Civvie 11 - Retro FPS Boomer

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

far as I know this goes back to at least 2000. Deus Ex had a multiplayer component which apparently still has a very very small community

PC was a bit different because it had native online functionality but you're completely right. Some games crash and burned after ditching their single-player component during development to focus exclusively on multiplayer. I think journos were partially the ones driving it, at the time they were always moaning if a game, especially a first person game, didn't have multiplayer. And modding tools, I remember some smugly writing "[multiplayer game] is good, there's also modding tools so wait until modders make a better game out of it". If a game didn't have modding tools so someone could make it into something else that was seen as a drawback. This was during the period of Team Fortress, CS, Natural Selection, Rocket Arena, Enemy Territory to some extent and others. It was a stupid time. It's similar to the current "heh, just wait until modders make [Bethesda game] good, Bethesda doesn't know shit about games"

One game that didn't need multiplayer but the devs put time, thought and effort into it was Splinter Cell. That was great. Assassin's Creed multiplayer was also a pretty fun novelty for a short while even if it was a game that really didn't need MP. I guess I'm shilling for Ubisoft.

 

[Pig Boss]

PC was a bit different because it had native online functionality but you're completely right. Some games crash and burned after ditching their single-player component during development to focus exclusively on multiplayer. I think journos were partially the ones driving it, at the time they were always moaning if a game, especially a first person game, didn't have multiplayer. And modding tools, I remember some smugly writing "[multiplayer game] is good, there's also modding tools so wait until modders make a better game out of it". If a game didn't have modding tools so someone could make it into something else that was seen as a drawback. This was during the period of Team Fortress, CS, Natural Selection, Rocket Arena, Enemy Territory to some extent and others. It was a stupid time. It's similar to the current "heh, just wait until modders make [Bethesda game] good, Bethesda doesn't know shit about games"

One game that didn't need multiplayer but the devs put time, thought and effort into it was Splinter Cell. That was great. Assassin's Creed multiplayer was also a pretty fun novelty for a short while even if it was a game that really didn't need MP. I guess I'm shilling for Ubisoft.

I do miss the days of games having built in modding tools, though. Or even just map makers. NWN still has a huge Ravenloft themed server that is 100% original content made by the community. Even Solasta, a very recent game, has the most bare bones custom content options, less than games from 5 years ago. The Shadowrun games have some great custom content option, some smart people even made a perpetual world solo game based on the tabletop where you just get to keep growing and doing bigger and wilder runs.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I do miss the days of games having built in modding tools, though. Or even just map makers. NWN still has a huge Ravenloft themed server that is 100% original content made by the community. Even Solasta, a very recent game, has the most bare bones custom content options, less than games from 5 years ago. The Shadowrun games have some great custom content option, some smart people even made a perpetual world solo game based on the tabletop where you just get to keep growing and doing bigger and wilder runs.

I think it's a case of publishers not wanting to invest the time or money to create mod tools and that it's more lucrative (or so they think) to focus on selling DLC instead.

 

[Well Intentioned]

There's certainly more profit to be had both with cranking out DLC for people to consume and having a sort of fixed life to your product, which is the "problem" that comes with that Ravenloft server example.

Can't really monetize something your user base creates for free (plus the specter of Blizzard and DOTA most likely hangs over developer's heads) and (I would imagine is the thinking) you lose a potential sale if someone is still playing a game 19 years later, but hasn't sunk a penny into it that has gone to the company since date of initial purchase.

 

[modern horrors]

Interesting how it changed. Used to be "here's a third of the game for free (shareware), please buy the full game, it comes with free mod tools". Now it's day one DLCs, constant internet connection requirement even for single player, modding is a fucking ToS violation and 2-3 years later game servers get shut down and you can't play anymore. We need another video game crash.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

Interesting how it changed. Used to be "here's a third of the game for free (shareware), please buy the full game, it comes with free mod tools". Now it's day one DLCs, constant internet connection requirement even for single player, modding is a fucking ToS violation and 2-3 years later game servers get shut down and you can't play anymore. We need another video game crash.

