Best 360 game?

Gamer talk.

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efilflah
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Post by efilflah » 01 Jun 2007 01:27

Yeah I agree with you completely.

I just thought your statement about "such a game" not needing decent graphics was a bit sweeping, and I've just been in too many arguments with people about graphics to not be a nitpicking bastard :P

Umgawa
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Post by Umgawa » 01 Jun 2007 05:44

eamon angelface wrote:I like third person shooters and driving games over RPGs. I liked Zelda for the 64 and I played a bit of the Wii version which was cool too.

My favorite games for the old XBOX were the Hitman series and the Need for Speed series. Maybe I'm a culture-less boob? I dunno. I remember Smash saying I have boob like taste in movies which is odd. I spent 5 years getting an MFA in screenwriting and have been writing consistently since only to end up a boob? Ah well. A boob I must be then.
This explains so much about why there's so much crap in the movie theaters these days.

Korea actually has a huge gaming industry; you just have to know where to look. After all, where was the Starcraft II announcement made? Korea, in front of a full stadium of people. Also, prior to World of Warcraft, the Korean MMO Lineage had the largest subscriber base in the world at around three-million paying customers.

China, on the other hand, isn't anyplace that gaming companies really want to focus their efforts, much like any other media sector, due to the rampant prevalence of what we would consider copyright infringement, or what the media likes to call "piracy" (an inaccurate term, as the Chinese "pirates" lack eyepatches and parrots). So it's a huge potential customer base with a very low potential for actually making money. And, even then, you have to play within the government's rules, which is when it's fun to look at what changes had to be made to World of Warcraft (which is only financially viable due to its authentication system and monthly fee) in order to do business in China.

And Rockstar has GTA IV in development for the 360. I don't care that much for the games, but I ultimately cave and buy them after deciding that I really just want to tool around the city in a stolen car listening to a really good soundtrack with even better commercials.

smash
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Post by smash » 01 Jun 2007 09:09

Umgawa wrote:
eamon angelface wrote: Maybe I'm a culture-less boob? I dunno. I remember Smash saying I have boob like taste in movies which is odd. I spent 5 years getting an MFA in screenwriting and have been writing consistently since only to end up a boob? Ah well. A boob I must be then.
This explains so much about why there's so much crap in the movie theaters these days.

Zing?

eamon angelface
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Post by eamon angelface » 01 Jun 2007 09:20

Zing



Buuuut true.

I look at it as I came full circle back to boobality. I've watched all the snooty stuff (and I mean ALL). I've met the foreign film makers. I know why it's good but it's like a bran muffin. No matter how good it is for you you still want the chocolate. To be honest I do try and start with good intentions and to be derivative of criterion worthy material but I know one a first run through by ___berg or ___stien it'll all get cut in favour of "oh. my. god." or a gay ass racially motivated joke.

Anyway...when i said Korean I meant developing the games. I know they love them so why don't they make them in the same capacity as Japan?
DLT Prom Queen 4 years running.

Umgawa
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Location: Chicago, IL

Post by Umgawa » 02 Jun 2007 12:33

eamon angelface wrote: Anyway...when i said Korean I meant developing the games. I know they love them so why don't they make them in the same capacity as Japan?
I'm going to quote the final section of Gamer Nation, from The Escapist, which is a weekly online publication about videogames. For comparison's sake, The Escapist is to Esquire what IGN is to US Weekly. I've added boldface to emphasize a point, with regard to this particular topic, and keep in mind that this article was published in July, 2005, so it may be a touch dated. I also highly recommend reading the linked article, because it's terribly interesting (as articles from The Escapist generally are).
Korean Games in America, and Vice Versa

The Korean National Tourism Organization pushes a buzzword, "hallyu" ("Korean wave"), the new enthusiasm for Korean pop culture in Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Over there, hallyu is driven by Korea's feverish TV soap operas. Here, "hallyu" is only just now impinging on American awareness. The dedicated trend-watcher can find a few Korean films, some manga and, most notably, online games.

Seoul's online giant NCSoft runs the world's biggest MMORPG, Lineage, which has seven million subscribers. To import Lineage to America, NCSoft established a beachhead office in Austin, Texas, run by Richard "Lord British" Garriott and his brother Robert. But Lineage made disappointing headway here (though Lineage II has done better). Another import, Webzen's Shattered Galaxy, tanked. Prospects aren't much better for online golf and the like.

