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The Future of Console Gaming
I've come across a well-written piece regarding the future of console gaming. The op-ed piece deals with machinery, games as well as working within the video game industry.
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First post. :P
Do I still smell like monkey ass? *LOL*
Today, the games are developed by teams of people, sometimes past 100 members. There are programmers, artists, marketeers, and even people whose job it is to do nothing but manage the aforementioned people.
This has happened in other areas as well. For example, the movie Terminator was never expected to be a success, and was filmed on a very small budget. After it became popular, a sequel was made, which (IMHO) was nowher near as good, although it cost a lot more, and IIRC was at one time the most expensive movie ever.
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Damn firewalls. I'd like to read this though; anyone mirror it?
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
I'm sorry, what does this post have to do with anything? You cite a bunch of commonly known facts to back up your argument, but, you don't have an argument.
Yes, games used to be made by one person, now there made by lots (although, actualy the number of people who work full time on the game is usualy less then 10). Movies used to be cheap, now there not. But what does it mean?
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
First off, I want to quote what is maybe the most succinct, beautiful, imaginative, and just plain f*cking accurate quote I've heard in a while. You'll know it when you see it:
"First off, it's plain unfair to merely release a game with the exact same engine. New graphics, new level maps, and new sounds do not constitute a sequel. Such a change should be labeled an expansion pack. If you think I'm lying about trying to do this, I'd like to relate a quote I heard at E3 a few years ago, "We used to call it, 'slapping new make-up on the whore and sending her back out.'"
Beautiful.
R.I.P brings up some very interesting points. The point that there's no real indie scene in the gaming industry however belies the fact that while there are in fact small development groups who come up with games, they're very, very often pretty awful...and when they're not awful, suddenly they're plucked from the indie scene and morphed into a GT or Microsoft product.
One of the nicer things about the Shareware scene--noticably absent from R.I.P.'s paper, but it's still in progress--was that small guys actually could make a living. iD and Apogee/Epic are probably the single best examples.
But, overall, you may wonder why I think the gaming industry is broken. See Messiah and Daikatana for that one. The only bright side is that Half Life was *also* horrifically delayed, but managed to far exceed expectations. That gives some hope. But overall...the complete inability to hype with any sense of reality is just disturbing and wrong, to the point where, even with my copious amounts of net addiction, I simply refuse to read gaming news anymore.
It's Just Not Worth It.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
I'm going to be honest from the start. I didn't really read the article. I tried, dont get me wrong, but after I was 2 pages in I was really just bored off my ass and gave up. Maybe it's just because it's monday... I dont know, all I know is that reading license agreements is about as fun as that article was.
:P) and motions become more realistic. I've seen RPG's no longer become a game of rolling the dice, but become worlds for us to escape in, they stopped being sprites and really became characters. FF8 seemed like a movie at times. But even though all this, one thing has been lacking....... Life!
However, I do have thoughts on gaming. I've been around games all my life. From back in the day of Atari, up until the playstation. I haven't shelled out the money for the dreamcast yet, because I did purchase the Saturn for $300 with 2 games when it was new, and promptly sold it to some other sucker for the same price. Beofre that I bought the 32X to go with my sega, and both systems were poor ideas and died shortly after their release. The only worse game system (which i was smart enough to never buy) was the Virtual Boy.
I remember back in the day, playing games over and over again. Games like Space Invaders, Pac Man, and such classics on the Atari. I also remember Pitfall (the original), Donkey Kong (ditto), and Porkys (I think the first shower scene ever in a video game, even back in the Atari games people wanted chicks in showers). *L*
Over time I've seen games improve in all areas. I've seen graphics get better, speed improve, AI improve (anyone play the old baseball game on Atari? I think it was called baseball.
Final Fantasy 8 (FF8), Resident Evil 1,2,and 3, Dino Crisis, Silent Hill, all of these are games that played like movies, but still all of which were cartoony. I'm not talking bugs bunny and loony toons type cartoony, I'm just talking artsy drawing type cartoony.
I think that one of the improvements we're going to see in games is more video, not CGI but actual video shots in video games. It'll start out slowly with just replacing still scenes with video clips, but eventually playing a video game is really going to be like being a part of a movie. People will look like real people, not like drawn characters. People will ACT not just stand in place. People will speak rather than make you read words on the screen.
I think the start would be games similar to the Tex Murphy games on the PC (Under a Killing Moon, The Pandora Detective, and I forgot the 3rd once since I dont have a DVD to play it on.) They are all detective games, but when you talk with people you see video clips of real people answering you. Yeah it took up 4 cds, but I'd rather disk swap and have a great game than have a crappy game with some great options tossed out of it to make it fit on one. And with the incorporation of DVD and larger media such as that into console systems, well it's now possible to fit it all into one disk and have room to spare.
As long as desktop PC's; as cheap as they are, Have a GPFing Microsoft Windows installed; Consoles will flourish. 10 year old boys dont wanna have to reboot in the middle of a Squaresoft movie sequence.
-Oy Vey
From the article :
My first exposure to modern console gaming was in 1989 when I first played Revenge of Shinobi on the Genesis, followed by hours of time lost to Tetris, and Golgo 13 for the NES.
One of the interesting, and really, sad things about old video games is how much they suck. A friend of mine had a Golgo13 NES game, and I played it for the first time a few months ago when he finally got his NES hooked up again. That game sucks, and sucks bad. (btw, has anyone here seen the Anime it's from? I thought it was pretty bad to, actually)
I think the most fun old games are the ones that didn't try and 'push' the system to far. By that I mean, games that didn't try to produce 'amazing' graphics, because by default those graphic will appear to suck to future generations. When you compare a game like "super Mario bros. 3" for the NES, to a game like "Batman 3" or something, witch was supposed to have lush graphics at the time, looks like crap.
Not that this has anything to do with anything, but...
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Back in 1981 I video game salesman told me the games
are popular because of the bad economy. He said people
want cheap intertainment.
Now that the economy is "booming", I've noticed a drop off
in the number of people in the local arcade.
So, vote republican if you want to have better video games.
At the beginning of the article R.I.P mentions the dearth of great writing on video games; I'd like to place here a plug for J.C. Herz's Joystick Nation : How Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds, and even more so Herz's New York Times Column Game Theory. Reading Game Theory is the highlight of my Thursday.
mahlen
When a team of marketing minions from Sears paid a visit to the company's production facilities, Bushnell made a lasting impression by riding around the factory floor on a conveyor belt, in a box. Elsewhere in the organization, happy employees tried to drive an executive mad by gradually adding lead weights to his telephone receiver.
--ATARI, 1974
Having recently played NFL2K on a dreamcast, I was appauled at the user interface. The game was just difficult to play. A major disappointment.
Though some games rise above the general level of white noise, most games a relegated to some grey area. Most likely because they don't provide the user with the most integral part of the experience:
Most modern games are not engaging!
Add to this the clones (1st person shooters, 2-player fighters, etc) we end up with a muddy environment of gaming that people quickly tire of.
Though I adore Quake, and my current choice of game is Soul Calibre, very few other games appeal. The quote about slapping new paint on the old whore is so poignant its not funny.
Soul Calibre offers engagement, namely, letting you and your friends have a fantastic laugh at the crazy (and sometimes suggestive) special moves you can make.
Quake allows you to pit your skills against other actual people, not just some badly designed AI. Engaging.
The future of gaming consoles? Bring Soul Calibre to a PC, and my Dreamcast is history.
Sakhmet.
"When I want to do something mindless to relax, I reinstall Windows 95."
Ban the Nukes! Save the Whales! Screw it. Nuke the Whales!
Outside of the people writing military grade combat/weapons simulations, there are not many other programming jobs that are as mentally taxing and physically demanding as that of programming games. [emphasis added] I'm trying to figure this out. I didn't see any further support for this assertion in the article (although I admit to dozing off about halfway through). Add this odd statement to the back-handed swipe that R.I.P. takes at all other programmers - something along the lines of the "the hardest thing they have to do is figure out a new date algorithm". Gee, thanks. Besides, I'll still take the original Infocom text games over most of todays graphics-fests any day. Of course, those aren't very physically demanding either.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
You know, a long time ago, cars were usually built by just one person. He'd design and build the engine, assemble the chassis, hammer the body panels, etc. One person decided how the car would look, how the driving controls would work, and which side of the car the driver would sit on. This gave the car a certain feel, similar to the one you experience when you read a poem or look at a painting. The car was an artform.
Today, the cars are developed by teams of people, sometimes thousands. There are engineers, designers, marketeers, and even people whose job it is to do nothing but manage the aforementioned people.
Who cares about "objective" measures of quality, like acceleration, top speed, fuel economy, and polution. Who cares about trivial issues like a standardized control system. I'd give up knowing that the gas and the brake were always in the same place for the soul of one of those old fashioned cars.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Never knock on Death's door:
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Well, he may be refering to the late nights spent by programers, or posibly the lower pay even. In any event, I'm going to be late for class...
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
The games "industry" is broken because it is too expensive to develop and market games.
It is absolutely impossible to make a business case for a "new idea" that costs $3 million to develop, unless you are an established team with at least one, preferably a half dozen hits.
Of course, if you are an established team, its a lot easier to make a sequel to one of your hits than it is to convince the checkbook to invest in a "new idea."
That's why you get so many similar games at retail.
Such an investment requires the game to be a hit just to break even. You can't make money in a limited market starting out $3 million in debt.
"How do you know this game will sell?" Greatest question in the whole industry. You know what? There IS NO RIGHT ANSWER. You don't know it will sell, and neither does anyone else. Anyone who tells you they "know" something will sell and is still working for a living is being "creative."
Not to mention the unbelievable cheese grater that stands between a developer and the retail shelves. Why do games cost $50?; because there are about eleventeen levels of companies who want their part before it gets to the shelf.
When a small team (2-5 people) can develop AND MARKET a game for the cost of their labor, the game industry will improve. Prices will drop, quality will rise, development schedules will be measured in months instead of years, and there will be a much better selection of games.
What bugs me isn't the whole "shine and sent it out again" games but its the pay-to-play model.
Its already seen in everquest and ultima online with a ton of new ones coming soon. If upper management sees the revenue models for these sort of games you can bet they will get all "hot-and-bothered".
Its not so bad now since they do provide you with servers to play on, but it could lead to a charge-per-use of single player games. For example, if Q3A required not only to authenticate your CD key to play over the internet but also charges you a monthly bill.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
WOW. The article is about the game industry in general, not just consoles, so if that's interesting to you, go read it!
I've noticed a lot of things mentioned in the article, like how "sequels" are just the same old game with a new coat of paint. In fact, I just bought Half-Life: Opposing Force, which is just another set of levels (only half as many as the original). Good thing I bought it in a 3-pack that included the original Half-Life (and an upgrade CD that installs Team Fortress Classic), since I mostly enjoy Half-Life's TFC and Counter-Strike multiplayer mods.
Anyways, the article does a great job of making sense out of where the gaming industry is today, including why PC games are so buggy and why there are so many of the same types of games for consoles.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Although not many. Looking Glass Studios, for one, has attracted a pretty rabid following. I know that I, for one, put myself through all kinds of hell getting my system to run the original System Shock, and it was worth every second.
