Well yes, but at least there is the "look at a picture" part.

Oh I completely don't care about whether you find hidden object games acceptable, or whether you tolerate newspapers featuring "spot the differences" games, or whether walking simulators are interactive movies, and all that. I'm just amused by imagining the people who feel outraged by gog's selection and their reactions if they were being thrown the laziest HOGsploitations at. Dumb comedy material, of the "watch Adrian Monk freak out" variety, I guess.

"Good" HOGs fascinate me a bit, through their flaws. They are a bit sweet, a bit lame, a bit trying, a bit too much, a bit not enough. I can see their appeal and yet this appeal makes me ill at ease (I'm not talking about the core gameplay, here, which is 100% fine by me, but about the production values, the pretentious plots, and their formulaic rehash of the tritest clichés : as a whole they do genuinely, seriously, deserve a full semiologic analysis). So, I'm stiining on a perplexed, condescending fence, but with enough understanding for a hint of sympathy (for... the roots... of what is being exploited ?... not sure).

But what I feel for "good" HOGs different from what I feel for those that don't even try. The core (as opposed to the framing plots) is something that I love. The sensory overload of flea markets, the (true) easter egg hunts, the immersion in some rich disorder - an untidy room, an antique shop, a chaotic street, etc. So I appreciate the HOG pictures when they cleverly integrate the hidden objects in it. And when a trillion games just rip off the concept, not even trying (however artificially and "industrially"), simply randomly spraying clipart over a photo, that's when I get angry. And it makes a significant, meaningful, qualitative difference between both types of productions.

So, seeing one treated like the other makes me just shrug. At least, I trust GOG to keep that distinction.

I agree, that HOGs, that are games, and the ones, that aren't, should be separated. I'll definitely filter out the clicker games, while I might give the others a shot.

Wasn't going to but I just grabbed a bunch of them.

I screwed up my left wrist yesterday and these should be a nice play while I give it some rest from the normal button mashing of FPS and Metroidvanias.

Ouch. Get well soon.

I'm trying to figure out how it happened. :P I thought gaming but that typically happens to a the 'mouse hand' for a gamer. Maybe I rolled over and twisted it in my sleep. I don't know.

But in a way, I may do the opposite.

I preferred the original "MCF Huntsville" and "Travelogue 360", with their pure Hidden Object gameplay, to the later ones that wrap them in very bad excuses of adventure games. More precisely, I was welcoming the addition of some other minigames (I remember having to guess the mechanisms of some weird doors and contraptions - the kind of puzzle that would entirely constitute the delightful "The room", later). But not the pseudo point-and-click fluff, based on surreal Resident Evil logic and dream-like causalities (and cheap fade-in fade-out animations), through which the plots started taking themselves ridiculously seriously.

So, I'd probably consider as "real games" the ones with honest barebone mechanics, and "fake games" the ones bloated with formulaic narration and clumsy adventure sequences. Those feel more artificial to me. So I set my own puritanism in a very different way.

Which just shows the relativity and subjectivity of all these distinctions.

Then we will have agree to disagree here. Imo it is impossible for anything to be bad for everybody (which objectively means by definition) when it can be enjoyed in the end.

It's not a liberal strategy it's an economic one and since it is a business it's all about economics.

That is what has been proven wrong. People (as I said those who voiced their opinion only) still don't want to be forced to use a client. Just search the forum. They ARE still bothered as long as it is not optional which is not the case for most games on Steam and THERE you have your difference and the reason why most people here are using GOG.

1) DRM-free ( Optional client.
2) Offline Installers that you can backup and store.
3) Wallet funds to make regional pricing a bit fairer.
4) Communication with the community (I never saw this on Steam).
5) Friendly staff which are also gamers .
6) Support trries to be helpful and does not treat you as a potential criminal (just read Steam ToS and compare to GOG)

For me THESE are more than enough reasons to sstay loyal to GOG.

