The New Golden Age of Games?

[Mindf!3ldzX]

Witcher 2, if you haven't tried it, then you've missed out on some epic gaming/storytelling.

[grave_digga]

Witcher 2, if you haven't tried it, then you've missed out on some epic gaming/storytelling.

I've seen your thread about it and watched some ingame vids. Not bad but that's not a "i must play this" title for me. And on the other side my rig is too slow for witcher 2 anyways and i'm not planing to update it soon.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

Thats the dark side to PC gaming eheh

[_Smith_]

Golden era of games was obviously in late 90s. Most of the best games from genres I care about was created that era:
4x strategy: Alpha Centauri
'Immersive simulator' subgenre of action games: Thief 1 & 2, Outcast, System Shock 2
RPGs: Fallout 1 & 2, Planescape: Torment
and of course classic shooters: Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Half-life, Unreal

Only hope for a new golden age I see in stuff like this

50k fans funds a game they want to play that has potential to sell digitally lets say 200k units more when shipped.

It's not something publishers will give a shit about. For small and medium game studios it may turns out however more profitable to serve niche audience that way than producing for a publisher a game that sell 1-2M and get nothing but a flat pay per man hour of work. There is no blowing money on marketing, high level execs salaries, CGI cinematics, scripting few hours of in engine cutscenes, celebrity voiceacting... with modern tools it should be possible to produce great games for few millions.

Imagine American McGee launching a crowd funding for Cthulhu inspired, no bullshit classic shooter, with crazy level design properly utilizing 3d space, with a toolset

Of course there is a large field for frauds and media will stop giving free publicity for these projects after some time.
I am really curious whether crowd funding good games will pick up, or fade away soon. I've also pledged 50 bucks for Wasteland.

As for The Witcher games, they have great art, atmosphere and writing, but gameplay is seriously lacking. W2 is a console game at heart, interface is from console hell and plays much better with gamepad than with mouse and keyboard. Beside making a decision that branch the storyline from time to time, there is no real freedom or emergent gameplay or interactivity with gameworld. I enjoy both good gameplay and good atmosphere, story and visuals. I accept that they rarely come in games both at once, so for me The Witcher is worth it. I can see how many folks here can not enjoy it, though.