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Harry · Jun 20th, 2009, 02:46 PM

Hey Faile,

First, congratulations for Catherine and the Owl. Not only the CD was great and crazy, but I just took a look at your website and you guys and gals look like a real band of hard, pure, and real musicians (I added the link to the ps2fantasy.com affiliate box - it won't do much, but ps2fantasy still has a decent google ranking).

Things did not go too well in the videogame industry in the past years, at least when it comes to the "big guys". New platforms are opening the market to small developers, and this is great and probably where the most interesting stuff is.

But a lot of big development teams have disappeared, even more have been purchased by EA - which produces technically good products, but that feel all exactly the same to me: without a soul. Even some of the series that were above anything else out there - even outside the game industry - have, in my book, gone in the wrong direction.

As you said, games have the power not only to "entertain", but to make you feel things that are difficult to achieve with other forms of communication and art. I still think of some "places" I have visited in old games as real places that have somehow shaped the way I think or the way I interact with the world. What I mean is that we are the first generation that was able to experience interactive 3D realities, and this necessarily shaped our way of thinking and changed the way we perceive the work. But lack of courage, crazy development costs (development of a lot of console games costs as much as movies in these days), and financial crisis seem to have filled the console gaming world with games that are technically incredible (and I mean it) and breathtaking, but often, soulless. There are of course exceptions, but these are 4-5 games for me, or little more. The "Wii revolution" is thankfully going against the high costs of game development, yet it is still a revolution that limits the power of games to just "entertainment".

Speaking of platforms, I do not see much differences in terms of software between the Xbox and the PS 3. The differences are in the hardware, with the PS3 being obviously made of higher quality components, but it is software that makes the console. Again, I love the WII, but its software line-up was a disappointement. I also hate the cocky way Microsoft and Sony handled their platforms, which in the end was one of the main causes of concentration of development teams in the hands of a few companies like EA.

Probably,episodic games are the way of the future, next to small development teams that can bring a lot of new ideas to an industry (see the iPhone platform) that, right now, seems scared of itself.

Anyhow, the above way of thinking has nothing to do with the current status of this website. I love videogames with all my hearth, and I believe they still are the art of the future.

I wanted to launch psfantasy.com (or vgfantasy.com, if we decided to go multi-platform) and I spent nearly 2 years of my life developing a CMS for a new network (we did not have the $30,000 necessary to buy the only software that at the time was able to support our project; things have changed a bit recently, with more frameworks making a project like this more doable), that was never completed because of all the things that happened in our team (I was alone developing it) and because of bad planning. I still want to open the website, in some different form that would make it still useful and able to maintain itself financially.

Lack of money was what caused the end of the ps2fantasy.com activity. With costs going as high as $400 per month and ads paying as little as $50 every month (yet, gaming companies liked to spam our forums a lot - so our ad spaces must have had some value, after all), we had to move to work as "mercenaries" for third parties. Making a profitable website is difficult but possible, even though we currently have other projects we will be working on that will force us to work on psfantasy.com as a side or sister project to the other things we want to do - because yeah, they are somehow related to video games

But we all know nothing is easy these days, and I am personally in a situation that leaves no easy way out of troubles, so I cannot guarantee or promise or anticipate anything right now - I am the first unsure about my future, and, in the end, about the future of this website. One thing is guaranteed: this forum will always be here, in a form, or in another for the funny lost souls still wandering it!

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Jun 20th, 2009, 02:46 PM	#2
Harry Administrator Joined: Jan 2002 Location: Here Posts: 1,222	Hey Faile, First, congratulations for Catherine and the Owl. Not only the CD was great and crazy, but I just took a look at your website and you guys and gals look like a real band of hard, pure, and real musicians (I added the link to the ps2fantasy.com affiliate box - it won't do much, but ps2fantasy still has a decent google ranking). Things did not go too well in the videogame industry in the past years, at least when it comes to the "big guys". New platforms are opening the market to small developers, and this is great and probably where the most interesting stuff is. But a lot of big development teams have disappeared, even more have been purchased by EA - which produces technically good products, but that feel all exactly the same to me: without a soul. Even some of the series that were above anything else out there - even outside the game industry - have, in my book, gone in the wrong direction. As you said, games have the power not only to "entertain", but to make you feel things that are difficult to achieve with other forms of communication and art. I still think of some "places" I have visited in old games as real places that have somehow shaped the way I think or the way I interact with the world. What I mean is that we are the first generation that was able to experience interactive 3D realities, and this necessarily shaped our way of thinking and changed the way we perceive the work. But lack of courage, crazy development costs (development of a lot of console games costs as much as movies in these days), and financial crisis seem to have filled the console gaming world with games that are technically incredible (and I mean it) and breathtaking, but often, soulless. There are of course exceptions, but these are 4-5 games for me, or little more. The "Wii revolution" is thankfully going against the high costs of game development, yet it is still a revolution that limits the power of games to just "entertainment". Speaking of platforms, I do not see much differences in terms of software between the Xbox and the PS 3. The differences are in the hardware, with the PS3 being obviously made of higher quality components, but it is software that makes the console. Again, I love the WII, but its software line-up was a disappointement. I also hate the cocky way Microsoft and Sony handled their platforms, which in the end was one of the main causes of concentration of development teams in the hands of a few companies like EA. Probably,episodic games are the way of the future, next to small development teams that can bring a lot of new ideas to an industry (see the iPhone platform) that, right now, seems scared of itself. Anyhow, the above way of thinking has nothing to do with the current status of this website. I love videogames with all my hearth, and I believe they still are the art of the future. I wanted to launch psfantasy.com (or vgfantasy.com, if we decided to go multi-platform) and I spent nearly 2 years of my life developing a CMS for a new network (we did not have the $30,000 necessary to buy the only software that at the time was able to support our project; things have changed a bit recently, with more frameworks making a project like this more doable), that was never completed because of all the things that happened in our team (I was alone developing it) and because of bad planning. I still want to open the website, in some different form that would make it still useful and able to maintain itself financially. Lack of money was what caused the end of the ps2fantasy.com activity. With costs going as high as $400 per month and ads paying as little as $50 every month (yet, gaming companies liked to spam our forums a lot - so our ad spaces must have had some value, after all), we had to move to work as "mercenaries" for third parties. Making a profitable website is difficult but possible, even though we currently have other projects we will be working on that will force us to work on psfantasy.com as a side or sister project to the other things we want to do - because yeah, they are somehow related to video games But we all know nothing is easy these days, and I am personally in a situation that leaves no easy way out of troubles, so I cannot guarantee or promise or anticipate anything right now - I am the first unsure about my future, and, in the end, about the future of this website. One thing is guaranteed: this forum will always be here, in a form, or in another for the funny lost souls still wandering it!