Laserschwert Posted June 8, 2004 Share Posted June 8, 2004 Let's just call those people up at the highest room in the highest building of the LucasArts-building "suits". That spares us the hassle of remembering the names of the everchanging cast of the dope show up there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshi Posted June 9, 2004 Share Posted June 9, 2004 First of all, if you're going to send an email of that sort to someone important in LA, make sure you get your facts right. Was LA the #1 in adventure games way back when. I think you'll find that different people and different companies see it differently and think that company's such as Sierra had it good. Also please note, with company's producing such games as Syberia 2 and The Longest Journey 2 (offical name forgotten), the adventure game market is not as low as LucasArts would have you believe (I put a tiny bit more trust in the other game developers than I do with LA so I can at least anticipate those two games to come out with less fear of cancellation) and therefore the drop in adventure game sales isn't totally due to them. For instance, better engines, better storylines, better graphics and overall better technology allow gameplay of other types to be more enjoyable than the point n click adventuregame and the X generation enjoy FPS's and so on as appose to the walking around and solving riddles type of game, therefore you cannot say that this is totally LA's fault (although they have added to the problem somewhat by creating loads of SW games, none of which have been predictably succesful adventures games). And finally, I think G Lucas's word on the creation of LA was "Whatever you do, be the best." Somewhere along the line the best didn't bring in the money and so they stuck to what worked instead and bnrought in money. as horrible as it is to think, this world is built on little pieces of paper with pictures of royalty or presidents on them and there's no getting around that. If you're going to write to LA, do some research first, and then send it off, because nothing pisses these people off more than someone arguing a point without being in possesion of all the facts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JBRAA Posted June 9, 2004 Author Share Posted June 9, 2004 Originally posted by Joshi And finally, I think G Lucas's word on the creation of LA was "Whatever you do, be the best." Somewhere along the line the best didn't bring in the money and so they stuck to what worked instead and bnrought in money. as horrible as it is to think, this world is built on little pieces of paper with pictures of royalty or presidents on them and there's no getting around that. I guess the people at LucasArts are trying, and of course doing work for a living, and profit must be made to the company. What's really strange is how these people choose what game to develop, and how much budget the game will get. For example: FT2 Hell on Wheels, should have gotten much more resources of man power and talents than it got. It was almost like LucasArts decition makers thought nobody would notice the bad quality in many aspects of the game. And another thing. I agree about getting facts straight before complaining. But I do understand LucasArts should be more open and talk to us, and not hide stuff. Yeah, and complain to the right people is another thing. Agree there too. I'm just making conversation. I don't know much about other game communites, when it comes to how much contact and how honest the company is to their game fan base. It seems to me LucasArts needs to grow up and face us. I know in fact that is what they have done etc, but to write stuff on their company 'about page' how they work and stuff, when they know it's just professional stuff to make them look professional. What I'm babbling about here is, yes I am coming to the point here, is that LucasArts should if they had goodwill talk to us and explain how they think when it comes to decline or give 'go' to a Loom 2 game for example. Ok, sure, you could say that is company business and not meant for the public. But, when comparing how it -seems- how other companies listen how much as they can to their game fan base, and communicate, it seems ridicolus and immature to hide stuff, and act like their own company is useless and can only do Star Wars stuff. I mean, what's so hard about doing an original adventure, or an original story? If they had changed name to Star Wars games, I wouldn't complain, I would leave. Leave the community as regular visitor. So by that, I pessimistically say that the name LucasArts has place in my heart, in my game heart, and I can't see LucasArts' tombstone yet. Jake, you're free to take the word and explain how I've misunderstood stuff. =) Hehe, other than that, I don't have anything to say. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshi Posted June 9, 2004 Share Posted June 9, 2004 The big wigs at the company would be too busy to talk to us, the only people at the company who would actually talk to us (allegedly) are the pr people and they're not too good either. The fact of the matter is, the PR people get told what to say by hte bigwigs, but aren't told most of the actual info that we want to know. It is actually impossible to have a real conversation one on one with the main people at LA (and this is true for most big companies, it's not just an LA thing). Plus, for them to start talking now would be suicide as they would be sure to get a barrage of sam n max complaints again, and considering they just won't do anything, it would just be wasted for both them and the complainers and so it wouldn't help. a communication between us and them would be nice, but it won't happen sadly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dpolsrod Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 Originally posted by Joshi ... and The Longest Journey 2 (offical name forgotten)... The full name will be The Longest Journey 2: Dreamfall. I'm really looking forward to it. Loved the first one. And the company is FunCom. It's Norwegian. Yay! BTW: Åssen går det, Rapp Scallion? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VoodooFX Posted June 11, 2004 Share Posted June 11, 2004 Originally posted by JBRAA I mean, what's so hard about doing an original adventure, or an original story? Actually it's harder than you think, you need good writer for story, who would work out the world, the characters. You need talented artists who can translate the vision from paper into computer images, like backgrounds for example. But you must remember adventures are moving into 3D, so the making process is much more time consuming, requires more people to do the work. With most of the talented people gone from LEC it's almost impossible for them to make an adventure worthy of name LucasArts. And when you add all this up, mix it with not exactly good sales you can see why there aren't as many games as in old days Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JBRAA Posted June 11, 2004 Author Share Posted June 11, 2004 Originally posted by VoodooFX Actually it's harder than you think, you need good writer for story, who would work out the world, the characters. You need talented artists who can translate the vision from paper into computer images, like backgrounds for example. But you must remember adventures are moving into 3D, so the making process is much more time consuming, requires more people to do the work. With most of the talented people gone from LEC it's almost impossible for them to make an adventure worthy of name LucasArts. And when you add all this up, mix it with not exactly good sales you can see why there aren't as many games as in old days True, there you have it. "More effort". I'm sure LucasArts could attract those kind of people if they really wanted to. What I really meant by "what's so hard about doing an original story?", is that they can do it, but they aren't. Like, what's the problem? A super-good game like, Day of the Tentacle, hits one of greatest computer games of time. But, saleswise, a super game is probable to require perhaps 4X the budget, but with only 3X income. Or how is it??? At that sales-view, it is easy to choose to produce less-great games that have better sales-ratio. I don't know how the "gamequality/sales ratio" works. But even a poor effort game can sell good enough to make it good business, because LOTS of people by games they know nothing about except back of box. Like, for me, I most interested in game-play and demos. "back-of-box buys" mostly result in bad experience for me. I asked my question misdirected. This is a better frased one: Why do some companies make massive effort to make a game-of-the-year, while other don't, when they infact could do it financially. Isn't that just bad for gamers? Perhaps it's good for gamecompanies to get income more easily, but if/when game-buyers will catch-on, and not buy less-good games any more, the gamecompanies are in for a downhill journey. Atleast, I think better games can only do good on the game-market, and worse games can do small good things for individual gamecompanies, but worse-games would do harm to the game-market. Like, if it's only **** out there, why bother visit a gamestore, or online-gamestore. I've stretched this topic out a bit, but I think this is what it is all about on the decition-table at LEC and many other companies. I'm just making a "big deal" out of all this, cause I do really like high quality stories in games. And professional, and "exciting" dialog. Not book-kind-of-stories, but integrated kind. And a CRAP-game like Full Throttle Hell on Wheels looked like, would just make me say "meh" and frown at the game. Like, who gives a sec for less-great games when there are good ones. Ha! Edit: Dont' LucasArts have the financial resources to make high-quality games? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jake Posted June 12, 2004 Share Posted June 12, 2004 Originally posted by JBRAA Edit: Dont' LucasArts have the financial resources to make high-quality games? Sometimes you have to wonder these days... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshi Posted June 12, 2004 Share Posted June 12, 2004 Originally posted by VoodooFX With most of the talented people gone from LEC it's almost impossible for them to make an adventure worthy of name LucasArts. Which completely contradicts EFMI, but whatever. And please note, good games were easier way back when because of two things. One, technology was crapper and therefore people expected less and got more than they bargained for with exceptional games coming out of LA. Two, it was easier to do (compared to now), the SCUMM interface was new and groundbreaking, but writing the programming code is done by 13 year olds now, so back then, talented programmers weren't exactly having it so tough. And with less emphasis on the graphics (characters being mere pixels across, see: The Secret of Monkey Island for an example), the could focus more on the story, puzzels and charcters. Plus, they were easier and more profitable to create than most of the early 3D stuff for Star wars and other LA games that used a 3D engine. Now it is harder for them to actually make a good game, forgetting a good adventure game, but just a good game in general and so they put most of their resources into games that will sell rather than games that are good (in comparison to games produced about a decade ago) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QueZTone Posted June 12, 2004 Share Posted June 12, 2004 how much did Syberia or Syberia 2 cost to produce and market and how were the profits? did it profit? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshi Posted June 12, 2004 Share Posted June 12, 2004 Syberia 2 isn't out yet, and I'm not sure if Syberia profited or not, but it obviously did well enough to sprout a sequel (the game was good no doubt, one of the better adventure games out there, definately, but not exactly up there with the best). Considering most companies look at cashflow anyway, it would be a pretty good bet that Syberia did make a profit, or at least a decent sized fanbase. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jake Posted June 12, 2004 Share Posted June 12, 2004 Syberia 2's been out for a while... http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000CDYOH/qid%3D1086989258/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/102-5449858-3852105 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshi Posted June 13, 2004 Share Posted June 13, 2004 Probably not out in england yet then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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