So- why do you think that this one group of developers has been so successful in creating a public image, while others remain obscure?
Lack of superstars
Any mark except a publisher leads to an expectation of Genre. Molyneux leads to god game, Meier leads to resource management. Most film directors manage not to get hemmed in like this.
Ordinary programmers who work in the industry, personally I want my name on the box, but I'm not too interested in being a superstar.
18 month production cycles lead to a fluid base of people working on the game making picking a single person difficult.
System's like Valve's Cabal are basically design by committe, a sin in most areas, but here it resulted in a hell of a game (Half-life).
Todays games rely on a lot of organisational work. They are more like other large media projects
Sequels
Juxtaposed with the above, we had a rant about sequels.
Sequels are just making the game characters stars.
This isn't always bad. Crash Team Racing is an example.
This kind of shit regularly pops up. Always negative and just ranting about how bad it all is. Sure its not always fun, but its just a matter of remembering what your building and how cool its going to be.
I know when someone I work with works like a bastard to get their work done, I respect them more than any star.
Anyway, back to it...
There is an indie scene in Games.
It's the people doing mods for the Quake engine, producing new games based on Unreal, producing scenery for MS Flight Simulator.
There's an indie scene producing engines (see Crystal Space, for one of many examples).
There's many, many people out there working on products. No, they can't compete with the big boys, but they can produce real games, played by real gamers.
And just because sometimes these small groups are sometimes funded by the big boys, doesn't stop them from being just as real.
In some ways, game producers are always going to be small groups. It's very hard to write code with more than a few people. ID Software started to have problems when it got too big. Lionhead have decided to stick to less than 20 people.
My Journal
I've played video games continually (at least 4-5 hours a week) for the last 17 years. That's arcarde, console, PC, etc. These days, despite having a high-powered 3d machine that can play the latest games. I spend the vast majority of time playing games on MAME. Games like Galaga, centipede, Super Basketball, etc. I just find them more entertaining. Maybe I'm just reliving my youth, but most of those hold my attention longer. I think gameplay/learning curve has been sacrificed at the altar of Resolution * Weapons * Textures * FPS = Great game!
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
And that company is... Squaresoft. From Final Fantasy to Chrono Trigger, this company has always astounded me when I consider the depth of the story line, and the use of technology.
For instance, Final Fantasy VII was the first RPG game to really penetrate the average adult video game market. Also, its 3D rendering overlay on video was pretty cool stuff.
Now, take a look at Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy VIII (If you want to see the Chrono Cross opening - I have it here). These games are truly amazing. Chrono Cross' 3D overlay is even more impressive than Final Fantasy VII's - including shadows and other effects. Final Fantasy VIII's gameplay is unlike any other game.
Squaresoft has always amazed me with what comes out of their Hawaiian offices (who wouldn't want to live there?
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Walk into almost any arcade nowdays, excepting the ones that specialize in older games, and what do you see?
A half dozen Mortal Kombat wannabes, a mess of Lethal Enforcers clones with mabye a few Operation Wolf copies mixed in, and a mess of sit-down racing games which are, mostly, less fun than
Pole position.
Would Pac Man even be made in todays market, if it weren't a classic?
I'm sure burgertime would never have been introduced.
Tron?
Joust?
Lunar Patrol?
Q-Bert?
Centipede?
Asteroids?
Defender?
Zaxxon?
Zookeeper?
Donkey Kong?
Spy Hunter?
Afterburner?
Asteroids?
Would any of the above even be introduced to arcades nowdays if ther were not considered "classics"? These were all treeibly fun games, most more fun than ant recent game, most of which defined their own genres.
But, bomehow, I doubt that any of them would see the light of day today if they were not already "Classics", because none of them is:
A) A fighting game
B) A first peoson shooter
or
C) A racing game (with the arguable axception of Spy Hunter)
I think there is DEFINATELY a lack of originallity in today's cookie-cutter arcade game industry.
The art *IS* dead... the only art left in the arcades is that of creating a more bloody fatality when you defeat your opponent.
john
Imagine all the people...
In terms of game play, what's -really- changed between the days of Wizardry I, Chuckie Egg, Revs, or Elite? AFAICT, there's really nothing new there. It's at best re-hashes, and (at worst) trivialised.
Where's the idea that games players are -smart- gone? A decade ago, people fussed that games were causing people to become stupid, but psychology studies showed that the reverse might be true. These days, I doubt they'd get the same results.
Large sprites, simple blocky movement, and they call that a game. And me, with this pain down my left diodes...
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
>Built a game that *works* 100% on the target platform
Actually they failed on this one. When FFVII first came out for the PC, the game didn't work correctly for those who had non-3dfx 3d-accelerators.
Squaresoft does make good games but they are still not perfect.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
The thing is, game programmers aren't business app programmers, how can they understand what we have to do, just like I can't understand what game programmers have to do...
Personally, I'm not too concerned about the difficulty of programming different types of things (OS or game or whatever). For the most part doing another NT or Unix or FPS, the information is already out there, you study and learn, then do your own a little better. It's not so much of a problem compared to the size of the project. If game developers have to complain about teams of 50 or 100, I can't imagine what they'd do in a big business setting.
You quote a paragraph from the original article about "slapping new make-up on the whore and sending her back out", and claim that it's the most "accurate quote" you've heard in a while.
I don't know if you were being sarcastic or even just ironic, but in case you weren't being either, I must very strongly disagree.
The quote is a sad reflection of the state of the game industry today. Most of the time, games seem to be almost purely technology-driven, with little regard for gameplay or even originality.
Why is it necessary for a new game to have a completely new game engine in order for it to be worth of being called a new game and not a "mere" expansion pack or add-on?
In the "good old days", game developers would release many games based on basically the same engine. Infocom's classic text adventures were all based on variations of their Z-Machine interpreter. Sierra On-Line created literally dozens of terrific adventure games using their AGI engine -- and when they switched to SCI0 in the late eighties, they stuck with that for at least a dozen more games.
Infocom and Sierra are just two examples of the many companies that used to be able to create many games using the same engine. I don't recall Sierra or Infocom ever being accused of releasing mere "expansion packs" or games that were not worthy of being called sequels, simply because they happened to use the same engine.
To use a more contemporary example, take Looking Glass Technologies' Thief: The Dark Project. Their Dark Engine did not exactly have state-of-the-art graphics even at Thief's time of release. Yet, very few people who played the game complained that the game was "bad" simply because it wasn't as gorgeous to look at as, say, Unreal. For what it's worth, I personally consider Thief to be one of the finest gaming experiences I have ever had in my two decades of gaming.
More importantly, the upcoming Thief 2: The Metal Age is being created with what is at best described as an incremental upgrade to the original Dark Engine. Even Thief 2 will not look as good as the best games did at the time of the original Thief's release. But I'm hardly complaining, and neither are most of Thief's fans. Why? Because I know that Looking Glass's use of an existing game engine is allowing them to devote much more time and energy to the game itself, making for a much deeper, better-crafted, and more robust product than would have been possible if they had been forced to create a brand-new engine again from scratch.
It is an unfortunate reality that most of today's gamers do demand over everything else that their games look cutting edge. Developers are not to blame for the demands of their customers -- although I should point out that it is probably id Software that is to blame for starting this trend in the first place. Perhaps in the mindless shooter genre, graphics do make the game, to some extent; however, in other genres, it may be desirable, and possibly even crucial, to relegate the "engine arms race" to a back burner in favor of the all-important Gameplay.
begin 644
In a nutshell, for those who won't read the article, the people who really dictate what will sell are the magazine reviewers and the shop salesmen, who are mostly males between 14 and 25.
A mother goes to a games shop, and says she's looking for a game to give to her 12 yr old daughter. The shop assistant is a 16 year old boy. He likes Quake. Either he tries to sell her Quake, or he'll sell her a random "kiddies" game, of unknown quality, knowing nothing as he does about quality children's software. As a result there is nothing driving children's software to improve.
(the same thing applies to "women's software", "senior citizen's software"). Why is there nothing on the Playstation that will appeal to my Mum? I'm sure if anyone actually put some thought into it, they'd think of something. Sim Country Garden. There, that didn't take long.
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"(...) I'd like to relate a quote I heard at E3 a few years ago, "We used to call it, 'slapping new make-up on the whore and sending her back out.'" (...) However, I used the quote to illustrate how large software publishers perceived sequels(...)" ;-)
I wonder if he's talking about Tomb Raider
What are we at now? III? IV? I still haven't noticed any improvement in the rendering or gameplay... what's that you say? A movie? Oh that'll help a lot. Look at what it did to Wing Commander.
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btw, has anyone here seen the Anime it's from? I thought it was pretty bad to, actually
Yup, seen it, and I have to agree that it sucks. Just like the game. =)
Mikael Jacobson
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
The article's premise is wrong. A game programmer isn't the equivalent of a movie industry star. S/he's the equivalent of a grip or at most a set designer.
>It is an unfortunate reality that most of today's gamers do demand over everything else that their games look cutting edge.
It is true but some of us don't. Look at Planetscape:Torment or HalfLife when it came out. Even AlphaCenturi's graphics are nothing to write home about but all of these games sold well.
>relegate the "engine arms race" to a back burner in favor of the all-important Gameplay
Oh please do. I mean graphics are good enough unless you make something like Starshiptroopers animated series on my PC. Quake3 is one which would could use some gameplay. The model and bots are nice and all but how about something more than just 4 CTF maps! Future mods should improve this but id seems to be relying on cheap community labour to finish off their game. Why should I buy Q3 when it doesn't provide anything over Q2 in terms of gameplay?
As an game-engine, Q3 is nice but as a game its quite lacking.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Honestly, do you open up a new book and think to yourself, "Look at this! This thing has the exact same vocabulary, font, and paper as the last book I read! What a rip off!" Do you watch a new movie, and complain that there wasn't a single new special effect or camera angle? Do you listen to a new rock album, and complain that it's still the same 44khz stereo sampled electric guitars as last time?
In the long run (long run being less than 10 years from now in the computer software world), storyline development should be far more important than engine improvements to how good a sequel to a game is. There's already insufficient attention paid to storyline in most games, and the "tournament/arena" game variety isn't helping. Are people going to be buying Baldur's Gate II in droves because they expect another engrossing world and story, or because they want to see the cool alpha-blending effects in the new engine?
The fact that people can think exactly the opposite is true, that a new game engine is the most important part of a new game, is just an artifact of the current situation where computer hardware and the computer gaming market are improving exponentially, and so compromises made in previous games due to slow hardware and low development budgets are no longer necessary. This situation won't last forever - eventually the size of the market will level off and the rate of hardware improvement will slow or become less relevant. The difference between a 100 and a 1000 poly model is much larger than the difference between a 1000 and a 10000 poly model, and a good engine will allow users with vastly differing systems to use any of the above models in the same game.
There's only so far that you can go with a game engine before other things become more important. There's a reason why the Marathon games (and even Duke3D) had better single player play than the technically superior Quake. Atmosphere, level design, etc. can be more important than whats under the hood.
Quick reality check, though - when I say that the days of huge game engine improvements won't last in the long run, that isn't to say that there isn't lots of room to improve today. Check out the upcoming Halo, for an example of how far we have yet to go.
