And the sun sets | Hacker News Reader

And the sun sets

tale-of-tales.com

46 pointspanza19 comments

I found this user comment fascinating:

I am one such person. I am interested in Sunset and fully intent to play it, but have not yet purchased it, for the simple reason that there are many titles that I already own that I have yet to play; I am suffering from a massive backlog, and from what I can tell, this is the case for an overwhelming majority of RPS readers

Here is a person who likes the genre, but they already own so much product that they don't have time to play a new game. What that says to me is that game publishers are doing themselves a huge disservice by charging so little for their games. If you could imagine a fine art store where everything was $0.99, you might have dozens of paintings in your collection that you don't have wall space to put them on.

So rather than paying a lot of money for a game and valuing it such that it is played before the next one is purchases, people binge on a dozen different games which never satisfy and only a few are "worth it".

It is a sad place for game developers (charge more but get few sales as people work through the crap) or charge less and get few sales because nobody knows which are good and which are crap.

There's a Japanese word, tsundoku, which means "buying books and not reading them, letting them pile up unread". There is a growing need for an equivalent word for games, I think. I have hundreds of games in my Steam library, and I think I've only played around half of them.

I only regret a few purchases, though. I enjoy having a large selection of options, and when I'm in the mood for something new I will browse through them and pick out something I haven't tried yet.

One person having a backlog doesn't mean that games themselves are overpriced. This isn't true of physical goods (like books), and certainly not true of digital goods, which are not limited in the same way on the production side.

The concept I was going for wasn't "overpriced" as it was "too much choice". I first experienced it when I reached a point where, when walking into the computer store to buy a replacement PC, I had enough funds to buy any computer in the store. Before that point buying a computer was easier, I took the amount of money I had, read reviews, and then bought the one that best met my needs and stayed in my budget. But without a budget, the number of choices is huge. And to some extent overwhelming. It lead to the worst laptop purchase I ever made (which was a Sony 8 lb monstrosity).

When things cost "a lot" in ones mind, it makes us far more discriminating buyers. That was certainly true when Games were $60 a pop, but not true when they are $1 - $9 each.

I find that to be an odd opinion. More competition tends to work out in the consumer's favor, doesn't it?

I think what we're missing is curation. In the hardware world, there are companies like Alienware and Apple that whittle down those choices into fairly straightforward options (though for a hefty premium, usually). For gaming, Steam is working on a Curators[1] feature that seems to be an alright start, but still needs a lot of work.

[1] http://store.steampowered.com/curators/

Yes and no, more choices add cognitive load to the choice. So up to a point its a good thing, beyond that point it becomes a more difficult thing. In a generally commoditized market such as computer games or laptops, curation is a good helper, doesn't completely solve the problem though because there is the question of how much like the curator the buyer is (some movie critics for example will pan movies that I find enjoyable so I have to calibrate my opinions with the critic's opinions)

Back in the day I got three different computer games magazines and could reliably buy the games that got high scores in all three, knowing I would get enough enjoyment out of them to feel they had good value. My Andriod and iOS game experience has been spotty at best.

I agree that relying on reviews/critics work best for similar tastes, but a responsible consumer should be aware of a (modest) variety of sources for that information to account for unavoidable biases.

Metacritic tries to do that by aggregating reviews, but apart from the extremes it just winds up rating everything as "average", which I suppose is accurate, but not really informative.

Other than a variety of sources providing a variety of perspectives on any given game, though, how else could consumers make an informed decision? Your suggestion that price correlates to quality doesn't add up particularly where games are concerned, as there have been several very high-dollar flops and disappointments in recent years. It also sounds like you're suggesting creating artificially higher barriers to entry to get there, which I disagree with philosophically.

After reading this, and having never heard of the game before, I checked it out and just spent 90 minutes playing it. It has some serious problems, and those are in my opinion the reason why it's not selling very well:

The basic idea is great. This game has the kind of factors that make you want to like it: it's experimental, it hints at a great story, it's a period piece. However, the disappointments keep adding up as you interact with it.

Sunset's graphics performance is abysmal on OS X. On a current, maxed-out iMac I had to keep lowering the settings throughout play and still wound up with intolerable choppiness. The game does look good, but not that good as to justify having these issues.

In the beginning, it's fun to play. You discover the house, and the house keeps changing in interesting ways every time you visit. It's atmospheric. The music is as stark and beautifully depressing as the apartment. I enjoyed doing the chores, and took great care of what I did in the house. But it soon dawned on me that my actions don't really have any consequences. The "plot" keeps moving along, telling you of the results of your actions, whether you actually performed them or not (at least as far as I can tell, it's kinda difficult to say).

