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Are Virtual Worlds Worth It?
Junks Jerzey writes: "SIGGRAPH's Computer Graphics has an interesting article titled Are Virtual Worlds Worth It? which looks at the ever increasing complexity of 3D game worlds, and how such complexity is often at odds with the whole point of games (i.e. fun gameplay). There's a lot of good video game history in there as well (remember Jumpman and Miner 2049'er?). This was printed in the May issue of CG which just went online recently." Though this piece gets into some technical information about gaming worlds and the design process (as well as the audience of today's games), it starts with the simple question: "Are computer games any more fun now than they were 10 years ago?"
Oh shit.
Oh Shit oh shit oh shit.
I wasted many night time hours when I should have been sleeping blowing up pillboxes and trying to wipe out opponents on the available Macs. And now, I discover that not only is the WinBolo (not much use there) but there is also LinBolo! I know what I'll be compiling this evening... Waaa! There goes my sleeping hours again! :-)
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
IMO, Gran Tourismo is a great innovation (it's not a dirty word) of Pole Position. For one thing, the object of the game isn't to speed ahead and make twitch reactions to rapidly approaching turns. When you get halfway off the track, you don't blow up -- you slow down.
Tony Hawk Pro Skater is a million times better than 720 or Skate or Die. The most important difference is that THPS doesn't have shitty play control.
Tetris will always be good. Every version of Super Mario Brothers has sucked (except Super Mario World), and THE ORIGINAL ZELDA WAS THE GREATEST GAME OF ALL TIME.
Games *should* be better now, but what keeps happening is that we use the technology to make an "even cooler" version of what has already been done.
I registered my hate for Jon Katz
BUT, I was only 12 years old. It had a huge impact on me. Now when I watch Star Wars, it's with a much more critical eye. I see the places where I think things might have been done better, or could have been improved, but I still have a nostalgic fondness for the movie. Also, Star Wars had the advantage of being something that no one had ever seen before: it really WAS groundbreaking. (What annoys me to no end is people who expected Episode I to be as groundbreaking as ANY of the classic trilogy, when we've had 20 years of clones, knockoffs, and (yes) movies that improved upon the original. It's hard to do what Star Wars did, let alone twice.)
My point is, there's a good reason why the original Star Wars satisfies me more than Episode I: it's because of nostalgia. And I recognize this. At www.rottentomatoes.com, they collect movie reviews. Each review is rated as being either positive or negative, and then they tally the percentage of positive reviews, and give the movie that final score.
When the Star Wars Trilogy was rereleased in 1997, they went and collected all the reviews for the rerelease:
Star Wars: 93%
The Empire Strikes Back: 97%
Return of the Jedi: 83%
Then they went back and found the ORIGINAL REVIEWS for those three films when they came out:
Star Wars: 79%
The Empire Strikes Back: 52%
Return of the Jedi: 31%
If this isn't nostalgia at work, then I don't know what is. (Disclaimer: I love Star Wars and I think all FOUR movies are excellent, however, I am trying to point out what time and nostalgia will do to our perceptions).
I don't think that there's any fundamental difference between our perception of old games and old movies. Things that we loved in our youth, we tend to be nostalgic over. We forget their faults and glorify them. This is the Nostalgia Problem.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I'll take Quake over Pac-Man any day.
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But I'd take JumpMan over Quake in a heartbeat. And I'd take Hacker (you know, the old 64 game, not the movie) over anything else I've ever played, except (maybe) Starcraft.
To each his own, I guess.
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
I agree with your commments about Final Fantasy. Unforunately my generalization was speaking more toward the quake 3 and other online only genre of PC games. Sorry for the confusion, but this is where I believe story and gameplay are lacking.
Down with GNU. Long live the ENL.
I've seen plenty of people complaining about "real life being dull".
Yes it sometimes is, and that is why we make games.
This does not however mean that it has to be unrealistic to be fun.
The ultimate game, would be a game totally realistic, working excactly like real life, but being a game, lets you walk away from it afterwards, or even save and reload situations.
This means that you would be able to do everything you normally does not dare to do (I can already hear George W. Bush screaming), like steal, kick the shit out of your boss, even doing stuff that makes "A clockwork Orange" seem like a childrens story, and you would be able to walk away without any damages when the authorities i.e. catches up with you.
This is the controversial part. I believe most people would do most about everything if it had no consequenses. Will this harm society, lowering peoples limits, or will it help (letting out steam)?
Realism does NOT mean dull. Some of the greates movies are very realistic, it just covers parts of the reality that you will never experience.
Most of us will never be able to fly an F-15, or drive a F1-car, and if something can deliver that experience to me, that sure as hell beats pacman.
Gaute
i didn't read the article but i think simple can be better. kind of depends on the game. in some of the newer games they eye candy is part of the fun
as far as simple, xpilot is still my favorite game after 8 years. but part of the fun is that you're playing against other humans with and humor often is involved.
My 1st computer was an Apple II+. A few months after I got it, a friend of mine showed me "Wizardry".
The scenario was simple: make a team of six guys with different characteristics, send them in a huge labyrinth full of monsters, see your team improve as you're getting further and further in he labyrinth, and discover -after months of day-to-day playing- what your actual mission is, and, after several more months, complete the mission. The graphics were minimal, but just right.
I had fun with this game at least one or two hours per day, during more than one year. I was twelve or thirteen. I finally finished it. And a few weeks later, a burglar took my Apple II away (which was already obsolete, so probably not worth much).
Since them, I have never, ever found a game that provided me with such excitement. Of course, there has been a few great innovative things since them: Wolfenstein 3D, Myth, Prince of Persia... But nothing has come close to that almost text-based game running on 6502 with 48k RAM.
This Paper explains Stuart Cheshire's latency lessons from Bolo.
I think the key difference between Cheshire's bolo and the apple ][ game is that Cheshire wrote it around the network code from the start (on an Acorn BBC Micro computer, wow!)
I have not read this book, so please correct me if I am misunderstanding something, but I think that the focus of most "virtual reality" games is (or should be) immersiveness over realism. The movie business has shown us that people don't want realism, they want things that *look* good (or "correct"). e.g. the car had better explode in a flaming conflagration despite the overwhelming odds against this occurance.
If you look at a lot of modern games you can clearly see where choices were made that enhance the "feel" of the game even if they are not, strictly speaking, "realistic".
Actually, when the author was working on it, his Indian housekeeper (eventually to become his wife) would consantly yell "Bolo!" at him. In other words "Get off your ass, quit dicking with that damned computer, and TALK TO ME."
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Bill - aka taniwha
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Bill - aka taniwha
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Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
The big revolution in games is multi-player over the internet. New Internet games are more fun.
I agreed with you about Duke Nukem 3D, but only because it wasn't as good as it's 3D competitors.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
People who aren't doing something useful are better off doing something useful. If they're good, skilled people, they can make other jobs for themselves if those jobs don't already exist -- which, in the existing market, they do.
Does anyone remember the name of the game where you were this warrior, 2-d scroller, walked down the hallway with this shield, which you could turn into the SUPER MEGA SHIELD by slamming the joystick up and down repeatedly, and you fought other warriors at the end, knocking parts of their armor off until you hit a vital point?
I remember trying to stay on the level with the chick as the boss for as long as possible, and trying to remove all of her armor. I can't remember the name of the game for the life of me, but I would spend my entire allowance there, in an attempt to see mostly naked video game chicks.
I blame my parents.
BilldaCat
Thinking about the affinity between films and computer games...
When was the last time you saw a really superlative film? Or better: what do you think of the recent hyper sFX ultra-THX films? Lousy, poor screenplay & predictable plots? Now what about recent games?
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
Months.
Trick question. Chess and go have never been popular.
The Math Maestro Tutoring Services in Seattle
The article has some good points, but basically what it says (IMHO) is this: "I don't really like these newfangled games. The games of my youth were simpler and better."
Fortunately each person is an individual and can choose what games he or she likes and play those.
I like both styles of gaming, but come now, could you imagine a multi-player game like EverQuest with Donkey King style 2D graphics? It'd be laughable. The 3D is a huge and important part of the playing experience.
On the other hand, when I saw that Frogger and some of the other 2D games of the 80s had 3D versions, I thought, "Why? They were great as they were." I agree with the author's assessment of the 3D Centepede. That game was not meant to be 3D.
In short, 3D/Virtual Worlds are one style of gaming, appropriate for many games, but not appropriate for many others.
And yes, the current state-of-the-art still looks like cheesy computer graphics to me.
Once they can make a game that looks as real as a movie, in full-motion, the game market will explode again. The notion of a virtual world will be compelling to people who want to explore a new world, not shoot at pixels.
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Private Essayist
The problem with most new games is the misapplication of technology. Instead of being creative, id Software has made a thousand different iterations of Wolfenstein. Instead of being creative, games are about buzzword compliant graphics running at high resolutions and color depths at imperceptibly high framerates using overclocked $600 video cards in $1000 overclocked systems with over $100 worth of cooling equipment that sounds like a 747 at takeoff.
Most of those games aren't very fun. Realtime strategy games all seemed the same by the time Starcraft came out, and it was a good genre that wasn't demanding of the highest spec machine possible.. Let's see some NEW ideas, dammit!
I registered my hate for Jon Katz
I remember back when the best computer games cost a quarter a play. I wasted tons of quarters too.
I had more fun playing Battlezone and Tempest that I do playing Quake now.
In fact I pretty much play Chess and Backgammon only now on computers.
Oh, and XBill.... *grin*
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
I think children will still play pong and pacman a thousand years from now. They're classics, like checkers.
;) ).
Retro gaming isn't an oddity. There's no particular virtue in novelty; Quake isn't better than Doom unless you've already played Doom until you're bored of it.
There are two areas in which the newest games are advancing: prettier graphics and larger, more complex, settings. The novelty of pretty graphics wears off quickly, and game worlds you can spend your life exploring don't really add anything for the casual gamer.
The old games are as much fun as the new ones. What they lack is the "progress high" of witnessing the latest and greatest step forward. That is a powerful thing; I remember the first time I played Doom as something like a religious experience. The same thing happened with Quake and Zelda64.
At some point, virtual reality will develop to be indistinguishable from reality. One thing people will use it for (between fantasies about barbarian killing sprees, orgies, and exploring surreally beautiful worlds) is to simulate the original forms of classic games (like the Q-Bert box that went "THUMP!" when Q-Bert fell off the pyramid), just as they'll simulate checkers (and I suspect that they'll simulate abacii, too; the ultimate case of emulation lag
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Any attack on the current state of games, quickly degenerates into cries of "don't be such a nostalgic, old fool" . But the guy writing the piece ACTUALLY works in games industry, unlike those who consider themselves "up-with-the times". He does present practical problems, which can't easily be dismissed as "nostalgic". People do not complain about the current state JUST because they want to return to the past. They may do so because they want a better FUTURE. But that is to be expected of those who think 3D card-board effects are realistic. He ends by saying:
"Okay, that's over the top. But there are certain design considerations and rules that come into play once you start down the "player in a world" path, and those considerations tend to conflict with games that don't fit that model. In many ways, the desire to architect explorable worlds inside the computer is at odds with what can be categorized as game design, the selection of rules and interactions that result in something that's fun to pick up and play. "
Nothing kills the creative process more quickly than NARROW mindedness. This is what those who cannot see this as anything but a nostalgic plea suffer from. That is what those who think the only valid goal is Virtual reality also suffer from.
Some of the post mentioned the Art World. Are the post-Raphaelite (more realistic works) superior to the pre-Raphaelites? Even in the artistic world, no one would dare say that 2D designs are inferior to 3D. Occassionaly, you get 2D pictures, some abstract pictures which would make a Cave-man blush, some black and white pictures. They still sell, because the Art World does not suffer from Narrow mindedness. The Computer Games industry TODAY does, when compared to their predecessors. A good game is a good game. Does not matter what time it was made in. If it was fun then, it would be fun now. Look at Chess, Draughts, Athletics.
Also if the goal of realism is to EXACTLY capture reality, how can realistic games be immersive? If they are EXACTLY like reality, you have not escaped anywhere, but simply back where you started. Perhaps this is the contradiction the article was hinting at the end.
One more thing. Being happy and free is a pre-requisite of being creative, especially creating FUN games. How can you give others the pleasure when you yourselves are unhappy? OK! Now ask yourselves this are today's developers happy? In the light of the censorship rights Sony, Sega and Nintendo excercise over their consoles? In the light of the long hours and terrible contracts employees in the Game Industry have to work under? In the light of the defections, sackings, and law suits you hear in the news?
There was darkness within. Now there is darkness without (the old games).
I don't know if the problem here is nolstagia. I think the problem is that we ignore that games are creative works. A good creative work which is not good by current technical standards is still good. Some of the special effects in the old Star Wars movies are horrible. But the classic movies are still much more satisfying to watch than the new one.
The same applies to video games. I've been playing some old favorites with NES/SNES emulators (I of course possess a legal copy and am merely asserting my fair use rights) and they aren't less fun than some of my "new classic" favorites, like Alpha Centauri, Starcraft, and yes, the Quake series. A well created-game is still good, even if it is only at 320x240 resolution, can only have 8 moving objects, etc.
Does anybody else miss the old side scrollers, Contra, MegaMan, Super Mario and all? 3-D engines really seem to have killed this genre off.
This game even predates the Mac; I remember playing it on my Apple ][+ in the early to mid '80s.
Of course, it wasn't networkable on the ][+.
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Although I do enjoy a bit of fun emulation of yesteryears favorites, I think the difference is that today's games are more fun now than the games of 10 years ago would be now. For example, Duke Nukem 3d was a fun game, and I played it a ton, but would I want to play it now instead of Quake3? No.
Similarly, would anyone really want to go back to the Gold Box AD&D games? If they ported them to Linux and win9x/2k, would you recommend them to a friend, or would you tell them to go get Baldur's Gate/BG2/IWD/etc? That said, I had as much fun playing the gold boxes then as I do now with the BG series, and ditto for duke nukem. But that doesn't mean if I went BACK I'd still have as much fun
But which one do you play now?
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
screw the article... he said Jumpman! what a great game. man i wish i still my C64.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
Joust, Defender, Tetris, and Super Dodge Ball are some of the most entertaining games ever made. None of them required nifty raphics.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
In reality you have to realize that most games really would benefit from realism at least in interaction with the game itself.
I say this because of some of the insanely hard things you have to do logically within games say like find a hidden key or get some magical monster.
For example instead of having to look blind I should be able to talk about any topic I want with a character in a game. Say I don't want to let on to the barmaid that I am looking for the treasure but want to simply engage her in small talk and get her to spill the beans about the adventurers who have been frequenting the tavern? What if I want to have a different approach each time I do something instead of being preprogrammed in? All that takes is a little creative use of the if() statement and you're home free.
Respond to s
Has anyone else noticed that whenever someone hyperlinks a book title, it's always to Amazon? It just strikes me as funny that the only other thing you hear about Amazon is that whole one-click patent..
there are more than a few game styles that have really benefitted from new technology. Take Gran Turismo, at its heart, its pole position. But with all the 3d graphics, and more complex physics, it has become much more addictive and fun. Tony Hawk Pro Skater is another example. At its heart its just Skate or Die or 720. However with the larger environments and more varied tricks, its 20 times better than either of those games. That being said, there are truly great games out there that will always be good. Tetris, Super Mario Bros., the first Zelda, are all examples of just plain good gaming that are still good today. Its like a movie in many respects. Just because Star Wars is almost 25 years old, doesnt make it dated. So what I'm trying to say is games benefit from the tech, but the tech alone does not make a great game.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
I prefer games like Myth II over Rogue anyday, but I also prefer games like ZAngband (a descendent of rogue, and being developed very regularly) over Myth II. The roguelike genre has to be the most addictive that I have ever come across.
I remember when Gauntlet first arrived in the UK (the early 80's). I loved that game, we all did. The graphics were amazing, the gameplay astounding. I can still do the voices :
Don't shoot food!
Wizard is about to die!
That summer we were united in two things : Our pubescent desire for a girl who spelled her name "Nikki" and Gauntlet.
A few months ago I loaded up Gauntlet in MAME. Though the graphics were terrible the gameplay was still there. What I really missed were the other players screaming "Over here! Arrggh! Death!"
I learned several lessons from this.
First, nostalgia warps the past.
Second, I should have concentrated on Gauntlet since I never got anywhere with Nikki.
Third, playability is king.
And finally, the best, most memorable games are those you play with friends...which is exactly what I was trying to explain to Nikki all those years ago.
- SparkyUK.
Hehe .. at one stage I was practically addicted to "Windows Tetris", an early Win16 implementation of tetris. One day I got my highest score ever, all excited - then was surprised when I was not prompted to enter my name on the high-score list. Turns out the score was stored in a 16-bit *signed* integer, and my score went over 32768, and I wound up with a negative score. I never played that one again.
Is this some kind of a joke? Name one folk musician today that is anywhere close to Dylan at his height. Who do we have to look to today, Jewel? Both Dylan's lyrics and songwriting ability is without equal. When it comes to folk legacy, probably Woody Guthrie's is better, but that was a long time ago.
If Dylan came out today writing on the same topics he was then, then sure he wouldn't be too groundbreaking, but that's just because the topics are different. Regardless, the songs he wrote are still among the best that rock/folk music has to offer.
In case you haven't done so already, pick up a copy of "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" to hear what real music sounds like.
Happy people make bad consumers.
I've recently been playing a few games featured in the The 6th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition. When I find myself in room with a lantern, an exit to the north, and a staircase leading down into the darkness, I get a special tingle that _no_ graphical engine can elicit.
There's a lot to be said for leaving things to the imagination.
Don't get me wrong, you are more likely to find me in a good UT frag-fest on a Saturday afternoon than hanging out in the GUE.
