277 replies to this topic

[darqsyde]

Funnily enough, you could take Girls Und Panzer, replace the tanks with mechs, BAM! new BT series done.

OTOH, I suspect Battletech (et al) want to stay very far away from anime...for...reasons.

Edited by darqsyde, 09 May 2017 - 09:22 AM.

[Commander A9]

No.

[Lily from animove]

Anjian, on 09 May 2017 - 08:22 AM, said:

For Battletech as a franchise to survive, it needs to move forward. And by moving forward, you have to take the base concept --- a turn based strategy and tactics game, with squad based elements --- and repackage that for the platform of the future. That means, not tables, not paper, not figures and not dice, but in digital form for the most ubiquitious hardware of today and the future --- the mobile --- the smartphone, the phablet and the tablet. PC and console game will erode. In fact, more and more of the gaming industry's revenues and player base, is now coming from mobile.

It takes years for a console platform to reach 20 million. The PC platform can move around 60 to 80 million units per quarter but that number is going down, and only a small fraction can support high end PC gaming. Mobiles on the other hand, including tablets, move over 200 to 300 million each quarter.

Mobile is where the future game franchises will arise. We got Angry Birds rising first, and now we got Candy Crush, Clash of Clans and Clash Royale. The Clash games might be the most popular games in the planet right now. Recently a mobile game called Monster Strike (yes its made into an anime, you can see it in Crunchyroll), achieved revenues of over 1.3 billion dollars, which is more than League of Legends, perhaps the top online game for PCs. Puzzles and Dragons is also huge, and turned into an anime of late.

Recently a game called Summoners War hit the top of Google Play charts. This game boasts over 70 million players, and the game is in the 50 to 100 million install category. Pokemon Go claims over 65 million players with over 100 million downloaded, and has achieved revenues of over $1 billion. Even various action games are fast rising. As mobile hardware becomes increasingly sophisticated, so are the games.

You really cannot ignore this trend. The Battletech franchise has adapted to different technology trends in the past. Moving from the tabletop to the arcade and the Battletech pods, to the PC, then to the Internet and the multiplayer era, even to the consoles, and finally to the massive online F2P revolution. The next revolution is already here, and this franchise needs to put its stake on it.

Well a simple battletech like game could run properly on a mobile. So I hope they make battletech just with some downgraded graphcis to run on a mobile.

even simple stuff like mech commander could get a simple remke for mobiles, easy money.

Edited by Lily from animove, 09 May 2017 - 10:00 AM.

[Karl Streiger]

Wasn't there something similar for iPads?
And MWT was already for web clients - round based would hardly be an issue.
But the issue might not be the makeability but the licence

[Anjian]

Mobile games today are much more powerful than say even console games in the past. Here are some upcoming examples.



Using Unreal 4 engine for iOS and Android.

[Latorque]

darqsyde, on 09 May 2017 - 09:20 AM, said:

Funnily enough, you could take Girls Und Panzer, replace the tanks with mechs, BAM! new BT series done.

OTOH, I suspect Battletech (et al) want to stay very far away from anime...for...reasons.

Hm, Now that this hast been mentioned, i want to puke my guts out again, and am thoroughly reminded why BT needs to stay a few galaxies away from anything stemming from Japan.

Should something like that be produced, it would bei preferable for BT never to have seen the light of day

[Jables McBarty]

I'm sorry Bish but you're on a war-path and are getting just plain wrong.

Bishop Steiner, on 08 May 2017 - 07:18 PM, said:

I do find it funny that if a Korean or Chinese actress had been cast...there would have been no outrage.... despite the character being depicted as Caucasian, in a Japanese city...meaning being either white or Japanese being the logical choices.

Where is the outrage for those evil Hollywood sorts not knowing the difference between Asian ethnicity?

This is a counterfactual, not to mention your debate partner was specifically advocating for Asian representation, not Japanese.

Bishop Steiner, on 08 May 2017 - 08:11 PM, said:

I can't help you with that.

But I will quote myself to answer your accusation


You want to be pissed about whitewashing? Be pissed about it. But aim your blows where they count, so they matter.

