?  To who?  Third parties?  I disagree with your assertion of "flamebait."  Just because an argument started on the 9th almost two weeks after the thread started doesn't mean that was Pro's intent for the thread when he did post it those weeks ago.

But, you are entitled to your opinion.  If that's what you think, fine.  We'll agree to disagree.
« Last Edit: February 11, 2010, 11:58:31 AM by Deguello »
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Offline Stratos

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #331 on: February 11, 2010, 11:30:03 AM »
Any game that is quickly and easily ported to the PS2 and PSP isn't a "best effort" by any developer.

We all know the Wii isn't a graphics powerhouse - but it's not a last generation system or a handheld either.  If a developer wants to be lazy and throw something together for the lowest common denominator , that's fine.  But I'm not going to be interested in buying it.

If you read impressions of the PS2 version the game is ****. Everything looks bad and it plays horribly. The game was made for the ground up as a Wii title and was merely ported to the PS2 as a cash grab.
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Offline ejamer

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #332 on: February 11, 2010, 11:39:57 AM »
Overall, this thread is a success.

No Deg, this thread is an outright failure.  The only thing it has served to do is, once again, start a massive argument - not debate, argument - which drags down the forums as a whole and generates nothing but negative feelings.

That deserves a standing ovation.
 
Sometimes it seems like people online fail to distinguish between trolling for comments and generating discussion.  Post (or page) count isn't what makes a thread successful - the ideas and subsequent discussion generated are!
 
That said, it can be harder to generate discussion without a little bit of controversy sometimes... but does it ever get tiring to read these negative (and often ridiculous) threads in every Wii forum online.  Is it only like this for Nintendo, or do Sony/Microsoft gaming forums have the same issues?
 
---
 
Anyway, on a sidenote I think UncleBob also has an interesting comment up above:
 
"Any game that is quickly and easily ported to the PS2 and PSP isn't a 'best effort' by any developer."
 
On one hand, I agree.  The Wii is clearly a more powerful system, and it also has many unique elements.  In my mind, a best effort game should try to take advantage of those elements whenever it clearly makes sense to do so.  However, saying that games should be difficult or impossible to port a game to another system to be worth playing is a huge leap from that statement.
 
Even though Little King's Story is a great game, I still feel like it's missing out by not using pointer controls to improve the experience.  The game could easily be ported to other systems, and suggesting that it's not a best effort is difficult when you consider the overall quality of the title.  Most importantly, this game is downright fun to play.
 
Silent Hill is example of a game that did get ported (with notable downgrades) to other system, but remains totally worth playing and clearly best on Wii.  Heck, Mega Man 10 will be worth playing and it could be easily and instantly ported to the NES.  Obviously the ability to create ports isn't an automatic statement about the quality of a game.
 
So while I appreciate it when developers find ways to make their games unique and more immersive on Wii, I don't think a game needs to take advantage of those unique features to count as a "best effort" or be considered "worth playing".
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Offline D_Average

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #333 on: February 11, 2010, 12:10:18 PM »
I vehemently agree with Lindy's conclusion. That is all.
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Offline NWR_Lindy

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #334 on: February 11, 2010, 12:13:54 PM »
Flamebait?  To who?  Third parties?  I disagree with your assertion of "flamebait."  Just because an argument started on the 9th almost two weeks after the thread started doesn't mean that was Pro's intent for the thread when he did post it those weeks ago.

But, you are entitled to your opinion.  If that's what you think, fine.  We'll agree to disagree.

Was the intent of this thread to engender polite discussion?  No, its intent was to continue the dialogue of, "Look how bad third parties suck on the Wii.  Everybody come pile on while we flame them!"  These discussions are rampant on these boards. Deg, you're a high-quality poster, and I'd love to see you involved in threads other than the "Look at how amazing Nintendo is at business/Third parties, Sony, and Microsoft are awful at business" borefests.  Unfortunately, these are the only threads that you seem interested in participating in.

You can counter this with "You and Andy dragged this thread out by posting in it thread so late," and while that's true, this thread wasn't meant to die, was it?  It's meant to live forever as a testament to how terrible third parties are, a point that has been made over and over and over and over.  I guess it's an axe several people never get tired of grinding, but I'd rather that grind take place a lot less around here.
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Offline BlackNMild2k1

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #335 on: February 11, 2010, 12:14:16 PM »
Overall, this thread is a success.