I just read Masters of Doom, and id's entire business model in the 90s runs so counter to modern gaming practices it's unreal. These guys didn't even have their own publisher, they did nearly everything themselves and got an insane amount of money as a result. Funnily enough, Carmack's decision to release Doom and Quake's source code was met with pushback from others in the company due to concerns over copyright (if anyone had the source code, they reasoned, randos could push out their own shitty Doom maps for retail, which did actually happen, but id was making money hand over fist so it didn't really matter in the long run).

There just seemed to be a lot more freedom with 90s PC games. People like Carmack encouraged people to open up their games and do whatever the hell they want, and so long as people were buying it, who cares what they did with it? Once everything became big business and technology got more expensive though that mindset went away. It's kinda tragic really.

 

[Corn Flakes]

I just read Masters of Doom, and id's entire business model in the 90s runs so counter to modern gaming practices it's unreal. These guys didn't even have their own publisher, they did nearly everything themselves and got an insane amount of money as a result. Funnily enough, Carmack's decision to release Doom and Quake's source code was met with pushback from others in the company due to concerns over copyright (if anyone had the source code, they reasoned, randos could push out their own shitty Doom maps for retail, which did actually happen, but id was making money hand over fist so it didn't really matter in the long run).

There just seemed to be a lot more freedom with 90s PC games. People like Carmack encouraged people to open up their games and do whatever the hell they want, and so long as people were buying it, who cares what they did with it? Once everything became big business and technology got more expensive though that mindset went away. It's kinda tragic really.

It weren't just the hardware and the engines that got optimized. Business models were also optimized. We can talk about DLC and always-online closed-systems being anti-consumer, but they're still the most efficient way for a large publisher with a built-in fanbase to make a lot of money very quickly.

 

[Poop A Loop]

I imagine it's just good old supply and demand that created this situation. Back then, people wanted to buy but it wasn't a huge demand and was a new market being forged so publishers and developers had to come up with good ways to market themselves or give up profit for market penetration potential.

Now, there's a ton of demand for games and, while the supply of shitty indie games is high, the supply of AAA titles isn't being exceeded by the demand of the public that now views games on almost the same level as TV and movies as a valid form of entertainment. There's also easy marketing avenues to reach those consumers and advertise to them.

I had a similar experience with a software company I worked at for a while. When I joined, the market was new and my employer and another one were engaged in a huge rush to capture parts of that market at any cost so prices were low due to the price war between them and we even went so far so as to accept a contract where the customer paid us in gym memberships to get a foothold in a particular state while they referenced for us.

However, about 5 years later the market was saturated and we were then focused on selling new products to those existing customers or a higher contract price so the focus then became splitting the product into "basic, standard, and enterprise" price levels and I started noticing new features that previously would have been just included in the price 5 years ago were now hidden behind a higher purchasing tier and the focus switched to maximizing the average contract price rather than just churning and burning through new customers and keeping existing ones happy with free features or easy access to my team to yell at them about fixing bugs and shit.

This is just personal experience in a market that wasn't gaming and I have no economics degree so I could be totally wrong.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

I've been waiting for this. He's been teasing it on Twitter for quite some time.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Damn, I think I'll start playing the game before watching the review now that my backlog has started shrinking down.

 

[YachieKicchou]

I have no idea what to say about Civvie not immediately seeing how brilliant Cruelty Squad is. He says he gave it twenty minutes and that's more than enough time to see how good everything is. The game has really tight controls and everything is satisfying to play. The level design starts out good and the levels are short enough that twenty minutes WILL get you to the good shit. Unless you explore, and if you do that, you should have gotten more drawn in just from seeing how much effort went into each and every single level.

Then again I'm the kind of guy who was immediately drawn in by Cruelty Squad before it became this big meme game and I fucking adore the soundtrack so maybe it's just a game that was right up my alley but I can't imagine playing it for twenty minutes and just deciding it's pure trash and refunding.

