At first when I opened this topic, I expected to read some pleasant reminiscing on the old times when audio games were new and fresh. I experienced this feeling in 2004 when I discovered Egg Hunt, Super Liam and in 2005 the BSC Games titles (now Blindsoftware). I enjoyed the hell out of those games, and still enjoy several of them today. In fact, in my personal opinion they really paved the way for future titles and some of them are still too unique to push aside. There was a whit and a charm to those games that I haven't felt since. Maybe that's simply because they were new to me? Or maybe because they were new in general. I don't know.
Later I played more games, but during the early days of my gaming, the community seemed, at least to my shallow perception, to be less stigmatized, less flaming and more productively doing things. Maybe lots of drama existed but I didn't see it, or maybe things were a little more civil back then. I don't know. Maybe I'm talking like an old geezer!
In any case, I thought that was going to be what this topic was about, and I would've said, hmm that's fair. But instead it has turned into a whine fest. It is this kind of stuff which holds the community back.
Are there a lot of card games that you don't like? I don't like them either, I can't remember very many times where I willingly sat down and played one, so I can sympathize. But you seem to have a lot of baggage against them which is considerably lacking in professionalism. If you want more of other games, either look for other games or try to learn to program. If it is too confusing for you, (and I find it extremely painful myself), then please show a little more respect to people who develop even card games. Card games are easy to make, so they serve as not only quick entertainment for those who like those sorts of games, or for nice exercises for beginner programmers.
There are other statements you make which seem contradictory at best, and ignorant at worst. First off you aren't organizing your thoughts and seem to be venting just to vent.
Erick wrote:Sidescrollers are just getting boring for me. Some of them are great. others not so much.
Why would you say they are boring, and then immediately after add that some of them are great, others not so much. Everything in life is like that. That's like saying soda is foul because I've had some that wasn't carbonated well, but other soda was okay. Your actual opinion is very unclear. Any time you contradict yourself like that, you really should be more specific as to why you like some and not others.
These contradictions are all over the place here. First you say that all we have is Blindfold Games, then all we have is stupid card games, oh a Hero's Call is good, Alter Eon is my favorite, this is okay, that is okay I guess... So what is your opinion? Do we have just crappy Blindfold and card games, or a mixed bag with some gems that you in fact like? This kind of thing doesn't make much sense to people who are trying to take you seriously. So for starters, you should at least think before you type and try to organize your thoughts more so that people know what you are actually trying to say.
Also, having a wide perspective helps. You seem to be hung up on narrow things like specific games, or even specific developer (you said STW and Redspot are stupid), well they're by one developer so fine, you don't like his games. What about the many other games and developers you scarcely mention, or only mention when people disagree with you and call your attention to them? You seem to have played those games enough to give a brief opinion of them, so you have lots of opportunity to cut down on the generalizations!
One more thing: there are plenty of reasons why audio games can be removed from the app store or no longer supported in general. When you buy an audio game, you are not buying ownership of that game. The company still owns it and can do what they wish, whether it be updating it, or stop supporting it. There are plenty of reasons to stop supporting a game, from financial to personal to compatibility for target devices. Some games are stopped simply because the tools that were used are now deprecated and it is just too much work to rewrite it for the new system.
If a company doesn't support the game any longer, it will be removed from distribution. On Windows this really can't be done (people will just share the setup), but on platforms like IOS with strictly controlled distribution, complete removal certainly does happen. And while there are probably wizards out there who can jailbreak and get the app to install despite its removal, there's no telling whether it actually will work, given the nasty habits of apps to stop working on newer devices or newer versions of IOS, which abandonware stuff obviously can't keep up with. Open source is not a big thing with Apple so people can't just fix the problems, and besides, for the Somethin Else games there's far more than compatibility at stake, there are royalties too from what I remember. It sucks, I know. I'm not about to tell you it doesn't, or that you should just forget those games. I have fond memories of them too. But I will tell you that the best thing to do is move on, because there's nothing to be done.
Finally I will agree with you that we need more audio games. Not because there aren't any good ones (though there are a lot of modern games I don't particularly enjoy), but because more is never a bad thing. That's why, even when a new audio game that I don't like comes out, I at least try to read about it, and if the mood takes me, I will give it a shot. I am a big fan of action/arcade games, with some adventure elements. Not card games, not RPGs, not trivia games, not heavily strategic games, not storybook games, not a lot of online stuff or multiplayer or MUDs, and a lot of those seem to have been big in this scene for a while and still are going strong I think, but you know what? I still am happy for every game we do have.
I also will acknowledge that there are glaring imbalances, but admittedly a lot of those imbalances are felt less by me because of my somewhat narrow preferences. I mentioned the genres I like above. As for platforms, I only need Windows and IOS support, and lately Android too but only for messing with really, so I am lucky in the sense that I have the platforms that these games are often released for. But I can definitely see an issue where people for instance only have a Mac. Well there are few games for Mac, and that's a problem. But most of the teams who develop audio games are very small, and some are solo jobs! They at least deserve respectful constructive criticism if anything productive is going to happen.
Make more of less, that way you won't make less of more!
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