No Deg, this thread is an outright failure.  The only thing it has served to do is, once again, start a massive argument - not debate, argument - which drags down the forums as a whole and generates nothing but negative feelings.  If you consider that to be a success in any regard, then please, leave these forums.  This whole thread was basically the anti-third party brigade puffing out their chest and saying, "Who dares challenge me?"  It was flamebait right from the start, serving no purpose but to stir up a hornet's nest by provoking those that disagree, and then piling on them when they do voice their opinions.

I'm this close to locking it, since there is really no debate going on here.
Well I couldn't disagree with everything said here more. There was no arguing because everyone was agreeing with each other about the point of the thread; 3rd parties have released far too much crap and it hides the few good games that were released. In that regard, the thread was a success as it pointed out why exactly 3rd parties are not selling games beyond the "they aren't advertising them" argument.

There was no debate because, well, who would disagree with the evidence provided by looking at the wall? The only time argument/debate began was when Drew came in and tried to incorrectly summarize the point of the thread missing it entirely (as it seems you have too). What is there to debate? 3rd parties have literally buried most of the good games in a wall of crap and figured the people would either figure it out and find the good stuff or just buy it all and love it. wrong.

And I don't think this thread was "Anti-Third party Brigade" as it was "Anti-Shovelware Wall of Shame". Go look at the wall and tell me where we were saying we HATE 3rd parties and that they should all die!!! I believe it was more along the lines of "I can't believe 3rd parties can release all of this crap and then turn around and blame everyone else as to why we don't instantly just buy their games when we see them", but I'm not gonna go back and quote search ;)

I fail to see how there was any flamebait as the only "baiting" in this thread has been done by the staff about the legitimacy of this very thread that we were all happy with you not noticing for so long. You all should be taking the idea and dressing it up for public consumption on the main site, using NWR as a platform for 3rd parties to see the error of their ways so that they can become aware of the problem and hopefully take steps to fix it. (It will also probably drive a lot of traffic to the site in the process too)

Quote from: Unclebob
Silent Hill blah blah blah
Wow....really UB?  I'm disappointed in that post and I'm not sure how you came to such a conclusion. Nothing much more to say on that.

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« Last Edit: February 11, 2010, 12:23:10 PM by BlackNMild2k1 »

Offline EasyCure

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #336 on: February 11, 2010, 12:21:51 PM »
personal opinion on the matter*

*statement retracted do to lenght

**** it I should just leave the forum because I think this thread proved its point in the OP and, like a lot of the people who posted here, agree that 3rd parties low quality games overshadow their other efforts in the eyes of new-to-gaming customers (and even gamers like myself), especially when lack of marketing creates zero product awareness. Who know every thread had to be about debating and not just discussing a hot topic issue in Wii gaming.

Guess there's nothing left for me in this place.. after all speculation on new games only last so long before you become exhausted with guessing and Nintendo doesn't give you any info until the games almost done. I can't comment on 3rd party games either since bringing up the bad ones lead to trolling, and bringing up the good ones will go from positive comments to negative ones after the game is released, bombs because outside the forum no ones heard about it and said 3rd party comments insulting their customers (us the ones who did by the game cuz we actually knew about it). There's always the funhouse I guess.. but then again, when staff starts making ya feel like you don't belong here, whats the point?

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Offline NWR_Lindy

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #337 on: February 11, 2010, 12:26:28 PM »
I'm challenging the purpose of this thread that beats a dead horse, much like people got annoyed with constant posts about how much Nintendo's E3 2008 presentation sucked.  If that makes you feel like you don't belong, I apologize.
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Offline UncleBob

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #338 on: February 11, 2010, 12:31:08 PM »
Okay, let's say for a moment that all of my concerns about Silent Hill being a remake of a PS1 game designed on a half-budget are 100% unfounded.

Let's say Silent Hill is the best damn game on the Wii. EVER. 10 years from now, there still won't be a game that touches the awesomness that is Silent Hill Wii.

Where's Konami's ads telling me this?

The average consumer doesn't read some random guy's review on some website.  They're going to walk into Target. Walmar or GameStop and see this giant wall of shame _ and - if Konami is lucky, they *might* notice this one title in the blob of Petz games and shamless movie tie-ins.