"Instead of being creative, id Software has made a thousand different iterations of Wolfenstein"
To be fair, Quake3arena is a bit more than a Wolfenstein clone with fancy graphics. There are a number of interesting new and original elements that no earlier FPS had, e.g. rocket jumps, strafe jumping, flick jumps etc, that do make the game more interesting, particularly when you become better at it. Sure, it plays pretty much like any previous FPS if you're a beginner, but I like Quake because as you get better, you're actually learning new techniques and strategies, even after playing for many months.
Personally, I can remember being absolutely terrified by little ascii text lower case "d". That dragon put the fear of God in me. On the other hand, I haven't seen a graphic of a dragon in a game that terrified me. The first thing I do is to evaluate the thing artistically, and think, "okay, it's a dragon." But I'm not terrified!
On the other hand, I do think that sub-woofers have added alot of excitement to games. As has background music. I had to turn the sound down on Legend of Zelda in order to get throught the dungeons. Yowza!
Mod this up!
Don't try that "protecting the children" shit you people use to keep the tits and bad words off my TV. --Seanbaby
--DigDug
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how about a beowulf cluster of virtual worlds?
Ist it ok for me to ask that?
thank you for reading
Take this personaility test.
I felt better about the time I spent (most would say ``wasted'') playing `Zork', `Hitchhiker's Guide...', `Leather ... Phobos', or even `Racter', than I do nowadays after a couple of hours of wielding a hyperblaster. Apparently, I get more fun exercising my brain cells or, in the case of `Racter', my funny bone than I do to wearing my finger joints down blasting mutants.
For me anyway, it can be more fun exploring the little known corners of a piece of software than it is shooting things, more fun setting up the system to be able to play the FPS game than to actually play it. (Wonder if anyone else feels that way?)
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CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
In Understanding Comics , Scott McCloud does point out that it's easier to attach oneself to an abstract form than a realistic one. McCloud explains that is is because other people look very realistic, and are obviously "not you", you most people only have an abstract sense of "self." An abstract character is easier to project myself into. However, he points out that there is a place for the realistic. Realistic things tend to look more "other." The comic Tintin placed the very abstract Tintin against much more realistic backdrops for this purpose.
While it's important to remember these details when designing a game, the lesson is not "don't make games realistic." The lesson is "it's easier for a player to project him or herself into an abstract avatar than a realistic one."
One good example of this working against a game is Diakatana . I never felt I was Hiro, Hiro was the nicely rendered character in front of me. On the other hand, it may be easier to feel for the characters of J et Grind Radio , who are rendered as cartoons.
Thief does a generally good job of making Garrent, the main character, abstract. In actual gameplay, you don't see Garret at all (it's first person). I always found it very jarring when Garret spoke while I was playing, it reinforced that I wasn't Garret.
That said, Understanding Comics is a great read. Anyone who reads comics will probably appreciate it. I suspect anyone involved in graphical arts of any time will find some valuable information.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
I think a lot of these responses are saying the same thing, but they're slightly wrong.
Yes, nostalgia plays a big role in remembering how 'great' the old games were. However, new games are not lacking 'game play' emphasis; they're just copying off of games that have already been successful with good gameplay. Sure the new graphics are nice, but basically Q3A is Doom. Basically the latest Command and Conquer game is Dune. The latest Civ/Sim game is Empire, or whatever the first one of those was. Playability is there, but we *already played* those games, so we feel the same boredom we did after playing them.
Online games are different because it allows us to do two things at once; we get to leave our stress-filled or boring life and take on the attributes of our avatar. We get to play a role and be someone else, inventing ourselves all over. We also get to interact with new and interesting people (sometimes) that we normally wouldn't meet. With AC, EQ, and all the other MMOG's, we meet literally hundreds of people from the safety and comfort of our chair. We experience that variety without expending the effort of actually doing this in person.
Is this a good thing? I think in limited quantities, virtual socialization can be a good thing. It can be used to find someone who is intellectually compatible without making snap judgments based on appearance, and we can do it wholesale.. meeting hundreds or thousands of people versus 2 or 3 at a singles bar.
I think this comes at the expense of social skills if taken too far, though. People with problems socializing can take the easy way out and build a social circle online, taking them out of the physical social pool. On the other hand, people with severe social handicaps can make friends online and then meet these people IRL after they've come to know them, saving them much anxiety.
This is a common theme in science fiction, telling a tale of a society that retreats into virtual space to live a perfect life made to order... And then the race dies off because nobody wants to deal with the REAL world. You could probably think of a dozen examples of this, but I have a headache so can't at the moment. Realistically, I can't see this happening until we get neural implants and a virtual environment on the order of sophistication and realism in The Matrix, or that Hogan's G ent le Giants series (I would highly recommend) wrote of.
By the way, here's a game that is good eye-candy, good gameplay, and kind of unique. "Hitman, Codename 47" or something like that. Eidos put out a demo recently. You're a hitman, you get an assignment and you have to purchase tools, scout out the victim, and do the deed(s). You can use a garotte, knife, various guns, car bomb, etc. You have to avoid detection as long as possible, change clothing to impersonate people, and behave intelligently rather than just go in guns blazing. The key interface is kind of hard to get used to, but I had loads of fun playing last night.
, but I dare you to go back and play Dig Dug or Frogger again now.
I play Dig Dug every day. My high score is 94,376.
Some day I'll beat it. I'm sure.
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What happens when you outlaw guns
I like old Commodore 64 games. I wasted hours on them. I still wip the commie out and play them - emulation doesn't cut it for me.
However, I like the immersion factor of some of the newer games. My favorite: Counter-strike mod for Half Life. Gameplay is simple and easy to learn. However, I still waste hours playing online with this game. It is the most realistic FPS game, IMO. I have never had an "older" game shock me as much as some guy sneaking up to me an catching me off guard in this game.
Without showing you the book, its hard to get across what the original poster was refering to (as an illustrator, McCloud draws better than he can explain). When he talks about reality, it is not the fact no amount of bullets will cause my car to burst into a giant fireball the size of the Goodyear blimp. Rather, he means a visual reality where things look like a thing rather than a class of things.
I could really go on at length about this, but it'd better for you to simply find a copy and read chapter 2. If you're in a real hurry (or just want to get the jist while standing in Barnes & Nobel) read pages 48-55. Should talk all of 4 minutes.
I think that the best games I've ever played are recent ones. Sure, I had fun with The Immortal on my Tandy, but the fighting was annoying and redundant. ROTT and Duke Nukem were fun over the modem, but the best games I've ever played have been StarCraft, Thief, and Thief II. But they aren't better because of the graphics. StarCrafts are preety weak, and while Thief had great looking detail and 3D, that wasn't why I liked it. It's al about gameplay. There is nothing inherently better about games from today or from fifteen years back.
XeoMage
You are playing the "best of". That 10% of games that are remembered. They're good because they were good game designs. There are still good, solid game designs in modern - they're just different (and anyone who bitchs about the glut of FPS's nowadays, go back to the SNES era and look at all the side-scrolling shooters (Gradius, R-Type, etc) there were).
Go to KLOV.com and pick out some random selections. See how many from that period you would have enjoyed then, let alone now.
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The lore around the mac version of bolo is that it was designed as a test of communication protocols via appletalk. Aparrently bolo means 'communication' in Hindi or some other language.
Thus, a network-playable game that works well on a 9.6 dialup connection!
I admit that 3D games are fun. However, there are many games that are not 3D and still kick.
Civilization and its derivitives are my favorite time-killers. You build a world from the ground up, and try to survive 5 millenia or take over the world or try to contact an Alien race (in CivCTP) or reach Alpha Centauri (in Freeciv or F.O. Civ).
I visit some BBS's and play the games there, which are middle-school old. Text with some ANSI graphics, and it was fun.
I play Q3A, and I like it. (Too bad I suck at it.)
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
Of course, this means that the most important part of the game lies in the player's imagination and how the game stimulates it. I recall playing SSI's "Secret of the Silver Blades", which goes back a long time ago, and having weeks of fun. Now, I'm playing Diablo II. And while I have fun with D2, I recall having more fun with "Silver Blades".
So yes, immersiveness is the key to a great game, but better graphics and interaction and whathaveyou is only part of the answer. A good storyline, interesting challenges, giving you more freedom to customize your character, all of these details can creat or destroy a good game.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
I think this is a difficult thing to argue. On one hand, a game with a lot of immersiveness will probably make a lot of people go out and buy it, even if they drop it after a month. This is fairly good for the game company, because they are making sales.
However, can they continue selling the product for months after the release? I would argue that those later sales are more the result of buzz, word-of-mouth, and 2nd-look reviews. A game that people are bored with is unlikely to continue to sell well. I think it comes down to the fact that for the buyer who is making a decision based solely on the box (or a demo), immersiveness may be a more important factor than gameplay, and obviously a game with one will do better than a game lacking both. However, in the long run it is the gameplay that will drive sales (and recruit players).
"Jeremy", Ten, Pearl Jam
"Smells Like Teen Spirit", Nevermind, Nirvana
"Champagne Supernova", (What's the Story) Morning Glory, Oasis
"Black Hole Sun", Superunknown, Soundgarden
"My Hero", The Colour and the Shape, Foo Fighters
"Enter Sandman", Metallica, Metallica
"Break Stuff", Significant Other, Limp Bizkit
"Closer", The Downward Spiral, Nine Inch Nails
"Devil's Haircut", Odelay, Beck
"Come Out and Play", Smash, The Offspring
"You Oughta Know", Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morisette
"Everything Zen", Sixteen Stone, Bush
"People of the Sun", Evil Empire, Rage Against the Machine
"Plush", Core, Stone Temple Pilots
"Would", Dirt, Alice in Chains
"Tonight, Tonight", Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Smashing Pumpkins
"Under the Bridge", Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Red Hot Chili Peppers
"What's My Age Again?", Enema of the State, Blink 182
"Connection", Elastica, Elastica
"Man in the Moon", Automatic for the People, R.E.M.
I did this off the top of my head. No references. Gimme a break, dude, your line about "no one can think of a top 20 list for the 90s". What, you expect me to believe that there was no notable music in the last 10 years? What the hell are you smoking? You think music wasn't driven by commercial interests until the 1990s? You think back in the 60s that everything was driven by highfalutin visions of peace and happiness and artistic creativity? Bullshit. Things were as money-driven then as they are now; the only difference is, the people doing that driving have gotten a lot better at it.
As for comics, there you're right. Comics certainly take up much less of the page, and are less colorful, than they used to be. Having not read many large-format comics from the past, I'm not in any position to comment on them.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
"You are playing the "best of". That 10% of games that are remembered. They're good because they were good game designs."
This is a valid point, but there is a counterpoint as well: constraints often force the creation of elegent design. When the constraints are removed, bigger things are accomplished but elegence is often lost in the process. This applies to most engineering fields that I know of; look at the design of an electropneumatic control system from the 1920's vs. a digital control system today. No doubt you can accomplish many more things with DCS', but the designs from the 1920's were often far "better" (whatever that means). The constraints of available technology forced the engineers of the day to be good.
The same may be true for games. The old Tank was (IMHO) much more fun to play than most of the current crop of 3D shooter tank sims (if you deliver one of each to my house I will be happy to verify that thought!). The designers of the early 1980's didn't have as much to work with as today's game designers - were their works better? Or just simpler?
sPh
James Hague probably isn't ust a nostalgia buff--look at who he's working for. Volition's Red Faction is trying something rather new from a technology standpoint (real-time arbitrary geometry modification), and hoping to apply this to gameplay. Summoner's trying to be technologically sound and "cutting-edge" as well. He's not asking do games today suck but are better graphics (and technology in general) making games, across the board, more fun?.
Yes, I'm sure it could happen, my point is that novelty often has an attraction that vanishes over time.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I don't remember who said it, but a quote I particularly remember is "realism is a tool, not a goal." Realism can greatly enhance the fun of a game, but it must be used properly and selectively. In current games, the place of realism is as the target for the graphics. If the storyline, gameplay, and physics are based too closely on real life, the game won't be any fun.
In response to the question of whether good graphics alone make a game more fun, I would definitely say that they do, but that the coolness of the graphics wears off after a few hours. Balanced gameplay and quality design should always be the focus of any game. Graphics are secondary.
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A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
Oh, no! I've been trolled! Oh, wait, I don't care.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Obviously, the older games can be just as much fun to as wide an audience. It's not a matter of whether the recent games are considered "more fun" than the older ones, what we're really focusing on is the 3D-ness of them. Many FPSs are turning 3D for the sake of being 3D. I'll start with the obvious example of the Quake series. Quake was built on top of the successes of Wolfenstein 3D and the Doom series. It was one of the first recognizably truly 3D FPSs. Moreover, unlike many other 3D games before and after it, it wasn't 3D for the sake of being 3D. Features we take for granted, such as strafing, true looking up and down, jumping, and multi-leveled areas, were all introduced in the Quake series. It added another level of strategy and gameplay. However, there are games (watch me take the whipping boy) such as Daikatana. No real innovation or new involvement in gameplay, Daikatana was "just another" FPS. This has become a new genre, the "just another" FPS collection where a designer takes an available engine (*cough*ID's*cough*) and hires a group of level designers and marketers. Apparently this genre is extremely popular because people have a craving for FPSs; the same people who immediately turn around and complain most FPSs are all the same. Games like Quake, Half-Life, and (my personal favorite for the non-PC world) the Virtual-On series purposefully pioneer new elements and gameplay paradigms to the 3D simulation genre. There is a reason they're #1.
Even better question: "Are computer games any more fun now than they were 20 years ago?
17-20 years ago Infocom ruled the game scene, and I haven't played games as good since.
wish
Vote for freedom!
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Not to be offensive or anything but...
...skip a bit...
I've played Action Quake and Counterstrike some against people who really enjoyed the game (although I did not).When I watched them play, they just charged in and shot things.
Therefore, the optimal strategy in counterstrike and action quake is to wait until they attack. Note that this is NOT fun.
It seems to me that there might be a connection between the way you play the game and the experience you get out of it. I also think the creators of AQ would be hurt by your theory that camping is the optimal strategy. It may be one of several effective strategy, but there is no optimal strategy. That's the beauty of a well designed game.
I personally really enjoy action quake/halflife and like to think i am pretty good at it. However i should also say that i play the game more like your friends. I like a run and gun style game - not only is it more intense and exciting, but it is also much more rewarding. Winning a back and forth gun battle is MUCH more rewarding than shooting someone in the back of the head. (IMHO)
Anyway.. the what i'm trying to say is if you get the chance, play it again. But instead of camping, run and gun. Dont worry about losing.. your new to it.. your supposed to lose. I can pretty much garentee that you will have more fun.
You're right, I didn't really mention that. I was just trying to head off the tendency of people to say things like, "Bah, nowadays the graphics make everyone ignore things like story and content and plot! Back in my day, every game had the depth of Shakespeare!" which is hogwash.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I find it very difficult, even with '3d sound', to feel immersed into a world that I look at thru a 15 inch window...
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Games are an art form filled with graphics and sound. Art by nature imitates life, or at least all art forms during their evolution eventually come to that.
This has been the case since the dawn of mankind, drawing pictures of people on cave walls. People create what they see, as closely as possible. It's a natural progression.
any claims that video games were as good or better
back in "the day" are invalidated by Tony Hawk Pro
Skater 2.
The author of the article mentions how long it takes to create a fully immersive level. Take a look at the community that has sprung up around games like Half-Life, Quake, and Unreal Tournament. There are tons of people putting out high-quality maps (and a few shitty ones) and mods/add-ons. And it is all FREE. If the developers concentrate more on the engine, and less on the levels, we find ourselves moving toward a video game world like Snow Crash's Metaverse. You can create your own world if you are so inclined, or visit hundreds of others.
This step away from developer-created content means that games are no longer providing stories, and that means less fun to a lot of people. But what do you get in exchange? You get spaces where you can do just about anything. Leave it up to the community to develop stories and new gamestyles.
Maybe if we ever get a nice micropayment system developed, the cream of the crop of ametuer level designers could actually start to make a living off of all their hard work. I don't even play the levels that UT comes with anymore, just some great user made maps.
I was never much of a PacMan fan, so I won't claim to speak for players of that game, but certainly I and my friends would get some decent adrenaline buzzes off games from that era. Remember Robotron, or Defender? Remember when you were just getting good enough to get into the nastier screens in those games?
... the rest of the arcade just didn't exist.
:)
I recall being severely pumped after managing to get out of some hairy situations in those games. I'm sure many PacMan players must have had similar experiences. All those games had about the same quality of graphics, and they were all great games to play. Once you got going, you were immersed
In fact, if you jump ahead in the time stream, DOOM is another good example of this. The graphic rendering is pretty cheezy by todays standards, but it's still a damn good game. And really, I don't consider DOOM's progeny to be much better as games: slightly more complicated and much better graphics. Not really any better as games tho, IMO.
Now that I've gotten started, I can imagine decent arguments for more esoteric notions like M:TG, AD&D, and chess.
It's the quality of the game that makes it an immersive and long lasting game, not the graphics.
That said, if the graphics/playing-pieces/whatever looked like they were made by a 3rd grader, I probably wouldn't play the game in the first place
Personally I think it's a travesty about online games. Basically any online game takes usually one of two forms if it's based on quake 3 or the like.
1. A mud type of thing where you kill computer controlled minions and you eventually get more and more points without a plot this is mind numbing and eats up your time really quickly. I had a character who was working up into the early 40's level on a Daiku mud and just gave up for lack of enjoyment rather sad but it just didn't flow easily.
2. Kill, kill, kill. Basically a supped version of Xevil where you kill others for hours at a time and never do any creativity there.
