Yesterday, I contacted the people at Playstation. I wasn't happy with the Plus membership and, after being polite, asking for a supervisor and being transferred over to customer service, I managed to get the full $50 back into my PSN wallet. Huzzah!
In celebration, I bought Shank and Danger Joe.
Holy crap, they're fun. Shank is a violent, stylized side-scroller that feels like the sort of thing I used to play way back when. Danger Joe seems like it'd be crap, but after playing the demo, I got hooked and bought it.
I've said before that I think games are moving more and more towards an online, downloadable style. That said, there seems to be kind of a Renassaince for smaller game studios, especially now with PSN and to a lesser extent, XBox Live. I don't know whether it's true or not, but about 80% of the money earned from each download goes to the studio (read that in Playstation magazine).
Then, you look at Telltale, who have built themselves up from scratch on episodic, downloadable games. They started with a Bone franchise that went nowhere, then Sam & Max which I believe put them on the map, then we had other great stuff like Strong Bad, Wallace & Gromit, Monkey Island, etc. Now, they're doing Back to the Future? All on a downloadable premise? Admitedly, they also offer discs, but the majority of their buisness is downloads.
And of course, the monster of downloadable games these days: Steam. PC games are almost entirely online, now. The PC game section in stores is miniscule compared to years ago. I've seen them shrink at Gamestop from a full wall, to a couple of shelves and now only one section of shelves. Steam, like PSN and Live, has also allowed smaller studio games to flourish. World of Goo, Braid, Machinarium. The list goes on. And goddamn them for having their big sales, like last Christmas.
Personally, I'm loving it. I enjoy the bigger titles like anyone else, but these smaller games are where the innovation is coming from. I feel like they're becoming the studios of tomorrow. Plus, they're smaller and cheaper, which are both big thumbs up for me. A lot of games, especially forced sandbox games, just feel too big sometimes.
What do you guys think? How many of you play smaller studio, discless games?