It's like the Black Lives Matter issue. It's a legit issue, there ARE some out of control Cops, and there are some serious issues between the Police and Minority Communities, as a whole. But when one chooses to make a martyr out of a career criminal with a rapsheet a mile long, and a very grey zone case... it doesn't help the real issue. In fact it clouds the very black and white real instances of police abusing their power. And the media spending huge amounts of energy on 6 crooked cops, while totally ignoring the thankless efforts to protect and serve of the 100s of thousands of other cops... does nothing to help heal the divide... but healing the divide doesn't generate clicks or sell papers, etc.

And that is what it has truly become about. Agendas for profit. Not actually achieving social justice. Yes, many of the individuals involved are sincere, but don't even see how they are getting drug into a machine that doesn't care about them.... just the money to be made off their plight.

So aim your blows where it's legit, no matte how big or how small. Or keep swinging as you are, it's your choice. But this is a case of really taking swing at best a fringe case, without real ammo.

You think it doesn't matter to me, cuz I'm white? Well, I don't have kids, but my niece is half Filipino. You think I want her to be marginalized in life? Hell no. Take aim at the REAL issues, so maybe, just maybe, there is a chance for real change.

It's not just a few "out-of-control cops" it's systemic racism in law enforcement but more importantly broader American society (which then seeps naturally into law enforcement) that paints young black males as criminals.

The fact that you cite "a career criminal with a rapsheet etc etc" shows that you haven't been paying attention. The children being killed by police aren't criminals. That's why the issue is gaining attention--they've been killing gang members in the streets for years. But as they start to kill innocents who happened to be speeding or walking home through a white neighborhood, people are paying attentin.

I'm sure it all looks so simple though from south of the border.

[Metus regem]

Jables McBarty, on 09 May 2017 - 12:59 PM, said:

It's not just a few "out-of-control cops" it's systemic racism in law enforcement but more importantly broader American society (which then seeps naturally into law enforcement) that paints young black males as criminals.

The fact that you cite "a career criminal with a rapsheet etc etc" shows that you haven't been paying attention. The children being killed by police aren't criminals. That's why the issue is gaining attention--they've been killing gang members in the streets for years. But as they start to kill innocents who happened to be speeding or walking home through a white neighborhood, people are paying attentin.

I'm sure it all looks so simple though from south of the border.

While on on the other side of the American Northern Border, we just wonder what is wrong with you guys.... Canadian Culture and American Culture are very similar, yet vastly different...

[Bishop Steiner]

Jables McBarty, on 09 May 2017 - 12:59 PM, said:

I'm sorry Bish but you're on a war-path and are getting just plain wrong.



This is a counterfactual, not to mention your debate partner was specifically advocating for Asian representation, not Japanese.



It's not just a few "out-of-control cops" it's systemic racism in law enforcement but more importantly broader American society (which then seeps naturally into law enforcement) that paints young black males as criminals.

The fact that you cite "a career criminal with a rapsheet etc etc" shows that you haven't been paying attention. The children being killed by police aren't criminals. That's why the issue is gaining attention--they've been killing gang members in the streets for years. But as they start to kill innocents who happened to be speeding or walking home through a white neighborhood, people are paying attentin.

I'm sure it all looks so simple though from south of the border.

SOME of those have been children (In fact offhand, Tamir Rice is the only such child I can recall, and from the details on hand, his shooting does indeed seem inexcusable). And SEVERAL that have been in the news are exactly as stated, career criminals. AND THAT is where you lose your credibility to comment, because it's NOT black and white.

But please, keep smearing the hundreds of thousands of police who are doing their jobs, with the few bad apples, and keep making their jobs and lives even harder.

Metus regem, on 09 May 2017 - 01:08 PM, said:

While on on the other side of the American Northern Border, we just wonder what is wrong with you guys.... Canadian Culture and American Culture are very similar, yet vastly different...

People who buy way too much into what the black and white far right/far left media is shoveling, instead of people who actually bother to investigate the facts for themselves, largely.

But don't kid yourself, y'all got race issues too, it's just not been manipulated to be part of your national identity like in the USA.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 09 May 2017 - 01:45 PM.

