What do you think the future of Might and Magic Shall Behold?

The role-playing games (I-X) that started it all and the various spin-offs (including Dark Messiah).
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Troller
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Re: What do you think the future of Might and Magic Shall Behold?

Unread postby Troller » 19 Oct 2016, 13:41

hellegennes wrote: Maybe. But there's no way to prove that this is the reason. The only way to prove he still is capable of creating masterpieces is... well, to create a masterpiece.

Look, there are some things at which you get better as you age and some things that you get worse at. That goes the other way around too. There's nothing wrong with accepting the weaknesses and strengths of your current age. Ageism is when you're using someone's age to justify their exclusion from something or to criticize them or belittle their abilities (that applies to all ages). Note that I never said that one can't create once -or before- they reach a certain age, I just argued that the average person's most productive and creative years are between the ages of 20 and 40. Most people are able to be creative also while they are outside those loosely defined boundaries, but their peak, on average, will be during those years. May I remind you how much better Spielberg, Lucas and Cameron were in their early years?

I already talked about scientists, so take musicians for example. Bands, singers, songwriters. The vast majority of non-scholar musicians have created their best works during their 20's and 30's. The same goes for writers. If you look up most classic pieces of literature, you will unsurprisingly find that most of them were written when their authors were young. Harper Lee died a few months ago. You may know her as the author of "To Kill a Mockingbird", which she wrote when she was 30-something. She died at age 89. Jane Austen wrote "Pride and Prejudice", her most famous novel, when she was 21. Herman Melville wrote "Moby-Dick" at 32. Alcott wrote "Little Women" when she was 36. Mary Shelley was 21 when she wrote "Frankenstein" (she died aged 53). Shakespeare died at 52 years of age, but he produced most of his best and best known works before his mid-40's. Dickens wrote most of his works between the ages of 25 and 48. Golding wrote "Lord of the Files" when he was 43. I could go on for hours. The point is that most people are more creative when they are younger. It's not only a matter of opinion, it's scientifically established too and the reasons behind it are very well understood and they are both sociological and biological in nature.

Maybe JVC is one of the rare exceptions. But his track record after the end of the 90's doesn't support this notion; at least not for the time being. I would be glad to be proven wrong by JVC but this requires a game.
Wow this awesome scientific work needs to be published in Nature right now!

I think C.S. Lewis (Wrote Narnia at 51 to 56), Steven King (69 and still going strong), Tolkien (Wrote Lord of the Rings at 45 to 57) and many many others disagree with you.

I agree that some people peek but it has NOTHING to with age!

The funny thing is that is that if you had referred to his gender, race or other irrelevant thing like eye color you would have been kicked out of this forum. Instead we lost Baronus - our loss in my humble opinion :-(

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Re: What do you think the future of Might and Magic Shall Behold?

Unread postby hellegennes » 25 Oct 2016, 00:29

I talk about average and you talk about exceptions. Not to mention Stephen King is repeating himself horribly for the past 20 years. Age is not irrelevant when talking about creativity and there are both sociological and biological reasons behind it. You simply need to accept that, it's not insulting. Creativity is prone to deterioration as much as anything in this life.

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Re: What do you think the future of Might and Magic Shall Behold?

Unread postby cjlee » 25 Oct 2016, 10:55

hellegennes wrote:I talk about average and you talk about exceptions. Not to mention Stephen King is repeating himself horribly for the past 20 years. Age is not irrelevant when talking about creativity and there are both sociological and biological reasons behind it. You simply need to accept that, it's not insulting. Creativity is prone to deterioration as much as anything in this life.

In the first place, creativity is not about average. It is about being the exception. Being exceptional.

If you want to talk about average, we should not be talking about Heroes of Might and Magic or Copernicus. We should be talking about the Kardashians, Super Mario Brothers, Counterstrike, or whatever that floats the boat for the biggest and most populous fanbase.

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Re: What do you think the future of Might and Magic Shall Behold?

Unread postby Bandobras Took » 25 Oct 2016, 15:16

cjlee wrote:In the first place, creativity is not about average. It is about being the exception. Being exceptional.
Else we would have as many great poets and writers as we have had Literature Professors. :)
Far too many people speak their minds without first verifying the quality of their source material.

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Re: What do you think the future of Might and Magic Shall Behold?

Unread postby hellegennes » 25 Oct 2016, 15:48

All people are inherently creative. We just don't have the same affinities. Of course, some people are more creative than others, but that only changes the grandeur of their work, it doesn't make them superhuman machines spewing out great art from childhood until deathbed. As you may see, all the people I listed are exceptional artists who are all remembered for the work they did when they were young. There are very few exceptions in history, most talented people were the most creative between the ages of 20-40. There is a good number of people who still did great things in their 40's, but only a handful of people who did anything noteworthy beyond the age of 50 (at least compared with their previous works).

