As several people here have suggested, I really think the Kickstarter approach could work here. There's been enough press about the game that a good number of people should be intrigued enough to contribute. I'd certainly consider it.
A good number of the people criticising this article seem to have missed the point. Sinclair is actually being critical of his own judgement of free to play social games (a sentiment shared by many gamers), saying that just because he doesn't understand the value doesn't mean that there is anything different between enjoying a free to play game and one with a more standard payment model, hence the comparison of himself and Jack Thompson: on the subject of free to play games, he, like Thompson on violent games, is critical of others for investing time and money in something that he personally doesn't find valuable. He explicitly states that he realises that his feelings are hypocritical; calling him out for it is redundant and contributes nothing to the discussion he was obviously trying to generate with this article. People aren't infallible: they can be hypocritical, and by this writer noting an instance where he demonstrated hypocrisy, his desire was probably to get others to notice their own hypocrisy and assess how they judge others for how they invest their time and money. Unfortunately, it seems as though people didn't read the article carefully enough and as such are now just dedicated to calling out the writer for sentiments he himself criticised in the article.
In a lot of ways I agree. The tech for games right now is obviously as good as it's ever been, and has allowed developers to do much more than they could in the past. But how much more is necessary to actually do new things? Sure it would be nice to have games with better textures, lighting, effects, etc., but what tech improvements are actually needed to allow devs to go places they've never gone before? When developers provide examples of things they want to do but can't because of current gen hardware, I'll be right there with them hoping for a new generation of tech. But right now I want to see more creative, unique experiences on the hardware I own.
I think it's pretty clear he's talking from a business perspective. His point was that a great game like Vanquish, which sold incredibly poorly, could have done business to match its quality if it had had multiplayer, particularly because it is a shooter and shooters lend themselves to co-op and/or competitive multiplayer. The truth is that the game, while great, was seen in public as fairly short, being a shooter with no mp, being Japanese (which, aside from the big franchises can often push games into the niche market), and being a new IP. As a result, when it was released in the busy season of October 2010, many gamers simply didn't have the cash to drop $60 on a brand new copy. It's unfortunate, but it seems that we've reached a point where even the highest quality focused, short experiences cannot be sold as full price games while the industry powerhouses churn out 200 hour RPGs and games designed purely around competitive MP. If devs don't want the game to suffer because of unnecessary length or MP that doesn't work, they're going to have to change their business models. I'm primarily a single player gamer, and own a copy of Vanquish, but the truth is $60 worth of quality doesn't sell; the back of the box bullet points and hype are what sell full priced games.
@TomMcShea I could be wrong but I believe Vigil, the Prothean Shepard speaks to at the end of the first game, explains that the keepers are integral to the Citadel, and that they are supposed to open the Citadel and mass relays when the Reapers come to allow them to go about exterminating life. He also says that the Protheans changed their function to prevent this from happening in the future. I remember this because I liked the way it connected to and gave weight to the side mission involving investigating the keepers.
Comparing the reveal trailer with the first gameplay trailer doesn't make sense... the MW2 gameplay trailer was better than the MW3 one but certainly light on class or suspense, and the MW3 reveal trailer (with no gameplay) was far less bombastic than the recent one
@alekishere You, sir, are making yourself sound like an idiot, bashing feminists (you really have to be ignorant to worry about "feminist tricks" being "woven" in "between the sentences" and thinking that sexism is limited to the outright expression of hatred of women (Parker's use of sexism to refer to cliches of women as purely sex objects is absolutely correct). Just as a brief lesson, let's explain feminism. In its most popular (read: nearly all feminists are like this) current form, most feminists are what we would refer to as "equal rights" feminists, meaning they simply believe women are entitled to be treated as human beings equal to men, which is such a basic right that if you don't agree with it then you can just go **** yourself. They're not out to get you and they don't hate men, they just believe that women should receive equal pay, have equal rights, etc. And she actually was defending it, pointing out that it is satire, mocking sexist cliches by exaggerating them to absurd levels. The fact that so many people thumbed you up is simply a sad reminder that ignorant fools can find a following. Oh well, I'll go back to both enjoying some Duke Nukem and writing my term paper on abortion laws (I'm male, btw, not another one of the terrifying feminists weaving lies throughout the internet.
One thing I miss from last generation is the lack of good local multiplayer. Online is great, but not all my friends play games, so local multiplayer is the only way for me to play with them is to play locally. It adds so much value to a game for me if it has local multiplayer. On my ps2 I played Star Wars Battlefront 2 for dozens of hours simply because it was fun and had a slew of local mp options. There are some games that do this well (such as Halo 3 and cod5) but it truly feels like an afterthought (GRAW2) or a complete missed opportunity (Cod 4, Killzone 2). So to developers-please bring local mp back, because you'll be doing many people a favour if you do.
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