Gaming's Great Debate!

@V: I know, I agree. Video Games are art. But believe it or not, some people seem to think otherwise. It's actually produced some pretty good debates on other sites etc.

I don't see how video games wouldn't be art, tbh.

Rotaretilbo wrote:You know, the real question is, why would Halo vs CoD be gaming's "great" debate. What about Valve vs Blizzard or something?

Or something more general than two companies, like XBox vs PS3 or console vs computer?

Hmm...

I truly have to say from a campaign standpoint, Call of Duty wins by far for me. Hell Defending Hill 400 on Veteran in COD2 is still my best achievement in my video gaming experience. And its not only COD2 that's good, each COD game i played added something to their campaigns i enjoy. COD4 first Marine level and sniper missions. MW2 taking back Whiskey Hotel and burning alive. All these moments i love to go back and play through.

Halo in my opinion had a solid campaign, but i just don't have those memories that i want to relive again, with one exception, exploring the city in ODST, which is one of the coolest experiences in Halo. Just ask Vigil, we explored the place for hours finding all neat stuff.

Anyways, for multiplayer, i don't mind playing either. I tend to lean towards halo 3 cause of customs, but Call of Duty makes Mikey Myers fun as hell...
But multiplayer for me is more of me just chatting to my friends about different stuff while playing a few games with each other, which i just so happen can do in both games. ^.^

So yeah...

Rotaretilbo wrote:You know, the real question is, why would Halo vs CoD be gaming's "great" debate. What about Valve vs Blizzard or something?

HL vs Halo would be pretty interesting...

HL would dominate in the story department.
Gameplay would be interesting. HL has puzzles and Halo has more strategic firefights.
Halo would triumph in multiplayer.

Now THAT is something that's debatable. COD, though? Not even close.

Speaking of HL and puzzles, do you suppose they'll have the hand-held portal device in Episode 3 (whenever it finally decides to come out)? They were on their way to Aperture Labs after all. How epic would that be?

well in the multi-player aspect you also have to take into account the mods. HL has some great mods with really good multi-player. Things like Gmod, PVk, and Insurgency.

CivBase wrote:Speaking of HL and puzzles, do you suppose they'll have the hand-held portal device in Episode 3 (whenever it finally decides to come out)? They were on their way to Aperture Labs after all. How epic would that be?

Valve stated that they wanted to keep their two franchises separate after Ep:2 (Ei: Not using any of Portal's signature gameplay mechanics in Ep:3) giving each game a distinct and definitive purpose, instead to blurring the line between the two games.

Not even a question

Ringleader wrote:When it comes to video games, popularity is synonymous with success, which is kind of why I used the two words interchangingly.

Popularity a factor of success, but it's not the only one. Psychonauts is supposedly a great game, but it wasn't very popular. I'd still consider it a successful development, though.

Popularity is large enough a factor of success (99%-ish?) for me to use the two words interchangeably. For instance, I can say that psychonaughts was not popular, therefore it was not successful,

Ringleader wrote:...If it was really that hard to deduce that. Unless of course, you're playing dumb on purpose to peddle this irrelevant point across with chin held high.

I don't play dumb.

Maybe you aren't playing...

Ringleader wrote:Lets not forget that the original argument was that you said ODST is an expansion, not a full, stand alone game. And even though this thread is about which games are good, and even though we both basically share the same stance on ODST (being good)... ...But, you still seem to think ODST is an ekspanshun, even though it is a stand alone game that you do not need another game to play, I'm afraid I cannot parse that level of reasoning.

Expansions are games that use the same setup from its root game to add a few new things (a new campaign and firefight). The root game isn't necessary because the xbox doesn't work like that, genius. You don't install games on an xbox. Normally an expansion draws off of files from the root game, which means there is very little actually in the expansion; that makes it so cheap. Because they have to make it work independently for the xbox, they had to throw in all the old stuff and bump up the price.

