MagicManICT wrote:Compared to the other games I play, sprite-based 2D is beautiful and hi tek. Of course, Dwarf Fortress and ASCII art has its own low tek beauty, too. Just remember, after a while, you don't see the code anymore, you just see dwarf, elf, rat, sword, etc.
Seriously, quit being so spoiled and come back down to Earth. It's the price of hiring dozens of modelers and artists that have the cost of game production in the $50-100 million (USD) range now for top of the line titles. (Have you looked at the credits of a typical AAA title? Compare that to a lot of these highly rated indie games that give, overall, 10x better game play.) Even middling priced titles can run several million. Granted, you can do rudimentary 3D for a few hundred thousand now due to the licensing on some of the engines like Unreal and Crytek if you're not going for a complex game and don't need to hire outside talent to either do graphics design (modelling and 2D texture art) or programming. It also helps that countries like the Philippines and India (and even several Eastern European countries) have talent capable of doing these things at a fraction of the cost to produce the same thing in the US.
I am, of course, leaving out the whole discussion of where the investment of resources should be: high end art vs amount of gameplay--are they interchangeable, etc? When games like the latest Call of Duty, Halo, Assassins Creed, Elder Scrolls, etc. can still make a serious profit even at those nosebleed development costs, it's obviously worth the investment of money, so that's not even the discussion. But if we're going to get a 10-15 hour game when 15 years ago a typical game was twice as long for the same relative cost (compared to the income of the average gamer), something just isn't quite right. (I do realize that the consumers could very well be the total sum of the blame here as developers tend to do things that the players want, else they don't stay in business long.)
I am spoiled, I know.
...but, It's just too hard to go back, even from Salem. One of my hopes is that they do hire one of those Korean firms or Indian Firms to do some of that 3-D modeling and graphics for Salem. It's one of the best ways to penetrate a market in Asia.
Art versus Gameplay is way too long of a discussion for these forums but of course you need to have both. HnH just doesn't have enough art for me, and I didn't really notice that much better gameplay over Salem. 3D gaming is of course on the rise and getting easier and easier to do. Here's hoping that Jorbtar get really good at it while developing Salem and leave 2D HnH in their rearview mirror.
As for how much Salem costs Paradox, it's not a lot. Server Bandwidth really isn't that expensive especially when you buy it in bulk. I'd say as low as a thousand a month for them, but of course a lot more in Salaries for TotallyMoo and Enigmaz and that new guy. I doubt if Seatribe's making much yet. I've got a new thing I'm going to do this summer to help them out though, every time they make a nice update I like, I'm going to buy a mystery box from Paradox. I hope you guys do the same. Think of it as buying a beer for Jorb or Loftar when you buy it.
Also, it was interesting to see the numbers on HnH W6 release compared to W7. I had no idea that the HnH population had dropped so low. Thanks for that.
