Golf With Your Friends Trailer - Releasing Later This Spring

[Steve_OS]

Team17 and Blacklight Interactive have announced Golf With Your Friends is making its way to PlayStation 4, Xbox...

Written By: Steve Noah

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[OnlookerDelay]

I hate to come off sounding like an old fart here, but what is it about this game that has made it sell over 1.5 million copies? I watched my son and some of his friends (all in their mid-20s) playing the game a few months back. They were whooping it up and cackling about it, but I didn't see any long term appeal to it. If any of you enjoy playing this game, do you get any 'golf' enjoyment out of it, or is there some other intangible quality it has that I'm missing?

My son says "well you like to play Wreckfest every now and then, Golf With Your Friends is to golf what Wreckfest is to racing". I'm sorry, but I think Wreckfest is much closer to racing than GWYF is to golf. I'm sorry, but I don't get it... maybe I'm becoming a crusty old curmudgeon?

[bigkev]

Pretty simple... golf sim don't sell, and just about any arcade golf game do. And for those few buying golf sim, it's never going to be sim and good enough so they complain all the time that the product is trash. And the sales are going down, and down, and down...


Meanwhile those not taking golf seriously and just want to have a good time, well they're ending up buying games like this product. Over 1.5M copies, WOW!

[OnlookerDelay]

Quote: Originally Posted by bigkev

Pretty simple... golf sim don't sell, and just about any arcade golf game do. And for those few buying golf sim, it's never going to be sim and good enough so they complain all the time that the product is trash. And the sales are going down, and down, and down... Meanwhile those not taking golf seriously and just want to have a good time, well they're ending up buying games like this product. Over 1.5M copies, WOW!

bigkev that helps put it into perspective... a bit. I'm more into a game that simulates golf more accurately, like The Golf Club 2019 and Jack Nicklaus Perfect Golf. I give the nod to TGC 2019 because of its use of tailorable, mo-capped golfers, but if I had to settle for either one of them I could. They could each be so much better though, IMO, and you're right, a lot of folks find them falling short and do nothing but complain about them.

I guess in an arcade golf game like GWYF, there's no attempt to model reality so the temptation to slam the game because it doesn't model it well isn't there?

[JayhawkerStL]

Quote: Originally Posted by OnlookerDelay

bigkev that helps put it into perspective... a bit. I'm more into a game that simulates golf more accurately, like The Golf Club 2019 and Jack Nicklaus Perfect Golf. I give the nod to TGC 2019 because of its use of tailorable, mo-capped golfers, but if I had to settle for either one of them I could. They could each be so much better though, IMO, and you're right, a lot of folks find them falling short and do nothing but complain about them. I guess in an arcade golf game like GWYF, there's no attempt to model reality so the temptation to slam the game because it doesn't model it well isn't there?

Well, duh...

And what you are seeing is that the average sports gamer, ones that want a realish sports game, want the devs to privilege fun over realism every single time. Tiger Woods was great. Fans of the game that continued to demand more realism ruined the community, and then the sales.

So, now, no one gets a game they like.

[OnlookerDelay]

Quote: Originally Posted by JayhawkerStL

Well, duh... And what you are seeing is that the average sports gamer, ones that want a realish sports game, want the devs to privilege fun over realism every single time. Tiger Woods was great. Fans of the game that continued to demand more realism ruined the community, and then the sales. So, now, no one gets a game they like.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here... the gamers that want 'realish' sports want the devs to 'privilege' fun over realism every single time? When you say "privilege", it sounds like you're saying they give the focus to fun versus realism. The way I see it, the golf games I've played over the last 20 years, by and large, default to more of what I'd call 'arcade' or 'fun' settings... that doesn't seem like the point you were trying to make though?

The Tiger Woods PGA Tour series games were classic examples of that, but over the years the devs included the ability for more realism minded players to go in and change the options to dial up settings that were more on the realism side. Tiger Woods 10 was a classic example of that. 85% of the players who played that game used the default, out of the box settings, which were pure arcade, and never looked back.

Others like me went with the tour pro setting and some even further into the club tuner settings to reduce the club sweetspots to make it even more reflective of real life FIRs and GIRs. I was very satisfied with the realistic challenge I was able to dial up with this game. The beauty of it was that I could do this without the fans of arcade or "fun" play not even knowing such an option existed. My play choice didn't affect their world and their's didn't affect mine.

People seem to think that a golf game can't be configurable between the range of arcade and realistic, yet Tiger Woods 10 through 14 had enough options to allow most anyone the opportunity to dial-in the settings they wanted to suit their tastes. TGC 2019 is not as configurable as Tiger Woods 10 through 14 were along these lines, but with Beginner clubs it feels more arcade and Master clubs it produces more realistic results.

I guess the point I'm really trying to make is that I don't think a golf game necessarily has to be one or the other. I can understand a golf game marketing itself as an arcade game, like GWYF, and I have no problem with that, but when I buy a game called "The Golf Club 2019: Featuring PGA TOUR, I expect it to lean more toward the realism side. However, if the devs want to provide an avenue for the buyers of TGC 2019 to configure it something more arcadish (fun), and that helps sell more copies, I'm all for it!