This touches on the overwhelming failure of indie game developers.
This has links to some good articles about the future of gaming and the rise and fall of shareware and hobbyist game programming.
I think in the future we will see a blurring of the distinction between console and PC games. There are still a lot of companies out there making interesting stuff. Just take a look at Thief: the Dark Project or Halflife. While they were both FPS games they greatly expanded on the concept and weren't simply cookie cutter rehashes. Crap is still being made, and always will. Most games suck, whether they were made 20 years ago or last week. It's the gems that we remember.
When ever I go into an arcade I look for Pacman, Tron, Spy Hunter, Donkey Kong, and Gauntlet. I love to play the classics. Rarely do I go and LOOK for a fighting game.
I think that we have definately strayed from the orginal concepts and are just a bunch of clone making fools. Sure we have remakes of Frogger, Gauntlet, and of course the original Pong.
The main problem that exists is that we don't have many types of cake out. Instead of making our games full of more icing we need to develop more types of cake. Sure in the beginning before we had icing the flavor of the cake was the most important thing, but now people are just changing the flavor of the icing while keeping the three flavors of cake, fighting, 1st person shooters, and racing. IMHO The remakes barely live up to the greatness that the classic was. Sure they have new and "better" graphics, "better" sound, but all of these are icing on the cake. If a video game is a cake then the icing sould add flavor but not take away from the flavor of the cake itself.
Nowadays games are just about all icing with little to no cake at all. Sticking a spoon into a tub of icing and eating it is good for one or two spoon fulls, but eventually you need to get same cake in your diet, and that is why I go back to the classics. Sure I indulge in the occational game of "Police Trainer".
"A fool finds no pleasure in understanding but delights in airing his own opinions." Proverbs 18 : 2
Phantasmagoria is THE game that springs to mind
when I try to explain how an interactive movie
shouldn't be done.
I mean c'mon this was far to easy (even for my
11 year old sister). Most people finish it the
first time they play I (if they have an afternoon
to spend)
Some games featured movies wich really helped set
an atmosphere (Wing Commander or Gabriel Knight 2
f.i.) but most "interactive" movies are just a
pile of crap pressed on a CD.
Of course
"de coloris et de gustibus non disputandum est"
J.
IF consoles are dead, then why are Sega, Sony, and Nintendo pouring so much money into the next consoles?
Because the market is HUGE. The 13 to 25 market specifically.
3D gaming is coming on strong (for better or for worse.) Take a look at Soul Caliber for state of the art of 3d graphics on consoles.
Granted, gameplay innovation is solely lacking today. Hence the reason for tons of "clones"
As a 3D programmer, I cringe when I see 3d as the first priority and gameplay second. Ironic I know. Unfortunately marketing seems to think, if the game isn't 3D, the game won't sell.
Cheers
Back then the gameplay had to be addicting or the game had no chance at all. You cant hide behind 3d graphics or cinematic sequences when you only have a few K to program in.
e n-getting-powerup-to-defeat-enemy games were there? There were a stack of other worthless Space Invaders type ripoffs. While Super Mario brothers was a classic, there have really only been a short list of Mario successes among the painfullyl ong list of Mario games for all the nintendo platforms. There are always games that set the standard and games that follow. Looking back on 20 years of gaming allows your short list to only include the winners.
That being said, there were PLENTY of rip-offs back then too. How many pole position ripoffs or pac-man-guy-moves-thru-maze-running-from-enemy-th
20 Years from now the kids today will look back on Gran Turismo and Quake (both excellent games IMHO) as reverently as we look back on Pole Position and Pac-Man.
-Rich
And of course, the ultimate 'rock stars' - Id Software (complete with Ferraris;-)
Hell, I saw an advert in a magazine recently for John Romero's company's (Ion Storm IIRC) new game, which featured his name in far bigger letters than the publisher (ok, maybe that's probably more Rock Star ego (Id/ego - geddit?) than rock star fame.)
--
I agree with most of these posts so far, except for one thing. I think the area where games have made distinct improvements and amazing advances in the last five years is flight sims. Look at what was once "state-of-the-art", something like US Navy Fighters. At the time it was one of the more complex sims around. Now compare it to todays godlike games like Falcon 4.0 and Janes's F-15. Those games are hardcore simulations -- you have almost all of the options and controls the actual pilots do, the graphics are amazing, the physics are stunning, you can do all sorts of complex scripting... well, I could go on for days. USNF looks like an arcade game compared to these masterpieces.
/. is usually the Quaker's domain, but I'd appreciate some backup from any flight simmers out there.
F-15 is cool because it also has a "casual" (read: loser) mode with arcade physics, and a point-and-shoot type of atmosphere. This allows the "casual" gamers to take advantage of the beatifully rendered aircraft and dynamic lighting without actually taking the Hardcore Flight Simmer oath.
And if you think *that's* good... just wait until you see F-18... heh heh heh...
Quake 3 doesn't have any real gameplay differences from Doom. Shoot and don't get shot. The graphics are awesome, the AI kicks ass, and a thousand other improvements are obvious, but the same basic gameplay applies. A Doom fanatic could adapt to Quake 3 in twenty minutes, tops. But try taking someone from the point-n-shoot flight sim era and showing them F-15. Assuming they have a few days to read the highly detailed, complex manual which teaches you actual combat air tactics and is an effective crash course in aerodynamics and flight systems, it'd take them a few days at least to get used to the sensitivity and realistic stall characteristics. It'd take them at least a week to be able to pull off a landing in expert mode without crashing and burning.
Unfortunately, I think that the flight sims have reached the limits of the current technology. These games suck up RAM and computing power. Anyhting more complex or powerful is going to be an actual military simulation at this point.
The last arena in which flight-sims have yet to venture (very well) is force-feedback. I want to have to wrestle with my $300 flight stick, and feel the Gs as I pull an Immelman. But this requires a full enclosure and much expensive machinery. So is VR the next step?
I know that
Holy shlamoly. I know I'm offtopic, but what has this site become when someone feels compelled to apologize for using a specific brand of computer?
"Forgive me, father Taco, but I have sinned. I really like Linux, but there's these games that run on the Mac. I really like them and, well, sometimes I play them. I'm terribly sorry. Once I get a Mac emulator running under the One True OS, I swear I'll never boot up a Mac again. Please don't hate me."
"My child, you have obviously been tempted by the bright case and easy interface of the Jobsian devil. Your penance shall be to read Hemos' essay 'Why I spelt stuff good' twice. You must also read every Jon Katz article for the next week. Do this and you will be forgiven. Now go in peace and configure your Debian box."
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Console vs PC game genre comparision
Certain styles of games work better on PC, others play better on consoles. The console isn't going to go away anytime soon, especially as Sega, Sony, and Nintendo are pouring huge amounts of money into R&D for the next generation consoles. The 13-25 age market is just too huge too ignore also ;-)
As a 3d game developer its very interesting to see which way the game industry is going to go. Having marketing basically ignoring a game unless it's 3D certainly isn't helping. Some games just don't play as well in 3D.
Unfortunately, the article is generally correct in how the game industry works overall.
Cheers
The biggest reason stopping me from purchasing UL and Everquest is the requirement that I play over one of there servers. Personally, I am one of the many that love the multiplayer feature. I just happen to insist playing in the controlled environment of my LAN.
I don't like using StarCraft's chat feature except for "gg" as I like the idea having all the people I play with in earshot/shouting range. Same with Diablo....and the group taunts I get when I hit the lava (ie: "Way to go, Stef!")
I'm a RPG nut too but I really don't like to deal with a lot of people I don't know. PKing has a lot to do with this. I don't mind PKing but there's a subtle difference in having your newbie character waxxed by a cheater as opposed to having that PKer in the same room with you. Something along the lines of "Wookie Chess Strategies."
-Vel
But, somehow, I doubt that any of them would see the light of day today if they were not already "Classics", because none of them is:
A) A fighting game
B) A first peoson shooter
C) A racing game (with the arguable axception of Spy Hunter)
It actually has more to do with the way games are displayed and played than how good the game actually is. I agree that the "classics" would never see the light of day in today's arcades. But todays arcades aren't about good games, they're about making money. And because the older games were all about fun and getting the high score, that doesn't translate into money for vendors. If you are going for a high score on Pac-Man, it could take you a couple hours...on one quarter. Instead, arcades put driving or shooting games in where the play is about a dollar and the game lasts for about 2 mintues. They get you to play with fancy cabinets and graphics, not good game play or high scores. Times have changed, and I must say, it is really sad.
To me it is a sad comment on the state of the gaming industry today that I have, at this very moment, a Commodore 128 system up and running on a desk right next to my P-II 333 system. (And in the same room I also have a Playstation, N64, and Sega Genesis.)
Why is my Commodore 128 still hooked up? Because there are a TON of GREAT games available for it. Titles like Pool of Radiance, Elite, Ultima I-IV, Neuromancer, Defender of the Crown, et al. Why are there no modern games being created that follow in the footsteps of these masterpieces? These games are all non-linear, fairly open-ended, had (by todays standards) poor graphics, but engaging storylines and hours (nay, YEARS) of re-play value.
Good graphics and sound do not a good game make. Very few games on the market these days (and no console games) come close to the high standards of these early games. Games that required intelligence, not reflexes. Games that had plot and storyline, not high-polygon counts. Games that had non-linear plotlines. (A few modern PC games follow this lead, Baldur's Gate is a good example.) Why is it that games of this caliber are so rare these days? (and non-existant on console systems?)
Final Fantasy et al are a joke in my opinion. I own FF VII, and it is so linear as to be boring. I want to play a ROLE PLAYING GAME, not watch a movie. The whole Final Fantasy series is nothing more than a hand-held walk through a poorly translated Anime film. (And I like Anime)
-Count Zero
Apologies to OT.
:) ) are still creatively, technically, or financially under the thumb of money or funding.
Thank you for kudos. If you don't mind, I would like to clip your quote and forward it to George and Scott. They are devoted to the small developer culture and would be pleased by it.
The following are my personal opinion, and not representative of my game project, nor my company.
I had and have a huge choice of companies to code at, and Apogee really stands out as a big company that works very hard to stay feeling like a small indie developer. That Apogee exists. That we are making some cool games and projects. That it feels like we will be making many for a long time to come. Just gives me renewed faith that small guys can still be around to make cool stuff.
I personally (not as representative of the company) contribute what I can to indie game dev. Because indie is fresh blood, and living creativity, of our industry. We will stifle ourselves with clones if we do not maintain and encourage a healthy indie culture.
I agree our field is still very money, very (large) publisher driven. That many small developers (and you would be surprised by *who* are *still small* developers, you would expect after such kicka** titles they should be *big* by now
A few lucky groups break free of that. And I am grateful I code for one of them.
In film they call directors whose works show a strong vision auteurs, and Auteur Theory does seem to cross over nicely into both video game design and animation, both of which are currently dominated by (film term again) a "studio system."
Because Sid Meier's games have such a consistent, recognizable look and feel, he could be called a game auteur (loosely). While there aren't too many in the marketplace now, there could be more, if game buyers were interested in that sort of thing.
"Game Auteur Theory" (a hypothetical) and a consequent market for individualist games would require a few things:
History of Auteurs:
What genius wrote Hunt the Wampus? Who was responsible for Pac-Man?