It's really not that hard to understand.

It's actually very hard to understand something you just blew out your ass, even more hard to understand is the fact that you think everyone should understand your reason, even though you're making up your own definition for an expansion. I will not:

Summary

The price of an expansion pack is usually much less than that of the original game. As expansion packs consist solely of additional content, most expansion packs require the original game in order to play. Games with many expansions often begin selling the original game with prior expansions, such as The Sims Deluxe Edition (The Sims with The Sims: Livin' Large). These bundles make the game more accessible to new players. When games reach the end of their lifespan, the publisher often releases a 'complete' or 'gold' collection which includes the game and all its subsequent expansions.

No, ODST does not require Halo 3 to play. No, there is no Halo 3: Deluxe bundle that includes ODST.

Ringleader wrote:I guess making up ridiculous points like "Even if a lot of its popularity came from past success, that doesn't make the current success any less real.", and trying to push them across as some kind of fact of life is more important then that sort of thing.

A fact of life?

You're the one throwing a fit cuz you couldn't understand it. I guess it just never occurred to you that when I use two different words I mean two different things.

Yeah, a fact of life, you must have been pretty dead set on getting your point across to have divided it up into 4 whole lines.

The instance in which you used the world 'popularity', you could have also used 'success' because in this case, the two are one and the same. It doen't really matter though, because niether version supports your original argument because neither version is a conclusive statement.

Ringleader wrote:Another example of this being your anecdotal response to what Angatar was saying about how few people play custom games now, the logical conclusion would be to agree, fewer people would be playing Halo 3 after 3 years and people moved on to different games, right?

Fewer and few are not the same, so please do not treat them as such. Less people play Halo 3 now than did three years ago, but many people still play. There is still an abundance of players.

Your're right, in this case, the two are not the same, but I'm still correct that fewer people play now. An abundance? what portion of the 10 million XBL players frequently play custom games? Few.

Ringleader wrote:Also, isn't your rebuttal completely depended on your friend's preferences? You see, I can say that I had a game of COD with 12 of my friends, but that doesn't really mean anything, because for all we know, I could have added them FROM PLAYING COD, and similarly, you could have added those seven from Halo, so don't act like your friends list is representative of all gamers because that's a pretty weak platform to support your point.

....half of the people were friends of my friend's friends. This is not just from my own friends list. Hell, YOU were playing in a game with me two or three days ago!

Let's see, I know you from the Halo Wars forum, oh, in fact I know a lot of my friends from the Halo Wars forum (could there be an underlaying factor?), aaaand I'm pretty sure those friends know some other friends off of the Halo Wars forum. Again, your confusing anecdotal evidence with logic, there may be 20,000 people in custom games, but that doesn't mean even a tiny fraction of that 20,000 will be on your friends list. Proportionally fewer people per friends list are playing custom games now, that's my point, and the fact that few people in general play custom games, that's Ang's point, we are both right.

I love playing Custom Games. It doesn't matter how many people still play'em. I got all the players I need right on the friends lists.

And have you even seen the options in Reach? Combined with the new Forge, for me, Customs is the new Matchmaking.

I like half life's story x10 more. I like Half Life's firefights x10 more.

Halo wins in multiplayer by default, because Half-Life has none :V



Off-topic: I dont think Ep. 3 will have a portal gun
But I do think that Portal 2 may have some hints to Borealis and the combine.

Gauz wrote:I like half life's story x10 more. I like Half Life's firefights x10 more.

Halo wins in multiplayer by default, because Half-Life has none :V



Off-topic: I dont think Ep. 3 will have a portal gun
But I do think that Portal 2 may have some hints to Borealis and the combine.

Don't spoil it! I still haven't beaten Two or any episodes.

Well, there is Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, which is essentially the multiplayer, but since Half-Life 2 generally comes with Deathmatch and Counter Strike, Deathmatch doesn't see much play. A shame, because the gravity gun is the awesomest weapon ever to use against other players.