Nintendo advertised New Super Mario Bros. Wii. TV, magazines, internet ads. This game was going to sell more than $5 lap dances at grandpa's birthday party... Yet Nintendo still advertised it.

So where's the ads for Silent Hill?
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Offline BlackNMild2k1

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #339 on: February 11, 2010, 12:32:55 PM »
You should be happy that we've created a centralized place to beat the dead horse instead of dragging it all over the forums to beat. The thread served a point though, and that was to lay it all out infront of you visually so that it was painfully obvious what the dead horse was and why we keep beating it (it's still growing!!!).

Offline BlackNMild2k1

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #340 on: February 11, 2010, 12:36:03 PM »
Okay, let's say for a moment that all of my concerns about Silent Hill being a remake of a PS1 game designed on a half-budget are 100% unfounded.

Let's say Silent Hill is the best damn game on the Wii. EVER. 10 years from now, there still won't be a game that touches the awesomness that is Silent Hill Wii.

Where's Konami's ads telling me this?

The average consumer doesn't read some random guy's review on some website.  They're going to walk into Target. Walmar or GameStop and see this giant wall of shame _ and - if Konami is lucky, they *might* notice this one title in the blob of Petz games and shamless movie tie-ins.

Nintendo advertised New Super Mario Bros. Wii. TV, magazines, internet ads. This game was going to sell more than $5 lap dances at grandpa's birthday party... Yet Nintendo still advertised it.

So where's the ads for Silent Hill?

That doesn't mean the game sucks, it just means that this game is just another in a very tall wall of games being buried by the rubble and no one even knows to look for it since no one is aware that it exist. That is entirely the fault of the publisher though and has nothing to do with the quality of the game itself.

Offline Deguello

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #341 on: February 11, 2010, 12:43:02 PM »
Quote
Deg, you're a high-quality poster, and I'd love to see you involved in threads other than the "Look at how amazing Nintendo is at business/Third parties, Sony, and Microsoft are awful at business" borefests.

I don't think Nintendo was even mentioned in this thread as being superior at anything until the 3rd page, when I just explained the phenomenon of Wii owners buying mostly Nintendo games.  And I don't think anybody mentioned "business" until way later.  Just straight up as developers, based on market reaction and critical scores.

And Sorry, I'll try to be more interesting in the future.

Quote
You can counter this with "You and Andy dragged this thread out by posting in it thread so late," and while that's true, this thread wasn't meant to die, was it?

Didn't Pro, the Original poster, actually say he was finished with this thread on Page 9 or 10?  So he did finish the thread, or at least motioned for an endgame to it.  It's not his fault or.. the thread's fault it became popular.
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Offline NWR_DrewMG

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #342 on: February 11, 2010, 12:44:04 PM »
Honest question, BlackNMild, and Deguello:

If simply posting an image of every shitty game on a system is enough to prove your point, then why do third parties succeed on the DS?   What about the Playstation 2?  Couldn't you make a similar "Wall of Shame" for DS or PS2?  I think your point is that third parties don't allocate enough resources toward Wii titles, and that's an assertion I can get behind.  This is NOT the way to make that point.

Also, I apologize for any incendiary comments I made earlier on this thread.   EasyCure, I hope that I didn't make you feel like you weren't welcome here.  Most of you guys have been active here longer than I have, and I hope you all understand that I think dissenting opinions are valuable at a site like ours.  We need discussion, discourse, debate.  The problem as I see it is that there's so much of it, and the comments have become so goddamn snarky (I'm at fault here too, before you point fingers) that the discussion goes from polite to attack in no time flat, and that's unfortunate. 

Deg, you know by now that you and I agree on very little, but Lindy's right: You're a hell of a poster, and having you here is an asset. 

Okay, so I'd like an honest answer here to my question above:  Why has the overwhelming presence of shovelware been a problem on the Wii, but not the DS or the PS2 before it? 
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Offline Deguello

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #343 on: February 11, 2010, 12:51:50 PM »
Quote
Okay, so I'd like an honest answer here to my question above:  Why has the overwhelming presence of shovelware been a problem on the Wii, but not the DS or the PS2 before it?