Current Auteurs:
Does Meier still qualify? I saw someone mention the guy who made (is making?) Daikatana... game critics would have to take the developer's name into account when reviewing the game. Does it show the same "personality" his last one did? We saw this with the recent Zelda sequel, all the magazines talked about the lead developer when discussing details from the game itself.
Indie Marketplace:
A group of game buyers who will go out of their way to play (and pay for) games developed by individuals, eschewing slick style and overlooking a few bugs here and there in order to play something new and different.
This stuff hasn't quite gotten off the ground in animation yet, but looking at the stellar rise in indie films and music over the last 10 years, (and to a lesser degree televised animation) it isn't inconceivable that it could happen to video games as well.
jpowers
-jpowers
I'm sorry that you got a bad taste of Final Fantasy. I've played the original one on the NES, and it remains one of my favorite games to this date. FFIV and FFVI (2 and 3 in the USA) were also great games for their time. Get an emulator and play them sometime.
Although maybe I've missed a reference to this, either in the comment string or the original article, I feel that "strategy" games are worth a mention, because I know several types of people who only enjoy these types of games. Myself included. I get bored and frusterated with RPG because I feel that under all of the flashy graphics they are imbued with nowadays, they are no more fun than the old type-string games like Wolves and such, and often less because they've mostly just taken away your chance to use your imagination, which is mostly what is fun about those games anyway. The only part of FF7 that I liked, really, was that part where you race those Chocobo things.
Which leads me to my original point. Strategy games, like SimCity, Civilization, and Ceasar - those are where its at. They don't try to be too complicated, and instead of telling some sort of a story they behave more like a puzzle or a board game. Also I have to give a shout out to my other favorite games of all time (full James Brown voice now...) Centipede, Revenge of Yars, Battletoads, Sonic2, and Nascar racing for the PlayStation!!!!
Two Things
First if anyone is interested in learning about game development there are a ton of ways to do so thanks to the net. If you are intersted in first person 3D development check out G-Sector here http://www.freegamesweb.com/gsector/ a complete functioning open source 3d multiplayer game. Or hell the quake source for that matter thanks JC!
Personally I want to create a graphical MUD that is open sourced . Kind of an open sourced diablo style game with full editors to allow you to add in monsters quests subquests and your own landmass.
To that end a recent release by Eidos called Revenant was supposed to have multiplayer coop and ship with the editor. I saw this and thought cool I can create game worlds for me and my friends to romp through. I thought it would be kinda like the dungeon designs I used to do on graph paper for me and my buds in the D&D days except these would be graphical and truly interactive. The graphics in the game are tre nice so I rushed out and bought it. I gotta say I have never been so pissed about a game before. In order to ship before Xmas and in order to release before Diablo 2. Eidos shipped and incomplete product. The coop multiplayer they promised that had me so jazzed isn't even in the fscking game! And certainly no mention of that on the Revenant web site either. They have multiplayer deathmatch but who the fsck in their right mind wants to play an isometric quake? It really sucks because the game shows some real inovation in many respects like the combat system and at times it begs to be loved but its just not quite finished. Another case of the marketing dept. screwing things up good. Because with the rep the game now has it is unlikely it will ever live up to it's potential. I am still really pissed can you tell?
I haven't played any Final Fantasy except 7, but I hated it. I'm a big Chrono Trigger and Phantasy Star fan, but Final Fantasy 7 was just too long and boring. I just never got too excited about the story, because it was too slow and never got too interesting.
Of course just about every game back in '83 was original...
The more the market gains popularity, the more games are produced... the more games produced, the less likely a game is to be "original"
Simply stating that games nowadays are less original than a previous decade is pointless...
Do you have any ideas for an original game? Game creators have to get flashy and put twists on existing, popular games because just about *everything* has been done...
The people that create games can't be faulted for this, it's just how it works... over time, we'll cover just about any kind of game that can be thought of..
In short, do people actually think before posting comments like these?
I'd wish they would.
"I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
No, it is the consoles, with their proprietary technology and strict content controls that don't have much of an indie scene. The content controls on consoles are driven by a few different things:
1. Profits: By controlling every aspect of video game creation, companies like Nintendo and Sony can make killings. Everytime someone makes a game, they get a cut of the profits. I don't think Microsoft weilds that type of power with developers, but if they do it is a relatively new thing.
2. Fear: The attitude of the U.S. Government and certain powerful political lobbies in the U.S. is that videoogaming and gaming in general are evil and should just disappear. Console game companies have come to the conclusion that if they are to continue to exist (in the U.S.), they will have to restrict content, despite the First Amendment. Electronic Arts did this with a game by a company they bought. Their attitude was "We won't produce it but we are going to sit on the rights and prevent anyone else from producing it either."
Oh, I've read Game Over by David Scheff and I think it is an excellent reference for people interested in the industry. An online reference (which I got due to a Slashdot poster on another thread) is The Dot Eaters an online history of console games.
I agree with the article about the consoles niches, Nintendo seeks to appeal to younger kids, and Playstation to older. However, I think that while it is true that among teenage salespeople the Playstation may get support, a far more powerful persuasion was summed up for me by a kids mom in Toys 'R' Us. She said, "Look at all the games for the Playstation, the Nintendo 64 has only a few." For the inexperienced game buyer, more is going to seem like better because they'll figure there are more chances to find a good title.
Oh, and I want to address the 'life' issue brought up by someone in another thread. The fact is, the first responsibility of games is to have an immersive environment where the player feels that they have some control. They tried creating photorealistic games in the past, but these games didn't sell because they were limited to point and click quick decision making. I'm not talking about more impressive stuff like the rotoscoping in Prince of Persia which allowed for fluid life like movement in characters but to games like Night Trap or Fox Hunt which were just badly made movies with limited interactivity.
Personally, I'm not interested in photorealism (as some people are), I'm not sure I'd even like it if it were possible. I like games that feel immersive like System Shock 2 (or on consoles, the much maligned Resident Evil) but this is a personal opinion. If a game will sell in big numbers, someone will try to make it. I just think photorealistic graphics will continue to be a low priority if it continues to mean low player interaction.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Not necessarily.
Photo-based rendering combined with video, actual shots, digitization can merge realism and dynamism.
Polygonal complexity shall outstrip the "art development budget" required to create that many polygons to build that many models, not only for indie developers, but even for mid-size (non-Square-Final-Fantasy-size) development teams.
Polygon as a basic content primitive shall soon become unwieldily expensive.
Mathematically, both the ideas of "convex hull polygon shell" and "affine transformation of bitmap onto hull -- *ahem* texturing" are temporary artificial constructs eventually inadequate to represent reality.
Zelda64 (N64) : Wow. Take the Mario64 engine, but wrap it in an engrossing and suprisingly non-linear storyline. Mix in lots of puzzles and little side-games. Make it easy enough so that it doesn't take superhuman reflexes to advance past the first level, but yet make it challenging enough to make you work at it a little - and vary the challenges so that you don't get "oh, not this again!" syndrome. A crowning work. It's worth buying the system to play this game.
Monaco Grand Prix (Dreamcast) Perhaps the most detailed race car sims I've ever played - and I drive real race cars kids! You can tune the _silastos_ in this sim! A game so detailed that I can tell the difference between a suspension-induced handling problem, and an aero-induced handling problem. Suffers from a lack of an official FIA licence, and I really wish that the track in "nostalgia mode" was an authentic replica of the Nurburgring - and I miss the rubber marks on the track being darker in the braking zone (that the N64 version has). Other than that, near perfect.
Tokyo XTreme Racer: (Dreamcast) An arcade-physics drivimg game (normally a big minus with me - see San Fransico Rush for an example) that's silly and fun. Race other street racing gangs in Tokyo to become king of the street. Sort of like Grand Tourismo with more rice. Fun stuff!
Armada: (Dreamcast) A 2-D overhead space shooter game (like Asteroids) but in a huge playfield. Fly around. Blow stuff up. Complete little mini-quests. Upgrade your ship. Simple concept, well executed - a worthy successor to the 80's arcade shooters
R.I.P.'s article (and yes, I read it all) strikes me as less of an article about the future of console gaming than a rant about what he thinks is wrong with the game industry today. There's an inferred suggestion of where he'd like the industry to go, but nothing about where it actually will go.
Yes, publishers hold a lot of power, and seek to keep that power by minimizing the role of the developer (just like music until about forty years ago, when the Beatles hit, and the standard contract gave everything to the label). Yes, a lot of publishers release a "new" game by using the same engine and new graphics (but criticizing this strikes me as a bit like complaining that not every movie developed a new camera or lens or special effect during production). And yes, the industry has been dominated by the "adolescent male" segment (though, in PC games particularly, that is starting to change - I don't think 16yo boys are playing all those copies of "Trophy Bass Hunter").
But none of that says anything about the future of console gaming!
So, let me put my money where my mouth is.
During the next year or two, clearly, the landmark event will be the introduction of the PlayStation 2 (and, having been privileged enough to see this beast in action in person, I can safely say, it is a landmark). How is that going to change gaming?
Just my quick thoughts about where the future is really going, and not just complaints about what's wrong today.
-----
Klactovedestene!
There are something like 130 million Sony PSX, Nintendo 64 and Sega Dreamcast consoles in the world, with hundreds of thousands of new ones sold in a slow week, and millions sold in a busy week. The software that is available for these consoles is most definitely, most assuredly, a work of art. You would have us believe that we don't know shit from shineola, crap from craftsmanship. Well, pen, we know damn well what we like, what is art, what we will pay for, and what we want. Your opinion will not dissuade a single one of hundreds of millions of people throughout the world from admiring, enjoying, and buying what we consider to be the best game software that has ever been created. You can have the Terminator - we have our own preferences.
> stories of companies who would like to strike all development credits from games. Fortunately this hasn't happened yet, but it is always a risk.
;-) Heck, my mom was pround after seeing me in the company photo.
;-)
Yeah right. If a team of programmers (and artists, musicians, designers, etc) develop a game, they have the right to be listed as [co-]creators.
Besides, who doesn't want their name up in lights for the 15 seconds of fame?
Fortunately, us game developers still have some "rights"
Cheers
Infocom used essentially the same game engine for most of their titles. But the games were sufficiently different and entertaining that this wasn't a problem but a benefit.
Perhaps game engines these days aren't sufficiently general to allow for different games, just different graphics?
This is *PART 1* of 4 parts. And more than just spouting what machine is going to be the winner next year, I'm taking pains to set-up a history for my readers so that they can better understand where the "future" is on their own. My next part which should be available within the next 2 weeks will cover each of the specific console manufactures/publishers and what their track-records show and what their corporate phylosophie(sp!) and goals are.
This part is trying to explain why the industry is as it is *today*! Emphasis on the *today*.
While I agree with almost everything in this article, I've come to realize that just about every engineer, artist, designer, and producer in the industry agrees as well. They all want to make cool games, but since that involves risk, the suits aren't willing to let them. Yes, there is a minority of superstars who can do anything they want, but that's not the mass of people who inhabit GDC and read Game Developer and GamaSutra. Most are wage slaves who love games and stick around in the hopes that something will change.
