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[Parkour Lewis]

First, to contribute to the topic, I was around for the first Tomb Raider, and have followed the series ever since, the only ones I never finished being AoD and Chronicles.  I supppose that I'm in the minority on liking Legend and Underworld, but I'm probably more forgiving on certain things, and I loved the way they connected Excalibur to Mjolnir in the story of those games.  I just thought that was neat as hell.  I also loved this one, especially considering the fact that it was new mythology that I'd never heard of, meaning I actually learned something (after some googling), which was neat point five.  I liked the gameplay, the story was great, and I'm very glad I bought it so I'll have it to play through again someday while I'm waiting for a gamefly rental to ship.

That said:

Yeah, that's a good video for the subject. Another big example would be GTA IV I think. Niko is written as a man looking for redemption, tired of the senseless violence of his lifestyle and his place within it, he regularly talks about how he is full of grief for the lives lost and how he will never do it again... and then you're forced to kill several dozen people, both innocents and enemies, so that you can finish the story mission.

Edit: And that, combined with some gameplay things I didn't like afterwards, is why Vice City will always be the best GTA.

Well that's the problem right there.  GTA IV wasn't about redemption.  The game's creator borrowed heavily from the themes of a movie called Koyaanisqatsi (Hopi Native American for "life out of balance"), and even used the film's theme music for the first commercials for GTA IV.  Koyaanisqatsi is about how humanity's development and industry, among other things, place it out of balance with nature, and even itself to a degree.  Niko wasn't looking for redemption, he'd long since realized that this was something he could never have, because his entire life had been to become a tool of death and destruction for others.  Old Men took young boys to go fight their war for them, a war that the boys did not even understand.  After the war he left to join the merchant marines (at least I think it was?), because fighting was the only trade he'd ever known, and still wound up fighting other peoples' wars, and even after going to America, led by the tales of wealth and opportunity (which he most likely even then knew were bullshit), he still gets swept up fighting other peoples' battles because it's the only thing he knows how to do and he's good at it.  Not because he wants to be, but because other people want him to be.  Niko's life is out of balance because the world he was born into is out of balance and he's merely a product of that world.  He never stood a chance.  No matter how much he may wish he could live a normal, quiet life, he knows that he never can, because his fate was already decided for him on the day he was born.  So he seeks out the man that betrayed him and his friends to find answers that he knows he'll never get, because he's asking questions that he already knows the answers to.  The world is as it is.  That's what the game is about.  At least in my opinion.

[ackblom12]

Greenman Gaming has this on sale for $13.60 with the voucher GMG20-LLASD-D8WBQ.

http://www.greenmangaming.com/s/us/en/pc/games/action/tomb-raider/

[ackblom12]

So I'm really enjoying the game, but it definitely feels a bit like misery porn at times. I'm also unsure of why they bothered to include any weapon but the bow.

It's mildly irritating how often you find a camp with no fast travel capability and I haven't finished the game yet, but thus far I'd probably rate it an 8 or 8.5.

[snalin]

Anyone that has any thoughts on how this game could never have been made the way it has been made if Square Enix had budgeted like sensible people? This game, Hitman Absolution and Sleeping dogs are all smash hits, each selling millions in their first months. Squenix expected half again or double the number of actual sales for each game, and are expecting massive losses

How do you sell about 6 million copies of three titles and lose money? Did they seriously think that Tomb Raider was a strong enough franchise on it's own to sell 5-6 million copies in a month? To put that in perspective, Black Ops 2, the latest game in a series that's arguably the most popular franchise today, sold 7,5 million copies in it's first month. They expected to be close to that.

Now, the franchise has sold a lot of games earlier - the first three games all sold 5 or more million copies (8 million at the highest), but those were [ilifetime[/i] sales. The last two only made 1,5 lifetime sales. The expectations for the sales of this game was blown so out of proportion with reality, and if they've budgeted with an expectation of that kind of sales, that's bad business based on crazy optimism.

At one point these studios has to understand that while there's a big market for games that take 300 people years to make, that market isn't endless, and when those projects fail, they fail spectacularly. For the same amount of money, you could make 6 games that takes 50 people to make (oversimplification here), and those games only needs one sixth of the total sales that big game required. Have those six teams spread their game releases out so they're not competing, and you've got a much better and safer business model.

[Masterpiece]

I fail to see how Tomb Raider failed spectacularly. It was the single best gaming experience I had this year.

[ackblom12]

It failed financially by a rather large margin.

[Masterpiece]

Let me tell you why it failed: They decided that they had to include multiplayer.

[Method of Madness]

It had multiplayer? I didn't even notice.

[Parkour Lewis]

Yeah, that multiplayer was kind of crappy and tacked-on.  I played it for all of two hours before giving up on it.  Loved the single player though, it's one of the few games that I turned around and played through it again right after finishing it.

[ackblom12]

Sure, the multiplayer likely played a large part in it. I know Multi is rather expensive to develop, though I'm not sure what percentage of the costs it was in this case. The main problem really is though that Squeenix has no idea how to make a budget. They never have.

[snalin]

It's not only them, though. There will probably be no more Dead Space games because the owners (EA) think a game series like that needs around 5 million players to be worthwhile investing in. It seems like there's no willingness to work with lower budgets whatsoever.

[Parkour Lewis]

And that's the problem with the modern business world.  They don't see it as "We spent 10 million on this game and made 30 million so we got ourselves a good little bit of money there.", they see it as "We spent 10 mil and made 30, but THESE guys spent 50 mil and made 200, so we just lost 190 million dollars."

[LTK]

It failed financially by a rather large margin.

It made a profit but failed to meet the publisher's expectations. Guess where the problem is.

[snalin]

Did it profit? I can find an official statement that says that development costs were covered, so they broke even, but that's about it.

Of course, the long term sales could be huge - while I've not done much proper research, the examples I can remember have the game's lifetime sales at about double what the sales during the initial launch were. While the income isn't that large later on - many of those are on lowered prices - there's still a good chance the game will see a neat profit over time. The investors doesn't seem to care much about the long term profitability of games, though - almost all the talking points are sales around launch.

[ackblom12]

Yeah, last I checked they're reporting a massive financial loss and it's because these games didn't make much, if any, profit.

[LTK]

This article reports that sales have been increasing in spite of their losses, and this one indicates that Tomb Raider was topping the charts, so that led me to infer that the game itself has been selling very well, but Square must be spending even more than that at the same time, which they do seem to acknowledge.

[Masterpiece]

Taking this thread out of the crypt, just to say... this thing looks BEAUTIFUL.

[Blyss]

Yeah, the new game looks amazing.  I think they've done good work with it, and I'll likely buy it.  The only problem I have is Microsoft still trying to tout it as exclusive, when it's actually just a timed exclusive.  I'll definitely be getting it for PS4, and not Xbone.