"The DRM is a difference, but not one, that made me interested in GoG. ... I doubt, that many are bothered by DRM in the form of a client. They got used to it and it has nice benefits. I always use Galaxy to install and play as it is just convenient. Therefore GoG needs something else to distinguish itself from others. "

You were comparing two storefronts: GOG and Steam and you assumed (wrongly) that people here would not bother anymore about DRM in form of a client. So I replied that GOG Galaxy is no DRM since people are not forced to use it. If they were they would bother. It has been said more than once that people here need the store to stay DRM-free , including Galaxy.

Actually I'd suggest the reading of David Hume's "On the standards of taste", which is the best input I know of, on this question.

[url=https://web.csulb.edu/~jvancamp/361r15.html]https://web.csulb.edu/~jvancamp/361r15.html[/url]

As for the rest, I didn't see the origin of the argument, but from the quotes in its last two posts I feel that one is talking of "most gamers" and the other of "most gog customers" (or "most gog forumers", which is yet another thing). The proportion of "clients rejection" is of course not the same for the three populations.

Are these games not cheap? Take a look at the price tags. That was not a hate post, it was an observation.
Thanks MarkoH01, that's exactly what I meant - and thanks for voting for Prominence too. :-)

Well, if you follow the conversation you will see that it's not as off topic as you might think. This thread is not just about "Hidden Object Games" the thread title is "Hidden Object games are coming to GOG". People who don't want HOGs here are fearing that GOG will turn to Steam and since the discussion why Steam still is different from GOG is kind of related.

I don't want to continue this whole Steam vs. GOG discussion for all eternity but if people think that bringing HOGs here would be a bad move for GOG because GOG needs to distinguish themselves from Steam to be able to compete it's hard for me not to reply when I think that's not the case.

If we would talk about the latest Star Wars movie I'd agree that this would be off topic but here I disagree. It's a sub discussion related to the main one. I know you are the mod here (and of course I will follow your rules) but imo it's nearly impossible to keep a discussion completely on topic you just can try to prevent that it is going too much and too long off topic.
I doubt any book (or in this case essay) would ever change my mind that taste/opinions will always be subjective.

You are right. I was only talking about people here on GOG that are also voicing their opinion in the forums since these are the only opinions I know of.

Countdown clock of the promo page is wrong (24 hours shorter).

I stayed up all night last night playing through the second Enigmatis. Very addictive yet calming game with beautiful artwork. Thanks for adding this to the catalogue!

This seems to be the part where you've been talking past each other, and where your supposition of objectivity doesn't hold up. You pointed out that a low level of interactivity is an objective fact. But then you apply the very subjective rule that how good a game is, is related to its level of interactivity. A lot of gamers would strongly disagree with that. The interactivity that's there can be done better or worse, but the degree of interactivity is simply a design decision.

So we end up at the question, what authority rules over the degree of interactivity that is necessary for a program to be allowed to call itself a "game"? Of course, nobody does and nobody needs to. I think "game" is a terrible name for the medium anyway, because it leads some people to believe that they necessarily need to be rule-based or competition-based like traditional games. But I also can't think of a better term. "Interactive entertainment software" is slightly unwieldy. But none of the Gs in GOG stand for games anymore, and they also sell a few films. The boundary is completely blurred.

Your position leads me to the question: what level of interactivity do you need to add to a good movie to turn it into a bad game? If I watch The Godfather in a way that I have to click my remote at every scene change, it reaches VN levels of interactivity, and hence in your terms becomes a bad game. That's how arbitrary those definitions are – in the end, I and most people just want to enjoy something that's entertaining (or challenging, or disturbing, or thought-provoking), and I decide based on what fits the mood, which can, but most often doesn't, include the criteria of how interactive or passive I want it to be.

To me, these discussions always feel a bit like someone calling a newspaper a terrible novel. It's measuring one thing against the quality criteria of a completely different thing, simply because they're both printed on paper.

I know I shouldn't, but… we should figure what, exactly?
That you realised that not every other person shares your tastes? That people particularly don't like being insulted over what they happen to like?
Or is there some conspiracy you think is at work here?