I also hate what sqaure plans to do with Final Fantasy through 11 when they plan an online game which I speculate will eventually kill the series and considering their lack of fun games in the remainder (for me they just are flashy games that have their difficulty settings up a bit too much Vagrant Story comes to mind immediately) will probably convince me to leave the square bandwagon.
Respond to s
This statement could have been made accurately in every year for the past 20.
That's my point. Most games DO suck. They always have. They always will.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Another game that has an even BETTER story is Final Fantasy III (US Title, SNES). I think it's FFVI in Japan - it was also released on PSX is USA as Final Fantasy Anthologies (V and VI).
I have been playing RPG's for a long time now, and FFIII has the absolute best storyline I have ever seen in a game.
Fort Apocalypse rocked! I got the game right after I got the C64 programmers guide. My first C64 game (The only one I paided for in those days.), and it was way cool. I also liked jumpman, and all the other stuff Mike J. Henry cracked.
Half-Life IMHO is one of the greatest games made in a long time. It has a better plot than most movies, and the gameplay, graphics, engine, and multiplayer (especially counter-strike) just rock. Plus i've been able to run it on a p-133 with 16 megs of ram and no 3d card, not exactly a beast of a machine.
- *Normality Is The Root of All Evil*
You seem to start off saying that crap 20 years ago is crap today. Sure, I'll buy that. But then you go onto say that things that were great years ago (Bob Dylan, Dig Dug, Frogger) would be crap today. This is wrong; they would not be crap... they wouldn't be groudbreaking either, but greatness and groundbreaking are hardly the same thing.
Plenty of people not from the sixties have discovered and enjoyed Bob Dylan well after his prime. I, for one, didn't start playing Galaga, my all-time favorite game, until I discovered standing next to a Mortal Combat II machine.
I argue that several classic games are just as great as the ones made today. They were developed with the tools they had at hand. Because tools were primative is no reason to say a game wasn't great.
1. making the interface as simple as possible.
2. allow simple commands to be combined to form more complex manuevers.
3. Making the opponents act as real as possible (or have real people).
People want games to be simple otherwise it starts to look suspecisly like work to them. With a low learning curve things seem a lot more fun and when you can experiment with those simple commands to form neat, complex behaviors in your character the fun is amplified.
My example is the online game subspace(before all the new servers went on-line). You could get going in subspace in about 10 seconds. move left/right, fire bullets/bombs ect. What made things fun was that you could combine your simple moves to do new things. For instance you could create an area full of mines and use your 'repel' power to push people into them(instead of it's typical use of repelling shots going towards you). There were dozens of tricks you could learn all using simple manauers that you learned back in your first minute of play. Another bonus was that you could play against 60 people and nothing says fun like dodging 20 people at a time. Subspace wasn't 3D, it was a simple 2D sparse tile engine with a simple particle engine that could handle about 130 people in a game. It's changed a lot since I used to play a lot..more fast paced with faster firing (which elimates a lot of the really hard to master strategies) but still a lot of fun.
What is an analog video game and how do they work? Are they like pinball games?
Respond to s
- Primus
- Midnight Oil (Yes, they are still going)
- Dave Mattews Band
And then there's all the earlier bands that were not started in the '90s but still were producing good new work in the 90's, like Rush, Bad Religion, Iron Maiden, etc.Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Ahh, a topic often pondered... To increase graphics or not to increase graphics or sound, environmental factors, AI, etc. I would have to say that all the advancements in gameplay haven't led to wonderfully better gaming. Plots are predictable, "quests" are easy and I can't remember the last time I needed a hint book. Games now just lead us on to the next objective. Only in a few instances has this advancement really helped and here are my cases in point... Remember D&D Gold box games? I don't think the pyramids in Pool of Radiance could have been navigated without the hintbook. Remember Bard's Tale? Wastelands? What about the early versions of Ultima! The old games required much more thought than the new games, especially Wastelands. Remember Finster's mind games? However, in defense of the newer games I have enjoyed playing, I will say the the development in graphics and sound have improved games like Ultima. (I remember when the game went to EGA and how excited I was!) Although Ultima Ascension should never have been released. Fallout was spawned by Wasteland and I have finally found a 3D tactical combat game (Counter Strike) based on the Quake gaming engine that I can stand playing. For the most part, aside from DOOM, I can't stand all the damned copycat 3D shooters out there! So there's my two cents and I AM the President!
I have to agree about all that annoying eye candy. I always try to keep the number of graphics per page to an absolute minimum.... generally following the reduce, reuse, recycle type of thinking when graphics are in play I remember how annoyed I was when Apogee (or whatever they were calling themselves at the time) released Duke 3D.... I love side scrollers... as far as multiplayer games go I rather be nearby (within shouting distance of my opponent).... and hey... whatta ya know... every gaming console I've seen has supported at least 2 controllers..... I remember playing micro machines (1) on the nes.... those were fun times
I was amazed when my eight year old daughter wanted to play with the old Atari 2600 system as much as her Nintendo and Sega. Makes me mighty happy I'll tell you, good to see 'Pitfall' and 'Space Invaders' getting some play time again!
Right now it seems like a huge majority of arcades break down into Gun Games or Fighting Games (of the Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Soul Edge variety). That and more than a few Driving Games.
Don't get me wrong, there's great new stuff in each category (the Time Crisis and Silent Scope stuff are great Gun Games). But I want innovation in another direction.
Any Strider fans out there? How about Smash TV? Now *those* were fun and innovative. I'm sick of people rehashing the same old formulas. I love playing a game that makes you feel like you're absorbed in a whole other world, and I just don't feel that they're making those anymore.
They ought to have a book or TV program or something to talk about what the best/most innovative arcades in history are. Anyone know of any?
"Good luck! You'll need it." -Smash TV
Happy people make bad consumers.
Anyone read "Snow Crash" By Neal Stephenson The Metauniverse is the eventual outcome of todays games. No Beer and no TV make Homer go something something. -Homer S.-
Flash is bad for this sort of stuff (Possible, but bad):
a) realtime rendered vector graphics, it'll kill your CPU compared to using sprites if you have a lot of them on the screen.
b) Flash 1 to 4 used some variant of Lingo. I used Macromedia Director for 3 years and to do adventure games in Lingo, it felt like driving a car where you can only turn left and go in reverse - you can get to where you want to do, but it's slow and it'll drive you nuts. Had there been a C equivilent language available, I would have been able to finish that final school project instead of tearing my hair out. Flash 5 uses JavaScript, but I have no experience with that so I don't know how usable it is in a game environment (aside from animated push buttons).
As for other software to do this, none that I know of that's widely supported or easy to use. I have an idea on how to fix Director's shortcomings but I don't have the programming experience to accomplish this task. If anyone's interested in making a "GUI application builder", talk to me.
> How long is the average computer game popular?
We may never see the death of tetris.
> How long have games like Go and Chess been popular?
How often do such games even come around?
Still, I think you're comparing apples and oranges. I'm having terrific fun playing Baldurs Gate 2 (it's leagues better than the original in terms of richness and complexity) but when I've played all the way through it, and maybe played it as an evil character just for kicks (and probably using a cheat, assuming shadowkeeper works correctly by then) it'll go on the shelf, or I'll give it to someone. So it's more like a concert or a book or a play (a little bit of all of them really) than a game such as chess. The genre constitutes a lasting form of entertainment, not the individual game.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Heh... thanks. I actually held off on making an account for a few days after Taco implemented it since I thought making people log on was annoying. In hindsight, probably shouldn't have done that... 'twould be cool to be #80 or so. :)
:)
ICC's a very nifty idea, but I prefer to play against real people... I spend enough time in front of a CRT as it is, and a little social contact's never a bad thing.
> Rational Rose for yet another webbrowser with avatars built in.
:)
Slashdotting from your programming job? I think you meant "moove", not RR
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Immersiveness keeps the same players coming back again and again. Like I said, it's a psychological dependency they develop, and they can't break free unless somehow they find a different opiate to get hooked on. And anyone who wants to communicate with the immersed players must do so through their medium: the game environment.
-- Anne Marie
I play QuakeWorld Clan Arena with the graphics turned intentionally down, and believe me, for an older game, that equals out to some pretty blocky, but fluid, screens.
And while sitting in the room with 23 others computers, most of which are occupied by neo-fps playing llamas who play Half-Life: Counterstrike, which, admittedly is a fun game, they continually ask me what the hell that game is I'm playing that looks like so-much-shit.
I respond: "It's quakeworld clan arena, it's more fun than your game, and YES, I turned the graphics all the way down." (I even used a console command to turn em down farther! {d_mipcap 5, d_mipscale 40})
They look at me in utter shock, as if I had suddenly stood up and snapped their neck like so much celery.
I smile, and think "amateurs".
The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all, is the person who argues with him.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Yeah, the content has made for more linearity, but that's not the only way it could have turned out.
The concern has been with jamming as much stuff (in this case, it's polygons, but you bring up content generally) into a game as possible, and you fall into the trap of thinking that quantity can make up for quality or organization.
I tend to agree though. Many so-called RPG's are simply story books that you get walked through by your PC or console.
god is just pretend.
I actually think that this level of abstraction has nothing to with what I call the empathy a player has with a game character. It has to do with far more esoteric elements, like dialogue and action and what other characters say about the player, the basics of character in traditional drama - and/or options given to players to shape that character.
For example, I feel that JC Denton in Deus Ex is, for the most part me, to some degree. I have shaped that character through various choices into representing how I tackle the game world, how he looks, how he behaves.
On the other hand, Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid completely elicits my empathy despite being a fully fledged character who I don't choose dialogue for, who doesn't grow in skills of my choice, and looks slightly less realistic due to old technology. But when *spoiler warning* a certain character got sniped and I had to find a way to rescue her, my heart was pounding. In that moment I had a complete game playing epiphany, I was honestly concerned for the character involved and was really determined to get some payback. This was because the game had taken the time out to develop a relationship and put it in crisis.
Now that in Metal Gear Solid 2 I can actually read the expression on Solid Snake's face I think the empathic response will grow. It's a stated intention of Hideo Kojima to insure that his face will be readable as much as possible to convey that emotion.
On the other hand, I really, really cared for my Avatar in Ultima V, rendered in glorious EGA - especially, in another special moment in gaming, when I was asked to free an innocent man, knowing that it would get me into deep shit and danger. I was posed with a choice that had more consequence than abstraction survival by dodging bricks, and as a result I felt like I was in the world. This much feeling for a stick man.
Abstraction of character in the best comic books almost come off as a psychic defense; the cartoonish look of Barefoot Gen (autobiographical comic about the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima) or Maus have been stated as a means to try and work through the reality of the horrors portrayed.
The real important necessity for gaming, as I've been babbling about for years, is not the degree of visual realism, but rather the need for sharp characters and deeper plots than bad cliched retreads of the most juvenile and aesthetic elements of genre fiction. Get that right, and you'll see empathy skyrocket.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
well, Wolfenstein was a rehash of the 2d version and commander keen, albiet in quasi 3d.
... but does that make it less of an activity?
but, they have made their game *much* better, if you remember what wolf was like. they have the multi-player arena universe, and have made it much of what it is. sure, there is less innovation when you work on perfecting a concept
mx
I agree...any game can be immersive. I used to walk away from defender all jittery and tense after a series of near-deaths while on my last ship. I get the same with Quake3. The difference is that Quake3 appears closer to real life and for some reason (for me anyway) gives me a much greater sense of urgency when running for my 'life' than I ever got in defender.
Blar.
First things first. I'm a Sega fan, not that I dislike Nintendo, but if I have to choose between the two I go to Sega. So a lot of my comments are going to be on Sega games.
When you look at video games, their purpose is entertainment. Be it the old school Donkey Kong or new Ecco the Dolphin, they're trying to be fun.
Now, when you play a game like Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future, it's hard not to belive that you aren't controlling a real dolphin, except for all the game related stuff. It just looks SO real. However, the downside to this is that you get lost real easily. You are using your echolocation probably about every 5 seconds so you don't get lost. Now, a real dolphin doesn't do this, I bet, but I'm not a real dolphin.
Donkey Kong, on the other hand, is very unreal. You could magically see through walls. You could jump your hight as many times as you wanted without getting tired, and swinging a big 100lb hammer at who knows how fast didn't tire you out for 30 seconds! Pretty good for an overweight carpenter (little known fact, Mario wasn't named Mario back then, he was called "Jumpman" and he was a carpenter).
For current games, this works just as well. Two of my favorite games (both on Dreamcast) are Samba de Amigo and ChuChu Rocket. While both use polygons, they don't need to. Many people have looked at ChuChu Rocket and thought that it was using sprites! Samba de Amigo doesn't really need any graphics other than lights and colors; it might actually be better that way!
As a counter example, sort of, is Jet Set/Grind Radio also on Dreamcast. It is 3D, but it stands out because they purposely made it have... kinda crappy looking 3D. And that makes it look good. However, I really wouldn't have minded if wasn't in that graphical style.
The thing that's always important to remeber is that games are just supposed to be games. That's why true simulators aren't really that popular; particularly sims of planes, helicopters, and other things that are that foriegn. At least with a racing car sim, it's just a fast car.
I am a bad speler. Please ignore speling meestakes in me poast.
Get Baldur's Gate 2. BG2 has up to 200 hours of gameplay in it, all excellent D&D action.
I would think that chess evoloved from the ancient battles that plagued the midevil world and tended to focus on strategy. Mostly I think they were like military training excercises that monarches would employ to get the finer points of what they wanted to gain.
Respond to s
"Does anybody else miss the old side scrollers, Contra, MegaMan, Super Mario and all? "
Look for Mega Man X 5, in glorious 2D on the playstation soon.
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ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Firstly, if I understand correctly, the author or someone he is quoting is questioning the physics behind Donkey Kong. The very concept that there should be actual physics behind every piece of gameplay is ludicrous - think about fantasy and sci-fi games, for one thing. Or Pac-man!
I gotta agree here. Game physics are an interesting thing - for a game like DK or Pac-Man which is fairly abstracted from the real world of physics, all that matters is that the physics are consistent. When the physics in a game have an inconsistency, the effect is fairly jaring, and the errors with the game's own physics model become quite glairing. Within games like that, we tend to just 'accept' the physics it presents, and go on.
But something funky happens when games try more and more to emulate real-world physics: as you get closer to being right with real-world physics, the differences between real-world physics and game world physics become glairing.
Secondly, I have long griped about the decline of gameplay in recent years. Sure, you have all these fancy new games with their fancy high-framerate multi-texeled whatevers, but does it make the GAME any good? What I see is a lot of rehashed ideas, worn-out puzzles and games so simple a half-dead carrot could beat them.
I dunno - there have been some games that have had great gameplay. Most of them are not FPS, of course - RTS games usually are the ones I think that have the best gameplay, and tend to be as good or better than games produced in the past.
It sounds like the video game industry is realizing what the movie industry found out years ago - smart doesn't sell. If you want to sell copies, sell to the lowest common denominator. The only reason for "strategy guides" and hint books these days is to point out the "secret areas" in games and the stuff the developers hid! Think about all the games there are now - especially of this new "3-d adventure" variety - that it is impossible to lose the game. How more dumbed-down does it need to get?!
A gripe of mine too. Who cares if they finish some of the newest games out there - there is very little sense of accomplishment! I like games that present a real challenge - I want to feel like I really did something when I manage to whip the shit out of the final bad guy! (Actually, I'm surprised on what the last game I felt that way about was: Finishing the final tournament in the Single Player sections of Unreal Tournament. I actually had that feeling I hadn't had playing a game in quite a while! Before that, however, I can't remember the last time I felt really challenged. :-( )
Hiding stuff can be interesting - sometimes it just goes to far, unluckly. For Jumpman: 2049, I'm hiding all of the original Jumpman and Jumpman, Jr levels within the main game as a sort of 'bonus' system. Instead of making the game any easier to win, it really just drags out the game further, plus presents some interesting options towards the end of the game. I don't have much problem with hiding stuff, but, I really hate when it's nessisary to win the game, or when that's what most of the game seems to be composed of - hidden items and areas!
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
Quake 3 was never meant to be 'well balanced' - it was meant to be frantic instead.
However, taking realism AND gameplay, and putting it together say, in a game like Counter Strike, definately works.
Plus, "Realistic" first person shooters do have a suspension if disbeleif.. most people who play it aren't SWAT team members.
----
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
I know this sounded very subjective, because, well, it is, and it should be. Ultimately, the question of "Are Virtual Worlds Worth It?" can be answered with "Forget the world. Is the rest of the game worth it?"
"Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst."
Do you like chess? (I'm just talking about the two-human kind).
It's not immersive in the sense you speak of... but (IMHO) it's one heckuvalot of fun.
It isn't always self delusion that makes people love a classic...sometimes it is just that good!
I remember playing a handheld football game with my Uncle while I was growing up. I don't remember the exact number of rows and colums, but I think there were 5 or 7 rows by 10 columns of red LEDs. The really bright one was the guy who had the ball, the fast, blinking one was the ball being passed, and I don't recall how you distinguished between your guys and the other team. I believe the buttons were up, down, forward (right), back (left), pass / kick and one other button (maybe kneel or punt or something). In a 2 player game, you had to play 1 at a time. I clearly remember having lots of fun.
I've since played football on various home gaming systems, each offering sets of plays to run, more or less realistic 3D characters, yadda, yadda, yadda. I didn't have as much fun.
Proud father,
Jason
...I don't have enough faith to believe in the "big bang"...
I think that developers are making progress in developing 3D games, but it's important to realize that when we compare classic 2D games to 3D games, we are comparing what is essentially a mature technology to one that is very new. The conventions of movement in a 2D world have been well worked out. For example, we accept almost without noticing the completely nonphysical convention of being able to alter the direction of a jump in mid leap. On the other hand, the ability to produce a moderately realistic, detailed world is very new, and designers have not had as much time and experience to figure out which conventions work and which don't.