Let me repeat; JVC may be one of those people who are still super creative. Somehow I don't see that being true. It's been almost 20 years since MM7 and we haven't seen anything noteworthy. You can blame 3DO all you want, but he has been free of them since 2003 and he still produced nothing which would lead us to believe that, after all this time, he's got it. I wish I was wrong but only JVC can prove me wrong; by creating a masterpiece.

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Re: What do you think the future of Might and Magic Shall Behold?

Unread postby Troller » 26 Oct 2016, 12:04

I disagree with you but it is word against word, I haven't done a study in how the creative mind is impacted by age and neither have you.

Your statements are insulting and prejudice, and you don't even offer them as opinions but as facts, are you by any chance a politician?

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Re: What do you think the future of Might and Magic Shall Behold?

Unread postby Bandobras Took » 26 Oct 2016, 14:42

hellegennes wrote:All people are inherently creative.
You lost me there. Where did you get that idea?
Far too many people speak their minds without first verifying the quality of their source material.

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Re: What do you think the future of Might and Magic Shall Behold?

Unread postby Steven Aus » 26 Oct 2016, 15:31

People who aren't creative in at least some areas of their life tend to be unhealthy. You either do things that are creative, or the world gives you creative problems to work out. Creativity can be in relationships of any sort, art, music, making computer games or any area where you need to solve problems, especially when resources are limited.
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Re: What do you think the future of Might and Magic Shall Behold?

Unread postby hellegennes » 27 Oct 2016, 23:58

What Steven Aus said. Creativity is an inherent trait of the human species. You can certainly observe it by watching children interact with the world. Creativity is not just writing music or poetry or painting. These are very specific fields. Creativity has to do with anything that requires problem solving. The way you work your way out of a situation, your imagination, your ability to overcome obstacles in anything you do, the way you do your work, all require creativity. Creativity is the process by which the brain combines knowledge and previous experience with environmental stimuli and information in order to create anything.

Some people are more creative than others. But what makes an artist is usually happenstance and not an overabundance of creative impulses. Most people could be creative in a host of fields but this is hindered by both the environment in which we grow up and time restraints. We don't have enough time to explore all of our potential and we don't get to know a lot of stuff in which we could be brilliant because of the direction we took in life. Some people discover "hidden" talents during mid-life or even after they retire (because generally you have more time to spend and you need to find creative ways to spend it).
Troller wrote:I disagree with you but it is word against word, I haven't done a study in how the creative mind is impacted by age and neither have you.

Your statements are insulting and prejudice, and you don't even offer them as opinions but as facts, are you by any chance a politician?
Honestly, I don't see where I was insulting and what I talk about is not just my opinion, it's backed by tons of scientific literature. Not only do you get to observe it empirically, but creativity deterioration is actually pretty well understood. Look up "creativity age curve"* and you'lll see what I mean.

Here's an excerpt from a relevant research:
The question that now arises is that of the relationship between creativity and age. Concentrating on "ordinary" people who have not become famous for creativity, various authors (see Cropley in press for a summary) have concluded that there is a curvilinear relationship between age and "creativity", as measured by psychological tests. Scores increase until about age 6, followed by a trough between about 6 and 16, and an increase again until about 30. After about 30 there is thought to be a steady decline. The early, "classic" study of Lehman (1953) reported that peak performances of people who had actually become famous for their creative achievements occurred most frequently between 30 and 40. This view is still widely supported (see Simonton (1988) for a detailed analysis based on case studies of famous people).

Lehman's findings indicated that the age at which peak performances occur varies from discipline to discipline, mathematicians tending to become
famous particularly early. Nonetheless, there is agreement in the research literature (e.g., Cole 1979; Dennis 1966; Horner, Rushton & Vernon 1986) that, allowing for differences in definitions and methodology, somewhere around 40 is the most productive age.


* Here's one such curve:

Image

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Bandobras Took
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Re: What do you think the future of Might and Magic Shall Behold?

Unread postby Bandobras Took » 28 Oct 2016, 00:53

I see. If that's the definition you're working with, what you say makes sense; it amounts to "the brain, like the rest of the body, tends to deteriorate with age."
Far too many people speak their minds without first verifying the quality of their source material.

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Re: What do you think the future of Might and Magic Shall Behold?

Unread postby Tress » 02 Nov 2016, 08:56

I think people idolize JVC too much. Sure he made some great games and more importantly placed good portion of foundation for fantasy rpg and strategy genre, but those ideas by now day standards would not amount much. He isnt Peter Molyneux type guy who always try to deliver something revolutionary(though in this case it's hit and miss, and now days unfortunately more of a miss ).
It hard to see what will future for MM bring , but unfortunately Ubi doesn't have or don't want to allocate enough resources to jump start series. MM:X was good attempt, but unfortunatelly it didnt found it's market in today's community , which also means that if game would be couple tiers more expensive, it would just add to it's failure. That is the reason why W8 is last of it's kind and its been more than 10 years now since it was released.


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