@brannox

There are a couple of typos in your original post at the start of this thread:

1. Spelling mistake: "Brave Earth: Prologue", not "Brave Earth Plague" (currently number 49 in the list)

2. Not really a specific typo, but a general one. The opening paragraph is giving out of date instructions and will cause confusion to anyone who newly enters the thread or missed the recent change. As it reads now, it is still instructing people to post their own index "from the games covered on the EZA podcast", and it refers to updating our lists every time the podcast adds more games to their batch.

After reading the EZA Desire Index thread, I thought I would take the initiative and create the thread about where we stand with our desire index. Here's what I was thinking: We each give our own index from the games covered on the EZA Podcast. From those, a communal list, which will be listed in this specific post will be the "Master Index" of our game desires. We then update our post with the games they cover and adjust the Master Index accordingly. This means that for every new batch of games and personal posts, I'll have to re-average out the games. I won't be able to check in every minute of every day, but I hope to update this thread two or three times a day, especially with the amount of adjustment necessary for the list's upkeep.

I guess this is my final list then. Au revoir, our community desire index! This thread has been fun. May a flight of angels sing thee to thy rest.

1. Brave Earth: Prologue
2. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
3. Resident Evil 2 Remake
4. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
5. Metroid Prime 4
6. Etrian Odyssey X
7. Ion Maiden
8. Babylon's Fall
9. Blackroom

A thread for sharing new games coming out in August... what are you personal picks/interests of the month?

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Did you discover some small game that not everyone knows about?
Share that and let us know what it is about!

Already know a thing or two that interests you?
Make a list (or a swanky desire index) of your interests and/or possibles!

Don't know what's so great about an upcoming game you keep hearing about?
Ask here!

Don't follow gaming news that closely and just want to passively see what BigGames™ people care about?
This is the place!

~

Going into more detail:

The basic idea is to list new games that you are interested in, as well as games you are potentially curious about or want to give wider attention to. You can briefly describe them or ask other people to help fill you in. The hope is that regular threads like these can act as a collective filter/discovery mechanism to help people decide what is worth checking out.

"New games" means any new title that is being released or ported this month in any capacity (not "backlogs/what you are playing this month"). The angle here is sharing your anticipation and promoting game discovery (as opposed to sharing comments about a first playthrough in progress - that belongs elsewhere).

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• If you want a handy list that covers most of the major upcoming games of the month, here's one text list. Feel free to post other lists or list videos that you find useful.

• Final request: If you are the first person to mention a game please provide (at minimum) a short sentence description. (If it is a very big AAA release though, then don't worry about it.) This is a good convention that makes the thread more useful as a discovery mechanism, and especially helps out anyone who doesn't follow the news as closely as you.

@Brannox Is there a deadline to this, and if so what is it? Since we can't change our "final lists", it feels like I have to spend some extra time researching before posting it. I hope you aren't going to require us to set our desires indicies in stone with just a few days notice.

@brannox said in YOUR Desire Index:

I don't really want to spoil it and this is for two reasons. 1.) If I propose this new system, but the majority selects the other option and I don't use it, what then?

re: "what then". In all likelihood, your new system would still be used, but just not immediately. i.e., in all likelihood the Allies are not going to keep updating their desire index forever (as stated by Kyle Bosman during one of the episodes, I think), so barring a change of hearts on their part, the current thread poll is only about the short term future of the thread.

(I'll postpone responding to your 'reason 2)' that I didn't quote, since it falls under the umbrella of a larger sentiment that I will end my post with.)

Could you clarify your last sentence? [...] as I'm reading that as: ____

Sure. The meaning was not what you had read in what followed. The meaning was merely this: let's suppose the poll will vote to "switch over" from the current status quo of following the podcast to a new protocol of allowing all games. By keeping the new ranking system a secret instead of being open about it and thus allowing people to comment on the new system and offer suggestions, it creates an unintended impression that you are resistant to changing the new ranking algorithm should people desire a different implementation that is more widely liked. That was a lot of words so just to be clear: this was not particularly of concern to me (I was much more concerned with everything preceding the last sentence of that comment), but I didn't know whether or not it was of particular concern to you so I thought I would mention it.

Finally, more than anything else I've said in this post I feel there is something I want to reply to in your comment, but it is a reply to something too intangible and dispersed that I can't simply quote a sentence or passage and reply to that part. So I will just say this:

You do carry the burden of maintaining the master index and have the ultimate say on every decision, but remember that people on the outside still often want to offer suggestions for you to consider because they want to help you. If you ever find yourself with a new problem, people on the outside will want to brainstorm solutions, again because they want to help you. You're not alone.

@brannox said in YOUR Desire Index:

@Sentinel-Beach The points will be completely scrapped. I won't be using points at all. I don't want to give away how I'm doing things [the replacement for assigning points] until a decision is reached.

I'm against this, and I think the reason is self-evident: Why are we voting or discussing the options without knowing what we are voting on or the options we are trying to choose between?

Second, you are also leaving me and many other people excitedly curious about what the new system is, but we aren't allowed to ask you about it?? I don't like that, I want to know and have my curiosity be saited or at bare minimum have a broad, low resolution outline of the new system.