Complicating that is the fact that 3D is inherently more difficult. In 2D, the degrees of freedom of your controller correspond very closely to the degrees of freedom of the visual world. 3D opens up vastly more degrees of freedom, not merely for movement, but for view. In 2D, the only real view problem was how to handle screen boundaries, and even that introduced difficulties, such as enemies attacking from just outside the boundaries of the screen. With 3D, there is not merely the issue of controlling your character, but also of controlling the point of view. Indeed, problems of camera control are the most common criticism of 3D games. Camera control has to balance the requirements of visual interest with those of character control, and do so dynamically in real time. Once again, there are a huge number of degrees of freedom to manage.
Of course, the other problem is that 3D is such a novelty that many games use 3D for its own sake, not because it is the best way to create a particular game. Very likely, some kinds of games simply call out for 2D play, regardless of whether the graphics are implemented with sprites or polygons. It may well be that 2D is the natural format for the platform game, for example.
"This sounds a bit like they mixed some Tomb Raider into it? Rocket jumps are not new in Quake 3, btw"
OK .. it's the first game I played with rocket jumps. What about strafe jumps and flick jumps though? Is that new?
Ironically enough, despite the amazine graphics in Q3A, many of the best players play with their graphics settings horribly low ("r_picmip 5", anyone?), making the game look absolutely horrible, but it gives you a slight edge. I also play q3a with horrible visuals (mainly disabling shadowmaps and lowering texture quality), as I find it helps my brain be just that few milliseconds quicker in evaluating and reacting to the scene in front of me.
The game seems to remain just as much fun, no matter how low the graphics are set.
I still don't think you're being fair to id wrt q3a. Please, give q3 a fair chance, it is nowhere near wolfenstein in gameplay.
Is there something wrong with enjoying "twitching at pixels," as you put it? I highly enjoy Quake (and derivatives). I also highly enjoyed System Shock, Half-Life, Starcraft, Diablo, EverQuest, Command & Conquer, and a whole raft of other games that have nothing in common except that I find them FUN.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
After having read so many comments from young game users and coders, the one question for which I really like to hear your answers is:
:-)).
Have you had sisters ? Did they love to play games as much as you did ?
If not, why ? If yes, did they like the same games ? If yes, would the game playing had lead them to choose IT for a career ?
Do you think that loving to play the games and then starting to figure out how to code games is something you have started at such a young age, that it might be a sign that somehow your preference for those games is gender specific and more or less inate ?
How much were your game playing influenced (either supported or surpressed) by your parents ? Or did no one care what you played with ?
At what age did you start playing video and computer games ? Did you start playing games because there was nothing much else to do (i.e. real life was boring/not so nice/real shitty) or would you say that playing games were much better than all the other "good stuff" out there (music, sport, art etc.)
Just wondering, especially as I remember that Bob Young once said, that the internet is going to be
developed by sixteen year old boys. (After reading the comments here, I actually start to believe he might be right
I have seen rarely relaxed and amicable cameradey between younger male and female geeks on forums like this and I like to ask any of you to give me an opinion why that is.
Sounds like a typical mom question, yeah, can't help it somehow....
Here's my list, off the top of my head, and what made the game good in my opinion:
GAME....................GOOD FOR
Jumpman(c64)...........Needed tactical think-ahead movement to avoid death.
.......................Variety of traps and tricks.
Impossible Mission.....Groundbreaking for complexity of the "map".
.......................Required logical thought to evade the robots.
.......................That scream sound when you fall to your death was addictive.
.......................(The first time I played I kept throwing myself to my
.......................death just to hear it again.)
Phantasie 1,2,3........Predecessor to the Ultima series, by the same guy.
.......................Fun map exploration, party-style D&D setting.
.......................Could change the item descriptions in a text file, so
.......................after a while I was fighting with "trashcan lids",
......................."Big sticks", and so on.
Atari 4-paddle games (like Warlords, Quadrapong, etc) - Instead of
.......................the impossible task of making the computer an interesting
.......................challenge, it put the players against each other, but
.......................in the same room. (Moderm net play is too impersonal.)
Civ (original).........Nice game length, and a user interface that was efficient.
.......................(unlike Civ:CTP).
Lemmings...............Hilarious premise, and a fun challenge to boot.
Does this mean all new games are bad? No, just that the extra graphics and sound don't really make a game good all by themselves. It's important to have a good, *fun* idea at the core of the game. Ask yourself the question, "Would this game still be fun if the graphics and sound weren't as good?" If the answer is "no", then there's no substance to the game.
One modern game I do like is Thief 1&2. Why? Because they had the balls to try something *different* instead of just another Duke Quakem clone. Much like Ultima Underworld (which was also by Looking Glass), this game was groundbreaking and unique without needing the best graphics of the day - they relied on other stuff to make it a good game - like a plot, and a realistic set of physics. (While the graphics engine in Thief wasn't the greatest, the realistic physics for throwing projectiles and shooting bows was awesome. Having an FPS where you have to arc your shot was a new idea, and they did a good job with it.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Silly little comment but the Tandy 1000 was 4.77mhz 8088. Though it had some good games that could only be played on a Tandy 1000. It still has the best port of demon attack, you could play Kings Quest with 16 colors and three channels of sound, and Star Flight was simply a great game. That with the joystick ports in front of the machine, it really was a great machine to play games on.
There's nothing wrong with it if that's what you want. That's what Space Invaders was. I personally enjoy Descent when I want some mindless action.
It's just that I hear so much news about each latest FPS like it's some kind of great new innovation, and they're all basically the same thing.
Does anyone remember what Quake was originally described as by id in the early days? It was radically different from the warned-over Doom it became. They went on and on about physics simulations, elaborate hand-to-hand combat, actually story elements in the games like puzzle or role-playing. What did it end up as? More shotgun shuffle with endless zombies and demons... ho hum. I just like a little imagination in my games rather than running around endless brown labyrinths with the computer congratulating me in terms of gay sex.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Old-school games are some of the best I've ever played. Too many companies nowadays are concerned with graphics and options, which often compromises things like framerates and gameplay. In fact, I have an N64 in my dorm room, and come the end of next year I'll have a Gamecube too. But I also have the original NES, and I play that way more than the N64. Back then, the capabilities weren't as good, so that forced the companies to make games with better gameplay, and that's really what gaming should be all about.
Real is not fun? Along the lines of Bradbury's thoughts on fiction, that sort of thing is better if it is mostly real, as that makes it palatable/imersable. It is the small deviation from a palitable reality that allows a person to escape his own. A reality that is then enhanced by adding some deviance and exageration.
From that, I believe that it is the the deviant parts of a reality and the imersibility that can cause an incredible draw to a game: Quake3 style arena matches mimic a faster variety of a paintball sort of thing. If the universe was not fast, and visually realistic, with simulated and exagerated physics, would the game be as fun? A 2d sprite version of the same is fun, but nowhere near as imersive. Think about the classics: time-bandits, combat, temple of asphi, etc. Good games in their time, but you never really believed you were there. You *only* had the game play to enjoy.
mx
Personally, I think Primus sucks. Never listened to Midnight Oil. If I'd thought of DMB before some of the others, I would have put "Ants Marching." Now, are you gonna argue that my musical taste is wrong? Cause if so, you're utterly and completely off-topic.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Strafe jumps and flick jumps sound like something from Tomb Raider, but it's new in a fps.
Okay, I may have been a bit harsh, but q3a could have brought something more new to the genre, couldn't it? The genre is pretty much stuffed, as it is.
Id seems be growing more into a 3d engine developer, what with everyone and their distant cousin (ok, ok, Soldier of Fortune and Half-Life, at least) licensing either the quake2 or quake3 engine (Funnily enough, they all swear they used only 10% of the engine code). With the new Doom, id perhaps are trying to change that.
Let's hope they will.
This is the same as the Film market, its so much harder to make a different and challenging film, it much better to rehash an old plot and add in some more FX.
That said however the games market does benifit in increasing the level of reality in games that are meant to be real (F1, FIFA, Quake etc etc) but whether their current dominance of the games market is due to a lack of imagination on the part of developers or publishers is easy to say.
Of course it is. Just look at what happens when a new genre comes out, everyone plunders it for years to come. Film and games companies contain accountants and imagination is not their strongest point.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Well, I'm one of those people who really prefers 'realistic' FPSes (well, I am a Rogue Spear addict, and my appetite for Quake, or AvP, has rapidly diminished to almost nothing), but I think that saying I have a problem with suspension of disbelief is not quite true.
Playing Rogue Spear or Rainbow Six is a totally different experience from Quake or Unreal; in Quake or Unreal, the goal is to rack up your kills, there's not really any penalty for doing things the quick and dirty way (the worst that could happen is that you die and you have to sit out for like 5 seconds). Rogue Spear is more about accomplishing a more complicated goal (usually), and the difficulty level is a lot harder (and if you screw up, there's no second chances). For me, that ramps the tension up a ton and makes the game a lot more exciting, even if a tango cuts me down in the first 5 seconds of the battle.
That's not to say I didn't have fun playing Quake or AvP -- it's just a different sort of experience altogether.
I guess, looking back, id has never really been all that innovative, so you're probably right. Carmack never seems to actually implement new stuff wrt graphics .. generally he takes existing theory and techniques in computer graphics, and then he's the first to come up with a way to do that super quickly on PC's. Wrt games, I don't think they've ever actually had a game that wasn't based on the old "run around in a maze and shoot everything that moves" plot. When you look at it that way, nothing of there's seems particularly innovative (commander keen aside.) People often mis-attribute to id many of the innovative things *within* the fps genre too (as I apparently did re rocket jumps) .. things that id didn't come up with. But people tend to associate id with most of that innovation. I often hear people claiming stuff like "quake was the first to ..." when I know that Duke3d (for example) had the same stuff in before Quake was released.
So I guess they don't have particularly innovative games (although the Q3 character physics model is damn well fine-tuned, those flick-jumps are very difficult to get right) but what they do do, they do very well. Very good 3d engines. Very good sound. Very good graphics. And atmosphere.
I wonder how much of id's income is from licensing the engine, and how much is from the sales of games? They probably make lots of money from both. It's OK though, I guess, Carmack always seems to come up with leading-edge 3d engines.
it doesn't matter how fun the games are. it matters if they can convince the consumer to spend $200 on a mass produced console.
to do this they need stats.
voxels/sec is a stat
"fun-ness" is not
-f
It's pretty nice, in a graphics quality standpoint. I especially like Shana's transformation (well, shouldn't every guy?) However, I'm not one for turn-based RPGs, so the gameplay doesn't really appeal to me. Nice melting effects, I never knew the PS1 could do that.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
"nothing of there's seems particularly innovative"
Aaaargh! Has my english gotten *that bad* since I left school? That should be "nothing of theirs"!!!
...LucasFilm games, such as Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders, Maniac Mansion, Indy & the Fate of Atlantis, etc... (I must admit to not having tried out the most recent Monkey Island or even Grim Fandango)
Seems to me that having key verbs at the bottom of the screen made for a very intuitive interface. Those games didn't need a 3-D world and were tons of fun.
...it seems to me that in this day and age it would not be difficult to port most of those classics with Flash. (kinda like they did with Joust, Spyhunter, etc...)
Anybody willing to do this or know of an existing equivilant?
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
That seems to be an entire genre of games now. I looked at the system requirements for Lemmings (the original I believe came on a single floppy) and it was at least a P2 300 with a 3d accelerator. To play LEMMINGS! Same with Frogger, Centipede, and Asteroids. None of these games have been improved by the addition of 3D rendering, and in my opinion they have more in common with FPSs than their namesakes.
Bite the hand.
You guys are just proving his point. It's almost impossible to come to a consensus on what was the definitive 90's music. The point is that in any given era there will always be good music to be found, but in the 90's it became extremely fragmented, for good & bad, by the rise of so-called Alternative. Maybe we need 10 or 20 years for lists to distill down to the really definitive.
Notice I don't say 'greatest' or 'best' - that's all just taste. I think it's more interesting to look at what songs will identify a era. Once you look at these, see which era had the 'best' songs that were widely recognized & consumed.
For another example: Take a look at Amazon.com's 'essential recordings' list, organized by year. As you go farther back in time, the essential recordings become more well known - the stuff that everyone was listening to back then has turned out to be considered 'essential', at least by Amazon. As you get more & more recent, the artists become more obscure. People aren't all flocking around a common sound like they did in the past, which is good and bad.
So it goes.
-BbT
(WARNING, YOU ARE TEMPORARILY LEAVING THE FREE SOURCE WORLD) www.winbolo.com (they have a port called linbolo) BOLO was a game for the MAC which I played at least 8 years ago. Because the mac had more network-ability than your similarly equipped intel-class PC, this game spread across (mac-equipped) campus labs like wildfire. Which is proof, that you don't need 3-d graphics (in fact, the game is designed to work well in BLACK AND WHITE) to have great gameplay. Now it's available for windows and linux. Don't miss it.
Yeah, there's going to be some tediousness. I'm about halfway through BG2, though, and it hasn't got boring yet ...
All the little tricks and traps in tha game show all the effort that went into it. I found a walkthrough that, when you started the game, let you get the "Dagger of Penetration". As a result of that cheat, one of the other towers up on the first level (the one with the Fountain of Thera in it) also had a giant sharga that said (in a female voice)
"Beware of the Kevin of Bass" (I assume one of the game's designers)
I ROTFL after that. That game is AWESOME!
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
I would buy:
#1: Half-life. (d/l cstrike & tfc) and yes, it's in the bargain bin
#2: Sim City 2000. (forget simant, simfarm, simearth, simjungle) If you can get it in a combo pack, COOL
#3: Total Annihilation.
#4: MDK (MDK2, but it's not in the bargain bin yet) smooth, liquid, funky, cool + eye candy
#5: Some other funky game you've never heard of that looks cool .
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
Pssht, yeah. I mean that Jakob kid's nothing out of the ordinary.
Shake and shake
the ketchup bottle.
None will come,
and then a lot'll.
"Are computer games any more fun now than they were 10 years ago"
I don't think they're any better. They're always best when you're 12 years old and they're the most exciting thing you've ever seen. I would say that the additional complexity and megs & megs of content has made them more linear however.
The quality of the Virtual world has a big impact on whether or not the game will be a success. Hardcore gamers have come to expect a new game to take advantage of the newest hardware and get progressively more lifelike. As long as the gameplay is no worse than previous games, they accept it.
So, with all these memories I am seeing lots of references to Half-life, Quake, Doom etc. etc. Here is a question:
If you had $50, which games would you get from the $10 rack at Comp-USA (Best Buy, Walmart etc), or would you just spend the $50 on one recent game?
I ask because I really would like to play some games on my computer, but don't have a lot of money and would hate to waste what I do have. Also, my video card is just an 8mb ATI RageIIc on a Dual Pentium II 400.
thanks for the recommendations,
Stuart
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
If you like Combat you will love BZ Flag. A networked came with good to cheasy effects (depending on your video card) and networked. Basically its Combat but with a couple of special weapons. It is SO fun. For Windows or Linux (Linux version is free of course). Get it, play it, love it.
Do you ever feel like there are people watching you? You're not alone.
Yes.
Next article.
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
You're right that the "nostalgia" problem exists; however, what makes you think that this is evidence of it? The 80s weren't the only time that people made games which weren't massive 3d "virtual worlds". You can find any number of modern examples of such "primitive" techniques just about anywhere. The first one that springs to mind, of course, is Nethack (which I swear I will finish one day..if I ever dare to play that black hole of time again..), but even something as simple and uncreative as lbreakout is an excellent example of an "old" game done well in a creative way. Freeciv is mostly derivative of Civilization, an 80s game, but the coders have many ambitious plans to add features that Civilization never dreamed of. Probably those will see the light of day, but even without them, it's still an engrossing and fun-to-play game (even with the "must reproduce like rabbits" syndrome) I tried the Quake 3 demo. It had the prettiest and most "immersive" graphics I've ever seen. It's not on my hard drive anymore. Nethack, lbreakout, and Freeciv are. (and the first of those, I might add, is far more immersive overall (not graphically, of course) than Q3..) Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Immersiveness is a subjective value as well. I find Infocom text adventures and text-based muds to be far more immersive than graphical games. /can't/ quantify it. Saying "it's immersive" or "it has good graphics" is just one person's view of it. (Also, OCD is not the disorder you're looking for; I think you're referring to addictions - OCD /is/ bad)
I think a problem that we'll all have when it comes to quantifying the playability of games is that you
i will always remember the old days, when i was playing Boulder Dash, Out Run, Tetris, etc, all this games are fun! Even now i'm still playing at Sokoban for example. 3D games are fun to play, but i don't care about complexity, i see nothing about the superb texture of the wall when my character is running, and actually i prefer to play at 60+ fps instead of 30 fps with "beautiful" texture. ;o)))
anyway 3D does not mean fun, what's fun are games that will never end, like the one i mentioned, i'm sure i'm missing some good title, Space Harrier for example (BTW if someone can make a OpenGL version i'll be cool
--
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Im thinking about it. But there's an interesting point in your post, that I'd like to comment on:
BG2 has up to 200 hours of gameplay in it.
Gameplay. Not the same as 200 hours of fun. I can't speak about BG2, since I haven't played it yet. But I've seen several games reach a level where they get so repetitive after a while that it stops being so much fun and starts becoming a tedious task.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Ahhhh. Memories....
Ok, someone post a link to where I can
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I was in college in '89-'94 and I remember the guys in my dorm lining up to play the latest flight simulator or even the chance to see the game play on the few PCs around. Then one weekend someone brought an old Atari 2600 from home. Even more people lined up to play and watch, but mostly to play. You didn't have to read a manual of key commands and strategy to be able to play a game. You could squeeze in a couple of quick games of Combat or Battlezone before class and a round of Asteroids or Adventure before lunch. In the weeks to come, some other people brought their favorite games from home and we had a great time. That old Atari console got warm, but never did burn up.
