@DarthNocturnal No, you're correct. No one was forced to charge for mods, and it was up to the publisher of the base game to decide on the profit-sharing levels. I hadn't heard the milestone thing, but I'd bet that was decided by a publisher too.
To be frank, a hard time limit (such as the one in the first Pikmin game) isn't just a turn-off to a lot of players, it's really bad design. Think about how cheap of a tool a hard time-limit is: instead of developing new, interesting mechanics that fit your game and challenge the players, you tell the audience that you have to complete the goal in a set amount of time, or start completely over. As an example, Dark Souls and/or Demon Souls could have given you a set amount of time in which to beat the game, at the end of which you get sent back to the beginning to try again if you fail. That isn't fun, or interesting. Even the Demon Souls brand of gameplay — dying and dying until you can win — is more interesting and dynamic than a timer.
In essence (for the TL;DR crowd), what I'm saying is that there are plenty of ways to keep Pikmin tense without adding a hard timer back into the mix. I know the caves in Pikmin 2, as mentioned by a lot of folks above me, were fairly intense. Personally, I don't think that they will bring back a timer. Nintendo isn't stupid, and they'll realize that alienating the younger/less-skilled/less interested in tension crowd largely defeats the purpose of a Nintendo device. There are ways to use a timer well... there are just very few of them, and even fewer developers who realize the best way to use them.
Comments 2
Re: Talking Point: The Fragility of Buying Download Games
@DarthNocturnal No, you're correct. No one was forced to charge for mods, and it was up to the publisher of the base game to decide on the profit-sharing levels. I hadn't heard the milestone thing, but I'd bet that was decided by a publisher too.
Re: Miyamoto: Pikmin 3 To Be More Like Series Original
To be frank, a hard time limit (such as the one in the first Pikmin game) isn't just a turn-off to a lot of players, it's really bad design. Think about how cheap of a tool a hard time-limit is: instead of developing new, interesting mechanics that fit your game and challenge the players, you tell the audience that you have to complete the goal in a set amount of time, or start completely over. As an example, Dark Souls and/or Demon Souls could have given you a set amount of time in which to beat the game, at the end of which you get sent back to the beginning to try again if you fail. That isn't fun, or interesting. Even the Demon Souls brand of gameplay — dying and dying until you can win — is more interesting and dynamic than a timer.
In essence (for the TL;DR crowd), what I'm saying is that there are plenty of ways to keep Pikmin tense without adding a hard timer back into the mix. I know the caves in Pikmin 2, as mentioned by a lot of folks above me, were fairly intense. Personally, I don't think that they will bring back a timer. Nintendo isn't stupid, and they'll realize that alienating the younger/less-skilled/less interested in tension crowd largely defeats the purpose of a Nintendo device. There are ways to use a timer well... there are just very few of them, and even fewer developers who realize the best way to use them.