Messages

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General Discussion / Re: So... do we have any idea what project #4 is?

« on: February 08, 2013, 05:49:14 AM »

At this point I'm perplexed less by the radio silence on project 4 and more by the fact that we haven't heard anything about anything else, either. I can think of three possibilities here:

1. Project 4 is the War and Peace of JRPGs, and they've been working on it steadily for the past fourteen months. If this is the case, what on Earth could it be?

2. Their NDA forbids them from mentioning anything about any project until project 4 is out the door. That would be weird, but as far as NDAs go, I've seen far weirder. Moderately plausible.

3. Their contract with their mysterious partner forbids them from working on any other project until project 4 is out the door, and they've been forced to sit idle for the past six months while said partner dicks them around. It's not inconceivable, based on past experience - I've actually worked for an outfit that ended up in that exact position - but it'd definitely be a "wow, you really signed that?" sort of deal.

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General Discussion / Re: So... do we have any idea what project #4 is?

« on: February 01, 2013, 03:34:36 PM »

SpaceDrake, can we get a comment about the "slightly over a week at most" you posted over 2 weeks ago? even if it's a "sorry it didn't work out, black magic is at work here. i can't say anything else because any date i say will be missed anyway"

THERE IS NO PROJECT 4, ONLY ZUUL.

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General Discussion / Re: So... do we have any idea what project #4 is?

« on: January 31, 2013, 05:18:06 PM »

Alternatively, all this theorising is off the mark and it has nothing to do with XSEED whatsoever.

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General Discussion / Re: So... do we have any idea what project #4 is?

« on: January 18, 2013, 08:41:18 PM »

Those responsible for announcing these announcements have been sacked by those responsible for sacking, as has just been announced.

Mynd you, møøse bites kan be pretty nasti.

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General Discussion / Re: So... do we have any idea what project #4 is?

« on: January 17, 2013, 06:31:10 AM »

So... we're announcing a delay of the announcement to announce the date of the announcement?

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General Discussion / Re: So... do we have any idea what project #4 is?

« on: January 16, 2013, 12:48:41 PM »

The new info will be that there will be new info sometime in the unknown future.

Announcing the date that you'll be making an announcement about the announcement is the "in" thing these days.

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General Discussion / Re: So... do we have any idea what project #4 is?

« on: January 14, 2013, 03:06:58 PM »

Why would Capcom bother to outsource it anyway? They're big enough to localize this by themselves.
Unless they think they can get "cheap" labor force in form of indie localization teams.

As mentioned upthread, that's actually a fairly common tactic for some of the big publishers, though labour costs aren't the primary motivator. When they've got a property they're not sure of, they bring on a small-time "partner" to handle it. The contract and NDA are written so that if they later decide to pull the plug, it's the partner that takes the financial hit and eats the bad PR. They're essentially outsourcing risk.

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General Discussion / Re: What would market interest be for a Recettear spiritual successor?

« on: December 26, 2012, 08:14:13 PM »

It's very clear when you so much have, for instance, companions with bouncing breasts and such.

It's not always as clear-cut as you'd think.

To draw a parallel, some folks argue that, because American comics are filled with men with ridiculously idealised physiques parading about in tight spandex, American comics are obviously constantly pandering to female readers. Clearly, these people are full of it, but they're right about one thing: male characters in American comics are indeed sexualised. It's just that they're sexualised as a component of a male-targeted power fantasy; any actual appeal for female readers is a secondary concern at best.

Similarly, the fact that a female character has large breasts doesn't automatically mean she's being offered up primarily for a male audience. The strong, sexy power fantasy doesn't just appeal to dudes. Melvia, for example, spends the whole of Atelier Totori parading about in a bikini, yet her animations have very little of the vamp about them, and her personality basically boils down to "awesome big sister".

(And that's not even looking at the male half of the equation. Some of the guys you can recruit are straight-up yaoi stereotypes - based on what I've seen, they actually make some straight dudes uncomfortable.  )

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General Discussion / Re: What would market interest be for a Recettear spiritual successor?