Sure the eyecandy of Wing Commander was amazing, but everyone flocked to the console system. I now feel the same way about some of the DOS games I played since I don't get the latest, greatest PC hardware to be able to keep up with the new games. Those old games hold up for playability for the long haul. Then again I never did have a long attention-span for game play. Long games of Monopoly, cards or PC games bore me. I want to play for a short time then do something else, not spend several hours just learning to play.
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
"Amplified Reality"
It's not that reality is not fun, it's that there is a large span of time between the fun.
A swat team charging into a room of terorists is pretty exciting, however the 6 hours that they sat outside the door waiting to go in probally wasnt all that fun. So how does a situation like this become entertaining? Simple.. take out the waiting and presto.. reality just became entertainment.
So basically to create something entertaining take a plausable chain of events, keep the exciting parts, and drop the rest.
there's about 65 people on at all times average
That's the reason MUDs are so addictive. You don't play them for fun. OK, let me rephrase that:
You don't get the fun from playing them (kill monster, get all from corpse, repeat ad infitum). You get the fun from interacting with the rest of the players in a virtual (as in not real, not as in visually similar) world with a sense of belonging.
Otherwise, we would all be playing NetHack instead of playing MUDs. I know what I speak of: I held a record once at college for DikuMUDing 30 hours in a row, with only one snack break.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Unforunately my generalization was speaking more toward the quake 3 and other online only genre of PC games.
I had a similar conversation to this with a traditional (Dungeons and Dragons-style RPGs) gamer. He claimed that gaming was dead. When asked why, he answered that the game itself hadn't declined - it was just that the card "RPGs" like Magic: The Gathering had stolen away most of gaming's core constituency.
I think it's the same deal with computer games. I mean, I catch myself falling into the trap all the time. I have Balder's Gate II on my computer, which people are telling me is very good, but I've never played it. Why? Because every time I have some free time, I think "Do I really want to learn a whole complicated system and try to remember everything everyone's telling me? No.. actually I just want to shoot people in the face with the sniper rifle." And then I play Tribes.
There will always be computer games which improve on previous computer games in every way. The question is whether anyone will play them.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
As an American, though, you'll have to either have a stealth mod chip (an ordinary mod chip won't do) or Bleem! (it's slightly buggy in Bleem!, the music doesn't quite match up with the onscreen action.
Basically, $ony has come to the conclusion that all American releases should be in crap-polygon format, and they mostly suppress sprite based side scrollers that come out in Japan.
A victory for region based censorship.
I hate $ony.
I had a rant about this up on my site, but I have since decided I need to mellow my position. I mean, I really like some polygon based games, I just get mad when the sprite based games are suppressed.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Actually, the Tandy that I owned was bought in 1988. It was the Tandy 1000 TX, and among its features were an 8MHz 80286 processor, TGA graphics (Tandy Graphics adapter, I think it added one additional mode that never became standard), the 3-voice sound that you mentioned and a 3 1/2" double density floppy drive.
As for games, well I didn't play them much because Tandy games were only kicking for a very short time. The ones I had were Marble Madness, Thexder, and an arcade-perfect port of Sega's Outrun. Outrun was particularly neat, because it was a perfect arcarde-quality game even before Sega's Genesis had even been conceived. And my version of Marble Madness (complete with a real Tandy joystick) was just plain leagues ahead of the NES version.
Tandy could have been in a unique position to bring about a revolution in computer gaming, but alas, they screwed up somehow and we all had to wait until about 1994 or so before we saw good enough IBMs to bring back computer gaming in a big way.
(Note: I am blatantly ignoring the Apple, Amiga, and others because I never owned one and don't really know the history on them and gaming too well. Forgove me.)
My biggest obstacle with playing games is that my women all get bored sitting around watching me play.
No matter how Cinematic and 3D the games are the girls start yawning after about an hour. I feel that
what we need to do is make more games so chicks like them too so we can get away with spending
more time on them. How many relationships must come to an end because of immersing games like....
Everquest?
It dependes on what part of the argument theou're basing it on; as for the last line "are games more fun than they were 10 years ago", I'd have to say 'yes' -- mostly because of the advent of multiplayer gaming; playing against a human bean is much more fulfilling than an AI.
//c out of mothballs every few weeks just to play Ultima IV because it's a story I've been engrossed in for well over 10 years.
But there are some noticable let downs as well. Most current games (with some notable exceptions) are relying too much on technical merit and not enough on design or inspiration. Most single-player games of today are completely devoid of anything resembing an enveloping story line or interesting characters; I'll still pull my Apple
In short, I don't think the advance in 3D design is taking anything away from the experience, but I don't thing advanced 3d Design is enough to make a game 'fun', either.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
MDK2 is MORE FUN than any video game I was playing 10 years back.
tcd004
Adventures are still being dripped and there's a quarterly newsletter print (though the back issues are available here.) The openning paragraphs are a great read, if a bit depressing.
1995: 80 Subscribers
2000: 28
The maintainer is also putting out a CD containing all the adventures, perfect for any emulator or APPLE// thats still working. Search rec.games.eamon for more info.
On an aside, Trinity by infocom is still beyond amazing, and people are still getting stuck in Zork every year...
when Push Comes to Shove
One of the most important experiences of playing a 3D game is immersing yourself in the world. Until "smellevision" is invented, the primary way of doing this is by looking at the finer details of the world. Half-Life and Soldier of Fortune really excelled in this respect; seeing a science lab destroyed by marauding aliens brings on that special feeling of fear that would happen in a similar situation. The Quake 3 engine is also good at this, though you rarely have enough time to stop and smell the skulls. DOOM was really the first game to have this type of experience; just seeing the rivers of blood and the impaled bodies added a special macabre feeling to gameplay. Though game designers should never get carried away with that aspect (see: Daikatana), it is still an important part of a 3D game.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I've spent a lot of time wondering why and I think the core problem is that the games are so awfully repititious. In RTS games, they all seem to boil down to build a base and then go wipe the enemy of the map. After about 100 times of this, is it any wonder that building next base isn'nt fun? FPS games like Quake and Doom seem even worse, all you do is run around and blow things up.
Probably the game that has managed to hold my attention the best was Alpha Centauri because of the great depth of the game. But even that gets old real quick; all you seem to do is spend your time nudging units across the map and working your way up the tech tree in order to get an edge over your enemies.
No matter what game in what genre I try, they all quickly become repititious. I keep feeling like some little cog wheel stuck going round and round inside the "game engine".
It's interesting that this article came along when it did. For some months now I've been wondering if someone was going to abandon all this 3D/voxel/blah blah blah approach and focus on game play for a change. Eyecandy doesn't last very long; what keeps player's interest are other factors. I've been thinking of trying Empire, but am scared by the addiction warnings posted on the website. Can you imagine playing games that go on for as long as 2 years? Yeoww!
The reson it seems that games keep getting worse is the same resons that our parents dont like the music we listen to, we out-grow games, we still have memories on how much fun we had playing pac-man on the atari 2600, the same way our parents remember how good music was in the 50-60's. new games dont seem fun becouse were too old to play them, most games are made for a spacific age group. give a 13y/o a atari2600 or a NES and see how long the'll play with it, not very long mostlikely ( there are exceptions somegames are just timeless)
How long is the average computer game popular?
How long have games like Go and Chess been popular?
Misfit
The best games are ones that define a limited number of abstract 'dimensions' and then milk every possible drop of playability out of them.
When any game makes the jump to 'realistic' representation of 3-D space, it becomes impossible to do this, and the designer is frustrated by having too many degrees of freedom.
As an aside, I had a couple of hours to kill in a strange city a couple of years ago, and a public library was nearby, so I stopped by and immediately went for the "Computer" books section. Needless to say, most of the books were about BASIC on your TRS-80 and the like. One of the more interesting books was a "Video Game Guide" that listed different gaming consoles availible that year. This work predated the Atari 2600 by a year or two, and as such only listed pong-type games (classifying them by how many "games" they featured, i.e. "tennis", "table tennis", "doubles", "squash" which were really only re-arrangements of the paddles and walls). The relevant part is a piece out of the book describing the next year's models of non-programmable game consoles being demonstrated by a factory tech - "This young man deftly manipulated BOTH paddles, playing a game of pong with himself with an ease that amazed onlookers." Hence my point, that people simply SUCKED at hand-eye type coordination back then, and we're just getting better and better and better at it. Take a pinball wizard and ask him to play Quake. He'll spend the whole day trying to figure out how to aim the mouse.
sometimes, i enjoy being immersed into an environment, and sometimes i enjoy a quick blast-em-up. i'm guessing everyone is the same way, in different proportions. but i guess overall i get more enjoyment from immersive 3D than blast-em-up. i actually feel like i'm using my brain a little.
The REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
Hmm .. I'm afraid I don't think much of most of the song's you've mentioned. Enter Sandman is an excellent song (I thought it was late 80's actually.) Same goes for Smells like Teen Spirit - thought that was eighties.
Man in the moon is not too bad, but doesn't come close to the best songs of the 60's.
Most of the songs you mentioned are from the first half of the 90's, if I'm not mistaken (although I might be mistaken.)
None of the other songs you've mentioned even come close to at least a dozen great songs from the 60's era. Some of them are OK (e.g. black hole sun), but others are quite boring and merely pretend to be deep.
Naturally these are just one person's opinions :) Music is obviously fairly subjective, each to his own etc. So maybe those songs do something for you, that they just don't do for me. I guess I'm just more of a folk music fan, in general, with some noteable exceptions, like Guns n Roses, and I like dance music too. But seriously, how can you compare songs like "What's my age again" to songs like Don Mclean's "Vincent", or "Windmills of my mind", or Donovan's "Catch the Wind", or "Diamonds and Rust", or "Sounds of Silence", "bridge over troubled water", or at least half a dozen of Cat Steven's earlier songs (e.g. "sad lisa", "matthew and son"), or John Lennon's "working class hero" .. and really, we're just scraping the tip of the iceberg here.
The answer is that realistic virtual worlds make games more interesting and more immersive, but fail to make up for a failed basic premise. If a game is well thought out and well designed, the realism added definitely increases the fun and value. A pretty game that is not fun to play lasts only as long as the eye candy is still intriguing.
This is why there are still plenty of people playing Quake and Starcraft. They are poor examples of current (audio visual) technology, but as games they are just plain very entertaining.
What we lack currently is the killer app for virtual worlds: a game that is both technologically stunning as well as based on a framework that keeps gamers playing. It's a hard mix to achieve, because so much work *is* required for modern games. We've come a long way from the days of 2d scrollers; many modern game projects are beginning to look more like movie sets. Getting all that fancy technology (and complicated geometry) working may require more effort from designers than ever before, but if they can pull it off they can also show off a game that is more amazing than previously thought possible.
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
Graphics3D 640, 480
That was engaging...okay, just plain fun. Hate to say how many hours I played. C64 version. It was also my first game, on cassette. Copy protected cassette -- most were -- though you might wonder how they could prevent copying a cassette.
I think that I have just as much fun playing games now as I used to when they weren't nearly as Graphically Appealing, but with the newer games having much more realistic (or at least much more interesting) graphics, it adds another layer to the games themselves.
The games that try to be cool just on the basis of looking pretty alone usually suck, but games that are FUN to play, and have good graphics/sounds are REALLY FUN to play. Star Trek Voyager: EF is a good example. It's fun to play, and the sounds, graphics, etc make it really exciting.
I've given up playing new games, my playstation lies unused, I play no computer games bar the odd sim type game. Modern games seem to be all style and no substance.
Old games though, aaaahhh, do you remember Elite? Simple graphics, complex open-ended gameplay. Wher'as reviews of new games always seem to say, one way or another, 'Better graphics' or 'More eyecandy'
In fact, modern games are so crap I've started playing interactive fiction again, exercising your mind for a change, and not just your trigger finger.
Still, I suppose it takes all types of games and people, maybe I'm just getting old.
Iain
--- imh
When you have MMRPG's like UO, Everquest and Asherons Call, it seams like times playing old muds. (Overdrive being my fav)
Now personaly I find Asherons Call more fun then OD was, I dont find my self playing it as much as I played OD 5 years ago. I dont think that I will ever forget some friends that I have made on OD. I guess that 'fun' is a bad word to describe it. UO was not a 'fun' game. I found the game very repetitive and rather dull, but interacting with other chars was the best (or only) fun part. And that was a blast (many hours at school were wasted playing that game).
I think that with the perty 3-D graphics, larger amounts of players and more stuff just crammed in, there is much more to explore and find, more friends to make and new items to use.
I guess that it comes down as what the community of the game is. OD and UO had great a community. AC is just fun to play. But I spend more hours during the week playing OD and OU 3-4 years ago, then I play AC now.
Sanchi
"They said we couldn't do it [Athlon]... but we built it, we shipped it... and we didn't have to recall it." Rich Heye
Let's first look at the evidence:
;-)
:-)
Numerous people love 3D shooters (Quake, Thief, Counter-Strike, CTF, etc). Lots of people love 2D RTSs (Age of Empires 2, Starcraft, Majesty, etc), and other people love traditional games like Cards, Chess, Backgammon. Many people enjoy the socializing, goodies, trading, and virtual community in RPGs (UO, EQ, AC, Diablo 2, Balder's Gate), and yet others love the retro C64, Apple ][, Atari games (*cough Apple ][ : Aquatron, Rescue Raiders, Gemstone Warrior cough*) , while others love a good puzzle game (Monkey Island, Zork, Myst, etc). And last but not least, there are a good number of people who enjoy sports games (Football, Basketball, Soccer, Driving, etc)
And what conclusion can we draw?
How complex were the games from yesterday? For the most part, they "were simple." People want something that is "fresh" and "exciting." Adding complexity to a game, i.e. more detailed world, is the easiest way to do this. (Note, that I didn't say the best way
If we look at the (short) history of computer games, are today's games just as fun as the "oldies"?
Not everyone has the same taste, but Yes! Today's games are just as fun. (Popularity is ONE way to guage this.)
One thing we all must remember, is that good gameplay is, for the most part, independent of graphics and sound, but great graphics and sound helps the player to be immersed in a world. Something which seems to be lost on most publishers chanting the mantra "MUST SELL 3D GAMES." (Could you imagine playing Thief without 3d sound? Ugh. Playable, but the expercience wouldn't be that good.)
You can still have a good game and have bad graphics. A bad game with pretty graphics is still a bad game (even though it still might sell)
The main problem is there are a lot of REPEAT games out there. Of course it's not as fun playing the ump'teenth version of a shooter, because the INITIAL thrill of playing something ORIGINAL wears off, but slowly we are seeing NEW genres. i.e. Thief, Majesty, Sims.
One should note there is an interesting parallel with the movie industry. We could ask the same question: Are movies still fun to see after all these years they have been around? After all, the plot has pretty much been seen before, in either books, or previous stories. Movies are using the "latest 3D" rendering techniques to impress us visually, i.e. Matrox. And 3D sound is nice, but not essential to enjoy a good flick.
But what do I know, I'm just a game programmer and avid game player
Score 0: Obvious
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
Graphics3D 640, 480
Save yourself some time, use Crystal Space, an open source 3d engine, http://crystal.linuxgames.com/, cross platform, suports 3d hardware, just as good as the halflife engine. I think the real problem is how do you support a virtual world with 50 thousand (or 2 million for that matter) people walking around in it having real time conversations?
How we know is more important than what we know.
I think Dirtside has done an excellent job of proving his point, and I think posts like this do an excellent job of proving his point too. ;)
Music taste is fermly set early in life, and it's not surprising to hear music fans claim their favorite genre is infinitely better than any other genre, especially "new" genres and songs. No one would rightly expect a folk music fan to like 20 popular hits of the 90's; there's a giant blinder there that isn't your fault, and no one can or should convince you to ignore your personal preference.
The simple argument (that no one has successfully disproven to my satisfaction) is that people tend to forget what was wrong about old music/games/movies when it's so easy to remember what was right about it. I would dare you to come up with a bad song from the 60's for every good song you've listed, as well as a mediocre song.
--
Speak for yourself. Most of that music I find deadly boring. Naturally, these are just one person's opinions. :)
Most of the songs I listed in the 20 (and I never said they were the 20 best songs, where did you get that idea?) I like listening to a hell of a lot more than 60s stuff. There's a lot of 60s/early 70s stuff I DO like (like The Doors, some Beatles, Hendrix, Steely Dan, and more) but for the most part I just don't find music from that era very interesting. And for what it's worth, your opinion is no more valid than mine.
Now it would be dense for me to claim that a lot of that music isn't a) very well done, b) important in terms of musical history, and c) highly influential, but that doesn't mean that I have to agree that it's "better" in the conventional sense than, say, Joe Satriani. In fact, right now I'm listening to my current favorite song, "Motorcycle Driver" by Satriani.
I've had plenty of experience with classic rock and folk and pop. Usually, I don't like it. Are you going to tell me I'm wrong? Do you think I'm trying to tell you that you're wrong? How the hell can you be intellectually justified in saying "These are just my opinions" and then implying that I'm somehow wrong to say that a modern song is, IN MY OPINION, better than an equivalent song from the 60s?
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
This is something I ask myself everytime I see a new, slick, beautiful, incredibly boring game come out. Then I start pining for my old Atari 800--those were some fun games. Anyone ever play "Whistler's Brother"? That was an intense, reflex demanding game that I really enjoyed. I can't think of a 3-D based game that has ever come out that has challenged and engrossed me as much. Oh, with the exception of Deathmatching. Now that was a genuine breakthrough . . .
Respondeo dicendum quod . . .
