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[GamerDad]

It's all very complicated and very illogical (can you spot the flaw?)

i see two. 1) you are not incorporated. 2) wife looks at bank account.

1. True, but I claim GamerDad on my taxes as part of my freelancer home business.

2. My wife also makes 90% of the money these days.

[Yegolev]

1. True, but I claim GamerDad on my taxes as part of my freelancer home business.

so you are filing as "self-employed"? the IRS doesn't even give you a reach-around when you do that. well, maybe that depends on your taxable income.

[SiW]

Unless you're making hardly anything (and can thus qualify for certain credits) or making lots of money, the IRS eats you alive with self-employment tax. Actually, state is worse for me, I can't even use the one-half-of-SE-tax deduction on my Iowa return.

[GamerDad]

1. True, but I claim GamerDad on my taxes as part of my freelancer home business.

so you are filing as "self-employed"? the IRS doesn't even give you a reach-around when you do that. well, maybe that depends on your taxable income.

I've been filing self-employed and a home business deduction for 8 years running. I basically get 3-4 1099's and aside from my wife's income, that's all our income. Usually I paid Quarterly but not the past couple years because the income dropped too low to make that make sense. This year was my first loss (my business only), so the IRS wasn't too unhappy. If this continues though....

[SiW]

Hey, it was a Timesplitters pic up there at first, you can't fool me!

Agreed that many games take themselves too seriously, but I think certain parts of the industry are guilty of this too.

I don't expect Psychonauts to sell. Let's face it, it's not "cool", is it? And that's where much of the industry appears to be moving to - the "cool" market.

[GamerDad]

It's got tremendous word of mouth though. It might do okay, but okay is relative given game budgets.

[momGamer]

Another problem is the "relativity" of humor. Something I think is hysterical might not even make you chuckle, and vice-versa. I still randomly giggle about a couple lines in Voodoo Vince. My kids think I'm an alien. Of course, they probably think that anyways but if you'll follow the immutable point....

[SiW]

Something I think is hysterical might not even make you chuckle, and vice-versa.

Very true. You'd think something like Monkey Island would be universal, but a lot of the jokes are truly groanworthy. If you don't like that sort of bad joke, then it's perfectly reasonable for you to call it "dumb".

[Atras126]

If you compare games to film (a flawed analogy at best, I know), most comedy films get little to no recognition for quality, and comedies tend to not make a lot of money.

[txa1265]

Just read #82, and thought immediately of LEGO Star Wars. Here is a game that is kid friendly, family friendly, and has a number of laugh-out-loud moments ... and is just fun.

It really struck me how rare that was ...

Mike

[Luke'sDad]

I'm definitely interested in Psychonauts. Some of my best gaming memories are working through the Lucasarts game with MathGoddess (Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, etc.)

TimeSplitters II doesn't really interest me... but that's more because I couldn't get into the first one.

I don't think the landscape has been quite as barren as you'd think. The Serious Sam and NOLF games are somewhat recent examples of games with a sense of humor that we're both critically and financially successful. Admittedly, I'm hard-pressed to come up with much else off the top of my head.

[txa1265]

NOLF - critically VERY successful, financially ... not so much. Too bad, really, a couple of the best FPS, and so few have played them.

Mike

[Tater-Dad]

Hear hear! why does everybody look at me like I'm nuts when I check the NES & SNES games?

[momGamer]

Because they're idiots, Tater. And they don't know what they're missing.

And Dave, Hear Hear! And this is coming from a hardcore pixel junkie. I enjoy those sorts of environments, and I will note every little detail. It might be a chick-thing, though. You know how you can walk through a room that you think is perfectly clean but then your wife will come in and exclaim that it's filthy and starting cleaning up stuff you didn't see? Possibly related to that one. That could also explain my sorry score in some of these games. Too much time staring at the walls.

But graphics aren't the seller for me. I want a good story, and a good game. The console guys have to know this at some level - I mean, why would they have chosen FFXII for their PS3 rendering demo? They could have gone to town with any number of other properties. They know they had us all hooked with the story and the game, and adding eyecandy was just topping.

Now, graphical bugs, that will kill a game for me. Clipping problems and textures that are skewed or not mapped correctly in particular. I'll probably finish it, but I probably won't play it again. But those things aren't caused by how many polygons are being blown downrange. That's the skill of the artists and the developers.

[txa1265]

There was an article somewhere that was discussing the technical aspects of scheduling and pipelining in the new PS3 and Xbox360 systems, and that the designs are done in a way that inhibits clever AI in favor of 'cool looking stuff' ... in other words, new games will get no smarter, only prettier ... and since that prettier stuff sells, and takes a lot of time, and time is short in design these days, we can only assume that games will continue to get shorter and dumber. In general, of course.

I just finished Nox and played some Gothic II today, and despite both games being 'outdated', they take apart their contemporaries in terms of gameplay ...

(nice article, BTW)
Mike