Re: reflections from a former developer
Totally agree with @CAE_Jones. Where's our Turok: ? Cruising the world/USA/other titles of that nature? Mario Kart? Diddy Kong racing? DK country/64? Super Smash Brothers? Banjo-Kazooie? Golden Eye? And yes, you knew it was coming... Perfect Dark! Forever, Perfect Dark!
No, I haven't forgotten you, Sony... I had my fair share of fun on playstations, just not as much as I did on my n64, because I was a poor kid with poor parents and not enough money to indulge myself. Twisted metal was a cool concept; Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was fun to watch in action, and Resident Evil and Final Fantasy all had their place here as well. Spiro intrigued me but I only got to see someone playing it like, once. Everything beyond that was a sports game in some shape or form, so sadly can't comment any further, though I'm sure everyone who had a playstation can pick up the slack.
The point is quite simply that the two markets are still very, very different, and to try and compare them? You have to have a great understanding of the mainstream market and what it did to really see how drastically different it is from the audiogames market and what it has yet to do, conceptualize or even try to expand upon. The question of whether we should, however, is one that has been biting at me for the past ten years now, and the more I wrestle with it, the more I have come to believe that this is an exceptionally high expectation, considering that in all reality what we're discussing here is trying to meet up to the standard of a video game with an audio game, when the two are drastically different matters. One is usually developed by an already established company that collects data on players and what they're into and what things are trending at any given moment in time, then turns that data into a plausible budget to develop a game that will see some sort of return profit for its eforts, while the other is usually brought together by a gamer with a passion for gaming who trys to catch some semblance of what gaming is on a smaller scale, no graphics, no console other than a computer/smart phone, and very little money to work with and no agreed standard by which to develop because the rest of the community he or she depends upon is far to busy arguing about C versus Python versus a pile of scripts that can get the job done quickly but which may result in a less than desirable game in the end.
so the struggle to develop an audio game that compares to a video game is huge, and one that I believe most audiogamers do not take seriously enough. That Aprone was genuinely willing enough to invest so much time into his projects was a matter of good fortune from which this community benefited. I doubt it was all as easy as he made it seem, however, and if I had to guess what was the biggest struggle, I'm willing to bet anything he would at least toy with the idea of saying it's the community. that he had the desire and the passion to do it is more than obvious. That he always felt like his work was appreciated, particularly when he tried to innovate and introduce new concepts? I still wonder.
but here we are all the same. I believe we have failed and will continue to fail, because audiogames are a genre; not a standard. We have tried to rally around it and thus created a culture for ourselves and many of us are unwilling to leave it behind for fear of there not being anything on the other side. I thought my passion for gaming had died away, but this topic has proven to me that this is not the case, and posts here have reminded me of the fact that if I had a console, even MK or Tekken releases would satisfy me for a good long while before I put them down, and there's probably more outu there I'm just not considering right now because audiogames. this is where I've been for the past 10 years of my life. I won't say I didn't have any fun... I can still pick up JD, SL, q9, Time of Conflict which was really the only GMA game I honestly liked, and AHC is alright as a time waster now because I've already completed it a couple of times. Muds? I'm not hugely fond of scrolling text and never was... I only needed AOL chatrooms to show me that. Maybe it has something to do with my hearing impairment, but I never did learn to speedread with a screen reader just to process massive mountains of information. Alter Aeon was the exception, only because Mush-z is a thing. Miriani never had a truly dedicated soundpack, and everyone pretends to hate scripting while it's obvious they're still developing them for their own personal gains.
IN short, coupled with all of the titles I've already mentioned and some I haven't, ranging from Castlevania to Body Harvest, from Gran Turismo to WWF's In Your House, there are just more titles that I would willingly pick up for what some people may think is mindless fun. It is true that I've had more success with some than with others, and some are games I cannot play but which I've enjoyed watching other sighted people take a crack at. It's not like I want to be sidelined watching sighted people playing games while I do not... I don't. On the other hand, I don't want to pretend that I'm playing cool games that compare to those sighted people play, when in all reality, I'm not.
My hope is that we can soon call a spade a spade and proceed to make a greater push into the mainstream market by whatever means necessary. It seems so sad to me that with all the technology we have we do more to isolate ourselves as if we're some sort of underground society; the title Lair of the Blind Ones truly seems to apply here. It's a shame that we limit ourselves so, just because we don't necessarily feel accepted or welcome by sighted gamers. All that being said, if there is a single someone, anyone here, who can prove everything I've said wrong, I'll gladly take said proof and retract this post entirely with the most well worded apology I can come up with on behalf of audiogamers and audio games. It seems to me, however, that with all the time that has gone by and every chance that audiogaming has had to develop, this is where we stand, and we don't seem to be making any significant strides forward.
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