The only difference I see is that instead of using your imagination to supply the terrorists and interpersonal relationships, you're letting the software do it for you. I think the same has been said of television - that it acts as a substitute imagination rather than stimulates.
That's not to say that all media does that, but certainly the mass-produced, sequel-milking, eye-candy-filled television shows and video games have that effect.
I would point at history to demonstrate that whenever a new form of media comes out, it takes quite a while for it to start producing art. The printing press, photography, and film have all had a "trial period" before people started to use those mediums for art. Film has progressed relatively quickly in that regard, but how much art is there on television? Sure, Dark Angel might be a "neat show", but can you really call that action-thriller bullshit stimulating and provocative? What new ideas does it introduce? Even the bastion of high-brow programming, the PBS documentary, has been dumbed-down to pointless shows about guns & wars (History Channel), shock-value gore-fests (The Learning Channel), and completely unchallenging and basic trivia (Discovery Channel).
Anyway, in regard to games the same thing is happening (has been happening all along): somone takes some sort of fictional situation and creates a simulation so you can "immerse" yourself (as another /.er put it) in this fictional situation with graphics, sound, and...well, graphics and sound--instead of either using your imagination or actualizing the situation. This all has the effect of limiting the scope of our imagination and/or fixating our expectations . Just think of how the pr0n idustry has shaped male expectations of how women should act in bed (how many women do you know actually like to have guys ejaculate on their faces?).
The consequence is, of course, that we become more and more reliant on the next game or next TV show for our dose of escape, but eventually the shit's just not gonna do it for us anymore and look, here comes bland ol' boring reality right back at ya, with the car payments, the acne, the commute, the gov't, the consequences...
[pink beam of light]
I was just guessing on that one but most likely it did originate from military prepardness.
Respond to s
I would put good money that 3d will continue to be an increasing trend. Part of the illure is the ability to have a false world. It is enjoyable, to loose yourself in dark hallways of aliens or fantasy lands.
Anyone who doubts this take a look at Everquest, Asheron's Call, UO, etc. Having 30 full days played in less than a year is not uncommon.
Also, there is all this free processing power that is sitting around. Why not use it to create virtual worlds.
Also, new immersive/partially immersive technologies like http://www.elumens.com/
and the 3d digitizer stuff keeps getting cheaper.
Network bandwidth also continues to skyrocket, which will support moving those big files.
Already in some "games" it isn't as much as you play the game, but you experience the life, scenery, etc of the character. When my friend and I first played unreal on a huge system we spent hours just looking around and enjoying.
There are lots of benefits of having them, such as education and I'm sure the p0rn community will lead the way as always.
Anyway, I found the article an interesting point but a ridiculous premise. Does anyone really think we are going to stop advancing games? Eventually, the worlds from games will go more mainstream (the online component of Black and White http://www.lionhead.com will be a good example of this), people will catch on.
All of this is sort of like the saying back in the 80's, "lots of people spending time in chat rooms, typing..hehehehe... that will be the day." It's coming people, ready or not.
Now look at games like FPS's. I am a keyboard+mouse FPS player and that is fine and dandy when all you have is AIM, move, jump and strafe. Add a wheel mouse for weaponswitch and its great. But now, you get FPS's and mods wigh 5 grenade buttons, multiple modes on each weapon, pick up and drop items, use items, open doors, manual reload, ect. Most of which require unique key bindings. now.. with my fingers on the arrow kews and the other hand on the mouse, how much can I reach with my pinky? Not much.
Yes, I shamelessly promote my music in my sig, even if it sucks. Check it out and tell me what you think, especially if you really are anti RIAA and not just napster leeches.
Shameless Plug! If you like trance, tell me what you think!!
Funny you should mention that! I've played Action Quake and Counterstrike some against people who really enjoyed the game (although I did not). When I watched them play, they just charged in and shot things. One side one, the other lost, and they started another round. They had a great time.
When I jumped in the game, I immediately realized that because all the weapons were hitscan (immediate hit, no delay like a rocket launcher) and dealt a lot of damage, whoever got the first shot in won. Therefore the best strategy was to camp in an area and wait for the other team to get bored and attack. In my estimation, the team that attacked first lost over 70% of the battles. (In one 3 hour round of LAN action quake, I had more frags than the enemy team combined-- and it was the first time I'd ever played the mod!)
Therefore, the optimal strategy in counterstrike and action quake is to wait until they attack. Note that this is NOT fun. Counterstrike is fun only as long as people always charge in guns-a-blazing.
Too bad the gameplay for counterstrike encouraged camping. The reason the gameplay encourages camping is the prevelance of hitscan weapons, which in turn is based on a firm founding in reality at the expense of fun. This is a clear example of where a variety of unrealistic weapons (eg. Rocket Launcher, railgun, etc.) would encourage more attacking, creating more action, and therefore be more fun.
If you want to add on some realism later, that's great. Realism _is_ a good thing, but gameplay is better. Don't choose realism just because it makes your mind feel better.
-Ted
I much prefer Baldur's Gate 2 over Rogue, for example. There's a lot more depth to the game. And Civilization, when it came out, eclipsed everything else from the 80s. Falcon 4 is much better than any flight game produced three or more years prior.
Now, the question we should be asking is what makes for a better game? Because there's too much software being produced now that looks pretty but isn't worth even the cost of a bargain bin purchase.
Is it better graphics? Bigger worlds? No. Better graphics are necessary to keep me interested in the game. But graphics is not what makes the game good. More immersion in the game, better plots, tuning done well enough such that I feel I should play just one more turn (until the sun comes up). Games deep enough for me to ponder strategies while I am far away from my computer.
All of these things are easier now with bigger teams and more powerful computers. Unfortunately, while they result in more fun for the consumer and better reviews in the magazines, better graphics and bigger worlds is what tends to sell the game off the shelf.
I've been playing computer games since early 1982. I loved games back then. Some of them were really amazing. Some of them, such as Starflight, I'm sure I would still enjoy today. But in general, I am much happier living now. The graphics are better (so what?). The worlds are bigger (sometimes good, sometimes bad). The games are (occasionally) deeper, more enthralling, more complex (definitely good).
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Interactive fiction, baby! Enough of these gazillions of polygons and anti-aliasing and dithering and graphics never seen this side of Whogivesadamnistan .. I've yet to find a visual game to compete with my imagination from playing some of the recent (read: within the last five years) IF games.
Maybe I'm an elitist, maybe I'm a computer-game luddite, but I say that a good game created with Graham Nelson's Inform compiler beats pretty much any recent game hands-down. Not that it's stopped me from playing Diablo, The Sims, Ultima IX, and pretty much every FPS that's come to market, but I derived far far far more enjoyment from actually _using_ my own imagination to envision a situation rather than having to depend on someone else.
Jeez, now I sound like my parents, telling me to read a book and quit watching TV...
But I like my DreamCast more than my Atari 2600. I can play SoulCalibur all day long, but I can't seem to drive myself to play Missle Command for more than maybe 1/2 hour every year or so. I like well done games with stunning visuals.
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
All graphical game designers (pro and otherwise), drop whatever the hell you are doing and pick up a copy of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics.
This book has some imporant original things to say about the way people relate to abstract vs. realistic images, and should be a handbook to anyone doing graphical games. He argues convincingly that people are more engaged by abstracted images of characters precisely because they are more unspecific. The trend in games to be more and more realistic works precisely against this principle.
The question of whether or not games today, with their visual richness, are any more fun hinges on whether or not that visual richness is being used in ways which enhance the player's relationship to the game or detract from it. Read this book to begin to understand how this works.
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
I was, for a long time, in the school of thought that while cool looking, none of the fancy graphics were really needed to have kick ass gameplay. I enjoyed every new game that came out and the new graphics and sound and such (Mean Streets by Access comes to mind), but the gameplay still needs to follow the same old basic thoughts.- ----
Then recently I bought some of my favorite Atari games from my youth, but now they are available on Play Station and there are cds full of them. GREAT! so I loaded it up... and they all sucked. you could see them all for what they were, very minimal changes on the basic scrolling engine and boring as all hell.
so are the new games better, are my eyes spoiled by the new graphics, or am I just more analytical now that I program heavily myself?
I'm in the process of writing a game myself and I ask these questions to myself every night - I'd love to see some better answers to this question rather than "BEOWOLF!!! rock on !"
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There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Rouse seems to be taking this consequence and implying that it even goes for games that are designed for 3D worlds. That is not a logical conclusion. He says himself that the 3D world distracts from the gameplay of Centipede. Well, it's a gameplay designed for a 2D world, not 3D, that's why the "distraction" developes. I don't understand why he can't see that.
Similarily, if you took a 3D game such as Tomb Raider, Goldeneye, Quake 3, Soul Reaver, or any other game designed for a three dimeisonal world, and tried to force them into a 2D world, it wouldn't work. Different games are designed to be implemented in different ways.
The reason games seem less fun to him, or anyone else who's been playing them for a long time (and I'd consider him beyond even that, since he is a game programmer), is because he's jaded . They aren't a new experience anymore. They were much more fun when they were new. Now they're not, hence they're not as fun for that partiuclar gamer.
The funny thing is, he's arguing how cookie-cutter some of the modern 3D games of today are, presumabely using this as an argument as to why they're "less fun." Yeah, and all those Atari games and NES side-scrollers weren't cookie-cutter.
In ten years, gamers are going to look back at the games now and wonder if the ones they are playing are better than the ones that are here now. And the same in twenty years. Once the concept of playing video games becomes customary, you become jaded, and it takes more to entice you. You're still having the same amount of fun, but it may take more to please you. And once you've been exposed to a game of a certain complexity, you often expect at least that level in subsequent games. I assure you that the people who are being introduced to today's games are having just as much fun with them as everyone else was when they were introduced to gaming.
"I never said they were the 20 best songs, where did you get that idea?"
Actually I didn't have that idea, neither did I imply that I had that idea. Likewise, I'm by no means claiming the songs I mentioned were the best either, I named them off the top of my head as a bunch of arbitrary examples, just songs that I happen to like. Just as you did.
I'm not trying to say you're "wrong", sheez, where did I say that? What the hell does it mean for a song to better than another song? Ask 100 different people and you'll probably get as many different answers. I have my own answer to that question, and obviously it's different to yours.
Some songs are more "technically advanced" though than other simpler songs (e.g. "moonlight sonata" vs "bellisima"). Some songs definitely have lyrics that show more insight into life than other songs (e.g. "matthew and son" vs "macarena"). Can't really argue against that. Doesn't mean they're "better" in general, just "better" against certain criteria. Would you honestly say that metallica (for example) isn't better than Boyzone (for example, urgh .. ?)
Apart from great songs like "smells like teen spirit", which I've recently been made aware is a 90's song, I thought of some additional 90's music while driving home that I do really like. I like a lot of Tori Amos's stuff, for example. And some of Black's songs were also done in the early 90's. Most of the stuff I thought of though was from the first half of the 90's, dance music aside.
IMHO it's really not about whether or not they're *more* fun, they're just *different* fun. ;)
;)
If you'd been playing a couple of hours of Pacman every day for the last 10 years would it really still be fun? Possibly, but for most people it would lose it's appeal after a while.
That is why games continually evolve in new directions, the companies are trying to create something new and fresh that will inspire the young to waste hours of time and tons of money
People who whinge about how FPS games are so old hat, tired and boring should look at the phenomenal success of the Half-Life mod CounterStrike (http://www.counter-strike.net), which is played by more people than all of the games which supposedly lead the FPS genre (ie Quake3 and Unreal Tournament). Why is CStrike so popular? Because it's damn good fun. Sure it doesn't have the slickness of Quake3, or the raw adrenalin frenzied action, but at some fundemental level it's just plain more fun.
If it takes the John Carmacks of the world to push the envelope of their given genre so that someone else can come along and make it more fun, that's fine by me.
(Don't forget to look for me putting some bullets through your head next time you play cstrike
[DOG]Ng
Chris "Ng" Jones
cmsj@tenshu.net
www.tenshu.net
...and I like fps games. I can remember the first time I ascended 2 years ago I couldn't believe I had actually done it. All the dead characters and finally one made it. Much more sense of accomplishment than any game in recent times (although Half-life comes very close)
Vermifax
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Ahhh, Stunts!, that brings back memories, that was a cool game, remember "Squeelin' Bernie Rubber"?
Or "Cherry Chassis" (Man she was hot!) ?
I speant hours playing that game
High detail 3d virtual worlds may not elevate the gaming experience in an exponential way, but thats not really what it is about anymore.
Realism is becoming the standard these days. Dot matrix printers offer a good analogy. About 15 years ago a good dot-matrix printout was good enough for most anything. Today, the standard is much higher but we are still printing the same words!
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
The realisim helps, but the lack of decent game options sucks.
:-)
My two favorite games were from the mid 90s. Stonekeep was a visual Tour-de-Force when it came out, combined with easy, fun dungeon-crawl type gameplay. I'm currently taking my 4th (or is it 5th) shot at keeping my machine stable enough to FINISH the game.
Also Silent Hunter is one of the few games I can play for hours, get killed and have to restart and STILL have lots of fun.
Both had great gameplay first and decent graphics second, but the graphics were good enough that I don't notice they're circa 95-97.
My Humble Opinion. Where the HELL is the Throggish Key?!?
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Have you played Jetfighter? that was another good example of that point. The carrier landings on this game were really realistic , to the point that real pilots confirmed it (sorry, don't have the reference at hand), but we were flying a multimillion dollar jet with really few controls. :)
The fact that it ran at full speed on my 386 on that time was another plus
-You mean that if i were root, i could get passwords?
I'm just saying people shouldn't be paid to do things that don't do anyone any good -- like spending hours on making detailed worlds that nobody will really appreciate -- just for the sake of having them be employed.
I don't know *what* kind of strawman you're building, but the above is what -- and all -- I meant.
One potential that I see with virtual reality and 3D engines is that pretty soon, maybe the structural aspects of it all may become standardized, or at least compatable. Spending a long time building a model of the Whitehouse might make more sense if you can then put the model on the Internet, and then people can import it into their own games over and over. They can even have put the Whitehouse into their barbie game if they want.
This is theoretically possible with the virtual reality games, because all the models really do try to simulate a single platonic ideal: physical reality. (Not a platonic idea in real life, but it is one from the point of view of a simulation -- weird, my brain is hurting.) It doesn't make sense to put the Joust screen into Pacman; it just doesn't map. But it would sorta make sense to put Doom E1M3 level in Quake 7. There's game-specific stuff that wouldn't translate, but the structure would.
I look forward to the day when VR maps become non-game specific.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
For the most part, I have to agree with you. Back in the day, I had about 100 2600 carts and boy did they ever get cheap during the Great Videogame Crash. A bunch of them were variants of the sidescrolling Defender genre, a few Pole Position clones and so on. Even then originality was becoming a problem.
Nonetheless there were some gems. Did you ever get in the zone playing Kaboom? Didn't you really hate it when your paddle controller started going flakey? Combat with the complex maze and bouncing shots was the bomb. The blocky graphics didn't matter. Coming back from behind and getting revenge during the last fifteen seconds did. Four player Warlords with Catch the Ball and Fast Release could get absolutely personal.
The 2600 didn't make those games great. The 2600 IS crap. But the best of the games made for it shine because they are good ideas implemented well. Another poster wrote something like "If you take away the awesome graphics, will your game still be fun to play. If not, then your game is shallow." I would like to see some early eighties designs vastly enhanced by what is possible now. Perverting Frogger into a FPS is not quite what I have in mind.
The way I see it, there are a number of reasons people play games:
1. To kill time --for this realism does not matter.
2. Plain fun --for this, enhanced graphics and realistic sounds can make a game more fun. However, good storytelling and well-designed gameplay can do this too (e.g., early Zork series).
3. To escape. --some people enjoy the sensation of being swept into a different world when they play a game. The idea is playing a character other than yourself with abilities to do things and manipulate parts of the world that you otherwise would not have access to, either because of their non-existence or your inability to jump 30 feet while taking out 30 bad guys with your SMG. For this, high-end graphics and sound that contribute to realism are very important. Now, a person can certainly get this from running a well-tuned imagination on high speed, but nowadays, lots of people don't have the time or energy to do this. Hence the popularity of high-end graphics.
Does this mean realism in a game makes it more fun? For many people, definitely yes. Do we need this to have fun? Probably not.
"elegance", however, is not the goal. By this argument, I should be trying to design airliners with jackstraws and duct tape, because constraints on my toolset makes for interesting solutions. I don't want interesting solutions to problems, I want the BEST solution to a problem. In my example, the best solution to the problem is stressed aluminum skin and spar construction.
Getting back to video games, the silly notion that stuck out at me from this article was the idea that "game=world+characters" formula was a bad one. If you want to cast it that way, "life=world+characters", and I don't think there are many of us who want to pitch life just 'cuz it's a world where we meet and interact with people.
The bottom line is that there are different strokes for different folks. I was never enamored with arcade games, because I never felt the payoff for having superfast reflexes, or thinking the way the game designer wanted me to think. I'm much more interested in games that are somewhat like real life, but allow me to have experiences I could never otherwise have, like flying an AH-64D in combat, or running through a house full of terrorists followed by my commando team.
I _LIKE_ life. It's FASCINATING. Games that imitate aspects of life that are difficult to access make for interesting games.
'Course, every game designer I've talked to wants to figure out mathematical formulas for how to make their game fit into some game theory construct, but that's never made any sense to me. I think you could do a hell of a lot worse than telling a compelling story with the player as a main character. It's called drama, and it's been a fairly successful form of entertainment for several millenia.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I personally am biased to answer these questions, I'm 23, I still own a record player (280+ LP's in my collection!) and I run MAME daily (on the other hand I own a DVD player, and play Asheron's Call & Unreal Tourney).
