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Forums - Gaming Discussion - I don't like the direction Sony is taking

 

Do you only play narrative games?

Yes 162 39.61%
 
No 247 60.39%
 
Total:409

This is an exceprt from an interview of Jim Ryan, courtesy of GameSinners:

This was revealed by Sony’s Jim Ryan in an interview with Glixel, with the article mentioning that the game’s “new, more narrative-focused, open-world approach with a grizzled, bearded Kratos coming as a direct result of Sony’s new global thinking.” Ryan adds that “It’s a franchise that has historically acutely under-performed in Europe. Hack and slash games tend to not do so well in Europe, so the narrative this time around will make a big difference. European gamers love narrative games.”

http://gamesinners.com/news/2017/06/05/god-war-ps4-will-open-world-narrative-focused/

 

Firstly, I thought the gameplay looked great, and the atmosphere was spot on. Also God of War has always been narrative focussed, just a very differnt kind of narrative from your typical Naughty Dog game. But still I disagree with his statement for a variety of reasons.

 

This is wrong fro a variety of reasons. First, its wrong to homogenise all of Sony's franchises into The Last of Us like games, because even with that game's success I'm sure gamers do want varierty of games and if trhey want The Last of Us they have The Last of Us Part II to look forward to.

With this line of thought its also clear that targetting just that segment of the market wouldn't actually benefit any of these games because that segment already has another game to look forward to.

We saw what happens when you have a homogenous set of games, when the market shifts to different kind of products all of your franchises lose appeal at once and you have no backup left to serve the new tastes of the market. I think to a degree that is what happened with Microsoft games outside of Forza this generation, Halo and Gears of War appeal toa fairly similar market and both heavyweight franchises lost their weight at once this generation, while Forza has continued to thrive and Forza Horizon has expanded its audience this generation.

Second, it limits developer's creativity. The reason The Last of Us succeeded in both reviews and sales was that Naughty Dog were allowed to do what the wanted to, given creative freedom, and so they had a passion to make the best kind of product in its niche with The Last of Us. Its success came as a result of that. This is something Sony were good with last generation, that is why we had a diverse lineup of games like Infamous, Uncharted, God of War, Gran Turismo, Resistance, LittleBigPlanet and The Lat of Us. Sony is going to lose the one thing that makes their games stand out from both other first party games and third party games, something that is a reason millions of people play on PlayStation.

Also eventually third parties will see the niche as being successful, make games in the niche and take over Sony's first party games in the niche with their bigger budget due to being able to serve a larger audience. Its an unsustainable business practice and should be left in the dust. Jim Ryan's comment on PS2 backwards compatibility also irked me, he has no right to talk about what gamers want, he didn't even take a sample of gamers to decide what they want, but just that he didn't like PS2 games. So what? I like some PS2 games. Many people do. I can even play them on my PC, so why not on its own family? It makes no sense Sony. If gamers ask for it, give it to them.



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Story & narrative-focused is what I want.
That and RPGs.
So Im good with where things appear to be heading.

Im not really big on multiplayer focused games, and games as a service strategie sounds horrible to me.

I dont mind them trying to renew God of War like this.

Also it seems like 3rd party, and MS are all telling us "games as a service, multiplayer", I think its good sony is saying something differnt.



JRPGfan said:
Story & narrative-focused is what I want.
That and RPGs.
So Im good with where things appear to be heading.

Im not really big on multiplayer focused games, and games as a service strategie sounds horrible to me.

There are a lot of other things you can be without going multiplayer. I myself am not interested in multiplayer games.

I want gameplay depth, something narrative focussed games often fail to do. I want gameplay innovations, fun gameplay in a single player game. God of War looks fun though, but Sony Santa Monica is the xception in that they can do both. Other developers, I'm not so sure.



Out of all the stuff that Jim Ryan has said, you chose this quote? lol :p



I dont get the vote, why NO is winning.
Sony thinking globaly with game design, so games appeal to more markets... is somehow bad?
Yep who wants them listening to consumers anyways right?



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On the contrary, I love what Sony is doing. PS4 has a ton of variety and this is simply adding to that.



I'm thinking he might just be talking out of his ass. As you said, God of War has always been narrative focused. As far as GOW 4 having a more "open-world approach", we'll have to see to what degree this manifests itself, as he's not out-and-out saying it's open world. I'm fine with the idea.



- "If you have the heart of a true winner, you can always get more pissed off than some other asshole."

I never was really interested in God of War, well since the reveal last year 100% Day 1 buy, cant wait.
And God of War was always the same, it needed a big change.



Same here. It's like all of Sony's studios thought 'if Naughty Dog can do it, so can we', but nah, it doesn't work like that. What you end up getting is Sub-Ubisoft action adventures with nothing new brought to the table. Anyone expecting Days Gone to be anything more than what EA or Ubisoft ship out on an annual basis is to be dissappointed, trust me.

Santa Monica will undoubtedly fail at trying to be as clever as Naughty Dog when it comes to subtext in the characters and stuff like that, in that bracket only Rockstar fly with ND. SM don't have a history with well told stories and good character writing, why should I be excited about this games story? They've fucked with the gameplay and give us Ryse 2, it's insane.

On the other hand Sony's consoles get a whole lot more than their studios stuff, and thank God for that, because the truth of the matter is Sony's studios just aren't that good.



Sony should focus more on multiplayer games and FPS.