Re: audiogames, why they were good and now not good
Rereading, it occurs to me that I really do not understand Jacek's points. Usually, when Jacek shows up in a thread, it's something I look forward to reading, and at first, in this one, it sounded like points I could either agree with, or benefit from understanding... but I do not understand. Hence, the multiple times I asked if we're even talking about the same thing. Because I honestly can't tell.
I harp on the cloning and put-in-effort-to-play-mainstream-games things, because, at face value, they seem utterly ridiculous, but bits and pieces make me wonder if I am missing what's actually being said. And when I say so and ask for clarification, I get ignored. If it were anyone else, I'd assume they're treating it as a fight and retreating without admiting defeat. The point of this thread was to address the quality problem of Audio Games and hopefully dig up solutions, so it was not meant to be a fight, and I will assume that most posters in this thread know that.
So, I will recap as best I can, and someone tell me where I got lost, pretty please with non-sugar sweetener on top?
Jacek suggests that AGs are too derivative, should try to be more innovative, but are also trying to do too much.
I say that I don't have a problem with the clones because their mainstream counterparts are inaccessible.
Jacek says that the clones are pale imitations, and that mainstream games are playable with sufficient effort. (I assume there's a "some" or "many" missing from this sentence, but the opportunity to say so when I brought it up was not taken.)
I am confused, go on a rant about how I disagree about mainstream playability, and ask for clarification.
Ethin says Jacek is right, and cites Borderlands II as an example.
I insist that this does not refute my rant in the least, and again ask for clarification.
Jacek and Ethin go on a tangent about KF2 for a couple posts, resulting in a comment about AGs needing to be absurdly noisy.
Two or three people disagree with the noise thing, citing I forget which games in both categories.
The thread goes dormant for a month or so.
Did I miss something that dramatically changes how this should be interpreted?
Since this is so confusing, I will try to write stronger versions of what I'm reading as Jacek's position, and maybe something will change.
Cloning games is trying to keep up with a trend that is already far ahead. A similar mistake—jumping on a style or genre or mechanic bandwagon after it's left the station—is commonly included in lists of mistakes mainstream/indie devs should avoid. Something similar shows up in other areas than just gaming, and make it very clear that the successful are the innovators who stumbled on a lucky pick, and not the trend-chasers.
This, I agree with. It's true in audio games (look at the complaints about Redspot / Ultrapower / FPS do jour clones, generic side-scrollers, and Space Invaders clones). However, I feel like this applies inside the AG market, rather than to games as a whole, because of the playability gap. Manamon works because we cannot play Pokemon. Accessible clones of inaccessible games are not competing with each other at all, because different people play them. Accessible clones being inferior to their mainstream counterparts is practically universal, but in terms of the experiences of blind players, the reverse might as well be true, since we can only play the clones.
The best way to demonstrate that this is wrong is to demonstrate that a blind person can play the games being cloned, and get as much or more enjoyment out of them as the fully accessible clones. This has been asserted, but not demonstrated. BL2 and KF2 do not count, because no AGs are clones of either of them. This only works if Pokemon is playable enough to compete with Manamon. If this has been demonstrated and I just missed it, point me toward the evidence so I can concede.
It's telling that no one has explained how these supposedly playable-with-effort MGs are playable. Compare to the other active thread with this question as the main focus, where specific parts of the games which are and aren't doable, why, and how, are provided.
Given how this post started, I suppose I should bring it back around to the original topic.
Or, at least, address Jacek's point that hasn't been revisited yet: the one where AGs are trying to do too much for what they are.
I don't understand it well enough to reply, though.
OK, since no one else is going to do it, how about I try to argue against my "points"?
Well, I suppose the first counterargument is that Aprone is still around. He accomplished all that he has with a job, a family (who he frequently helps with mech-and-tech issues), and started with a non-budget. (Remember, Aprone didn't add a donation button to his site until players asked him to, and, iirc, not immediately, either. His online games became paid solely to deter malicious hackers and cheaters.)
Nyanchan illustrates that a sufficiently skilled developer can make great things without a massive budget, under the right conditions. I suppose it's possible that he's secretly fabulously wealthy, but I think there is evidence against him being in better financial places than most AG devs at the same point in life. He did spend money on some things, but it sounds comparable to some of the things I could "afford" at the same age. He's just a better dev. And possibly less easily distracted.
However, I feel like these are the exceptions that prove the rule. Most of the time, things work more like with Out Of Sight, where games require a team, lots of time, and a non-negligible budget, even by the standards of high GDP nations. Compare the amount of art produced before 1800 to the amount of art produced after 1800. It's hard to say, since so much either has been lost or hasn't been found, but the 21st century is in this weird place where there's more art than anyone could ever consume, and it's all right there at your fingertips. That is because of three things: technology, economy, and population. It's not that the pre-industrial world couldn't produce more art; it's that it was more arduous, that survival was harder, and there were fewer people. How many Renaissance painters can you name? How about the 19th-20th centuries? Was there a renaissance equivalent to deviantart?
So, while we may have our Apronardo da Kaldobsky, we do not have Photoshop or GIMP, and I'd be reluctant to compare audiogames.net to Deviantart.
What the mainstream has that we lack is far more than sight. They have Unity, Unreal, decades of libraries and algorithms optimized for sighted developers, a massive community, far more money and professional opportunities, and better access to what's already out there. It's not an insurmountable disparity, but it's a lot harder than grabbing a cane and walking to the store at 1/10 the speed of a car (at most).
And that is why I keep bringing it back to money, and occasionally editors. Some of those problems are big enough that thousands have been working at them for centuries. Editors and money are much narrower problems. I joke about giving me a million dollars (would be nice, cough. ... the cough/though thing doesn't work with screen readers, does it?), but someone puting together a project and getting the funding to support it is going to make a difference, if the recipiant is competent enough. If those of us making less than $30k/year were suddenly making that much, I would bet on the frequency of quality audio games increasing, provided these weren't all 50+hr jobs behind the money.
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