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I think that specifically for games designed for multiplayer, there should be enough content to satisfy a playerbase for more than a couple months. Games that become stale in such a quick fashion indicate a lack of novelty and innovation, which is unhealthy for the market. Although it is a better business model to have games that run out of content quickly to boost product sales, it is negative towards the gamer. It is understandable for companies to try to maximize their profits, but there should be a limit as to how far they go in their pursuit of this.
I disagree. Low replayability doesn't necessarily mean the game isn't innovative. You are paying 20-60 dollars for a game, and you're asking for 100s and 100s of hours of entertainment. When a game does that, it's usually considered something of a phenomenon, not a mechanic a company can guarentee.
There is always complains about the games of today, but there are always innovators and copy cats. There were dozens and dozens of side-scrolling clones in the past which weren't very different from one another, and then there was a really cool new game like StarFox that pushed the limits of gameplay. Recently there's been games like Portal and Deadly Preminition that took their own twist on the way to make a game. Even in the DOS days there was the occasional wonder like The Colonel's Bequest that would never again have its design principles recreated until the Mass Effect Series. Still, these are Single Player games so I guess they don't count? I can name only one multiplayer game I played consistently since it came out in 1998. I can't name a single other game that I played consistently, or even weekly for more than a year. I can name games like D2 and W3 as things that lasted a summer, I dropped for a few years, then played for 2 weeks again later and dropped again. I think that's a typical gamer experience minus the BW. Who the fuck played anything for more than 4 months on the SNES? Or N64? Who played Half-Life that long? Hell, Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike, for the vast majority of people, were not games they played consistently for more than 4 months. I played Counter Strike a lot one month and then got bored. BW had such replayability for such a large number of people because of chatcraft, because of a huge mapping community, and because of televised games and competition. None of those are features that were that unique to BW besides the televised games, it was up to the community if they wanted the game to last. It was one of those bizarre things that was in the right place at the right time. Especially when you consider how the proscene developed for BW. Game developers had cock-all to do with it.
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On August 02 2012 01:15 Chef wrote:Show nested quote +I think that specifically for games designed for multiplayer, there should be enough content to satisfy a playerbase for more than a couple months. Games that become stale in such a quick fashion indicate a lack of novelty and innovation, which is unhealthy for the market. Although it is a better business model to have games that run out of content quickly to boost product sales, it is negative towards the gamer. It is understandable for companies to try to maximize their profits, but there should be a limit as to how far they go in their pursuit of this. I disagree. Low replayability doesn't necessarily mean the game isn't innovative. You are paying 20-60 dollars for a game, and you're asking for 100s and 100s of hours of entertainment. When a game does that, it's usually considered something of a phenomenon, not a mechanic a company can guarentee. There is always complains about the games of today, but there are always innovators and copy cats. There were dozens and dozens of side-scrolling clones in the past which weren't very different from one another, and then there was a really cool new game like StarFox that pushed the limits of gameplay. Recently there's been games like Portal and Deadly Preminition that took their own twist on the way to make a game. Even in the DOS days there was the occasional wonder like The Colonel's Bequest that would never again have its design principles recreated until the Mass Effect Series. Still, these are Single Player games so I guess they don't count? I can name only one multiplayer game I played consistently since it came out in 1998. I can't name a single other game that I played consistently, or even weekly for more than a year. I can name games like D2 and W3 as things that lasted a summer, I dropped for a few years, then played for 2 weeks again later and dropped again. I think that's a typical gamer experience minus the BW. Who the fuck played anything for more than 4 months on the SNES? Or N64? Who played Half-Life that long? Hell, Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike, for the vast majority of people, were not games they played consistently for more than 4 months. I played Counter Strike a lot one month and then got bored. BW had such replayability for such a large number of people because of chatcraft, because of a huge mapping community, and because of televised games and competition. None of those are features that were that unique to BW besides the televised games, it was up to the community if they wanted the game to last. It was one of those bizarre things that was in the right place at the right time. Especially when you consider how the proscene developed for BW. Game developers had cock-all to do with it.
Counter strike is possibly the worst example you could've picked right after brood war and quake, cs still has big tournaments today, and the last time i checked ( stopped following the scene in 2010 ) the best team in the world made 220 000 usd without even winning all of the tournaments they took part in, and without taking part in all of the big tournaments that were available
cs 1.6 lasted almost as long as BW. Pretty sure it still has around 100 000 people playing it every day outside of south korea and excluding all the people who pirate it.