Doesn't gary's mod and the tons of multiplayer mods for Half-life, like Zombie source, fix that somewhat?

Oh, well of course.

Nocbl2 wrote:Don't spoil it! I still haven't beaten Two or any episodes.

Why haven't you played HL2 or any of it's episodes? There is almost nothing better you can play, go get it. I mean it. NOW

Gauz wrote:

Nocbl2 wrote:Don't spoil it! I still haven't beaten Two or any episodes.

Why haven't you played HL2 or any of it's episodes? There is almost nothing better you can play, go get it. I mean it. NOW

I have the Orange Box but haven't beaten it yet.

Ringleader wrote:Popularity is large enough a factor of success (99%-ish?) for me to use the two words interchangeably. For instance, I can say that psychonaughts was not popular, therefore it was not successful,

I am not you. I speak for myself.

Ringleader wrote:Maybe you aren't playing...

Insults? People don't tend to agree with you as easily if you start name-calling.

Ringleader wrote:It's actually very hard to understand something you just blew out your ass, even more hard to understand is the fact that you think everyone should understand your reason, even though you're making up your own definition for an expansion.

I am not, though.

Ringleader wrote:

The price of an expansion pack is usually much less than that of the original game. As expansion packs consist solely of additional content, most expansion packs require the original game in order to play. Games with many expansions often begin selling the original game with prior expansions, such as The Sims Deluxe Edition (The Sims with The Sims: Livin' Large). These bundles make the game more accessible to new players. When games reach the end of their lifespan, the publisher often releases a 'complete' or 'gold' collection which includes the game and all its subsequent expansions.

No, ODST does not require Halo 3 to play. No, there is no Halo 3: Deluxe bundle that includes ODST.

No, I need no further explanation.

Ringleader wrote:Yeah, a fact of life, you must have been pretty dead set on getting your point across to have divided it up into 4 whole lines.

No, I was dead set on you understanding the sentence, which you failed to do multiple times. Making stuff up about your opponent pushes them away even more than insults.

Ringleader wrote:The instance in which you used the world 'popularity', you could have also used 'success' because in this case, the two are one and the same. It doen't really matter though, because niether version supports your original argument because neither version is a conclusive statement.

I'm using the word "success" for development, not marketing. Can you please, for the love of god, get that through your head? If you question it one more time, I wont even bother responding.

Ringleader wrote:Let's see, I know you from the Halo Wars forum, oh, in fact I know a lot of my friends from the Halo Wars forum (could there be an underlaying factor?), aaaand I'm pretty sure those friends know some other friends off of the Halo Wars forum. Again, your confusing anecdotal evidence with logic, there may be 20,000 people in custom games, but that doesn't mean even a tiny fraction of that 20,000 will be on your friends list. Proportionally fewer people per friends list are playing custom games now, that's my point, and the fact that few people in general play custom games, that's Ang's point, we are both right.

Do you not understand "friends of my friends' friends"? The apostrophe at the end of the second 'friends' gives ownership to a plural noun - in this case, this friends of my friends. I mentioned you as an example that even people who allegedly don't like the game still play it. But, I guess you decided to ignore everything aside from that part. Picking and choosing pieces of arguments is also a great way to alienate your opponent.

CivBase wrote:

Ringleader wrote:Popularity is large enough a factor of success (99%-ish?) for me to use the two words interchangeably. For instance, I can say that psychonaughts was not popular, therefore it was not successful,

I am not you. I speak for myself.

It doesn't matter who said it, the two words are equally applicable in the phrase because their meanings are synonymous in this instance. Unless your speaking in a different language that only seems like English until you say something wrong, and have no other means of justification.

Ringleader wrote:Maybe you aren't playing...

Insults? People don't tend to agree with you as easily if you start name-calling.

Hey, you started it with 'ek'span-shun', so don't play the butt-hurt victim here, your first response involved insulting me with a sound-it-out approach to your as of yet unsubstantiated point.