[Alexander of Macedon]

Anjian, on 09 May 2017 - 08:22 AM, said:

For Battletech as a franchise to survive, it needs to move forward. And by moving forward, you have to take the base concept --- a turn based strategy and tactics game, with squad based elements --- and repackage that for the platform of the future. That means, not tables, not paper, not figures and not dice, but in digital form for the most ubiquitious hardware of today and the future --- the mobile --- the smartphone, the phablet and the tablet. PC and console game will erode. In fact, more and more of the gaming industry's revenues and player base, is now coming from mobile.

It takes years for a console platform to reach 20 million. The PC platform can move around 60 to 80 million units per quarter but that number is going down, and only a small fraction can support high end PC gaming. Mobiles on the other hand, including tablets, move over 200 to 300 million each quarter.

Mobile is where the future game franchises will arise. We got Angry Birds rising first, and now we got Candy Crush, Clash of Clans and Clash Royale. The Clash games might be the most popular games in the planet right now. Recently a mobile game called Monster Strike (yes its made into an anime, you can see it in Crunchyroll), achieved revenues of over 1.3 billion dollars, which is more than League of Legends, perhaps the top online game for PCs. Puzzles and Dragons is also huge, and turned into an anime of late.

Recently a game called Summoners War hit the top of Google Play charts. This game boasts over 70 million players, and the game is in the 50 to 100 million install category. Pokemon Go claims over 65 million players with over 100 million downloaded, and has achieved revenues of over $1 billion. Even various action games are fast rising. As mobile hardware becomes increasingly sophisticated, so are the games.

You really cannot ignore this trend. The Battletech franchise has adapted to different technology trends in the past. Moving from the tabletop to the arcade and the Battletech pods, to the PC, then to the Internet and the multiplayer era, even to the consoles, and finally to the massive online F2P revolution. The next revolution is already here, and this franchise needs to put its stake on it.

The problem there is that you're ignoring what the nature of those respective games are. Mobile games are very simple, free/freemium, and generally discarded quickly. They also tend to be very derivative--dumbed down versions of extant games and carbon copies of other mobile games.

You want to see what happens when you try to translate a video game with any degree of complexity to the mobile format for people who are not and almost certainly never will be gamers? You get stuff so terrible that it becomes a meme.

There's no future in mobile gaming for games like BTech because it relies on a mercurial audience, forces an immense dumbing-down of all content, and even if successful will only enjoy that success for a few years at best. It's the ultimate cash-grab style of publishing, even beyond the days of Atari shovelware, and makes it functionally impossible to build or maintain a core fanbase.

That, and good luck trying to get normies interested in stuff like BTech or D&D.

[Metus regem]

Bishop Steiner, on 09 May 2017 - 01:38 PM, said:

People who buy way too much into what the black and white far right/far left media is shoveling, instead of people who actually bother to investigate the facts for themselves, largely.

But don't kid yourself, y'all got race issues too, it's just not been manipulated to be part of your national identity like in the USA.

Never said we didn't have our own issues, some of them are rather hot button problems like with the Native American population, the issue of Western and Atlantic provinces seeing less funding than Ontario, let alone what goes to Quebec...

And that starts issues between french Canadians and every other Canadian... Hell the last time I was in Quebec, I needed some medical attention and the doctors and nursing staff refused to treat me, because I didn't speak french to them. So I had to over to Ontario to get treated.... Now I get to spend my time on Vancouver Island, and feel like I'm in my own little country away from all the issues of main land Canada... just that housing here is ridiculously expensive....

[Bishop Steiner]

Metus regem, on 09 May 2017 - 01:55 PM, said:

Never said we didn't have our own issues, some of them are rather hot button problems like with the Native American population, the issue of Western and Atlantic provinces seeing less funding than Ontario, let alone what goes to Quebec...

And that starts issues between french Canadians and every other Canadian... Hell the last time I was in Quebec, I needed some medical attention and the doctors and nursing staff refused to treat me, because I didn't speak french to them. So I had to over to Ontario to get treated.... Now I get to spend my time on Vancouver Island, and feel like I'm in my own little country away from all the issues of main land Canada... just that housing here is ridiculously expensive....

I hear that. Honestly always felt that one could take the Pacific Northwest, from maybe Portland, but for sure, the Seattle area, and BC, and make it's own little country, as IMO, Vancouverites and Seattleites seem to be come in common with each other than with the rest of the USA or Canada.

Would also probably make a pretty cool place to live, though all the yoga, kale and essential oils getting shoved in your face might get old.

