• 14May 09

  Fun vs trophies/achievements

  Achievements or trophies are just the same crap : a way to compare who has the biggest *** or who is ze noob. I want to play the way I like (which is already often limited) and not the way some developers decide and then compare to what others "achieved". The word "achievement" is absolutely ridiculous in gaming worl, as you really achieve nothing in gaming time other than proving you didn't do anything in real life.

  Having fun in gaming, it's something too many people forget about, how come we still don't have a car game where you only drive to watch the scenery and listen to cool music after a day's work, instead of getting unnerved because you didn't beat a time for the ** time? If this mode was implemented I'd buy Motorstorm and Pure. Having to beat some AI cars to unlock other cars that are most of the times incredibly hard to drive? wth? And then you see after 40 hours of play you unlocked only 4 trophies and are ridiculous compared to toher guys? Where's the fun of playing?

  I'm a 39 year old gamer and I had lots of fun being pwned in Crystal castles on Atari 2600 or smashed in Shufflepuck cafe on Amiga. And playing Shadow of the beast? the game was so friggin hard even with a cheat it was barely playable. But it was fun playing anyway.

  Now we have hundreds of FPS and racers where players say "hey, i've unlocked 45 cars in 8 hours" or "I killed 8 noobs with headshots" ... It was already stupid enough, but now you can compare how much you don't have a socail like by comparing trophies/achievements??? Lucky I have a PS3 to have fun with Ratchet and Clank, Eye of Judgment (I must have about 30% of trophies with 60+ hours of playing). I've had most fun with Prince of Persia and Tomb Raider underworld or The Darkness or Clive Barker's jericho, just because these games have an identity which is not based on being better than the game or another player.

  And yes, I love turn based JRPGs, I was at an ounce of beating Ozma with lvl 45 characters, and beat the final boss of Legend of dragoon in less than 25 minutes and never used a resurrection potion, so I can be competitive, but as long as I have fun.

  I think and hope gamers will show some critical spirit and show the developers they need to be more creative in the fun aspect of the games and not create some artificial game length by having the gamers do some pre-created gameplay that is only using their will to be better, letting the said developers do less work and have less ideas.

  • Posted May 14, 2009 7:47 am PT
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• 17Mar 09

  in the mood to make a presentation

  I'm 39, French, and have an expansive variety of tastes.

  For music, I like metal (extreme like Cradle of filth, Cannibal Corpse, Mystic circle, or soft like After forever, Metalium, Bon Jovi), 80s music (Duran Duran, Culture club, Eurythmics), Anime music (Escaflowne, Bubblegum crisis, Silent mobius), OST (Silence of the lambs, Star trek, Krull, Danny Elfman), some female pop stars (Madonna, Britney - not all, Rihanna). I hate rap.

  For movies I like action (Die hard, Mummy, Roland Emmerich, Michael Bay), horror (Blair witch, In the mouth of madness, Hellraiser), Hong Kong (Jackie Chan, Tsui Hark, Wu Ji, WArriors of heaven and earth - I hate Jet-Li) most and others (Phantom of the opera, Elvira).

  For TV shows I like Star trek, Xena, Smallville (I hate Chloe), Melrose Place, Veronica Mars, Andromeda, Sarah Connor, Return of the condor heroes (HK), many that have died too soon : Invasion, Vanished, Surface. I don't like Lost.

  My favourite TV actors/actresses : Michael Rosenbaum, Shannen Doherty, Eddie Cibrian, Kristin Kreuk, Kirsten Bell, Thomas Calabro, Jack Wagner, Hudson Leick, Tyler Labine.

  • Posted Mar 17, 2009 8:35 am PT
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• 1Aug 08

  enough with VGchartz!!! stop believing them!

  I'm sorry, it's a bit long :

  Absolutely nothing can prove their numbers are right, even if they were right, it would be a part of the truth (nothing can oblige any shop or internet site to give their numbers) for USA, but how in hell could they get - moderately accurate - numbers for Europe, even worse, Japan?

  
  OK they try to convince you with this :

  "As obligated by law, videogame companies report shipment data in their financial reports" : law only obligates to report your sales numbers, meaning how much money you made, and not how many of this product you sold ; even then these numbers go to the finance department, which VGchartz doesn't have access to.

  "How VG Chartz comes up with its figures :

  Sales figures are determined through two important methods
  Data Sampling - VG Chartz gathers random data from a sample of the total number of retailers. ---> RANDOM!!!
  Shipment information - VG Chartz has contacts with publishers who give their best estimates on number of products shipped.
  Because the number of retailers selling videogames is quite large, it is possible to attain statistically valid results from a small sample.
  It then becomes a matter of working backwards by having:
  The approximate number of retailers.
  Historical sales figures.
  Data from sales tracking agencies as reference points in accuracy.
  There are obvious limiting factors as well - few games have above a 40% attach rate, a game will never sell more than the console user base, publishers do not ship significantly more or less than they expect to be sold"

  
  * note that this section has disappeared from their FAQs some months ago ...

  These arguments show nothing but probability calculations based on "some" shops and "some" publishers, which may not always be even accurate based on lack of internal communication.
  They are even full of contradiction, as if "videogame companies report shipment data" and they have access to it, why would they need "some" companies and publishers to give their numbers to VGchartz who then use them to build some probability numbers?

  People don't come to their site to have accurate probability, they believe the numbers they see there and there's no way other than legal numbers, which are most confidential, to really know what sales have or not been done.

  • Posted Aug 1, 2008 4:31 am PT
  • Category: Rant
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