Hard Project: World of Darkness
Screw horses; my kingdom for a company who will actually develop this line properly.
For the handful of people who haven’t heard yet, CCP Games killed World of Darkness, because apparently a better use of the company’s funding was delivering a PC version of their failed console shooter? I don’t follow CCP’s business procedures too closely, I just know that they’re awful. Yes, part of the reason I’m saying that is because I knew people directly affected by this loss, but this is also the company responsible for the deep dark pit that is EVE Online, and it’s also a company that apparently doesn’t realize what it has.
Not that a lot of other companies seem to know, either. The World of Darkness setting is tailor-made for games, honestly; the fact that we haven’t had a Grand Theft Auto clone wherein everyone’s a supernatural creature is a crime. The only games we have gotten are a trio of Gautlet clones based on the one line that everyone tries to forget and two Vampire RPGs, both of which had major issues with bugs and a lack of polish. Without falling back on the obvious fact that the rights are owned by a company more concerned with promoting jerks with spreadsheets than any other game, why are games so difficult to develop for this property?
Hard Project: Superman
Truth, Justice, and Soaring Around Looking Majestic.
Superheroes owe their entire existence to Superman. There are worst places to start off. Sure, we’ve spent the last several years inundated with writers who feel that you can’t relate to Superman or that it’s too difficult to give Superman compelling challenges, but if you can’t think of a good setup to tell stories about an alien who was raised by humans and then decided that he liked people so much he wanted to protect all of them forever? That says more about your lack of imagination than the character.
What’s weird, though, is that we’ve never gotten a good video game based off of the Man of Steel. Not a one.
There have been some tolerable versions of Supes in fighting games here and there, yes, although Injustice loses loads of points right from the word go for buying into the “but what if we made Superman evil” school of thought. But every single game version has been some flavor of disappointment, with Superman 64 essentially being used as a synonym for Worst Game Ever. Why in the hell is that? Why is it so difficult to make a good game based around the Last Son of Krypton?
No, I don’t like Star Wars
It’s Hoth. It’s always Hoth. Because it was in the movies, and how can we possibly avoid referencing the movies over and over? So let’s slowly erode the idea that Hoth was this frozen backwater in the middle of nowhere and just keep going back to Hoth. (And somehow it’s still doing better in this regard than Tatooine.)
One of those things that always sticks in my craw is the result when I mention around people I don’t know that I don’t like Star Wars. Because someone always doesn’t believe me.
There’s a little twitch in the eye, a stare, an odd expression. “Really?” they ask. “Not even such-and-such? Does that mean you don’t like this or that?” It’s a request for elaboration, like there has to be some caveat, it can’t be as simple as just the fact that I would be much happier to live in a world where there would be no more Star Wars.
What I do like that intersects with Star Wars is a very thin list that I generally enjoy in spite of its association, not as a result of it. I would much prefer if Star Wars: The Old Republic was based on literally any other property in the world. I have to consciously distance myself from the name when I attempt to enjoy the original trilogy. I don’t like Star Wars, and I think there’s a lot of good reason not to like Star Wars.
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 