 

[YachieKicchou]

I think Civvie kind of overblows the difficulty a bit too, considering he plays a lot of FPS games. He really shouldn't have found the first level as hard as he did. I've been up for awhile and can barely use my right hand and have hand tremors on top of almost never playing FPS games and here's me clearing the first two targets in one minute by going through the front door with health left to spare. If I can do it then I'm not really sure why Civvie had so much trouble. The game kicks you in the ass but it isn't until later. He shows clips of him "dying quickly" but he has a bunch of time to react.

I play like a games journalist and I really didn't find the game all that bad.

 

[Brain Problems]

Fun video. I think I'll grab it on sale one day but the vomit inducing visuals are just too much for me right now, no matter how tight an ImSim it supposedly is.

Unsure if it's just me though but I kind of feel as though a vaguely distasteful clique of circle-jerking has formed between Civvie and the New Blood crew to the point that I recoil a bit whenever I see it evidence of it. Might just be that I think the Dusk creator (Syzmanki or whatever his name is) is a total homo but beyond that it just feels a little incestuous. More than willing to admit this is just my own 'tistic tic though.

 

[modern horrors]

Unsure if it's just me though but I kind of feel as though a vaguely distasteful clique of circle-jerking has formed between Civvie and the New Blood crew to the point that I recoil a bit whenever I see it evidence of it. Might just be that I think the Dusk creator (Syzmanki or whatever his name is) is a total homo but beyond that it just feels a little incestuous. More than willing to admit this is just my own 'tistic tic though.

delete your twitter account

 

[Takayuki Yagami]

Fun video. I think I'll grab it on sale one day but the vomit inducing visuals are just too much for me right now, no matter how tight an ImSim it supposedly is.

Unsure if it's just me though but I kind of feel as though a vaguely distasteful clique of circle-jerking has formed between Civvie and the New Blood crew to the point that I recoil a bit whenever I see it evidence of it. Might just be that I think the Dusk creator (Syzmanki or whatever his name is) is a total homo but beyond that it just feels a little incestuous. More than willing to admit this is just my own 'tistic tic though.

Someone’s started a thread on Dave Oshry and New Blood in Proseepering Grounds if you want to help on that front.

 

[Poop A Loop]

Sooner or later its going to happen. Civvie's gonna go on a tankie rant, lose ~1k in patreon dollars out of his buckets of free money for making videos about digital toys, make a video or tweet about how he's glad to "lose the haters/nazis/chuds", and we're all gonna act shocked about his sudden turn. This stuff with New Blood is just a little red flag that he's primed and ready to put out a video or interrupt a video with a "message about harassment/an aside about extremism/current day politics BS". No problem with watching his videos, but that's why no one should ever subscribe to patreons or contribute to people who aren't expressly anti-communist or haven't already hit that bullshit with a baseball bat because if they haven't they're either sympathetic to it or are afraid of it and will fold at the slightest pressure.

Plus it makes people like Dave Oshry soymad when you mention you pirate his shit or that he doesn't deserve your money. I'm just practicing what you preach, muh dude.

 

[Kane Lives]

I, for one, wouldn't be surprised if he goes on a full-on tankie rant. But until then, I'll just let myself be pleasantly surprised on how he managed to keep politics out of his videos in $CURRENT_YEAR. I get the distinct feeling he's being tardwrangled in the background, so the moment his ego gets too big for that is the moment he'll slide downhill.

 

[The tired cat]

that's why no one should ever subscribe to patreons or contribute to people who aren't expressly anti-communist or haven't already hit that bullshit with a baseball bat because if they haven't they're either sympathetic to it or are afraid of it and will fold at the slightest pressure.

Plus it makes people like Dave Oshry soymad when you mention you pirate his shit or that he doesn't deserve your money. I'm just practicing what you preach, muh dude.

Because it's bad when you give money to lefty's, so do the right thing and give money to alt-right faggots instead, great solution.

 

[L50LasPak]

Plus it makes people like Dave Oshry soymad when you mention you pirate his shit or that he doesn't deserve your money. I'm just practicing what you preach, muh dude.

Because it's bad when you give money to lefty's, so do the right thing and give money to alt-right faggots instead, great solution.

Pirate everything, use adblock, donate to no one, die with no regrets.