Having said that, i somewhat agree with the rest of your post, to an extent.
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I disagree. You will get the massive loss of people who rode the hype train, and then get off at the next stop  But that doesn't mean the game dies out. The TL section of minecraft may have died out, but I'm sure a lot of people in there just have moved onto other places of communication, or just left this faction for another. Your one minecraft server probably wasn't perfect, and people moved onto other servers. There is still a fan base for a lot of games, that you say have 'died out', which I guess is accurate, if you mean that's it's not the #1 game at the time.
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[B]On August 01 2012 03:59 KtheZ
Gone is the time of Warcraft 3, which was in a similar situation as SC1...
sorry, couldn't help but chime in with my two pennies on Warcraft III and sc1, but in china both are still going strong at LANs because they are freed by LAN support and thus many Internet cafes simply pay nothing by installing them on their pcs, which when compared with Starcraft, you pay 15 RMB (2-3 USD) each month, or you buy the full version for 15 USD (90rmb). So, for the sake that they are free, people in china still play sc1 and Warcraft III extensively.
But of course, this has very little to do with the tl.net community.
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On August 02 2012 03:27 Marti wrote:Show nested quote +On August 02 2012 01:15 Chef wrote:I think that specifically for games designed for multiplayer, there should be enough content to satisfy a playerbase for more than a couple months. Games that become stale in such a quick fashion indicate a lack of novelty and innovation, which is unhealthy for the market. Although it is a better business model to have games that run out of content quickly to boost product sales, it is negative towards the gamer. It is understandable for companies to try to maximize their profits, but there should be a limit as to how far they go in their pursuit of this. I disagree. Low replayability doesn't necessarily mean the game isn't innovative. You are paying 20-60 dollars for a game, and you're asking for 100s and 100s of hours of entertainment. When a game does that, it's usually considered something of a phenomenon, not a mechanic a company can guarentee. There is always complains about the games of today, but there are always innovators and copy cats. There were dozens and dozens of side-scrolling clones in the past which weren't very different from one another, and then there was a really cool new game like StarFox that pushed the limits of gameplay. Recently there's been games like Portal and Deadly Preminition that took their own twist on the way to make a game. Even in the DOS days there was the occasional wonder like The Colonel's Bequest that would never again have its design principles recreated until the Mass Effect Series. Still, these are Single Player games so I guess they don't count? I can name only one multiplayer game I played consistently since it came out in 1998. I can't name a single other game that I played consistently, or even weekly for more than a year. I can name games like D2 and W3 as things that lasted a summer, I dropped for a few years, then played for 2 weeks again later and dropped again. I think that's a typical gamer experience minus the BW. Who the fuck played anything for more than 4 months on the SNES? Or N64? Who played Half-Life that long? Hell, Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike, for the vast majority of people, were not games they played consistently for more than 4 months. I played Counter Strike a lot one month and then got bored. BW had such replayability for such a large number of people because of chatcraft, because of a huge mapping community, and because of televised games and competition. None of those are features that were that unique to BW besides the televised games, it was up to the community if they wanted the game to last. It was one of those bizarre things that was in the right place at the right time. Especially when you consider how the proscene developed for BW. Game developers had cock-all to do with it. Counter strike is possibly the worst example you could've picked right after brood war and quake, cs still has big tournaments today, and the last time i checked ( stopped following the scene in 2010 ) the best team in the world made 220 000 usd without even winning all of the tournaments they took part in, and without taking part in all of the big tournaments that were available cs 1.6 lasted almost as long as BW. Pretty sure it still has around 100 000 people playing it every day outside of south korea and excluding all the people who pirate it. Having said that, i somewhat agree with the rest of your post, to an extent.
I'm well aware there is a counter strike scene. I'm saying the average gamer (aka the guys being talked about in the OP who left his treasured mine craft server) are probably the same type who don't play Counter Strike endlessly. It's very rare people wanna play one game that long. The novelty wears off for a lot of people.
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Misleading: This 4 month syndrome is only indicative of TL. So that's TL attention span.
What's the attention span of an average gamer then?
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TL MapleStory is not dead. It's just very-low-activity =P
We still have a handful of regulars that play actively.
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EPT