« on: December 26, 2012, 04:13:59 PM »

There are no girls on the Internet, hence the assumption.

According to recent studies, slightly over 50% of gamers in the under-sixteen age bracket are female. If Western CRPGs aren't selling to them, that's reflective of a problem with the games, not an imbalance in the market.

What's My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic target audience again?

It seems that everything target audience related got absurdly mixed up recently.

Not really. Any well-written show is going to cross demographic boundaries simply by virtue of not sucking, but Friendship is Magic is nonetheless very unapologetically targeted at young girls. There's just a vocal minority of dudes who are committed to denying that this is the case because they can't stand the thought that anything popular might not be designed to cater specifically to them.

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General Discussion / Re: What would market interest be for a Recettear spiritual successor?

« on: December 26, 2012, 03:26:25 PM »

I was just saying that there's a lot of gamers out there who don't really want to play a game where they're a 15 year old girl in a short skirt running around.

What about actual fifteen-year-old girls?

One of the big differences between mainstream JRPGs and mainstream Western RPGs is that the former will quite happily market themselves to female gamers as a primary target audience, while the latter treats female gamers as a secondary market, if it acknowledges them at all. Your automatic assumption that the Atelier games appeal primarily to male otakus who get off on playing as tweenage girls is illustrative: the primary target audience of the Atelier series is not college-aged men, but middle-school girls.

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General Discussion / Re: What would market interest be for a Recettear spiritual successor?

« on: December 26, 2012, 02:01:17 PM »

As noted upthread, the market's obviously there; Recettear itself is a clear spiritual successor to games like Rune Factory and the Atelierseries (the creators' protestations notwithstanding), both of which do reasonably well - if nothing like AAA numbers - in the West. The issue isn't creating a market: it's making yourself stand out enough to capture that market's interest. Realistically, a project isn't going to out-Atelier the Atelier series on an indie-game budget, so you're going to need your own "hook".

(Personally? I'd put in in space. My vision of the perfect game is basically Starflight 2 meets Atelier Meruru.)

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General Discussion / Re: So... do we have any idea what project #4 is?

« on: December 20, 2012, 05:31:17 AM »

Hey, neat - a co-op version of 1000 Tiny Claws. 

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General Discussion / Re: Anime-Centric kickstarters

« on: December 10, 2012, 02:48:31 PM »

Given that the publishing schedule for the tabletop RPG is a perpetual rolling catastrophe, I'm morbidly curious to see just how badly the Anima video game is going to blow its targeted release date. Based on past performance, I'd set the over/under at about March 2016. 

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General Discussion / Re: So... do we have any idea what project #4 is?

« on: December 05, 2012, 06:53:40 PM »

Maybe Nintendo just doesn't care because it's so big that it doesn't make a financial difference for them (or has importing within plans). That would be my guess.

Nintendo doesn't care because they don't sell their consoles for less than it costs to manufacture them, hoping to make up the difference in software sales. They're the only console maker that actually makes money on the hardware. Their profitability is guaranteed regardless of how well the games sell.

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General Discussion / Re: So... do we have any idea what project #4 is?

« on: November 29, 2012, 05:09:16 PM »

IMO theres just a lot of hate followers and haters because its cool ""Justin Bieber sucks" says my friend, so i must think he sucks also because i think i should hate him" Cognitive dissonance
So there are a lot of people that can't really give a reason why they hate twilight or Justin Bieber besides " stalking old guy" " Over idolised preteen" to come to my point: people cant think for themselves anymore and just follow what others do

In a lot of cases, I think there's an even simpler explanation than just following the crowd. To wit:

1. Justin Bieber appeals to girls.

2. Femininity and everything associated with it is inherently contemptible.

3. Therefore, Justin Bieber is contemptible.

There are a lot things dudes are expected to hate with a passion for which the sole common denominator is that women like them. It's just straight-up unexamined misogyny.