Tough acts to follow
So far I’ve been having a blast, and that’s usually my first goal with any game in the franchise, so mission accomplished.
The Sims 4 came out just a little while ago, and I like it. It’s had some stuff snipped from it and some other things added in; conversations feel a lot more organic, for one thing, and relationships are thankfully measured along two axes rather than one. It’s solid, in other words. But its biggest competitor is hanging over its head in the form of the third game in the franchise.
I’m not really interested in talking here about what features were removed for this incarnation of the game; by and large, the cuts feel like they were good removals considering what got more development as a result. But I found myself thinking how difficult a road the game has ahead of it based not upon its own merits but simply by virtue of being new. There’s no reason a new game with a new engine can match up to what a predecessor with five years of development has accomplished, and yet it has to do exactly that. It’s a tough act to follow.
Telling Stories: I do not build a maze, I assemble tools
I’m in the midst of planning for a big roleplaying plot right now. That means integrating plots, making a couple of alts, planting the seeds of resolutions that won’t come for quite some time. It starts with an injury, I already know that. And it ends with…
Well, it could end with anything. That’s the whole point of this right now – creating a lot of potential outs. Oh, I have a fairly clear picture of what many of the long-term effects will be, but that’s not the same. There is no ending, just a variety of potential conclusions.
I’ve said many times in the past that roleplaying is not storytelling. This extends to events, storylines, and the like. If you have an ending ready when you have started the event, go back and try again, because you are doing it wrong. A good storyline isn’t about having a specific ending in mind, it’s about putting the pieces out and letting other people assemble the result on their own.
This isn’t a post about Zoe Quinn
In fact, she’s not even mentioned after the opening here and in the final two lines of the piece.
If you don’t know who Zoe Quinn is, that’s fine; this post isn’t about her. If you do know what happened recently, that’s good too. Although I’m using a very loose definition of the word “good” here, because what happened to her is another example of a problem that’s run rampant in gaming for years and just keeps getting more problematic. But she doesn’t want her personal life being dragged out for discussing something that’s completely unconnected to what she does for a living, and the fact is that asking that is beyond fair. Her personal life is hers. The whole “scandal” was, essentially, someone violating that boundary.
And there’s been a lot already written about it, many pieces within days of the event, and they all had the same tone to them. Hell, some of them had probably been written beforehand and were just sitting around ready for use as soon as something happened, because something was going to. It was inevitable. There was always going to be another one of these situations, and the same wave of “I can’t deal with this again” began to break.
Some people clocked out more or less as soon as it started happening. Because exhaustion had already set in.
Who wants to play my idea?
“Megaman without Capcom” is a pretty solid idea, admittedly, but it’s still just an idea.
You there! Would you like to play my idea? It’s a really great idea, and you can play it on whatever system you choose to play games on. It’s cool, too, especially as it has separate but linked components for your smartphone, consoles, and desktop computers. It’s got all sorts of exploration, a dynamic set of objectives that it can generate, and a deep and moving storyline that you’ll want to complete your way. And you can! There are romance systems and important decisions and epic combat, it’s great!
Oh, and if you like all of that, you’ll love my idea’s voxel support and robust physics engine, because those just make the game even better. And it has online or offline co-op! It’s the best idea you’ll play all year!
You’d like to play? Great. I’m going to need to see the cash up front, sixty bucks. Great. Have fun with my idea! What do you mean “how do I play it?” That’s not my department, dude, I just make the idea. What do you mean you don’t like playing it?
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 