Capt. Ron
crazy dynamite monkey
In the times that everybody was rushing to have a 3D look on old games, there was Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (for playstation, the Saturn version sucked). The game was in almost full 2D, and we have a huge world, with more secrets that the Pentagon, a highly detailed world, and music compared with real classics by people who knows (if i find the link to an article i read recently on this point i'll post it). Just yesterday i rediscovered it and started playing it again.
And Starcraft. A really good game, 2D too. I usually play it with some friends on weekends, and it's still one of the best.
Ah, look around on your linux distro for the little gem named xkobo, but be warned that if you start playing it, you won't want to stop.
-You mean that if i were root, i could get passwords?
My $.02,
dopp
-- If a god of love and life ever did exist, he's long since dead. Someone, something, rules in his place
I recently pulled my old Atari 2600 out of starage and hooked it up for some laughs. It was great.
I prefer GLquake over Q3A. I can't stand RTS games. (Who has that kind of time to spend on one game.) Strategy? Let's set up a chess board.
Off-topic a little: I'm sick of all the eye candy on the web as well. I loved the days of all text pages with maybe 1 or 2 pics and the top of the site. (pRon sights excluded of course)
There are so few monsters per encounter and the monsters are not as scary- they look kinda silly anyway. Whereas with DOOM2 you can go around a corner and go "WAAAH!".
When my housemates started playing doom, we did episode 2 coop, and at the last level, you start in a room, and you don't know what is outside, except you hear this ominous KA-THUMP, KA-THUMP. One of my housemates said it all for us with an "Oh shit!".
Of course the first time you encounter a good genre is always special.
Trouble is, games nowadays seem to be like hollywood movies nowadays - more expensive, and thus the bosses are less inclined to risk it all on something really different. You tend to get rehashes and sequels and "more of the same", till some indie group starts something totally new, then the rest of the industry follows up with copies of it.
So yes I think you lose the variety.
We need more of these crazy Japanese people coming up with really different and cool stuff. I hope Hollywood doesn't buy these people out and ruin them.
Look at Mattel, after decades its still dolls and stuff. Whereas the Japs came up with Transformers, now that sure was cool for a kid.
I suppose the US does have creativity of that order, but somehow we don't get to see much of it in these areas.
I suspect it's because the barriers of entry are much higher in the US than say in Japan. To do movies in US is so difficult. Whereas the Japanese do anime stuff which is cheaper especially if you really want to do out of this world stuff.
If the industry pushes expensive to make games and ignores other stuff we'll start to see more boring stuff.
More realism is ok, as long as technology becomes so good that it's trivial and cheap to do.
Games by most definitions aren't real life. What's the point of making it like real life. If I wanted real life I'd just switch off the PC and take a walk outside.
Link.
As far as game playing goes, complexity is often a good thing. Look at Sim City or the Civilisation-type games. You have to run cities, manage economies, and basically manage complexity the best you can. These games *must* be more immersive, since many people sit down for hours at a time with them, and lose track of time.
From reading the article, I got the feeling that the author was simply stating "some games don't work when converted from 2D to 3D". This I agree with. That all game genres are getting "less fun" over time, I disagree with.
Yeah, and there's so much CRAP put out by those amateurish authors and filmmakers...
Dude, the way you get good is to make lots of crap, and figure out why it's crap. Would it be better if people DIDN'T get to make levels?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
You have a leet userid. :)
Go to ICC if you haven't already
However, he doesn't note the business model that successful FPS games have used to overcome that problem: They open up the level-design specs, and make it possible for anybody to design their own level. That, plus the recent phenomena of near-universal Internet access, means that you can find people out there willing to give their work away for free as long as they get one e-mail's worth of praise for it. Egoboo is a powerful thing.
This puts a pretty radical paradigm shift into the gaming world: Your users determine the game's level design and play pattern. The most obvious example is that they can control the spacing and variety of obstacles (puzzles, enemies, etc.). But there are also people who have used the basic 3D engine at the heart of an FPS and applied them to uses that most people would have never predicted, including:
- Real-time virtual wedding ceremonies
- Animated short films set in the Quake world
- A virtual sysadmin tool that simulates kill -9 with a shotgun
It would be incorrect to argue that 3D-rendered games will lead to a lack of diversity in play. (They won't even completely eclipse other types of games: There will always be people who like Tetris or Scrabble or poker.) In some ways, 3D games represent a broadening of play that's pretty much unprecedented.Francis Hwang
Do domain names matter?
In general, I fully agree with you. People look back and only the see the good stuff, forgetting all the rubbish.
But hell, the 90's produced almost only sheer rubbish on the music scene. Seriously. Ask anyone you know to compile a list of the "the 20 greatest songs of .." lists for the 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's. I'm sorry, but my mind draws a blank when I reach the 90's. The biggest hit of the 90's was probably the macarena, for pete's sake, and most people I know get extremely irritated now whenever anyone tries to play that song, hardly a classic.
The newspaper-comics industry is an example of an art that most definitely degenerated between 1920 and 2000. Try to find yourself a copy of "the smithsonian collection of newspaper comics", and read it. Compare what the artists produced in the first half of the century, with the tiny, overcommercialized, washed-out, watered-down, politically correct, family-friendly comic strips you read in the papers these days. Bill Watterson, of Calvin & Hobbes fame, is one of the few modern cartoonists who did a decent job (dilbert is good too, but that probably had more to do with the internet, since no publisher wanted to touch dilbert when Scott Adams started out). Check out Bill Watterson's speech "the cheapening of the comics" (http://www.teleport.com /~e nnead/ampersand/watterson.html). Compare garfield's first years to garfield now - became more and more commercial, selling more and more on "cute", creating a multi-million dollar industry on paraphernalia.
This isn't just the "good old days" nostalgic memory problem either. As I said, I agree with you fully, and one has to be very careful to differentiate between when such criticisms are "valid", and when it's just the "good old days" phenomenon.
I do think that overcommercialization of any art form does lead to more generic, trite crap. It happened to comics (although the underground comics movement did breathe a little fresh air into the industry, until underground went commercial - similar to alternative music - alternative music was originally a type of backlash against commercialization of music - until the record companies figured it out and commercialized "alternative".)
The problems many musicians and the public have with record companies are surprisingly similar to many of the problems had with comic strip syndicates.
"Could it be done in 3D?"
I do need to jump in and defend the agent on this one - he wasn't thinking of his preferences, but, instead he was thinking of the preferences of the PUBLISHERS he's gotta pitch it to. I read it later, and realized that sounded like it was his opinion - not really, he's just echoing what the publishers want, good or bad :-( (He's a fairly cool guy that I chat with about more than just trying to make money on a game, etc. Plus, he ENJOYS games, and knew what Jumpman was right off the bat. If he's a game-pimp, he's a very nice and tollerable one ;-)
That seems to be an entire genre of games now. I looked at the system requirements for Lemmings (the original I believe came on a single floppy) and it was at least a P2 300 with a 3d accelerator. To play LEMMINGS! Same with Frogger, Centipede, and Asteroids. None of these games have been improved by the addition of 3D rendering, and in my opinion they have more in common with FPSs than their namesakes.
I still can't figure out why they thought moving some of these games to a 3D environment was going to be such a great idea. Randy Glover (original Jumpman / Jumpman Jr developer) will be doing a 3D Jumpman eventually - but, I've already seen how he's going to implement it, and it makes sense and fits with the Jumpman concepts (I wouldn't have thought of it, and it's quite a bit different than, say, Mario World. I want him to hurry up and finish it one of these days - I wanna play!) Problem is, companies like Hasbro aren't looking for innovative game design - they bought Atari, and all it's IP, and want to make money off of it. Retro gaming is starting to be large enough to notice, so they find a developer and say "Write this game in 3D." If you are a game development company, you sure don't turn down the opportunity and the money to pay the bills for the next year in exchange for developing a title ;-) I think it mainly boils down to "Look, these titles made TONS of cash in the past. People like things from the past. Lets make them items for the present. But, since 3D games are the other hot property, lets make them 3D."
If 2.5D isometric games were the hot technology at the moment, you might have seen Frogger done as an odd isometric game instead! ;-)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
Glad I'm not you. I think real life is a BLAST. But then again, I like figuring out how to disengage the rotor brake on the AH-64. Different strokes, I guess...
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I've often wondered about what is it about human perception that continually raises a bar and becomes accustomed to the beauty of a current technologies graphical limits, and then when faced with a better revision can instantly find the old, much vaunted console or 3d engine incredibly ugly. What is it about perception that allows itself to instantly refine itself when faced with a better simulation?
...and I'm not just talking about the dated hairstyles and fashion of a certain era.
I was watching a rerun of Cliffhanger the other day and remembered thinking how fantastic the scenery was etc. Seeing it the other day - it looked old, and I can't put my finger on what it was... it was just old. Maybe movies like Titanic and the Perfect storm etc. have raised the visual bar a notch... I don't know.
My other thought on the topic is that, as with movies, the better the realism gets, the faster the movie or games seems to date.
'sapientia potestas est'
Remember 'Stunts'? A game with crap graphics (even at the time), but limitless possibilities for replay. Remember King's Quest 1? A game so vastly different from any other, it was wholely intruiging. Just because a game requires a $400 3D card and has some sweet looking still shots in a paid for magazine ad, doesn't make it a fun game. You make a fun game by concentrating on what the player CAN do, not by developing the technology behind what happens as a result of the player's actions. And cloning is just bad.
You can laugh without eating a sandwhich, but you can do both if bring one.
I knew you could... Try to examine the popularity ( I use the term loosely ) of Abandonware to find the answer to whether or not new games are as fun as the old ones. Is it intertia/nostalgia that keeps interest in old games? The problem is that whether or not new games are as good as their Abandonware brethren is too subjective a question. Ask my little brother and he'll say StarCraft is the best game ever made. I say that starcraft has spoiled him and that some of the old Sid Meier (sp?) games would change his mind. Personally I'm a CS addict and yet this past weekend I just finished Monkey Island 2 for the 1000th time.
Ask yourself if new games "do it" for you but don't assume your opinion represents the gaming community no matter how many ppl agree with you.
BOSTON SUCKS!
Try teamfortress. It's team and goal oriented. Frags count, but teams that don't defend or don't attack and just go around fragging people usually lose. Because each time you score/cap your teammates get 10/15 frags each (map dependent).
;) ).
Even if you don't have stupendous hand eye coordination, you can still be very useful - so what if you had to die 5 times in order to stop your flag from being captured. You may suck in deathmatch terms but you saved your team 100 frags worth (10 enemies, and 10 frags eachper cap).
Counterstrike in contrast just degenerates to deathmatch - most people don't give a damn about goals and the goals hardly ever matter. The way hostages are handled is stupid.
The terrorists should be able to grab a hostage and use them as shields but move a lot slower (and the hostage should scream from time to time). And if the counterterrorists kill hostages they should lose 10 frags and money. That way you are a real hero if you can snipe the terrorist without killing the hostage (better not use armour piercing rounds
What about movies such as Thirteenth Floor, Existenz, and the Matrix, not to mention Gibson and Stevenson and all the others - a whole city or world of avatars... no real game but mimicing real life and massivley parallel and networked?- ---------
What would be the point of these and do we have anything close to this now? The Sims is a lame attempt at it maybe. And why would you want this stuff - perhaps for simulations or psychology studies... military training. Or just b/c it is cool?
Are there any known efforts now to mimic any of these things? They seem like they'd be a lot fo fun to program, but approaching impossible since they can barely get a computer to mimic one real person let alone multiples up to a city level or even world.
cool though.
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There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Yeah, I thought that ICQ was dumb when I first heard about it, so ended up missing out on six digits :(
I play on ICC and consider myself real..:)
I play once or twice a week in serious games at clubs, but it is good fun to sharpen the speed skills by caning lamers too
I would take a great game with good plot over a game with flashy graphics anyday. Game developers/designers should try and ride the happy medium. A good game should have good graphics, but it should have a well developed plot as well. There are some games that do just this, such as Grim Fandango, from Lucas Arts - it was a ton of fun.
I'd rather see game companies spend more time on plot and less on graphics.
Firstly, if I understand correctly, the author or someone he is quoting is questioning the physics behind Donkey Kong. The very concept that there should be actual physics behind every piece of gameplay is ludicrous - think about fantasy and sci-fi games, for one thing. Or Pac-man!
Secondly, I have long griped about the decline of gameplay in recent years. Sure, you have all these fancy new games with their fancy high-framerate multi-texeled whatevers, but does it make the GAME any good? What I see is a lot of rehashed ideas, worn-out puzzles and games so simple a half-dead carrot could beat them.
It sounds like the video game industry is realizing what the movie industry found out years ago - smart doesn't sell. If you want to sell copies, sell to the lowest common denominator. The only reason for "strategy guides" and hint books these days is to point out the "secret areas" in games and the stuff the developers hid! Think about all the games there are now - especially of this new "3-d adventure" variety - that it is impossible to lose the game. How more dumbed-down does it need to get?!
Long live Infocom!
"Property is theft, therefore theft must be property, right?"
Day of the Tenticle...
Sam and Max Hit the Road...
Absolute bliss when I played those games. I would love to see a low-tech Sam and Max sequel. That style of wacky gameplay was so much fun that I am considering digging out the floppies and playing it again.
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Let me give you the lowdown
I've read that Missle Command (city at night being bombarded while earth gun-turrets shot out the bombs before they hit a town) was analog.
A friend of mine used a pendulum for a game he built in the early 80s and the acceleration was measured which correlated to the spread of fire from the spaceship. He would immerse the pendulum in liquid when he was playing to lower the spread of fire and win. The bastard.
Oh, and so I don't dissapoint my audience, and i'm awfully sorry about this but hopefully you'll understand, you funt knuckle bsded poop-head
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
I know what you mean...I had forgotten about a lot of those C64 games until I discovered emulators. The gameplay is almost as good. One thing I remember about the C64 is that it had great sound for its day. Just go here for a list of some C64 emulators...there are several others.
You haven't played Quake much, have you?
"Could it be done in 3D?"
Of course. Anything 2D is 3D too _per definition_. Everything just happens to be in the same plane, what a coincidence! So you can sell your 2D games as 3D or 4D or whatever.
Or else what would happen to all those employed in these projects. We support further employment. And everything one does need not be meaningful, variety is the keyword.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
You can never get enough graphics, but you can be blown away by a game with none. After seeing on the technical side high end SGI Infinite Reality equipment, or on the artistic side the things the best artists (like Jeffrey Shaw of ZKM) can do with them (or anything, they don't need tech it is just a great tool), you begin to realize that when you depend on just pixels without any real intention or signification behind them you get a product that pales quickly. Especially when you've gone a generation or two past it in graphics card evolution. Honestly a large part of my feeling about this is I would probably have more fun building some PS2 soft than buying games for it.
/. I remember doing an interview with Sega's main game team a couple years ago for a video documentary. It took a while to find out that while this was the team they claimed that made Nights, the main guy had left and in fact almost nobody from the original team was still there.. just the team name!
On the other hand I remember firing up Zork from Infocom on an Apple II emulator and being drawn into it much as I did 20 years ago, while I don't enjoy doom very much. I thought Nights was the best Sega game (think it was Sega anyway), and it looks like there are some good games for PS2 now as well. There is a good driving game and another fun one about leading middle-ages Japanese armies singlehandedly. One of the most interesting to me perhaps is I think called Magic Mouse, a drawing game for kids. It was designed by a well known artist named Toshio Iwai. You can draw a horizontal line for example and a tree grows up from this horizon line, etc., so the fun comes from playing with your imagination.
So I think it is true that even with a machine that can do live animation of the Visible Human (a voxel model based on scanned slices of a corpse), you can still keep adding features until the machine gets overwhelmed without getting to a level of satisfaction or satedness. And some games that don't depend on graphics at all achieve this total immersion and enjoyment of the player..
it depends on how the tech is used, not what level of graphics you've got (except for the first time you play, when you are watching a fireworks show, not playing inside a game).
Some of the most interesting talk I've heard about game design was from Roe R. Adams III who was designer of Ultima IV and Wizardry (IV?) as well as Tokyo Dungeon (Playstation 1) I believe among others. I knew him for some years in Japan and found his stress on the necessity of game *designers* as opposed to programmers or graphic artists as a very important distinction. The graphics were not as important as the Quest, and the ability for the player to have valuable experiences in the game which he could take away from it. Roe often talked about psychology and how to intentionally lead users through game spaces, and there was a whole legend and history behind these things. Roe was knighted by Scotland for his contribution to promoting such traditional values as chivalry and honor.
2 years ago I also met the chief architect of Grandia, which took eons to make and was designed to lead 14 year old troubled boys in particular to face their demons (real to them, many young boys commit suicide in Japan from bullying and despair) through a quest through imaginary lands.
As Roe Adams had said many times, there are already enough stories in our collective pasts, and these legends can be used over and over again in games. I think the point is you get something out of the retelling, or reexperienceing of the story whereas most rehashes of arcade-style games, like doom or virtual fighter, are basically upgraded graphics on top of what was already a big selling muscle-flicker title. The most interesting parts seem to be the rendering of the costumes and their suggestion (kimono, or african medicine man, etc) of deep hidden strengths welling out of mastery of some obscure religion or discipline.
I remember the main reason I liked the Source (Compuserve forerunner). Their Zork was so fleshed out it seemed real even though it was text. They must have made piles of gold from the adventure program. I don't know who originally wrote it, and don't understand why Infocom didn't make more money with their natural language parsing engine. I don't think Scott Adams' work translated or maybe was executed well in the semi graphical format that came soon thereafter.. it was just enough to destroy the scenery you created in your head.
