Quoting: finaldestI am convinced at this point that a major crash within the games industry is just around the corner.

I believe it's already begun. It's already not hard to tell which pre-existing companies and indies will be left standing afterwards - if you look around, there are certainly some who've clearly prepared for this inevitability.

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There is a really simple solution to this: Do not buy it. Do not. DO NOT.

Support smaller games and indie titles that respect your time and money, instead - you can get a lot more of them for the price that EA asks for a single release.

Sincerely: Someone whose favourite series would be in a better spot if people did the above.

Quoting: pbI don't like the idea itself, but to be the devil's advocate: it *can* be done right. Like Lucozade in Superfrog (the original release) or even whole sponsored games such as Cool Spot (7up), Zool (Chupa Chups) and Global Gladiators (McDonald's). So basically, product placement in games. I don't think people would necessarily mind that. Maaaaybe well-blended-in billboards (although SCS wanted to do that in Euro/American Truck Sims and there was a lot of backlash). But commercial breaks? No way. It shall not pass.

Quoting: robvvThe Zool series from the early 1990s was sponsored by Chupa Chups. The branding was made very obvious when you purchased the game, so it wasn't intrusive or irritating. What EA are suggesting is not on, however.

I just played McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure (Mega Drive, via RetroDECK) this past weekend, and it's another example from this old-style pool of "advergames" - it was up-front about the product-placement, it respected the fact that the license is well-liked, and it was a good and complete game. I highly recommend it if you're after a short-but-sweet 16-bit platformer that you might've missed back in the day.

However, we all know from EA's previous experiments with in-game advertising, and from their track-record in general over the last 15 to 20 years, that this isn't what they're aiming for - look up that old boxing-game of theirs where they literally flashed full-screen ads in your face during gameplay, that'll be more like it. Presumably also with an option to pay EVEN MORE to stop the ads from locking up your character during gameplay.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeThe Vampire? I'll try and give a short version of it...

Ages ago, someone came up with an idea for a true successor to the Amiga (since there were AmigaNG systems that required PPC, and otherwise old Amiga's stagnated with AGA). One of the first things they wanted was a Super AGA chipset (SAGA). It was also developed along with an m68k successor, an '68080' CPU. This became the Vampire. The current version of the vampire (version 4) comes in several forms; V4SA (Vampire 4 Stand Alone) and Accelerator boards, A500, A600, A2000, A2000. The A3000/A4000 one is in design stage, I believe.

The V4SA you can kind of think of as sort of a MiST type thing in size, but is dedicated solely to M68k FPGA cores. It started off basically as an all Amiga compatible system. Right now the designers are working hard on getting Atari ST implemented, and of course the Mac side of things is very well emulated already via Shapeshifter on the Amiga side. Fun little device, for sure!

Oh that sounds awesome. Not sure I'm enough of an Amiga user to really get the best out of it (I never had one back in the day, but knew people who did, and mainly got into the games library via emulation, starting with titles old friends had introduced me to as a kid), but I can certainly appreciate how cool it is.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyYou two. Always raising the bar, humour-wise.

HAHAHAHAHA! I see what you did there!

Alas, I have nothing else to add - I think we've run this joke into the ground.

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Quoting: StoneColdSpiderIt might be a Marathon....... But is it a Racer???.......

Now I'm snickering.

Anyway, good to see the Marathon series being kept in circulation!

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Well, it's not like Nintendo are inclined to make more Zeldas like this now that they've taken the series in an entirely different direction! Good on these guys for continuing on with something that there's still plenty of demand for.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeYou should buy one of these! https://www.shop.apollo-computer.com/ Amiga platform, they're currently working hard on getting Atari ST platform supported, and the Amiga side already can outperform emulating a mac classic as well!

I've never heard of these before! What are they, exactly?

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Quoting: KimyrielleThe excuse typically is something like "Because Linux users are evil h4xx0rs and because open source is insecure by definition! Only closed-source operating system can ever be trusted."

I always love it when they say that there aren't enough of us to be worth supporting and that we account for the majority of cheaters in their multi-million-user Windows games, in the exact same breath.

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: PenglingI was never fooled by that whole attempt to paint the "AAA" label as representing good quality, when it's self-evidently always represented buggy, unfinished experiences

That's not at all what it means. "AAA" means "likely to make money" by analogy with the bond market. Blockbuster big-budget games with a variety of well-established mechanics, ideally as a tie-in to a popular brand or a sequel to a previously-lucrative game, are the safe bets that the industry has discovered over the years, since they'll draw in the widest audience. And since some people get addicted to gambling (which is very lucrative - ask the mafia) having mechanisms to hook some whales is also a safe bet for making money. And, yes, when you're min-maxing revenue you'll want to maximise non-refunded sales for the minimum of QA outlay. The term has never meant good quality.

Aye, I'm aware. That's why I said "that whole attempt to paint the "AAA" label as representing good quality" - and that certainly is a thing that happened, regardless of the term's true meaning, and there remain plenty of gamers out there who believe that it pertains to quality.

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Quoting: PyrateThat's basically been me these past couple years, a mix of emulation and generally older titles I missed out on. It's a good life; you'll probably never run out of good games, and your backlog will remain enormous for years to come.

Same here!

Modern gaming has offered me relatively little for an extremely long time - and it's not that my tastes are all that unusual, it's just that they're not what makes headlines and social-media buzz about DLC and subscriptions so that the publishers can milk people for more money.

My favourite series is Bomberman (it's the one and only series where I'm there for launch, because the games are dependable and complete, and I know what I'm getting), and the modern entries have proven themselves to be profitable multi-million sellers, but being brutally honest here, I accept that if Konami doesn't step it up with the marketing sometime soon*, then even that series will go away sooner or later, given what's likely to happen in the gaming space. I don't want that to happen, but I would be a fool if I didn't prepare for that possibility.

*They are seriously missing a trick here - they've got trademark filings covering merchandising and a streaming-show, both of which the series in its modern form is perfectly suited to, and yet they're not doing anything of the sort!

Quoting: PyrateThere's nothing especially important in getting the latest and the "greatest" of games if you think about it, once you wrap your head around that concept and ditch that FOMO feeling, you realise time doesn't amount all that much to art, and graphics aren't even close to being everything in a game.

You're preaching to the choir, friend! I was never fooled by that whole attempt to paint the "AAA" label as representing good quality, when it's self-evidently always represented buggy, unfinished experiences, and I've never had any fear of missing out, because an awful lot of games simply aren't aimed at me anymore (and for the sorts of things that I like, as long as good art-direction is in play, the graphical requirements really haven't changed in 20 years and rightly have no reason to).

To be quite honest, even way earlier than that I was never impressed by "It's 3D! And you can RUN AROUND IN IT!", either - it takes more than that to make a good game, regardless of format. And don't even get me started on folks who say that they want to get into the games industry and then proclaim "I've written the story and come up with all of the characters already!" but then give you a blank look when you ask about their dream game's rules, mechanics, and goals, or how everything will be structured and balanced.

... Man, now I sound like I need to go and tell a bunch of damn kids to get off my lawn.

Anyway, hopefully this stuff will lead to more activity in the emulation section of the GOL forums!

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