Sony Wants to Repair its Relationship With its Indie Partners

[starcrunch061]

18 hours ago, AJ_Radio said:

 

They didn't bother to renew the licensing, so they had their reasons.

 

Yeah, but I think it had more to do with Disney getting a hold of all Marvel stuff (at least in Deadpool and Marvel: UA's case). I don't know about Transformers, but I imagine that the license was granted to someone else.

 

Also, the licenser controls the license, not the licensee. What I mean is, Activision can't just renew its license without the permission of the entity that holds the license. 

[AJ_Radio]

Just now, starcrunch061 said:

 

Yeah, but I think it had more to do with Disney getting a hold of all Marvel stuff (at least in Deadpool and Marvel: UA's case). I don't know about Transformers, but I imagine that the license was granted to someone else.

 

Also, the licenser controls the license, not the licensee. What I mean is, Activision can't just renew its license without the permission of the entity that holds the license. 

 

It sucks though. I thought Deadpool was pretty amusing.

[DaveMcDamage]

Right before the launch day of the XOne and PS4 both companies pledged to take it easy on devs, even as far as going dropping a lot of cost for them to put on the companies stores. I think Ms at the time of the 360 was something stupid like 20 grand and for a small team thats stupid as hell to think they could afford it. Anyway that got ditched and then SONY goes and stuffs it anway.

 

The PS4 era for SONY's behavior was how Ms acted towards companies during the 360 era. You learn from others mistakes, not copy them.... Gah! 

[visighost]

When people say that "99% of indie games in sales are utter trash", I'm always curious if this is based on an empirical assessment on how many they've actually tried... I play a lot, but not 99% of what's available, so I humbly hold back sweeping generalizations?

 

As someone who likely plays more indies than most (based on often checking the lists of random people on the leaderboards), the only games I truly see as shovelware are the Breakthroughs and Something Breaks of this world, where no shits were obviously given. That's two publishers out of... a lot. Of the indie publishers that put out a lot of games, I think that Ratalaika may have doubtful trophy implementation, but I have found most of their games are genuinely fun to play. Sometimes You are experimenting in ways that few publishers do (and I'd argue it works most of the time). Chilidog might ruin the trophy experience with cheat codes, but again I am enjoying the games. Artifex Mundi follow the same formula every single time but... it works and my kids still beg me to play them together?

 

It's perfectly fine to enjoy a specific type of games, but that doesn't give you the right to spit on everything else.

 

I would love for Sony to add one or two indie games on PS+ every month, even if much older. That would be great exposure, and I would expect not at a high cost.

 

(I appreciate this may be a pointless post. The antivax trucker protests in my city and the rhetoric they use is starting to get to me.)

[AJ_Radio]

17 hours ago, visighost said:

When people say that "99% of indie games in sales are utter trash", I'm always curious if this is based on an empirical assessment on how many they've actually tried... I play a lot, but not 99% of what's available, so I humbly hold back sweeping generalizations?

 

As someone who likely plays more indies than most (based on often checking the lists of random people on the leaderboards), the only games I truly see as shovelware are the Breakthroughs and Something Breaks of this world, where no shits were obviously given. That's two publishers out of... a lot. Of the indie publishers that put out a lot of games, I think that Ratalaika may have doubtful trophy implementation, but I have found most of their games are genuinely fun to play. Sometimes You are experimenting in ways that few publishers do (and I'd argue it works most of the time). Chilidog might ruin the trophy experience with cheat codes, but again I am enjoying the games. Artifex Mundi follow the same formula every single time but... it works and my kids still beg me to play them together?

 

It's perfectly fine to enjoy a specific type of games, but that doesn't give you the right to spit on everything else.

 

I would love for Sony to add one or two indie games on PS+ every month, even if much older. That would be great exposure, and I would expect not at a high cost.

 

(I appreciate this may be a pointless post. The antivax trucker protests in my city and the rhetoric they use is starting to get to me.)

 

Most of Artifex Mundi's stuff is basically 'find the hidden object'. These games can be enjoyable, but my issue with a lot of point and clicks is guide walkthroughs and YouTube video guides completely destroy and spoil the immersion for me. I recently bought Thimbleweed Park for the PS4 console, which I also have on Steam. It's a good point and click from one of the all time greats in computer gaming history, Ron Gilbert of LucasArts, Secret of Monkey Island fame. Figuring stuff out on your own instead of relying on a quick guide for these point and clicks is much more immersive in my opinion.

 

The trophy standards definitely changed around 2015 - 2016. I honestly don't know who or what exactly set the standards in place, I don't know who did in the old days of trophy hunting either. But I definitely think Breakthough and Something Breaks are sold entirely on their trophy lists. They attract a niche audience, not exactly prevalent on the Nintendo Switch or the Steam platform, but are obviously on Sony consoles. Can't say much about Xbox Achievements, since I never really got into them.