[Anjian]

Alexander of Macedon, on 09 May 2017 - 01:46 PM, said:

The problem there is that you're ignoring what the nature of those respective games are. Mobile games are very simple, free/freemium, and generally discarded quickly. They also tend to be very derivative--dumbed down versions of extant games and carbon copies of other mobile games.

You want to see what happens when you try to translate a video game with any degree of complexity to the mobile format for people who are not and almost certainly never will be gamers? You get stuff so terrible that it becomes a meme.

There's no future in mobile gaming for games like BTech because it relies on a mercurial audience, forces an immense dumbing-down of all content, and even if successful will only enjoy that success for a few years at best. It's the ultimate cash-grab style of publishing, even beyond the days of Atari shovelware, and makes it functionally impossible to build or maintain a core fanbase.

That, and good luck trying to get normies interested in stuff like BTech or D&D.

Mercurial audience? I doubt the players of Clash of Clans and Clash Royale are anything than mercurial. In fact, they seem to be just as heavily invested or even more so than PC F2P. The Clash games have more online players than any PC game, including League of Legends. On Android alone there are more than 100 million Clash Royale players, and one extreme player has spent 12 grand on the game. CoC has dominating clans from the UAE, you know, oil sheik nation?

Your statements show a complete lack of study about mobile games. There are games out there where players have been in there for as long as that game has been around, and there are players that have shown extreme dedication. Games that are heavily rooted in both grind and cash investment which are the characteristics of F2P games tend to also seriously root players into the game.

Players could be interested in D&D and BT if these games are presented for them, and if the game is of good quality. If not, D&D and BT are going to be like AoL or MySpace or Excite. There are, a lot of players playing Heartstone, for example, in the tune of 70 million players announced in March 1. A game like BT or D&D in mobile would be in equal footing, people will approach them like any new game, no more or no less. How they will stick depends on the quality and richness of the game.

If you like to see a platform where players play a game for weeks, or days, then discard and play for another, that would be for consoles, because that is how their market works, with buy to play, packaged games.

Developers in Bethseda admitting they play mobile games and making their own.

https://www.gamespot...i/1100-6434943/

Edited by Anjian, 09 May 2017 - 04:16 PM.

[Alexander of Macedon]

You still completely dodged the core point: that mobile games are fundamentally too simplistic to mesh with stuff like BTech. They're the modern equivalent of those handhold Tetris pads or Minesweeper: fun in a pinch, but no gamer would choose one over a real game on their machine of choice. Games for non-gamers who want idle amusement in spare moments.

[Jables McBarty]

Bishop Steiner, on 09 May 2017 - 01:38 PM, said:

SOME of those have been children (In fact offhand, Tamir Rice is the only such child I can recall, and from the details on hand, his shooting does indeed seem inexcusable). And SEVERAL that have been in the news are exactly as stated, career criminals. AND THAT is where you lose your credibility to comment, because it's NOT black and white.

But please, keep smearing the hundreds of thousands of police who are doing their jobs, with the few bad apples, and keep making their jobs and lives even harder.


People who buy way too much into what the black and white far right/far left media is shoveling, instead of people who actually bother to investigate the facts for themselves, largely.

But don't kid yourself, y'all got race issues too, it's just not been manipulated to be part of your national identity like in the USA.

So quick to accuse others of blind spots, but clearly you have your own.

Blame it on "the media."

Again, easy to dismiss these problems when you aren't living right next to them.

And if you fail to acknowledge the systemic racism undergirds American society, then you're as much of the problem as the "couple of bad cops" who are brutalizing black America.

[Anjian]

Alexander of Macedon, on 09 May 2017 - 04:59 PM, said:

You still completely dodged the core point: that mobile games are fundamentally too simplistic to mesh with stuff like BTech. They're the modern equivalent of those handhold Tetris pads or Minesweeper: fun in a pinch, but no gamer would choose one over a real game on their machine of choice. Games for non-gamers who want idle amusement in spare moments.

Nonsense. You are missing the core point. Mobile games are not simplistic anymore. People don't spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on "Minesweeper".

https://www.bloomber...of-japan-gaming

Here is an example.

Atlantic Fleet


Legacy of Discord


World of Tanks Blitz


The first F2P wargame, Navyfield, enters the mobile field.