Probably because shovelware wasn't all they made for the PS2 or DS, and the shovelware didn't come from the major producers.
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Offline KDR_11k

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #344 on: February 11, 2010, 12:53:22 PM »
The point of this thread is to provide evidence for the constant "whose fault is it that third parties can't sell on the Wii" discussions. The list of releases provided here is pure evidence. There's nothing flamebaity about the wall itself, Pro didn't make any fake games up to smear third parties, he just listed what they did in a very visual manner that allows us to get a better feel for the sensory overload caused by the Wii's library of shovelware.

Apologies for third parties are everywhere in the gaming media, often even trolling for hits. Nobody is willing to call the third parties out. In the face of this situation it isn't surprising that we vent our frustrations at this biased reporting in the forums. Whenever a major news site brings it up as a discussion in something like their podcast or editorials the debate is always centered around the faults of Nintendo and the Wii owners, never those of the third parties (beyond "needs more advertising"). What shovelware does to the third party's brand image and just how many large third parties are guilty of shovelware is pretty much ignored. We're sick of IGN being the only voice out there. We're sick of third parties being treated with utmost respect while everybody wails on Nintendo. This isn't because of brand loyalty but because we see that bashing the wrong tree won't get the apples to fall.

Though it does seem a bit strange that the troublemakers in this thread are all NWR staffers.

Anyway, I'll go back to frothing over Zangeki no Reginleiv, a game that could have been published by D3 Publisher instead of Nintendo because it's made by an independent team but D3P failed to seize the opportunity.


EDIT: The DS and PS2 received many more full efforts from third parties. When they make a good game for the Wii it's often still an experiment, a rare game that's supposed to gauge the behaviour of the market. The Conduit was the first major FPS for the Wii since Red Steel, compare that to the flood the PS2 got!
« Last Edit: February 11, 2010, 12:58:18 PM by KDR_11k »

Offline Jonnyboy117

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #345 on: February 11, 2010, 12:57:42 PM »
One thing I really like about Talkback and Podcast Discussion threads is that no one wastes time asking why those threads exist.
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Offline NWR_DrewMG

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #346 on: February 11, 2010, 01:01:12 PM »
Quote
Okay, so I'd like an honest answer here to my question above:  Why has the overwhelming presence of shovelware been a problem on the Wii, but not the DS or the PS2 before it?

Probably because shovelware wasn't all they made for the PS2 or DS, and the shovelware didn't come from the major producers.

Regarding your first point, shovelware isn't all they make for Wii.  There are plenty of quality Wii titles out there.   

Here's a brief list of "shovelware" games put out by Ubisoft on PS2.  Note that Ubisoft also developed the very popular Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia titles:

Catching Granda Jimmy : Battle Of The Ages
Surf's Up
The Dukes of Hazzard: Return of the General Lee
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Downtown Run
FLOW: Urban Dance Uprising
Monster 4x4: Masters of Metal
Mum's Night Off

So once again, why did the presence of these games not hinder sales of Prince of Persia or Splinter Cell titles? 
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Offline NWR_Lindy

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #347 on: February 11, 2010, 01:02:24 PM »
KDR: As a staffer I care about the general tone of the forums.  You don't have such concerns.
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Offline BlackNMild2k1

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #348 on: February 11, 2010, 01:03:06 PM »
Because that shovelware isn't followed with the bulk of the 3rd parties actual best efforts and certainly not any advertising for the efforts that they did make.
PS2 may have gotten shovelware by the truckload, but everything else was advertised and people knew what came out and when. You also know that PS2 was gonna get just about every game that wasn't made by Nintendo or MS since they were the market leader.

With the DS shovelware is everywhere too, but the good games are advertised and people are generally aware of and happy with the games that they have been buying.

The Wii is getting 80% crap from most of these publishers and almost all of the games they put effort into are either ports we might have already owned or were done fairly poorly, spin-offs to games that we actually wanted and stealth released so that we didn't even know it was out yet.

To it plain as day, The problem with so much shovelware on the Wii is that there are no BIG well advertised games coming from the 3rd parties as well.
The only person advertising anything on the Wii is Nintendo, so when you look for something not made by Nintendo, all you have to go on is brand recognition and cover art. "Hey look!!! They made Castlevania for the Wii!! lets get that....."
45 minutes later.... "WTF is this Captain Picard .jpg"

Offline NWR_DrewMG

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Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame
« Reply #349 on: February 11, 2010, 01:06:00 PM »
So, once again, your issue seems to be with advertising and the lack of development resources being put into Wii titles.

The problem isn't "too much shovelware", it's "too little everything else."
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