But nothing is changing. And the siren song of the dot coms and hardware companies is sucking away many of the best. In my own experience, I've interviewed for lead coder positions 3 times in as many years and there's always been a more a lucrative and creatively free position in engineering fer cryin' out loud than any game position offered.
And don't cry for the suits. While only 1 game in 35 breaks even and only 1 in 4 of those makes the big bucks, the power of being a publisher absorbs much of the loss. Just read the quarterly reports of the >REALLYSo what to do? Sony says use Middleware and concentrate on the gameplay. Of course, the "Middleware" is currently "Vaporware" and Sony's 2 months away from launching in Japan, but pay no mind to the man behind the curtain. Not surpringly, the developers balk and look forward to harnessing the power of Sony's new widget on the metal and see right through this well-intentioned but impractical scheme.
So what happens next? I'd say thank god for the Dreamcast. Soul Caliber restored my faith in the ability of a company to deliver an excellent game to the consumer even in this day and age. But of course, at only 2 million units sold, the big guys still won't touch it, favoring an unreleased collection of parts in a box called the Playstation 2 because it got all the best hype. Talk about chasing vaporware. Meanwhile, Nintendo hems and haws about a fantastic new machine called the dolphin with a graphics chipset designed by the same guys who tried to pull that awful scam over on Ars Technica and has anybody seen one of these things yet? And then there's Microsoft who isn't working on a console called the X-Box that won't be released in 2001. Yawn, what's next? The T-Buffer?
The more things change, the more they stay the same...
Every 3 months another 3D accellerator card come out that's twice as powerful as the one before it. I'm doing fine with a Matrox Mystique 220. (But, then again, I don't play PC games.)
It appals me that another needless Tomb Raider can sell so many copies.
Everyone says Final Fantasy VIII is such a great game... it's crap. Compare it to FFVI (FFIII in the US) on SNES, and it pales in comparison. (Of course, all these stupid kids will hate FFVI because the graphics "suck".)
Even the brand-new Dreamcast suffered a bit because of spec-monkeys, who would rather wait an extra year and pay $500 for a PS2 with only marginally better performance.
All these idiots want more than the industry can offer them. The kiddies with deep pockets ruin it for those with little cash. The masses who eat up all fancy-looking crap ruin it for those who like a well-done game.
We could do anything possible to reform the game industry, but it wouldn't make any difference: the mass of the consumers are stupid tards.
Long live the hardcore gamer, for he/she will still be there when the industry falls.
(Sorry for the rambling, but I just got up. Spent a while last night playing a game from "way back" in 1991.)
The Next Level, Daily Videogame News and Info.
http://the-nextlevel.com
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
// Namco :)
:)
:) (ouch, please don't flame me or my company on this.)
:)
:) ) that also develop great awesome games.
Namco does it right often too. Though Soul Caliber does sway the vote a little.
// Devil's Advocate
Directly from their offices, I shall put up flame retardant and state that Parasite Eve failed my (admittedly high) expectation of smooth gameplay.
PC FF port was listed, but weren't they done by Eidos-contracted developers, and not the "Japanese"?
(Internally Square segregates "real" Square as the "Japanese" Square. To them "American" Square *doesn't* count.)
// How they succeed
1. You are right. Millions of dollars. Teams, no, hordes of developers. How many in America can afford to the same?
2. No press before its time. "Shut up." "Don't say anything." "Doesn't matter if all the FF fans keep bugging you when it's done, or when they can know something, not a word."
Development of good games sometimes takes lots of people, sometimes takes lots of time, sometimes take both. Japanese fans are more "well-behaved" when it comes to "understanding" the manpower or length of time needed.
You don't see Square posting a screenshot a day starting the 1st month of development of Final Fantasy VIII. No point in showing anything until it is ready.
3. Like all good games, from small teams or big teams, developed in 6 months, or takes 4 years: good, talented, hardworking developers who put it all in it just for you.
// Even more admirable
While Square's game development is admirable, we should perhaps admire "small" game teams without millions of dollars (and hordes of "development ninjas"
I can see that a lot of people are bemoaning the lack of truly original games appearing on the market today.
When I do see 'original' game manufacturer names come up, I think it's more because people are naming off companies that came up with an new and exciting idea for a game-type many years ago, and have the *name recognition* that is so important.
SquareSoft seems to be a name that comes up a lot. SquareSoft and Enix were the two companies that really defined "RPGs" as we know them today. SquareSoft continues to enjoy a lot of name recognition today (and high sales), because they were helped define RPGs many, many years ago. When people want to get a good RPG, they think "SquareSoft", because they've always been a company that has been known for putting out consistantly high quality RPGs. The name recognition is why the Final Fantasy series does so consistantly well - people recognize the name and buy the title. Lesser-known names like Enix (producers of the first *real* RPG for the Nintendo System, Dragon Warrior, and one of the most immersive titles ever, Dragon Warrior II) still do well in Japan - because they have the *name recognition* there that is so important.
I believe the real problem is that there are so many PlayStation games on the market today that it is difficult to find examples of true originality. Game magazine companies, for their part, tend to make the situation worse, because they more often than not, tend to review games created by the better known game companies.
There *have* been extremely original and fun games put out on the market recently. Some titles along this line are "Intelligence Qube" (IQ), "Devil Dice", and "Super Smash Brothers". Yet, most people I know go "Huh?" when I mention these titles because there are so many titles on the market today, that it's difficult to establish that name-brand recognition that I believe, is so important today.
Dear IRS,
I am writing to you to cancel my subscription.
// What I think the article meant
:)
:)", optimization, in all counts there are some on the console world that exceeds Carmack, and are not household names.
:) )
:)
:)
There lacks "famous" console developers, not on the same fame level as PC developers.
Console bestsellers (the titles, and the "companies") actually reach a larger audience, and generate more income, than even a "famous PC hit" that is a popular household name.
It is true the "fame spotlight" falls on PC developers a lot more disporportionately than on "equally influentially, talented, successful" console developers.
// console superstar coders
Understanding this lack of limelight, I do my part to praise the coding ability of my fellow console coders (some on and even above the ability of Carmack, but are way less well-known only because of platform) when opportunities arise.
Sales, development record, talent, ability, knowledge, that "super code god power
(Yes, this means they exceed me obviously in code-god-hood.
// fame the harsh mistress
As I "pity" my talented console coder friends for not having the limelight of fame, and discuss this issue, we come to the conclusion that the "PC game superstar celebrity syndrome" is a mixed blessing and harsh mistress:
1. PC fame attracts the *wrong* people. In the early years, it is only about people who do it for the love.
Now because there is so much fame (and sometimes money) involved, we attract a new breed more interested in turning themselves into celebrities, instead of loving the game, loving the code, loving the work.
We also start focusing our admiration of PC developers based more on "glamor", "photogenic", "great personality" instead of honest-to-goodness knowledge, ability, talent, and contribution.
My console developers are grateful their development world did not get "turvey-ed" like ours (PC).
2. Fame means Flame
With additional attention comes additional scrutiny. With additional scrutiny comes additional abuse.
PC developers face the level of drubbing and abuse the likes of which console developers laugh at.
Conclusion is, my smart console developer friends are happy to be anonymously optimizing to the latest ARM instructrions, instead of dealing with the "glamor queens" and the "flaming fanatics."
Good for them.
I'd really like to see some of these nostalgia titles make money in the US, because I find a lot of old classics stand up well to a lot of the current games. (Some good new games come out every now and then, like System Shock 2, which is actually pretty original.) Of course, I think the really old classics, like Pac-Man, sell really well.
Well... I suppose I just wanted to say "Hooray" for Final Fantasy III (though,obviously I don't want people to ignore really great RPGs like Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete or... ahem... Lunar II: Eternal Ble. I think it's interesting that Lunar is also a nostalgia RPG,but Working Designs decided to treat it like it was a faberge egg.)
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
The only games I have really gotten into lately are the solid multiplayer games. Unreal Tournament obviously has me by the cajones, NHL 2000 as well, being from the great white north. The only exception I can think of, is MGS. This game can truly be called a work of art, IMHO. I don't know if this game made Hideo Kojima a celebrity, but it was pretty clear whose baby this game was. Anyone with a playstation who hasn't played this game yet, give it a rent, there may still be hope for console gaming with more creativity like this.
The physical world is VERY complex to simulate in real-time! I'm not saying photo-realism is "the ultimate means to the end", but as a benchmark / goal, it seems to work.
;-)
As a 3D game programmer I am looking forward to when a Holo-deck wil be feasible, until then we are stuck with very sparsely populated [computer] worlds.
Don't also forget real-time ray tracing will be an option in the future too.
> The difference between a 100 and a 1000 poly model is much larger than the difference between a 1000 and a 10000 poly model,
At the moment 3d looks like crap compared to a 2d isometric engine, since the poly count is so dam low.
I want 100,000 poly trees. I want to see a realistic forest that a player can walk thru. (yes, HUGE culling problem here that is going to demand some SERIOUS number crunching ability.)
i.e. try rendering hair real-time.
You do have a point, but you're forgeting the TOTAL number of polys required to create a realistic world. As the hardware comes available that will give us a decent frame rate with millions of triangles... we will starting using complex rendering techiques such as NURB surfaces that need to be dynamically tesselated easilly shoting the total number of polys per frame up to the million mark PER object.
> and a good engine will allow users with vastly differing systems to use any of the above models in the same game.
Thats scalabilty, and one of the hardest problems on the PC platform.
> when I say that the days of huge game engine improvements won't last in the long run
In the early days, everyone was more or less on an equal footing: no 3d. Now a days, people are rushing to fit every known 3d feature into their game. But what happens when the 3d playing field is relatively level again, which I think is your point.
Usually, the extra cpu cycles will get spent on AI.