The chores get old very fast, and you start to skip your work. Which doesn't seem to be of any consequence at all. The more you play, the more you get the feeling that you're moving on rails, pushing difficult-to-reach yet pointless buttons in the process.

The monologue put forth by the protagonist isn't encouraging either. While at times poetic, it seems mostly banal and fake - which is astonishing considering the subject matter. Talking about banality, I played this on Steam, and you literally get achievements for zooming in on book titles and record labels, for no apparent reason.

More than anything, it's a missed opportunity. Nobody involved in the process stopped and looked at basic factors like: the pacing, the graphics, the dialogue/monologue, or the user experience overall. The game feels like something you'd expect to be still in development.

Although the game is most likely a labour of love, the jarring shortcomings in its implementation make it look like it's coasting along lazily on the merits of its premise without any intention of actually delivering on it.

This is a really excellent point, doubly so when three of the bullet points in the article about what they did to sell Sunset had zero to do with improving the game itself (namely, hire a PR firm, take out a pricy internet ad, hire an image consultant).

Advertising your game is great and all (although I seriously question if their PR/ad markets were well researched before their money was spent, because their ROR on those dollars was essentially nil) but you HAVE TO have a good game in the first place or else no one is going to want to play it. After reading the article it seems like they were more interested in going around saying "hey we made this game and we really really want you to pay us money and play it!" instead of making a kick-ass game in the first place.

> what they did to sell Sunset had zero to do with improving the game itself

There are genres where this could and does work, but not in the niche Sunset is playing in.

> although I seriously question if their PR/ad markets were well researched before their money was spent

I agree, and it's an easy trap to fall into for anyone. Spending money in all the wrong places is always a danger, and the problem is that the people you are paying of course won't tell you even if they know you're making a mistake.

> instead of making a kick-ass game in the first place

I believe someone on the team thought the game was excellent as is. Development shops and teams of all sizes can exhibit work dynamics where problem areas get ignored and sub-par stuff is getting churned out. In a big company this might be due to politics and power structures. In small shops this might be because you don't want to disappoint a close friend.

Somebody at that company should have said "this is a good idea, and a promising prototype, now let's get back to the drawing board and keep iterating". In retrospect I don't get the bitterness expressed in the article. It's not like they lack talent, and it's not like they're drastically under-appreciated for unknowable reasons. Those would be reasons to quit. But not this. This is something you can learn from and improve on.

What I took from the article was that this just isn't going to make enough money for them to deal with it.

Iterating gets expensive, fast. And apparently they're not making back the money they put in.

I think that's fair. There's a limit to how much you should have to spend to entertain other people if they're not (collectively, after expenses) paying you.

> I believe someone on the team thought the game was excellent as is

Behind every terrible work of art is a creator insisting that it's brilliant.

Artists love their art the way parents love their children. That means they're not really reliable judges of its quality, so a key to success for them is finding people who can be objective, and learning to listen to them.

They have made "The Path" (http://tale-of-tales.com/ThePath/), for me on favourite example of something on the edge of "a game"/"a non-game". And playing with convention of a game (you need to fail to "win") and a story (what is real, what is a metaphor?).

I love the analysis on https://gamerdame.wordpress.com/2011/08/13/in-depth-analysis... (ALERT: heavy spoilers and an interpretation that can affect your perception).

I know them better as the developers for "The Endless Forest" (http://tale-of-tales.com/TheEndlessForest/) which made a bit of a splash a few years ago as something original and different.

Indie game makes no money, news at 11.

Also, paying PR and marketing people to market some niche 'art' game? WTF are these people thinking?

I think their conclusion - that the advice they got just didn't fit for their games - is a little too neat, and leaves out a couple of factors that were absolutely in their control (pricing, for instance).

I hate to be harsh. I read that whole piece and I'm on board. But despite that, and looking up the game [1] on Steam, I still have no freaking clue what the point of the game is. The description makes it seem like you're cleaning some guy's office. The trailer doesn't show any gameplay footage. The screenshots look like a poorly rendered interior decorating catalog. What are you supposed to do in this game that is fun? I'm sure there's something - I'm guessing it's one of those graphical adventure type games, but I have no idea. And if I have no idea what kind of game this is, I'm not going to drop 10 bucks on it. And I can't tell from any of the normal channels companies what this game is about, other than being artistic.

1) http://store.steampowered.com/app/287600/

Emily Short (of interactive fiction fame) did a really good review of it a few days ago:

https://emshort.wordpress.com/2015/06/18/sunset-tale-of-tale...

This is what happens when you try to make art as games instead of games as art. Art doesn't have to be fun. Games do.

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