Finally, the quoted portion also leaves the unintended impression that you aren't going to change the system after the switch over should people desire a different implementation that is more widely liked.

@brannox

Since the podcast version of the Desire Index seems to be only on temporary hiatus, I lean towards waiting a week. We can always go nuts later. (I also think one should endeavor to word straw poll options neutrally, but I appreciate the desire for levity.)

I've been withholding myself from raising @Sentinel-Beach 's exact concern for a long time (simply because I figured no one would care until the day came). But I have silently been putting a fair amount of thought into it. To repeat his concern:

If and when we move to "all games allowed", how are we going to deal with each list varying in length?

I think putting a maximum size on each person's submitted list is one reasonable solution to this problem (whether that number be 10, 20, or 30, etc I have no opinion, but I can offer suggestions that will allow us to experimentally converge on a good number), because it allows the current system of awarding points on a linear scale to be preserved. Most people would use most of the available votes they are allowed, while others (as evidenced by previous posts in this very thread) would only post their top 5 because they sincerely don't care about anything else beyond those. And that's fine, as their votes wouldn't be punished for not filling up an entire list.

While it is perfectly possible to use a linear scale point system without imposing a "maximum list size restriction", such a system might begin to feel silly if most people are doing lists of 20 and one or two people post a list of 100.

There doesn't, of course, need to be a size restriction on the aggregated, master index (the length of the master index would equal the number of distinct games that posters have voted for).

Finally, there are also other systems we could consider, this is just what appeared to me to be the simplest system.

@smoothrunes

To address to original question posed by the OP

The point of discussion here is if there is enough originality in future ideas for games to release that grant us pause when defining what they are, how they play etc.

My answer to this question is "Yes". There is an untapped reservoir of originality for video games that, given practical limits of commercialization and the steady genesis of new game types caused by technological advancement, we are probably never going to run out of.

and perhaps bear witness to entirely new genres with the same impact and far-reaching influences of when the FPS or platformer or rogue-like was popularized.

My answer to this question though is: "I don't know". Because one can have a brilliantly original game, implement its design specifics near perfectly, and then throw a lot of money at it to cloak it in top shelf graphics, all without any gaurantee that after being released it will be received in one way or another. Stated another way, I don't believe the "impact and far-reaching influence" is a function of of the 1's and 0's on the disc, it is also highly dependent on the culture into which the game is released and what other games are being released alongside it. So I find the answer impossible to predict, although if we're speaking strictly in the near term future then I understand the skeptical position that there were only be a paltry handful of new such game types, given the historical trend. I won't make a prediction either way myself though, since what the future holds still contanis plenty of uncertainty.

Yeah, I don't think it really counts much as a genre if it never takes off and spawns imitators. If you can count on one hand the number of games that fit under a certain type, there isn't really enough to establish it as its own thing.

I think this one of the more insightful sentences in the thread that I want to draw more attention towards. What is a "genre"? One intentionally unorthodox view of the world looks at such questions as a subset of the broader linguistic lens: we give names to things so we don't have to refer to them using long winded sentences and paragraphs. Noby Noby Boy doesn't have a genre name because there isn't a linguistic need for it. (At least not until other games get made that share similarities that strike the observer.) Doom (1993) has a genre name, beacuse there was a linguistic need for it.

I started speedrunning a little with Goldeneye, and then went hard with Perfect Dark, which then continued off and on for a few years. I never tried to get to the top ranks of the leaderboards, but I did enjoy studying the leading strategies at The-Elite .net and modifying them to be workable to my skill level. That period with GE & PD sparked in me a more general interest in speedrunning as an activity I could do with every game even if there wasn't an illustrious community around it, i.e. a solitary activity. I remember heavily routing Majora's Mask and Final Fantasy 6 during the early 2000's in particular, but more importantly I found it fun to go for fast completions in a dozen other games without demanding from myself as much heavy lifting.

The hard thing I always find difficult to talk about in these discussions is how "Speedrunning" had a completely different meaning 15, 20 years ago. Long before GDQs, long before Twitch and so on. If there was no community for the game, then speedrunning was something you did just because you wanted to, without any encouragement or external validation. And "speedrunning a game" did not carry with it the heavy connotations that it does today. Today, saying such a thing is going to be interpreted as you are playing the same game over and over for months if not a year and you are actively keeping up with the top strategies. There was a time where it meant something far, far lighter, where you just practiced a speedy route a couple times, got a complete run or two, and then moved on with life with no more than a week or so being spent. Often there weren't any 'top strategies' or 'speed tech', because there wasn't a community pushing the game to those kind of boundaries (for a long time the number of such communities was short enough to be listable!). For many players, speedrunning was more like a type of side activity or self imposed challenge, and they didn't record it or post times. If you were competetive or passionate for the game then maybe you wouldn't let go and would strive to improve your times again and again, but that wasn't yet baked into the meaning of the word 'speedrun'.

I haven't stopped speedrunning games old and new, but it is much more often in old sense of the term (without the abundant repetition and competitiveness).

Updated my list, but I have nothing new to say at the moment so I'm not going to re-quote my index.