Cheers
...at least, not yet- and with devices like the playstation 2, they're certianly trying. Back in the day, I was considered Captian N the GameMaster- if it had the Nintendo seal of approval on it, I'd beaten it sixteen ways from Sunday. I knew so many tips and secrets about Final Fantasy Three [six, for you diehards] that I couldn't find in any gaming mag that I did my own multimedia piece on the topic. Then something changed, in a most dramatic form. Final Fantasy Seven was released to a great deal of hype and so forth, and it was a MASSIVE disappointment. For myself and several others, at any rate, ex D&D freaks that went back to Playstaiton because the people in college were far beyond our mild dweebiness. We'd been bitten by the Pen and Paper RPG bug, and we wanted more- a LOT more. We didn't want to deal with drunken dungeon masters or kill-fiends or people that were only in it because their roommate was, or to get magic items. We wanted full-level immersion, the ability to "become one" with the environment- the penultimate holy grail of escapism. Guess what? Didn't happen. Not even close. It hasn't, and it won't, for a very long time. A large part of this is due to corporate and monetary reasons cited in what I could stand to read of RIP's article [Sorry man, should've spell-checked and re-read before you sent that sucker up! Bad grammar and spelling will kill anyone. I'm lax with mine because really, how many people are going to read a "Score: 1" post?]- greed drives everything, so the corps will beat a dead horse until they can't do it any longer, then they'll change the graphics and do it again with a different title. Real innovation is not adding more weapons, better graphics, more levels and a lot more FMV than the other guy. FMV takes the player OUT of the game- he's forced to sit through a scene he has no control over, for however long it takes to unfold. Game engines have been beat to death, as have RPGS. All genres follow a formula that is becoming stale quickly - the only thing that changes is the terminology and presentation. And with the advent of CG, this gets even worse- games are taking on a more cinematic direction, the so-called "interactive movie" look. This was what sunk me about FF7. Cloud LOOKED cool, sure, but I really didn't like his character- which really angered me when I found out the whole story focused around HIM. The system has many other problems as well, namely being forced to sit through lengthy summon spells that could have been easily skipped to the point with the click of a button. Sephiroth took me an hour to kill not for difficulty, but for the fact his attack lasted long enough for me to change a load of laundry in the laundromat down the hall. [The attack, by the way, is a mathematical algorythm that does roughly 3/4 of your TOTAL HP insteafd of flatly assessed damage. I went at him with 3,000 hp and beat him, the attack doing 2,100. I went up with 8,000 and the attack did 6,500.] Point of fact, the game was far too easy and unsatisfying. The pattern continues with Quake and its bretheren, where plot is cast aside in favor of reflexes. Not having them, the only way I can enjoy these games is with the help of ~god and `impule 9 codes. Where's the fun? Where's the orginality? Why haven't companies "updated" cult classics? I'm sure if time and money went into Bionic Commando for the Playstation instead of Frogger, there would be some cash at hand rather than preying on nostalgia. Digital gaming has no flexibility- Baldur's Gate comes the closest, as does Fallout. But if these aren't your style of game, what then? What about the players that want things to happen rather they are around or not? People who want to dress their characters in whatever outfit, create or commission their own weapons, and drive their own choice of vehicles? The funding just simply isn't there to create that kind of immersion. So farewell to video games, left behind in favor of the ultimate challenge, the game with the most control, the most flexibility, the most rewards and fulfilment. The highest degree of interaction- it's not White Wolf, it's not Dungeons and Dragons. It's called Real Life. It's easy to install, suffers from an occasional virus, and has its bad moments, but it's the one game you control to the end, be it bitter or sweet. Game on.
...at least, not yet- and with devices like the playstation 2, they're certianly trying. Back in the day, I was considered Captian N the GameMaster- if it had the Nintendo seal of approval on it, I'd beaten it sixteen ways from Sunday. I knew so many tips and secrets about Final Fantasy Three [six, for you diehards] that I couldn't find in any gaming mag that I did my own multimedia piece on the topic. Then something changed, in a most dramatic form.
Final Fantasy Seven was released to a great deal of hype and so forth, and it was a MASSIVE disappointment. For myself and several others, at any rate, ex D&D freaks that went back to Playstaiton because the people in college were far beyond our mild dweebiness. We'd been bitten by the Pen and Paper RPG bug, and we wanted more- a LOT more. We didn't want to deal with drunken dungeon masters or kill-fiends or people that were only in it because their roommate was, or to get magic items. We wanted full-level immersion, the ability to "become one" with the environment- the penultimate holy grail of escapism.
Guess what?
Didn't happen. Not even close. It hasn't, and it won't, for a very long time. A large part of this is due to corporate and monetary reasons cited in what I could stand to read of RIP's article [Sorry man, should've spell-checked and re-read before you sent that sucker up! Bad grammar and spelling will kill anyone. I'm lax with mine because really, how many people are going to read a "Score: 1" post?]- greed drives everything, so the corps will beat a dead horse until they can't do it any longer, then they'll change the graphics and do it again with a different title.
Real innovation is not adding more weapons, better graphics, more levels and a lot more FMV than the other guy. FMV takes the player OUT of the game- he's forced to sit through a scene he has no control over, for however long it takes to unfold. Game engines have been beat to death, as have RPGS. All genres follow a formula that is becoming stale quickly - the only thing that changes is the terminology and presentation. And with the advent of CG, this gets even worse- games are taking on a more cinematic direction, the so-called "interactive movie" look. This was what sunk me about FF7. Cloud LOOKED cool, sure, but I really didn't like his character- which really angered me when I found out the whole story focused around HIM. The system has many other problems as well, namely being forced to sit through lengthy summon spells that could have been easily skipped to the point with the click of a button. Sephiroth took me an hour to kill not for difficulty, but for the fact his attack lasted long enough for me to change a load of laundry in the laundromat down the hall. [The attack, by the way, is a mathematical algorythm that does roughly 3/4 of your TOTAL HP insteafd of flatly assessed damage. I went at him with 3,000 hp and beat him, the attack doing 2,100. I went up with 8,000 and the attack did 6,500.] Point of fact, the game was far too easy and unsatisfying.
The pattern continues with Quake and its bretheren, where plot is cast aside in favor of reflexes. Not having them, the only way I can enjoy these games is with the help of ~god and `impule 9 codes. Where's the fun? Where's the orginality? Why haven't companies "updated" cult classics? I'm sure if time and money went into Bionic Commando for the Playstation instead of Frogger, there would be some cash at hand rather than preying on nostalgia.
Digital gaming has no flexibility- Baldur's Gate comes the closest, as does Fallout. But if these aren't your style of game, what then? What about the players that want things to happen rather they are around or not? People who want to dress their characters in whatever outfit, create or commission their own weapons, and drive their own choice of vehicles? The funding just simply isn't there to create that kind of immersion.
So farewell to video games, left behind in favor of the ultimate challenge, the game with the most control, the most flexibility, the most rewards and fulfilment. The highest degree of interaction- it's not White Wolf, it's not Dungeons and Dragons.
It's called Real Life. It's easy to install, suffers from an occasional virus, and has its bad moments, but it's the one game you control to the end, be it bitter or sweet.
Game on.
...at least, not yet- and with devices like the playstation 2, they're certianly trying. Back in the day, I was considered Captian N the GameMaster- if it had the Nintendo seal of approval on it, I'd beaten it sixteen ways from Sunday. I knew so many tips and secrets about Final Fantasy Three [six, for you diehards] that I couldn't find in any gaming mag that I did my own multimedia piece on the topic. Then something changed, in a most dramatic form.
Final Fantasy Seven was released to a great deal of hype and so forth, and it was a MASSIVE disappointment. For myself and several others, at any rate, ex D&D freaks that went back to Playstaiton because the people in college were far beyond our mild dweebiness. We'd been bitten by the Pen and Paper RPG bug, and we wanted more- a LOT more. We didn't want to deal with drunken dungeon masters or kill-fiends or people that were only in it because their roommate was, or to get magic items. We wanted full-level immersion, the ability to "become one" with the environment- the penultimate holy grail of escapism.
Guess what?
Didn't happen. Not even close. It hasn't, and it won't, for a very long time. A large part of this is due to corporate and monetary reasons cited in what I could stand to read of RIP's article [Sorry man, should've spell-checked and re-read before you sent that sucker up! Bad grammar and spelling will kill anyone. I'm lax with mine because really, how many people are going to read a "Score: 1" post?]- greed drives everything, so the corps will beat a dead horse until they can't do it any longer, then they'll change the graphics and do it again with a different title.
Real innovation is not adding more weapons, better graphics, more levels and a lot more FMV than the other guy. FMV takes the player OUT of the game- he's forced to sit through a scene he has no control over, for however long it takes to unfold. Game engines have been beat to death, as have RPGS. All genres follow a formula that is becoming stale quickly - the only thing that changes is the terminology and presentation. And with the advent of CG, this gets even worse- games are taking on a more cinematic direction, the so-called "interactive movie" look. This was what sunk me about FF7. Cloud LOOKED cool, sure, but I really didn't like his character- which really angered me when I found out the whole story focused around HIM. The system has many other problems as well, namely being forced to sit through lengthy summon spells that could have been easily skipped to the point with the click of a button. Sephiroth took me an hour to kill not for difficulty, but for the fact his attack lasted long enough for me to change a load of laundry in the laundromat down the hall. [The attack, by the way, is a mathematical algorythm that does roughly 3/4 of your TOTAL HP insteafd of flatly assessed damage. I went at him with 3,000 hp and beat him, the attack doing 2,100. I went up with 8,000 and the attack did 6,500.] Point of fact, the game was far too easy and unsatisfying, the combat cinematics were a design flaw, and the characters had nothing special in a combat environment beyond trite and generally unfulfilling Limit Breaks
.
The pattern continues with Quake and its bretheren, where plot is cast aside in favor of reflexes. Not having them, the only way I can enjoy these games is with the help of ~god and `impule 9 codes. Where's the fun? Where's the orginality? Why haven't companies "updated" cult classics? I'm sure if time and money went into Bionic Commando for the Playstation instead of Frogger, there would be some cash at hand rather than preying on nostalgia.
Digital gaming has no flexibility- Baldur's Gate comes the closest, as does Fallout. But if these aren't your style of game, what then? What about the players that want things to happen rather they are around or not? People who want to dress their characters in whatever outfit, create or commission their own weapons, and drive their own choice of vehicles? The funding just simply isn't there to create that kind of immersion.
So farewell to video games, left behind in favor of the ultimate challenge, the game with the most control, the most flexibility, the most rewards and fulfilment. The highest degree of interaction- it's not White Wolf, it's not Dungeons and Dragons.
It's called Real Life. It's easy to install, suffers from an occasional virus, and has its bad moments, but it's the one game you control to the end, be it bitter or sweet.
Game on.
While I agree with almost everything in this article, I've come to realize that just about every engineer, artist, designer, and producer in the industry agrees as well. They all want to make cool games, but since that involves risk, the suits aren't willing to let them. Yes, there is a minority of superstars who can do anything they want, but that's not the mass of people who inhabit GDC and read Game Developer and GamaSutra. Most are wage slaves who love games and stick around in the hopes that something will change.
But nothing is changing. And the siren song of the dot coms and hardware companies is sucking away many of the best. In my own experience, I've interviewed for lead coder positions 3 times in as many years and there's always been a more a lucrative and creatively free position in engineering fer cryin' out loud than any game position offered.
And don't cry for the suits. While only 1 game in 35 breaks even and only 1 in 4 of those makes the big bucks, the power of being a publisher absorbs much of the loss. Just read the quarterly reports of the REALLY big guys as they gobble up the little guys and there merely big guys. The developer OTOH is forced to design a game he knows no one wants to play, on a schedule that will consume his staff, and for the arbitrary system of milestones covered in the article.
So what to do? Sony says use Middleware and concentrate on the gameplay. Of course, the "Middleware" is currently "Vaporware" and Sony's 2 months away from launching in Japan, but pay no mind to the man behind the curtain. Not surpringly, the developers balk and look forward to harnessing the power of Sony's new widget on the metal and see right through this well-intentioned but impractical scheme.
So what happens next? I'd say thank god for the Dreamcast. Soul Caliber restored my faith in the ability of a company to deliver an excellent game to the consumer even in this day and age. But of course, at only 2 million units sold, the big guys still won't touch it, favoring an unreleased collection of parts in a box called the Playstation 2 because it got all the best hype. Talk about chasing vaporware. Meanwhile, Nintendo hems and haws about a fantastic new machine called the dolphin with a graphics chipset designed by the same guys who tried to pull that awful scam over on Ars Technica and has anybody seen one of these things yet? And then there's Microsoft who isn't working on a console called the X-Box that won't be released in 2001. Yawn, what's next? The T-Buffer?
