Topic: The Chit Chat Thread

I think it is OK for people to not be bothered about indie games though I wish more would. However I think that a healthy gaming industry has room for both - and I think it is important that Sony and big publishers support both. Mainstream AAA Gaming are designed to appeal to the broadest possible demographic because they want the most amount of people to be able to access them. Now obviously a big part is down to marketing, money etc. but largely it is because they are the type of games that many people want to play.

I liken it to movies. The Marvel movies make a lot of money and have a broad appeal. They are fun, pretty well made overall and give you some nice escapism for a few hours. This to me is the same as good quality AAA games. Sometimes those AAA games take a risk and possibly challenge you - but they'll often only challenge you in a limited way. That's fine and I like Marvel movies.

Sometimes though, you do want something different, be it a comedy or something serious and that is when you look towards smaller or niche games that are not made to appeal to all but to scratch an itch that more broad games can appeal to. Now some of these will cross over and become big hits and get a lot of interest in the same way that some AAA games made for everyone will bomb. I'll no doubt enjoy something like Assassin's Creed Odyssey as it is a great, switch brain off and enjoy game, but then sometimes I'll like something like the recent say Donut County which was a nice chilled way of spending a few hours with some humourous writing.

If you are not massively into games then it makes sense you are only into bigger games etc. it is also OK to not be a fan of indies. I'm not a fan of all genres - I struggle with the roguelike genre and some puzzlers too. Basically gaming is a broadchurch and I think Sony is good to invest in both areas but they'll always focus the money on the bigger games.

@Arugula Can you explain the Cyberpunk thing? Cos I genuinely do not understand why someone would not play a game because it is either in the first or third perspective! I get everyone has preferences and so on, but not play a game? Just baffles me!

Interesting news. Wonder how this will effect games that have them already?

@Arugula stop being toxic.

@Rudy_Manchego @LieutenantFatman @kyleforrester87 @Arugula @jdv95 @nessisonett @JohnnyShoulder
Some good points brought up here regarding indies. Even I, who would be considered a “hardcore” gamer since I visit Push Square daily and follow gaming news, sometimes have a hard time differentiating the subtypes of developers and publishers — indie, AAA, AA, 1st party, 2nd party, .... urgh, it’s all quite complex. Like someone said — I bet a lot of gamers don’t even realize that the game they are playing is an indie. There’s a wealth of high quality indies like - Firewatch, Oxenfree, Limbo, What Remains of Edith Finch ...not to mention critical darlings who compete with even AAA big budget games for GOTY awards such as Celeste, Cuphead, Untitled Goose Game, Hollow Knight... Heck, the most popular game of all time is/was an indie: Minecraft. People just don’t realize they are playing indies sometimes and might be unknowingly dismissing a whole pipeline of fantastic gaming if we don’t continue to foster the small independent studio support.

I like the movie analogy, and the same could be said for businesses. What kind of a world would be be living in if all we had to shop at were Wal-Mart and Best Buy? The small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy, and indie games are a similar essential cog in the machine of gaming.

@JohnnyShoulder Massive revenue drop though it should be noted that EA kept them going as long as could be in countries that also banned them in Fifa etc.

Still this is a positive move though I imagine the next incarnation will be no loot boxes but lots of desirable micro transactions etc.

@Th3solution Your Walmart and Best Buy analogy is way better than my movie one and I am totally going to use that in future discussions!

@Rudy_Manchego Lol, well I think they are both good metaphors. We all like a small budget indie film every now and then, just like we need to shop at a quaint little boutique or local eatery rather than always going to the big chain stores and restaurants.

@JohnnyShoulder
That's good to see, took long enough!

@Th3solution at the end of the day, you got games I like (good games), and games I don’t like (sh*t games). Fez is at one extreme and pretty much anything by Ubisoft is at the other. (Fun fact, Phil Fish worked at Ubisoft before he made Fez and subsequently went insane.)

Then you have fringe games like FIFA, COD and Fortnite which simply “exist”.

@Arugula But at least you will still give them a go, some people are refusing to even do that. Baffling, I tell ya, baffling.

Just out of interest, which non dedicated shooters in the first person perspective have you found 'restrictive, unwieldy and awkward'?

@kyleforrester87 Yeah, I can understand not liking certain indie games but just dismissing them for that very fact seems extraordinarily silly. It’s not a genre in and of itself, one thing that really bugs me when people say they like indie music.

@JohnnyShoulder I could totally understand how Bioshock, Deus Ex and Alien Isolation could be considered frustrating to play in first person. And Resi 7.

Now I’m not saying @Argula isn’t being a little princess (he is )and needs to get over himself (he does ) but I get how games presented in the first person but are not as polished as true first person shooters like Doom and Call of Duty can be off-putting initially.

@nessisonett yeah it’s dumb to dismiss something without experiencing (but we all do that to a degree, that’s life), at the end of the day it’s their loss. It was more the suggestion that people are being hypocritical, when I don’t think that’s the case. It’s easy to scroll through the comments and assume no one can be satisfied but generally it’s not the same people poopooing everything Sony announce. And the odd person doing that is obviously a troll.

@kyleforrester87 Yeah I get all that and we all dismiss things in our life, it is only human nature after all. I'm not saying that everyone has to play every game ever made, but don't think any of that is a good enough reason to totally dismiss a video game, something that you have to play to fully experience it.

Which is why I never understand people that watch playthroughs just to experience the story.

@JohnnyShoulder I could never just watch a let’s play, it goes against everything that I play games for. Like imagine just watching the cutscenes from Red Dead 2 or TLOU2, it’s the incidental dialogue, your experiences etc that make the cutscenes have meaning and depth. Some of my favourite game moments are from things that I’ve done in a game, unique to me. Not having control of a game would do my head in, it already does when I watch my wee brother playing RE2 😂😂

@Arugula Ok man, furry muff. I'll stop shagging your leg over it. For now. 😂

@nessisonett Yeah exactly. Games are interactive after all. They must have some interest in the game, just play the damn thing. I'm not a very good watcher at games either. Its agony watching my Dad play as he misses half the stuff and then wonders why he has no ammo, health or whatever. Or does annoying stuff like repeatedly pressing a button to run when you only need to hold it down.

@JohnnyShoulder Yeah, my mum forgets the buttons when things start getting hectic on screen. With Red Dead 2, it was easy because there’s the general strategy of find cover, shoot, get back in cover until the enemies are dead but Witcher 3 just had too much going on at once for her. I think it’ll be fine once she has more experience at these things but she’s going onto L.A. Noire next which I think’s a pretty good choice due to it being both Rockstar and being plot-focused.

@nessisonett I think TW3 is bit too complicated for my Dad bless him. Too many things to think about. I lent him The Outer WORLDS but think he mentioned that was was having trouble with the dialogue. Got him Days Gone for his birthday and he seems to be enjoying that. His fave game is Bioshock.

Looks Like Internet Data Caps Are Back.