Other attempts to cross the Pacific have been hit-or-miss in both directions. In the Republic of Korea, Blizzard's World of Warcraft bids fair to match its blockbuster precursor, StarCraft. But the games distributed by NCSoft Austin - City of Heroes and the new Guild Wars - hit big in America, yet have met only tepid response in Korea.

The two nations' games show different cultural assumptions. "Korean games are all about community, prestige, and hierarchy," said venture capitalist John Woongjae Lee at the 2003 Austin Game Conference. "Graphics aren't as important as customer service, fast patching, and speed-of-light adaptation" to new customer desires. Conversely, the graphics in some Korean games can turn off a Western viewer. Magic in these games is showy, spectacular, with vivid rainbow colors. Show these effects to an American EverQuest player and he may sniff, "That's not what a fireball looks like."
In short, there's a software industry out there, but their local tastes are so different from our own that most of the games never make it to our shores. Japan is much the same way, although I've been surprised that some of the DS and Wii games, such as Cooking Mama, have actually made it over. If you ever played the original Lineage, after having played a post-Ultima Online MMO, you'd have laughed and said, "What the fuck is this shit? People pay to play this?" And that's why it failed miserably, despite what Lord British thought when he brought it over.

As for what's coming from Korea in the future, the only one that comes to mind is Huxley, which is supposed to be a massively-multiplayer first-person shooter, like the bastard child of Unreal Tournament and Planetside, which isn't altogether a bad combination. It'll likely carry a monthly fee, which I'm sure many Xbox 360 players will balk at. Whether or not Huxley will ship this year like it's supposed to, who knows, but it's very pretty, as it's built on the Unreal 3.0 engine, which also powers Gears of War, amongst several other games.

Steampunk
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Post by Steampunk » 02 Jun 2007 21:33

Umgawa wrote:China, on the other hand, isn't anyplace that gaming companies really want to focus their efforts, much like any other media sector, due to the rampant prevalence of what we would consider copyright infringement, or what the media likes to call "piracy" (an inaccurate term, as the Chinese "pirates" lack eyepatches and parrots). So it's a huge potential customer base with a very low potential for actually making money. And, even then, you have to play within the government's rules, which is when it's fun to look at what changes had to be made to World of Warcraft (which is only financially viable due to its authentication system and monthly fee) in order to do business in China.
I made decent coin from owning stock in NetEase (symbol NTES). However, the big companies in China do seem to have a few things in common:

1 - Online content, not just standalone games. Most of the companies seem to have one or many MMORPGs.
2 - They're "media companies", with online stores, cell phones, teledildonics, etc. So, games aren't their only revenue.

For investors, a couple of similar Chinese companies to consider are Shandu (SNDA) and Baidu (BIDU).

http://www.fool.com/investing/high-grow ... mbers.aspx
http://www.fool.com/investing/high-grow ... mbers.aspx
http://www.fool.com/investing/high-grow ... baidu.aspx

eamon angelface
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Post by eamon angelface » 03 Jun 2007 00:34

So essentially the issue seems to boil down to:

Koreans like games that are more distant from reality and rooted in completely separately functioning realities while Americans want games that hit closer to home and are bound to the same physics and what not as the reality they exist in?

That's interesting. And I think I'm guilty of the American side.

Gears of War is fun. More fun with a second player cause he can revive you and if he doesn't you can yell at the guy you're playing with. Or girl. Though I haven't played it with a girl because all my girlfriend likes is Sonic and TMNT.

I want to play Kane and Lynch. That game can't come out soon enough for me.
DLT Prom Queen 4 years running.

Umgawa
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Joined: 24 Aug 2006 18:36
Location: Chicago, IL

Post by Umgawa » 03 Jun 2007 04:04

Steampunk wrote:I made decent coin from owning stock in NetEase (symbol NTES). However, the big companies in China do seem to have a few things in common:

1 - Online content, not just standalone games. Most of the companies seem to have one or many MMORPGs.
This is true. After all, Korean developer Webzen sold the Chinese rights to Huxley to The9 (who also operates World of Warcraft in China) for $35 million. The9 is a notoriously profitable company, netting $40 million in profit on $126 million in gross revenue in 2006. So they're doing something right.

In essence, to restate an earlier point more accurately, there's money to be made in China, but the only way to prevent rampant bootlegging is to have an up-front authentication and subscription scheme that players have to go through every time the game is started.

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