The more things change, the more they stay the same...
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/01/24/09392 46&cid=123
I saw several posts bemoan the sadness of game development not having superstars or celebs.
Not having celebrity is a good thing!
Besides the 2 points above (fame draws the *wrong* people, fame leads to flame) another advantage comes to mind:
Celebrity and superstar worship can stifle as much as it inspires.
Instead of growing into the coder one can become, a fanatic may dovetail his code development into that of whoever is "famous."
While good learning can take place.
Uncreative clon-ing can also take place.
I would much rather game coders and developers are people.
And that good smart knowledgeable talented game coders and developers are "respected people."
Respected for their knowledge and insights. And nothing more.
Get an NES cleaning kit. You can still get them ant FuncoLand. I got one, and after just one cleaning I could usualy get games to run in just two or three tries!! it's fantastic! If you've got an NES you should serously get one :)
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I wonder if he's talking about Tomb Raider ;-) What are we at now? III? IV? I still haven't noticed any improvement in the rendering or gameplay...
The only changes I've seen in Tomb Raider are that I think Laura Croft's breasts are getting bigger.
They aughtta call it "Boob Raider" or something.
;-)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Like painting. It takes so many man years to development something like half-life, unreal tournament, it makes the venture highly risky from a financier's perspective. Picasso's or Michelangelo's reach to fame before their death were highly unusual. Let's face it: we (at least I) should be thankful that once in a while there ARE good games!
Oh, and we need intermediaries between gamers (who like to play good games but who don't like to pay $50 bucks 2 years in advance) and game programmers (who LIKE to make good games but who have to suffer ALOT in doing so). Without these publishers, sharewares are probably our only choices (Yes, there are good sharewares, and they are even rarer than good commercial releases.) The intermediaries bridge the time lag gap and the riskiness of projects. The 50 bucks pay partially this risk premium, in the strictest economic sense.
So, when you see a good game on a shelf, think of it as just a statistical by-product, and give these people another chance some time later.
HFF
Well, I suppose it depends, really. I mean, I wouldn't think that coding a big-ass relational, multidimensional database would be 'easy' or anything, but for something like Word For Windows can't be that difficult (other then some of the zanier things like AutoSummarize). Hell, WordPad was nothing more then the MFC libs thrown together with just a little bit of glue.
As far as game programmers go Doing what John Carmak Or Corrine Yu do would be amazingly difficult for the average hacker. But then again, I can't imagine that something like Starcraft would really be that difficult ether...
That said, I don't think its unreasonable to make assumptions about what other people do, as programmers. We all have brains, and can guess what programmers do. And, all in all, I would have to say that game programming probably does take more skill then BizApp programming. That said, I do think there's a bit more to it then "figuring out financial formulas" or whatever R.I.P said.
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Same post. Three times. And freakin' LONG too!
Dude, are you home sick today or what? Get out and get some fresh air.
I think many people know who he is, at least inside the game industry. It would be intresting to see how many people outside the industry knows who these people are.
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Even so, there's a lot of originality on display at the arcade, and it's essentially all imported. The last two times I went to the arcade, I played Crazy Taxi (love that game), Mr. Driller (a Namco puzzler), Jambo! Safari (another Sega gem), Guitar Freaks ("Play the guitar rhythmically!"), some Megatouch games (come on, they're cool), Virtua Tennis (yes, arcade tennis, and it's great!) and the incomparable Dance Dance Revolution. All quite original and almost all Japanese, because their arcade market is still doing well and they just tend to be more goofy, original, risk-taking developers. Unfortunately, only the big entertainment centers will ever have these wonderful games because they tend to be heinously expensive (another reason why so many arcades have died).
Now, certainly, there was a fair share of fighting/gun/driving games like Tekken Tag Tournament, Dead or Alive 2, Silent Scope, Crisis Zone, Rush 2049, Ferrari F355, and Off-Road Thunder being played too. But let's not forget that there was a glut of maze games, space shooters and driving games in the classic era too -- there will always be popular genres.
After an 8 year wait to play this game, I am not disappointed... how many games can you say something like that about these days? It's much better than the $25,000,000 budgeted Final Fantasy VIII.
Another thing we need: more 2D games! Sprite-based games rule, but stupid kids fail to relise it!
(PS: FFII US is FFIV JP, and FFIII US is FFVI JP. FFV is the one that was never released here until Anthology.)
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
After checking out all these other posts on saying how arcade games are dead and how their not 'works of art' (?) I just have to say that all you people need to pull that pickle out of your asses. Imho, Arcade games are a lot more fun nowadays, and there are a lot of new ideas coming out from the industry. God knows how much money's I've spent on Dance Dance Revolution, and that DrumMania game .. so sue me, its F U N to play. Not only that, but lately, the racing sims have gotten nothing but INCREDIBLE lately. Have you seen F355 Challeng ? Or Racing Jam II ?? Sega Rally 2 ? If you don't have any of those games then I pretty much pity you then, your missing out on a lot of fun -- mind you if all you get is crap like Area 51 by Atari -- then I can see where' your coming from.
After checking out all these other posts on saying how arcade games are dead and how their not 'works of art' (?) I just have to say that all you people need to pull that pickle out of your asses.
.. so sue me, its F U N to play.
Imho, Arcade games are a lot more fun nowadays, and there are a lot of new ideas coming out from the industry. God knows how much money's I've spent on Dance Dance Revolution, and that DrumMania game
Not only that, but lately, the racing sims have gotten nothing but INCREDIBLE lately. Have you seen F355 Challeng ? Or Racing Jam II ?? Sega Rally 2 ?
If you don't have any of those games then I pretty much pity you then, your missing out on a lot of fun -- mind you if all you get is crap like Area 51 by Atari -- then I can see where' your coming from.
The entire development process in game companies has become far too similar to that of the movie/film industry. Projects are regularly run by producers. Many of the producers I had the pleasure of working with were not gamers, but were taking on the role of a gamers advocate when defining the features of thier repective games. In truth, many producers are nothin more than high level managers with good time management skills and the ability to manage a cutthroat budget.
I think the author put too much emphasis on the fact that he was upset about not getting his name into products that he worked on. I agree that contribution recognition is important in a game as with any other creative medium, but it made the articel sound like more of a personal rant rather than "the future of console gaming"
Of all the games i have worked on, I was only privelaged to have my name put into about 50% of them. Some of those, i would have rather not been included on as I am not proud of the product that i ws forced to ship to customers.
for those of us who are dedicated gamers, it is difficult to let a game with potential slip out the door sorely lacking but these decision are made by producers and marketing.
the big problem is that this industry is now so solely driven by marketing that software quality takes a distant back-seat. Most game manuyfacturers ( pc games in general ) do not make exhorbatant amounts of money. The pc game market is so cutthroat that getting a game to market is the most important thing to making a sale. Marketing arrangments with magazines are made in excess of 6 months in advance. even before the software is complete and bug-tested and the compay looses money each day after its marketing deadline slips.
I am not dissatisfied that i didnt get my name into all the games I worked on. I am dissatisfied that my company gave up early on onb making a "#1 title" in any category ( genre ) was content making in the top 5 in each category knowing roughly the maount of sales in the top 5 category slots.
With the exception of a few companies, my feeling is that the best games come from smaller companies that produce a game and then sell it to a large distributor like EA or GT. unfortunately, these companies are few and far between. Large publishers can save money by sacrificing when developers are in house and tend to buy the smaller companies once they have a marketable title. Then they build a "franchise" on the title.
on Sequels:
Reusing code is the staple of the 90's game market. titles are marketed and re-marketed with little or no changes. engine changes are minimal and graphics are rarley improved. As the author says, this is a very poor excuse for a sequel.
the problem here is that designing a product from the gound up nowadays and keeping with recent technology generally takes between 1 year and 2 years of research and development before any actual game coding actually occurs. Very few companies are unwilling to pay this much money to innovate.
LW
And possible poor design. Whomever favored the whole "put the SUBMIT after the PREVIEW instead of having both on the same page" idea is right on the money. I made some corrections, readjusted the dmaned defaults [fresh Netscape install], and before I realized it, I had three copies and I'd been docked two VERY, VERY hard-earned Karma points. I'm mad at no one- I wish Commander Taco had a more refined site design technique, but who am I to chastize the man?
More common sense [or testing the page on idiots] would have avoided this, and someone with a name may have read the article instead of sniggering at the Zero. Ah well.
Goes to show: you can have the best code on the planet, but if your layout lacks, it won't mean a thing.
About the DVD thing. First off, the PS2 will be $300 at launch, and even in a few years, I dont' see it selling for $100, unless it has to to sell some more units. Secondly, the PSX plays CD's, but do you use it as your sole CD player? You can buy a CD player for about $50 now, and why, for only $50 more you can buy one that plays games too! But for some reason, the CD player industry isn't ruined. The PS2 is nice and all, but I think the DVD playback and how it'll kill everything else because it can play DVD's is way over rated.
You can buy FFV for the Playstation now (it would have been FF2.5 };>), since Square is able to release it now. Don't blame Square for not releasing it over here -- that was a Nintendo of America decision. One of the many bad NoA decisions that screwed US audiences out of good games. Sony is a little more lenient, and has let Square re-release FFV and FFVI (with the original artwork) as "Final Fantasy Anthology" for the Playstation.
(Still it's fun to play the english translation on an SNES emulator. Only have a few minutes? Well, have the emulator save the state of the game at any point! That's one of the best things about emulators -- the ability to save whenever you want).
(please excuse any type-os I wrote this in one shot through...) ;0
In response to these comments, I myself have no major gripes about not having my name on any of the work I've done game related because it has all been of a hobbiest nature. My experience in this regards comes from my companions, and the many friends I have developed over the years who program games.
My primary irritation comes from the fact that about a year ago I sat down to finally generate a compendium of "who's who" in the industry by taking all of the games in our magazine's library and compiling all of the lists of credits from each game. Much to my irritation, after many weeks into the transcription and a number of correspondances with friends at various companies it became painfully clear to me that credits we in many cases worthless, or missleading, and without the first-hand experience of being at each company while each game was produced, I couldn't really know who exactly did what.
A good case in point from many exampes: A close friend of mine is currently working on a game for one of the top-10 publishing houses. The original core of this game was written for the 3DO, has been ported to every console since, with yearly versions released for the PC. The friend of mine did probably 70% of the coding work for the upcoming PC release, and a majority of the work in fixing bugs that dated back atleast to the first PC version of the game. They know that they will only have minor mention in the credits even though all of the new elements of the game were written by them. They also know that the original programmer who's name is still littered through the comments of the source code will get no credit for the original work. Also, one of the people who did a large portion of the artwork will not be mentioned in the credits at all because they were not "officially" on the project.
This is one of the *many* examples that generated my sentiment.
I want to know who did a game because my pocket money is limited and I want to get the best bang for my buck, and not have to depend on the arbetrary reviews of the bigger, mainstream gaming magazines.
You will also note that this this article is actually "Part 1" of 4 parts. This part covered "The State of the Industry" with "today" being implied.
Aside from that, thanks for taking the time to read it a comment.
But ranting isn't good for an arguement. That's why Katz gets flamed, after all: because sometimes, you don't have enough facts for an arguement. This is one of those times.
