Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: I kind of liked the bit of The Void I played

[quote name="jeep"][quote name="Hans Clastorp"] Of course, the publisher wants to sell a lot of books, and so he wants the book to appeal to as many people as it can. So why, then, does the publisher not say to the author: "This is a really good piece of literature, but I think we should release it in two editions, one for the 'ironman' readers who want the complete experience, and then we'll strip out all the challenging sections for the 'casual' edition. In this way, the book will appeal to more people, and you won't even need to write more because all we are doing is removing things you've already written!" This would be sort of ridiculous for a few reasons, not the least of which is that "casual"/(non-) readers don't want to read a book like Infinite Jest. It's just made for a different audience. [/quote] serialized novels, books on tape, simplified english versions for esl readers, books are often re-released in an abridged edition after the movie comes out the esl thing is important because I'm talking about making an alternate difficulty setting to appeal to people who don't "get" normal gameplay [quote]If you are making a game, it's seems like a better bet to target it towards people who play the kind of game that you are making. My grandma isn't going to buy Half-Life 3 no matter how effortless it is to play/watch. I mean sure, if there's no cost, having it potentially appeal to more people rather than less is always preferable; but there are always costs and tradeoffs to any design decision, even if it's just additional QA/playtesting.[/quote] yes cost. for `Age of the Massive Dragons: Beginnings`I'm going to test this on the cheap: it's already got 'rpg elements' and 'cutscenes' etc then I've got some animators on retainer. the qa group just spent months playing the shit out of it. I take the best qa guy and a junior animator but he really wants to direct and I let them come up with the perfect playthrough for battles, then I replace the combat with this as a cutscene. maybe no one cares or plays it and I just drop it, but if some people on the internet make a website where they wish this would happen more often, I will milk them for all they're worth. for the sequel, `Dragon Star System Effect Story 2: You Will Literally Ride A Dragon In Outer Space` I have a plan in advance where I hire an extra writer (who in this perfect scenario is both awesome at writing shit and also likes video games...lol) to make sure the story is non-retarded, but otherwise I do the same fucking thing I did on the first one. by this point millions of game players are whining that I even give a shit about these choose your own fantasy adventure types, and they complain that pure story mode "isn't a real game" and "isn't hard enough to be interesting" and welp that's basically free marketing to people who don't like the first group anyway. Finally I do the exact same thing with `Revenge of the Jedi 3: Reckoning`because let's not be stupid, I'm just in this for the capital, it's not like dr me and the other good doctor ever had the first idea how to make a game anyway. next series, though, maybe I add in some non-useless writers and see what happens.[/quote]