I could call you an idiot, but that wouldn't really change whether or not I was right about it. If you conclude that I'm wrong based on whatever derogatory remarks I choose to call you, then, well, your an idiot.

Also, I'm actually not concerned with whether or not you would agree anymore, because even if Bungie came out and said it was a full game, and not an expansion, I'm sure you would make up some reason why Bungie is wrong about their own product. Fortunately for me:

“But as we went along we got a better understanding of how much content we could create this way,” Creamer says. “Normally a Halo development cycle is three years compared to just a year here. But we weren’t going to make any changes to the engine so we had a more stable platform to work from and we were able to create quite a bit more content than we originally thought we would. That’s how the scope ended up changing from being an expansion to being a full game.”

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2009/08/how-halo-3-odst-went-from-expansion-to-full-game/

Ringleader wrote:It's actually very hard to understand something you just blew out your ass, even more hard to understand is the fact that you think everyone should understand your reason, even though you're making up your own definition for an expansion.

I am not, though.

Incorrect. You have not provided a reputable source for your definition of expansion, nor why ODST fits this definition.

Ringleader wrote:

The price of an expansion pack is usually much less than that of the original game. As expansion packs consist solely of additional content, most expansion packs require the original game in order to play. Games with many expansions often begin selling the original game with prior expansions, such as The Sims Deluxe Edition (The Sims with The Sims: Livin' Large). These bundles make the game more accessible to new players. When games reach the end of their lifespan, the publisher often releases a 'complete' or 'gold' collection which includes the game and all its subsequent expansions.

No, ODST does not require Halo 3 to play. No, there is no Halo 3: Deluxe bundle that includes ODST.

No, I need no further explanation.

You could start with why ODST is automatically one of these exceptions.

Ringleader wrote:Yeah, a fact of life, you must have been pretty dead set on getting your point across to have divided it up into 4 whole lines.

No, I was dead set on you understanding the sentence, which you failed to do multiple times. Making stuff up about your opponent pushes them away even more than insults.

Oh, you were dead set on my understanding the sentence, not getting your point across...

Also, I understand the sentence, I also understand why it doesn't support your original point because saying that 'Even lot of its popularity came from past success that doesn't make the current success any less real.' does not make the opposite false by default. Apperently I understand it better then you because you have not yet grasped this concept. Spewing out a factoid with no direction as far as making a definitive conclusion is pointless.

Ringleader wrote:The instance in which you used the world 'popularity', you could have also used 'success' because in this case, the two are one and the same. It doen't really matter though, because niether version supports your original argument because neither version is a conclusive statement.

I'm using the word "success" for development, not marketing. Can you please, for the love of god, get that through your head?

Well, the context clues tell a different story, you see, you responded to what I said, and I was clearly referring to financial success:

It's because your playing a game with not a whole lot of new content. Your basically paying for a side story with not very interesting characters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtpdpnIGGwc

I was kind of giving you the benifit of the doubt by assuming you meant financhal success, but I guess your rebuttal had absoluetely nothing to do with the original argument...

If you question it one more time, I wont even bother responding.

If that were the case, why did you make a new thread? Also, why did I ask that question knowing you wouldn't respond? Also, why did I ask that question...

Ringleader wrote:Let's see, I know you from the Halo Wars forum, oh, in fact I know a lot of my friends from the Halo Wars forum (could there be an underlaying factor?), aaaand I'm pretty sure those friends know some other friends off of the Halo Wars forum. Again, your confusing anecdotal evidence with logic, there may be 20,000 people in custom games, but that doesn't mean even a tiny fraction of that 20,000 will be on your friends list. Proportionally fewer people per friends list are playing custom games now, that's my point, and the fact that few people in general play custom games, that's Ang's point, we are both right.