At least examples were cited. Not until page 3, but examples are crucial for this kind of arguement.
"The publisher is given nearly 100% credit for everything, while they are often responsible for little more than setting deadlines and putting the product on the shelves."
I hate to burst bubbles of smart people, but marketing is arguably more important then production. Any arguements to this point should be addressed to Microsoft and Apple. And as Ion Storm proves, you can survive on marketing alone, even if you have no product.
And let's not ignore the concepts of who is taking the financial risk with the game.
"If the movie industry were run the same way as the game industry, this would be akin to saying "Schindler's List" was by Universal Pictures alone ...and giving Steven Spielberg little or no mention."
By the same token, you can't give Spielberg all the credit. Just as many actors and stagehands and cameramen and all of the others made equal contributions to the picture: Spielberg's name is attached because he (supposedly) came up with the idea, and probably made the most money from it. Did Spielberg pay the salaries of employees and take a financial risk if the picture flopped?
The books are a bad example: they are republished works. So are the songs: most musicians buy their lyrics.
Can you imagine never being able to go back and play a favorite game... especially one that wasn't a mainstream hit or had censored/questionable content? With the coming advent of broadband internet access, this day will be here sooner than you think.
At this point in my life I would probably be more afraid of the thought police arresting me because I had naughty thoughs about my girlfriend.
People will never go for this kind of service. And companies won't make what people won't buy: new technology rarely destroys a productive existing market, unless it's a technology that can totally replace another product, like the calculator for the abacus and the computer for the typewriter. I don't think online games qualify as that kind of shift: I cite the low popularity of MUDs and MUSHes as proof.
Anyone who disagrees should be reminded of Virgin Interactive's game 'Subspace', which had a pay-to-play format after it left its two-year 'testing' period. It was a purely multiplayer game. The game bombed, hard, once it became pay-to-play. And this was a basically bugfree game, and an extremely popular one that saw thousands of users on its servers. Unless every game everyone goes pay-to-play at the same time, this model will never take off.
"This industry also lacks an "indie-scene". Or better stated, an environment that fosters new artistic talent into the industry without direct industry intervention and manipulation."
If this is true, this is a glaringly brilliant concept. I always thought that smaller companies created this kind of phenomenon (places like id software, however rare they are). Perhaps the profession requires some sort of trade group or union to create one, something independent that the Sales Slime can't touch.
"Remember, almost all game testing is done by this same 16-24 year old demographic that is both reviewing the games in the press and selling the games at the stores."
This sounds like laziness on the part of marketing and management. If you have beta testers who are unpaid, Marketing people can take that part of the budgets and dump it into their own salaries. Or management types can do the same thing, taking monies that should have been allocated to that phase of development. Beta testers should cover all demographics and be paid a salary for their time. If you don't do that, then you are making a foolish decision in your focus group targeting.
"This isn't an attack against the PlayStation, but it is a fact that most PlayStation games just do not appeal to nor are they appropriate for children.
Actually, it is an attack, but that is fine, because in this paragraph a very valid point is made, regarding the above.
Not too impressed with joystick nations meandering pointless style.
Game theory is OK but JCHerz review of Sonic Adventure was sooo off-base that one had to wonder if she (or is it he?) spent more than 5 minutes playing it....
I agree with you that PS2 is probably going to dominate the industry, but most of your points make you look like you are smoking crack!
Addressing different issues:
You can already play MP3s on your PS for less than US$60.
PS2 development station will cost > $10,000, I garauntee. The OS doesn't matter, it's the proprietary development tools. And Sony will NOT let development info get out, they are very stingy about the content created. All current PS titles have been approved by Sony.
Will the PS2 have digital surround sound out? Otherwise it might not do well in the DVD market.
PS2 will do well however because of the huge installed base of PS1. I was amazed to see tons of people walking out of Fry's with Playstations in early January. I guess the price drop makes the Dreamcast look too expensive.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
Having played Mario1 and Mario3, Mario2 shure did seem weird compared to those two. Different graphics and evrything. Nothing more to say, as that was years ago, and I have almost forgotten about it.
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
...well, it's not an attack in the sense that I'm not saying the PlayStation is a bad machine, or has bad games. Quite the contrary, the PS does have good games, but it is *not* a "kids" game machine due to the content generated for it.
...and on the subject of "ranting", I must note that I say right out at the beginning of the piece "While, I have made every effort to be fair in this article and present a wide picture of the industry, even I will be the first to admit that my biases as both a professional writer and programmer may come through."
Just because I am pointing out serious problems in the industry does not instantly make a rant. A rant tends to be unsuported opinion, and I have made great efforts to support everything I present, but even I can only go so far. The fact of the matter is that if I want to talk to my friends about their work, I have to hold my tongue about what they tell me.
While I respect your opinion, I think you are wrong in some of your view. If you would like to discuss this further, feel free to write me directly.
Anyway, here's a success story for you; Psynogis' Wipeout series. They actually put some work into branding and recognition, and they've produced a great series. I have Wipeout, Wipeout 2097 & Wip3out for the PSX - they also have one or two PC versions and a Wipeout 64 for the N64. A great series, wonderfully produced. It's not impossible, but it needs more skills than just programming - it needs a bit of marketing savvy. Just like any industry.
OPEN SOURCE CONSOLE GAMES!
> Spooging is important.
;-)
... fellow 3D game programmer ... what are you doing your part in the non-spooge category of technology development? :)
;-)
;-)
;-)
I agree, Eye candy is nice
> And there are many non-spooging things (related to engine/code/tech) that is also important to research, and develop, that is being neglected in many engines.
Physics being one of them.
> So
Well since you asked: Particle Systems, Physics, and Real-time Shadows. Ok, the shadows gets into spooging.
Mind if I ask what you're working on?
Slightly digressing: Where do you think the 3d hardware is going to be in 5 to 10 years?
What are your thoughts on T&L ? Is it going to give the speed increases that it has been hyped to? What about real-time mesh deformation, due to trying to get BACK values from the hardware?
Personally, I wish rendering into textures was better supported, along with the card being able to handle a few million textured polys being thrown at it. Ironically, I still like the look of a good isometeric game
Oh well, at least the Geforce will be the "bottom end" in 2 years
Cheers
My fiance works at id software, and he is not silly enough to drive ferraris.
Plus if he ever thinks he is a rockstar, I shall smack him upside the head.
And remind him. It is quality, baby, and productivity of work. Nothing more.
Fortunately, he is the one who reminds me of this. I am preaching to the choir with him.
Ditto.
:)
The credit thing really sucks.
Sorry that it happens.
I've been recipient of this crap, and watch ex-co-workers be recipient of this crap.
Meanwhile have to put up with some producer / biz ahem excuse me DIRECTOR (in caps) / marketing / whatever / lunch-bringer to CEO be listed in bigger (or at all) than the dudes who do the work.
You've gotta do it for love only, and for a lotta love, to be willing to put up with all the credit crap.
It is funny there were so many chicks are oppressed articles. From what I get to see, the "average enthusiastic game developer" get "exploited" and "abused" in worst ways.
You right as many wrongs locally as you can.
P.S. I am *obviously* not speaking of my current company.
It just occurs to me it can be awfully funny to get John Katz onto the bandwagon of the poor oppressed abused overworked underpaid not given credit to average enthusiastic game coder. :)
:)
Welcome to the Hellmouth, today we talk to the poor suffering coder who was told by marketing he's gotta massively irretrievably f*cked up the code base in 1 week for E3 deadline or else.
I am *pretty* sure this is true.
Wipe Out success, but at what cost?
My friends who worked on the first Wipe Out, in order to make some deadlines to get into the movie "Hackers" (Kate plays the first Wipe Out game in the movie "Hackers"), were given amphetamines / speed-like drugs to stay awake longer and work faster.
It worked. Productivity was amazing.
Then after Wipe Out shipped, my friends just crashed from all the drug use.
Despite the improved productivity and lack of need of sleep, my friends who tried to develop-game-on-speed route heartily recommend against it.
I just stick with my Diet Coke caffeine of choice and stay away from the meds, because of what my friends told me.
P.S. It was funny how I knew this story. I was coding engine on a game with some developers who were on the first Wipe Out team at Psygnosis. I am hyper-energetic. I sleep little to none. I am coding at the computer all the time, and always have an up-beat energetic cheerful hyper attitude. I eat copious amounts of food, and appears to stay thin.
My ex-speed friends were convinced I was using speed to code. And tried to talk me out of it. They told me how drugs eventually messed you up.
I kept telling them I am not on speed!
J.C. Herz's effort is not anywhere near as good a source of information as the other two texts the author of the article reccommended. Herz seems to have written "Joystick Nation" with little actual first hand experience with the business or consumer side of the console game industry. I can't point to specific examples since my copy is located halfway around the earth from me, but as I recall the whole book seemed to be written from an uninformed outsider's point of view.
Leonard Herman's "Phoenix" is more of an encyclopedic/time line read with a real wealth of information, especially about the US side of the console business. Leonard writes from the perspective of a collector who has been in the scene and has many industry contacts.
David Scheff's "Game Over" is more like business journalism with enough human interest for the general reader as well. Scheff focuses on Nintendo and is perhaps the only English language writer to present Nintendo's history in Japan. Not that it should be treated as 100% gospel, but it is still a great book.
Even in Japan, very little in the way of "insider" info is published on the game industry, partly due to the fact that there is very little investigative journalism to begin with and also becuse it is not considered polite to publish dirt on big companies. There are a few self publised books or pamphlets which can be found with great effort which claim to tell "the truth" about the industry, but not much else.
Whilst the article waffles on a lot, it does make some good points, but it also seems to miss a fundamental one. The effect on the wide spread piracy of the top games titles, the games companies are looking for new methods of distribution. However most haven't noticed it's already here; Games on Demand. This is enabled by a change, the convergence of Games Consoles and Digital STB's. These both broadly require the same sorts of functions. A CPU & memory, audio & video and networking. Tie these together with xDSL or Cable and you've got the disruptive technology that will ultimately finish the PC in most homes. Now before you mod this flamebait, think about this for a moment. What is required from a disruptive technology? It does not need to be better, it does not even need to be as good. It needs to be simpler and cheaper. It attacks from the low end, eating into the lower margin markets which the incumbent does not bother defending. It is for this reason that WebTV is doomed, it's based on PC technology, it too big, too complex, and too expensive. Why should an *ordinary consumer* buy a $1000 PC or a $500 WebTV box when I can get a $200 console or STB that will do the key things. The PC is dead, long live the PC.
Your're right. I tried to sit down and play mechwarrior 3 a while back. I played for two hours and I was still going through tutorials trying to learn to play. Maybe I should've started on Mech1, but that's ridiculous. Too unaproachable. Give me a simple setting and I'll get to all that advanced stuff later.
At the same time, I got Star Wars pod racer, which I thought would be fun. Lame. Looked beautiful, but went through a progression of levels like this: Very easy ->> very hard with no in-between. PROGRESSION people!
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
More on topic, I actually enjoy games that tie-in with some other media (medium). My first two Gameboy games were a Pokemon game and a Star Wars game. The world is richer - there are references to stories and story lines. It's nice.