Mobile


Navyfield 1 on the PC




PC gamers are the only gamers?

[Johnny Z]

Anjian, on 09 May 2017 - 08:22 AM, said:

For Battletech as a franchise to survive, it needs to move forward. And by moving forward, you have to take the base concept --- a turn based strategy and tactics game, with squad based elements --- and repackage that for the platform of the future. That means, not tables, not paper, not figures and not dice, but in digital form for the most ubiquitious hardware of today and the future --- the mobile --- the smartphone, the phablet and the tablet. PC and console game will erode. In fact, more and more of the gaming industry's revenues and player base, is now coming from mobile.

It takes years for a console platform to reach 20 million. The PC platform can move around 60 to 80 million units per quarter but that number is going down, and only a small fraction can support high end PC gaming. Mobiles on the other hand, including tablets, move over 200 to 300 million each quarter.

Mobile is where the future game franchises will arise. We got Angry Birds rising first, and now we got Candy Crush, Clash of Clans and Clash Royale. The Clash games might be the most popular games in the planet right now. Recently a mobile game called Monster Strike (yes its made into an anime, you can see it in Crunchyroll), achieved revenues of over 1.3 billion dollars, which is more than League of Legends, perhaps the top online game for PCs. Puzzles and Dragons is also huge, and turned into an anime of late.

Recently a game called Summoners War hit the top of Google Play charts. This game boasts over 70 million players, and the game is in the 50 to 100 million install category. Pokemon Go claims over 65 million players with over 100 million downloaded, and has achieved revenues of over $1 billion. Even various action games are fast rising. As mobile hardware becomes increasingly sophisticated, so are the games.

You really cannot ignore this trend. The Battletech franchise has adapted to different technology trends in the past. Moving from the tabletop to the arcade and the Battletech pods, to the PC, then to the Internet and the multiplayer era, even to the consoles, and finally to the massive online F2P revolution. The next revolution is already here, and this franchise needs to put its stake on it.

More number cooking.

The bottom isn't the place to be, regardless of some being really good at cooking the numbers.

The push for consoles is strong enough, but PC gaming is where it is at. Games cannot be made on consoles just for starters.

This is a huge subject but it boils down to greed being the enemy of progress and anything good. Like it always is. Greed is a dead end even if it isn't looked at that way lately because of quite literally short sighted thinking, just not looking far enough down the road, or being completely unable to see that far.

[Templar Dane]

Japanese style makes me want to puke.

[Johnny Z]

Templar Dane, on 09 May 2017 - 06:29 PM, said:

Japanese style makes me want to puke.

Oh really? Have some of this then.

[Anjian]

Johnny Z, on 09 May 2017 - 06:27 PM, said:

More number cooking.

The bottom isn't the place to be, regardless of some being really good at cooking the numbers.

The push for consoles is strong enough, but PC gaming is where it is at. Games cannot be made on consoles just for starters.

This is a huge subject but it boils down to greed being the enemy of progress and anything good. Like it always is. Greed is a dead end even if it isn't looked at that way lately because of quite literally short sighted thinking, just not looking far enough down the road, or being completely unable to see that far.

Consoles at this point in this current generation is down by 125 million units compared to the previous generation. They certainly didn't go PC, since PC sales in general has been declining in the last few years, with the only sales gains coming from corporate laptops in a replacement cycle. Ask where did all these players go and why Gamestop is closing stores.

As for numbers cooking, Apple and Google not only count the downloads through their app stores, and unlike PC games, mobile games have much more accurate and precise analytical tools. You don't cook numbers in your corporate statements either as those are legally liable. When Niantic stated they made over $1 billion in revenue back in January for Pokemon Go, you bet they did. Nintendo pulled over $300 million from its first smartphone games, suddenly their future is looking a bit brighter now. Companies like Square Enix and so on, do mention and state mobile revenue earnings.

A turn based tactics or strategy game would more than fit the hardware of smartphone and a tablet. Those kinds of games are not resource intensive, and strategy games are booming on mobile. The Clash games happen to be strategy games.

For a BT or Mechcommander type game, you can open an ingame app market where you can sell not just mechs, but anything from tanks, infantry units to aerial units.

Edited by Anjian, 09 May 2017 - 06:45 PM.