Do you not understand "friends of my friends' friends"? The apostrophe at the end of the second 'friends' gives ownership to a plural noun - in this case, this friends of my friends. I mentioned you as an example that even people who allegedly don't like the game still play it. But, I guess you decided to ignore everything aside from that part. Picking and choosing pieces of arguments is also a great way to alienate your opponent.

Why would you assume this? I merely wished to imply there was an underlaying variable that made your anecdotal response to what Angatar said irrelevant. Speaking of picking and choosing and disregarding entire arguments, what do you think about the rest of what I said? (underlined)

Allegedly don't like it? Who said I didn't like Halo 3? Did I say this? Where are you getting your information? Did you say this because I criticize aspects from Halo Reach often? (Halo Reach =/= Halo 3) Well, maybe I criticize it so much because I care enough to see it better? That I'm not 'eh, ok' with whatever Bungie is pumping out.

As far as what you said in italics, are you referring to what you JUST said in your own post? 'That part?' What part are you talking about?

Ringleader wrote:It doesn't matter who said it, the two words are equally applicable in the phrase because their meanings are synonymous in this instance. Unless your speaking in a different language that only seems like English until you say something wrong, and have no other means of justification.

I must be speaking a different language cuz I don't think you've listened to a word I've said.

We could argue for years about whether ODST was an expansion or not. In my mind, it always will be. It's even called Halo 3: ODST. Not Halo ODST. It was made as almost the exact same game and added little. Why Bungie thinks they can get away with calling it a full game is beyond me, but I will never see it like that.

Ringleader wrote:You could start with why ODST is automatically one of these exceptions.

Because it doesn't require the original game and isn't sold as a deluxe edition? I guess that means CnC3: Kain's Wrath isn't an expansion either because neither of these apply to it on the Xbox 360 version.

Ringleader wrote:Oh, you were dead set on my understanding the sentence, not getting your point across...

Okay, the sentence wasn't the most effective for illustrating my point and was misleading. Great job, but you didn't have to be a f***ing jerk about it for most of the thread. Get over yourself.

Ringleader wrote:I was kind of giving you the benifit of the doubt by assuming you meant financhal success, but I guess your rebuttal had absoluetely nothing to do with the original argument...

You haven't been giving me ANY benefit of the doubt. You've been calling me an idiot for the sentence the whole time, even though I've already explained what I meant several times. You've made some serious grammar and spelling mistakes yourself, but you don't see me attacking them.

Ringleader wrote:If that were the case, why did you make a new thread? Also, why did I ask that question knowing you wouldn't respond? Also, why did I ask that question...

New thread? And why am I even responding?

Few people in general play custom games? You're right? Where's your proof? I'm sorry if I don't add random people from matchmaking to my friends list like most people do. I'm having no trouble getting a custom game started. You suggest that it's only true because the people on my friends list are mostly people that like Halo, but why would anyone else play Halo? People that don't like Halo hardly played it before, and they don't play it now. People that like Halo still play Halo. There is no anecdotal evidence.

2007
Johny and Steve like Halo and play 100 games a month. Bob and Ray don't like Halo very much and play 10 games a month. Phil and Harold hate it and only play it to laugh at other players (5 games a month)

230 games a month.

2008
Frank just got the game. Johny, Steve, and Frank like Halo and play 75 games a month. Jane just got the game. Bob, Ray, and Jane don't like Halo very much and play 5 games a month.

240 games a month

2009
Paul just got the game. Paul loves his new game and plays 75 games a month. Johny, Steve, and Frank like Halo and play 50 games a month. Bob and Jane stopped caring and decided to catch up on the last thirty-seven Call of Dutys. Ray still plays 5 games a month.

230 games a month.

2010
Dave just got the game. Paul and Dave like Halo and play 50 games a month. Johny, Steve, and Frank still play 25 games a month. Greg just got the game, but only plays with friends (15 games a moth). Ray starts liking girls and stops playing video games.

190 games a month.

230 to 190. Not a very significant drop.