Dragon Age

Dragon Age is for all masses, but aimed at bringing more of the "unwashed masses" to crpgs. Some of those unwashed masses may become niche retro crpg gamers. This outcome would increase the niche's numbers making it more appealing to developers. If developers think they can make money in that niche more games may be made.

Dragon Age will have to be played for what it is, not what we want it to be. The more numbers we have the more voice we can project and get developers to listen.

 

"Yellow piss fog" is quite funny, lol. Kinda like cars that are painted baby-s$#@ green. I'm so scatalogical today.

Anyways, I didn't think Marilyn Manson was even around anymore, after he threw a temper tantrum and went all drama queen doing the nightly cut & cry because his 21 year old girlfriend dumped him, lol. A little girl less than half his age and he freaks out. Freak. This loser is the second coming of Michael Jackson, lol.

They should be using ZZ Top's "Tush" for the game's opening theme.

 

Every game has a target audience in mind. Marketing is going to be aimed at the target where publishers think they can generate the most sales. If they can hit the sweet spot in their target market, any sales coming from targets outside of the main target is gravy. The first thing in any publisher's mind is recouping the costs of making the game.

Is marketing always correct? No. History has quite a few marketing mishaps, but 75-85% of the time it is dead on.

 

I'm guessing that most of the guys hovering around here and that play D&D pnp and otherwise are in their 30s (myself included). So with that in mind I wonder how the marketing would be used. :questionm

 

MonkeyLancer,

You may be surprised to find some of us are a great deal older than the 30's. Some of us pre-date Rogue by at least a decade.

 

Oops!

But.. I seem to predate Rogue by exactly a decade too being born in 76... Well I would figure that there were those who were older and younger, really based on what I thought I heard somewhere that the average "gamer" is in their 30s and not teenagers as some may think.

 

I'm skeptical, for all the reasons already stated above. Besides, Bioware's games have only been getting worse not better since BG2. If they break the trend, good, if not - I'll just go with the "told you so" line. From the previews it looked like another version of NWN with the same boring cookie-cutter plot, improved GFX and somewhat (but barely) changed character system. In short, nothing that's make me go "Hey! that's fun!" Personally at least - I prefer good writing to fitting into a game type (rather play a well-written FPS like STALKER rather than an RPG with a plot that has been repeated since late 80s).

 

Impressive. You work about 20+ hours per week more than me. Congratz!
:roll:

Anyway my post was more aimed at that little remark about isometric games. And frankly when Dragon Age was announced back in 04 it was a must buy title for me. Now? After the godawful trailers and seeing what BioWare has done with their so called original IP I'm on fence whether to buy that... thing.
Plus a lot of interesting titles are coming out together with DA roughly at the same time - for instance Divine Divinity 2, Risen, Alpha Protocol, Borderlands and the Kings Bounty expansion.

 

I want to raise this from the dead to point out something new on Dragon Age's website.

http://dragonage.bioware.com/addon/

The game releases in a month, but they are already creating mini-expansion packages for it. These expansions do cost money, and while that may upset some of you, I believe that it could be for the best.

I say that because Bioware is releasing modding tools with the game. If they are smart, they will create a marketplace for modders to sell their expansion content. Think of iPhone application developers selling their applications on iTunes. Game modders could sell their mods for DragonAge, with Bioware taking a portion I am sure.

I just wanted to point it out because it could be of interest to our modders. If this were to happen, the modders of Co8 could combine forces and make top quality mods, which in turn would make us a semi game studio (and hopefully some money for our efforts).

This is all speculation, but we know Bioware is selling addon packs, and we know that they are giving us the tools to make addons. It is just a short leap to create a marketplace for them.

 

DA combat is real time, isn't it?

If so, no thanks. I can't stand RT combat (with pause or not).

 

Yes it is real time. You do have a pause button and can change between camera views. You can look from behind the character (like MMO's) or above in an isometric ToEE-ish viewpoint. I haven't seen any videos or screenshots of the iscometric viewpoint though.

 

Kind of sounds like theWitcher, semi-D&D style. Some of the best Witcher stuff is done by modders with tools from the developers. Atari/Troika weren't so generous.

 

This is by far the coolest game video I have ever seen.
http://dragonage.bioware.com/sacred_ashes.html