But it seems that there are at least two ways for you to go about building a game, either hire tons of talented people (mostly programmers and graphic artists) and blow a lot of cash, taking on a lot of risk, and when you hit something lucrative stick with it. The other way is to get the key persons you need to build a game - the kind that will be interesting and succeed to some extent almost no matter what direction they take, like Roe above, or the Myst brothers, or other game authors featured at
I think people who "get it", who are making the psychological life of the player a top priority, are probably as important to the big companies' game development efforts as to smaller teams. And that while nostalgia and human perception focusing on the highlights of the past are undoubtedly real, the presence or not of these individuals, given the freedom to follow their training and instincts, in the development cycle is a major factor in whether the software stands up over time.
The name of the software was Bikkuri Mouse (Surprise Mouse) not Magic Mouse.
Publisher is Sony Computer Entertainment. It uses
USB mice, 1 or 2 players. There is a brief description of it at <a href=http://ps2.ign.com/news/20185.html> http://ps2.ign.com/news/20185.html</a>.
A lot of entertainment has to do with hightening your "immersion" in the experience. Be it an orchestra in a huge opera house, a movie theatre with THX sound, or a ten thousand dollar home audio setup, it's all there for the same purpose: to trigger a bigger reaction in the person experiencing some form of input.
:)
That's not to say PacMan wasn't immersive; the goal was to forget about real life for a while and see how many points you could stack up.
But the human philosophy is 'bigger, better, faster, more', and you can guarantee there were people who spent an hour at PacMan, and said 'what's next'?
Smoothly rendered hills with details fading realistically into the background, animated cloud cover, and dynamic lighting.. they're kind of the answer to that question. It doesn't make the games themselves any better, but it improves our perception of them.
Playing Q3, I find it impossible to ask the question of "do better graphics help?" seriously. There's times where you're so glued to the action and visual stimulae, when suddenly the fraglimit is hit and action halts, you come out of the game with a buzz.. and you're like, 'woa, that was awesome'.
PacMan was fun, yes, but I would be hesitant to accept that anyone ever got an adrenaline high off it.
No great game since Dizzy series has been written. I am talking about the Z80 version (which fitted 48K's of RAM). The 386 versions were awful. And a lot more memory used. And at least in the last two years I haven't seen a game that would make me dream about at night. 3D stuff are too hard to handle, or they ask you to act machine-like - Grrrr, I hate that.
Spooky of the CyBurial Squad
There have been some pretty poorly designed complex games. Just like movies with large degrees of complexity (SW EpI), it really comes down to acting and script. If Final Fantasy has a crappy script it, too, will suck -- independent of its great effects. As to games, Dragon's Lair was very popular and was fairly complex for its time. Castle Wolfenstein/Doom/Quake are great examples of increasing complexity with quality of game play increasing (although I have friends who prefer doom). I think it has more to do with good design than the complexity causing the problems.
-Moondog
Is the real world worth it? ;-)
Gilad.
Yeah, it was one of the first Lucas games (along long with another game where you drove on the surface of an alien planet). I used to play BallBlaster for days on end at my friend's place...I was always jealous of him because he had an Atari ST while I only had a wimpy (but still good to me) C64.
Lucky bastard...I also remember playing Falcon (could it have been 1.0) on that ST.
.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
Are today's games any better than 10 years ago? Maybe, maybe not. But they're not worse, certainly. Today's games are today's games. And people want to play today's games. Even when one section of people says "Yawn... another fps. (First Person Shooter)" another section says, "Sure, but this one is true 3D with real shadows and physics!" And what many of us want most is to play today's games.
I don't understand those that say, "Its all about graphics today, nothing about gameplay, bah." As the author of this article points out, how many 'jump off of stuff' games were there 'back in the day'? Or how many 'fly around and shoot stuff' games? Every generation of games has had both better graphics and new concepts. If you're feeling stuck in a rut, switch genres!
That said, I think the author missed an important feature of Virtual Reality, or at least the Snowcrash-esque VR I imagine. The users are the level designers. That's what really has me excited about TOMORROW's games is that we're giving the players the tools to build their own world and their own games within ours.
I'm a big fan of ORPGs (Online Roleplaying Games), obviously. Multiplayer interaction, be it gibs or buffs or ebolts to the heads, is where I want to be, and VR is what I want to take me there.
Zipwow
aka Smythe Skepfen, Cap & Dagger Casino Director, Great Lakes, Ultima Online.
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
This sounds a bit like they mixed some Tomb Raider into it? Rocket jumps are not new in Quake 3, btw.
The point is, that id (and indeed, many other game companies) seems to have stagnated in their rush for technology. Sure, their games are pushing the boundaries of what 3d cards are capable of, and what 3d engines are capable of doing, but they don't make the games any different or fun to play. The games still feel like Wolfenstein where you can look up and down and jump around. Oh, and some better graphics.
Sequels are pretty hard to do. It's a fine line between giving people more of the same and giving people something new to experience. A good example is Diablo II. Diablo II plays much like Diablo I, but still manages to have something new for the player to experience. They don't make a good job on the technology front (seems like they're using the same graphics engine as Diablo I, and much of the same sounds) but still it's sold, like, four copies to each household. And even if I hated the graphics, and the poor performance (even on a 550 MHz pentium III with 256, I played the game through.
Lots of people want to create virtual worlds, but currently it is way too dificult.
I come from a computer game development background and the problem facing the industry is that every one is inventing the wheel over and over again. Almost all game companies devote large resources to technology development and it costs a lot. In almost every other medium (tv, radio, film, press and so on) the tout that the providers of the content would provide the technology is absurd, but not in games.
So why is it like this? well first technology is moving fast, but that is not the main problem. The most important thing for a game developer is control: if I wrote it I can fix it. Currently a lot of new technologies are becoming so advanced (AI, graphics, physics)that very few developers can keep up, so games become very tech driven.
In order to progress we need a standard, for 3D real-time content. The infra structure is missing from the medium. Take a look at what director did to CD-ROM production, or http/html for the net. VRML is dead and it is one of the few technologies that you can openly hate, whit out offending anyone, what we need is a open system. we need some thing that every one can agree to, and we need it before microsoft realizes the potential of the medium.
Eskil Steenberg part of the verse development team. (hopefully bringing answers)
Man I love this game. I remember playing this years ago on my friend's zenith x86 laptop.
Enjoy.
http://www.isn.net/~dsimeone/JMAN.EXE
Traser
Insanity is contagious. - Yossarian
The one thing that makes games better these days is the multiplayer aspect, more specifically, the massively multiplayer stuff. That definately makes things more fun and interesting (and addicting).
Aside from that, no...
The early Ultima games were fun, had great depth and took a long time to finish, and required a lot of thought.
Go to www.booksense.com, and buy from your local bookstore.
Understanding Comics in hardcover and paperback.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
When I feel the urge for a really complex game with super sharp gfx, I try real life. It only lacks possibility to restart from a saved game.
Take a game like Dungeons and Dragons, or White Wolf's Vampire. As long as the world stays new and interesting with fresh role-playing challenges, then the game is still fun. Complaex gameworlds can give the same benefit in a video game, sa like Asheron's Call. Keep playing, and that is the goal. Winning isn't really a part of the equation, but challenge and fun are. In other types of games, like puzzle games or first person shooters, extra complexity can exclude some people because they can't handle that complexity within the context of making the game work. In this case the extra work could make the game less fun for some.
I got Total Annihilation for $9 from the bargain bin, and so far it has been great, if a little bit hard. I also got MotoRacer2, Road Rash and SuperBike in a combo pack for $15. Call me cheap, but without a great video card I guess I do ok.
Thanks for the recommendations - I'll check the others out, esp. Half-Life if I can find it.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
Ah, I wish I could, but when I told my boss, G----, that I was planning to use an OSS MUD server to handle the avatars and virtual world stuff, I thought he was going to blow a valve. We argued bitterly for a while about what was best for the product (technology proven to work) and what was best for the investors (technology we can say we own 'completely'). In the end, I gave up.
Luckily, I was able to reasses the product's needs while G---- was away on a business trip, and I declared that a virtual world wasn't as necessary as mere chatting and scalability, and managed to change the company's momentum into that direction. An IRC server satisfies these needs.
I won't tell G---- that the IRC server is GNU Licensed if you don't. Just in case I found an IRC server that he can pay thousands of dollars for if he really wants to. Yes, I understand the irony that the price tag doesn't give ownership anymore than a GNU License does. He hasn't clued in to the fact that the same GNU License also covers our Apache web server. (Maybe I should be writing this for fuckedcompany.com)
I will investigate Crystal Space on my own. Thank you for mentioning it.
One thing I've noticed is that (good) games tend to come around full circle. I'm a sucker for pretty graphics, so I tend to go and buy the latest Playstation or PC Games, and normally after a few days, they end up sitting in their jewel cases collecting dust. I almost always find myself reverting back to loading up MAME and running old arcade games, like Rolling Thunder and Shinobi. I have no idea why I prefer these over the new games, they're just as brainless if not more so than the latest FPS. Who knows, maybe 10 years from now I'll find myself dusting off my Playstation and finally finishing, oh, ANY PS game I own.
If I hadn't lost the password to my first UIN, I'd still be six digits; instead I've got seven. However, I've since abandoned ICQ. Text is fine for simple communication, but I'm dissatisfied with anything less than physical presence for Real Social Contact, which is what a lot of this stuff aims to be.
Think of it this way:
.sigs??
You go to a lecture in school. Its chemistry. What is more interesting? Lab or the Lecture.
By being human, the more we can see the more it is interesting..
So, although Ultima4 was an excellent game, I find that Ultima7 was a better game because it had the same plot, but better graphics, allowing me to be more absorbed in the storyline.
Deus Ex is a great example, too. With the graphics being closer to realistic, its easier to get more into the game and be completely absorbed.
Valve Software made it a point to never show a picture of what the main character looked like, and never made him speak, just so you'd feel more like it was you running away from the aliens, and not some character you were controlling.
We play games to be absorbed in some fantasy. By making better audio/visuals, we are making it easier to be completely absorbed into the games, and therefore, having a more fun, and, generally, better experience with the game.
-- Don't you hate it when people comment on other people's
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Actually, neither. Work work work, it's all I do.
And if my Commodore 64 still worked (I burned out the power supply...three of four times), I'd be playing Jumpman all the time. I loved that game.
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
Don't tell me for a moment that Ultima Underworld is anywhere near as easy to play as Deus Ex just for the 3d engine. UU's 3d world is a small, low res window where objects remain perpetually two dimensional and distort perspective. Repetitive textures lead to no real geography - the brain must adjust and form an abstract sort of wireframe map in the brain. Just getting your bearings is much more difficult. But the only thing that seperates the games, really, is technology. The storyline, characters, work on interface, and richness of the world is comparable today, and both are games far above the norm.
In fact, one could find that richness and depth in a much uglier game than either, Ultima VII - but I remember when it was coming out being blown away by the screenshots. Too many console launches and neat graphics cards since then, my brain is spoiled. Sure, there's even a correlation between filmic graphics and the bar set - does anyone remember watching Terminator 2 and thinking, well that's quite shoddy work? It was the first I can remember seeing where there wasn't a single dodgy effects shot - but today it's showing its age. Awareness of the illusion leads to disbelief, which is probably more important to games than even movies.
What seperates the games I mention above from others is a unification at every time they came out to be best at everything they attempted - technology and design both. We often argue for one or the other without ever thinking that the true beauty is when both work hand in hand. Building these worlds is absolutely worth it, and the best games continue to show the promise of the medium in the future.
But current development cycles in gaming seem to stifle this. I won't even get into this, as it's a much broader issue, but gaming is being changed from the outside in by a nasty corporate culture, shortened development cycles combined with large, uncommunacative teams, lack of support upon release, runaway and ludicrous mismanaged budgets, and worst of all SUITS who don't understand gaming and don't care and want no interest in advancing it as an art form. They want their merchandised rights title on two consoles and PC and done NOW, and to fix the problem they're going to hire 100 more people.
Retro gaming is an oddity at best, and doesn't address the larger issues of gaming entering the cultural mainstream. I say this as someone who collects consoles, aware of what gaming is becoming. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire PC edition will outsell Deus Ex two to one, I have no doubt of that.
And as more people come to the party they will expect a union between technology and design, the more mainstream audiences will demand a greater visual realism from games. There's no avoiding it. What's important is to give them both.
Or at least, that's what I think, but then look at Diablo II. Three year old graphics and console style gameplay - maybe that's the future (no disrespect to Blizzard as I find the product as addictive as crack.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
I remember playing Pong way back when and thinking, "This is very cool!" Of course, it was a two player game, so the replay value wasn't very high.
Then I got an Atari 2600 (before it was even called the 2600), and remember being blown away again. And because it was a cartridge system with a ton of single player games, the replay value was high. I spent A LOT of hours playing Atari.
Then I got an Apple ][+, and the graphics were phenomenal, compared to the Atari! And the games were much more interactive, too. Again, many more hours wasted, and loads of fun.
I won't continue on with the walk through memory lane, because you probably see where I'm going by now. The games were always fun, but in the beginning our expectations of what could be accomplished with regard to graphics and sound were pretty low. With each generation of game systems that came out, there were phenomenal improvements, and it almost made you say, "It just can't get any better than this!"
Of course, as you progress to higher and higher generations of systems, it's easy to look back on yesterday's technology and say, "Wow, that sucks! I can't believe I thought that was hot stuff!"
I'll always have fond memories of games I played on my Apple ][+ 20 years ago, but I'll never go back and play them.
If you go back and actually look at it, though, you'll find that there was just as high a percentage of crap (re: Sturgeon's Law) then as there is now. People tend to forget the crap, and focus on the stuff that was great.
One other thing to consider is also the fact that greater strides are always made earlier in any field than later. Bob Dylan was so groundbreaking because no one had ever done anything like it before -- but that was because rock and roll hadn't been around that long. Dylan himself is not particularly special; if he came along today, he'd probably be considered a talented artist, but hardly groundbreaking. (Someone else would have filled his role in the 60s.) The same goes for video games. When there's been 20 years of game development, it's a lot harder to be groundbreakingly innovative than when no one has done anything yet.
The point is, a lot of us were kids back when videogames first became popular. We are inclined to remember them fondly, but I dare you to go back and play Dig Dug or Frogger again now. Sure, it's a nice feeling to play again, but how fun is it? I rarely am entertained with more than nostalgia by the old games I used to love. Don't fall into that trap; before you go on about how games used to be so much better, go back and play them again with the hindsight of years to help you figure out what you really think.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
-pf, nostalgic
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...take a look at the open-source Exult game engine for playing U7. We're already soking up CPU cycles using a 2X scaler contributed by the fellow who wrote the scaling code for Snes. It gives you double the original resolution with amazing clarity.
I think there comes a point when making the game realistic is detremental to the processing power of the box.
The basics: You have to have enough frames per second to trick the mind into believing that the object on the screen is really moving (without flicker) and you have to make the visuals appealing enough to capture the player's attention.
When you make a game too complex, you loose the whole fun aspect. To me, Counterstrike is more fun than Rainbow 6 -- not because of the graphics detail but because of the way it "feels".
If a game has so much complexity that it doesn't "feel" right (interface, movement, etc.) then it will loose in the gaming market.
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
.. with my fingers on the arrow kews and the other hand on the mouse, how much can I reach with my pinky?
:)
:) over there on the right its pretty dang obvious you're not on the job.
Join us in the wonderful world of WASD
Halflife got it right by having that as the default mapping - E to use, R to reload, X to duck, Shift of Space for jump depending on your prefernce - plus had all of the 1-5 weapon select keys handy right there.
Plus you can much more convincingly fake work with your left hand on the left hand side of the keyboard
Ad in classifieds: Pandora's Box (no box) $5
A lot of the "evolution" of games has been to make them more realistic. Real life ain't fun, though.
Take your typical combat sim...to play now, you must learn the entire systems of a modern jet fighter or warship. Great for those who crave realism and can immerse themselves in the experience, not so great for those who don't have 4 hours to spend in a sitting, who don't want to spend weeks learning how to start engines, and who just want to blow something up.
I played adom and one of the worst things about the game is the fact that most characters are weak and rations and foodstuffs are heavy. The only really playable characters are the lizard people (their name skips me havn't played in a while). I die far too easily on that game. Grey elven wizards are the best spell casters who can really win easily but they are also weak and need food which they usually cannot find. Add to that the fact that you have to deal with spell books magically disapearing and the like and adom while having a plot I grant you that and maybe a nice one is a very frustrating game.
Respond to s
'Are computer games any more fun now than they were 10 years ago?'
Probably not. The term 'fun' is just that, 'fun'. People have had fun all through the ages, and they didn't need video games to have it. One difference you can see in modern gaming though is the existance of an older age group. This could be put down to the ageing of previous generations though.
-- Hob - Java Spectrum Emulator
...but what's being asked about here is practice.
Did you ever play Commander Keen? Do you really think you have more fun playing Quake?
Did you play Elite? Do you enjoy Wing Commander more?
I was one of the people who thought, when Duke Nukem 3D came out, it really sucked compared to the side-scrollers.
Yes, the whole concept of an immersive experience is nice and all... but the question is whether the new games are really more fun.
I don't think they are.
Computer Games these days are mostly eye candy. Game play and story are a thing of the past. Sad.
I don't mean to flame but have you ever seen some of the differences between the releases of the Final Fantasy series namely the difference between FFV and say FFVIII really quite stunning. Story line is not at all declining in favor of "eye candy".
P.S. Can you imagine playing games on a beowulf cluster? You will probably need one to play in a virtual 3d world.
I can't totally say for sure but most people in the modern world seen to have dedicated processing boards for 3d work and that allow for more and more 3d processing.
Your above sounds like something people accuse me of saying but I think it's a little extreme. On the PC end you are talking about a great deal of money but less than $10,000 worth of hardware for anything but the most extreme uses.
Remember the original playstation has a 33Mhz processor in it.
Respond to s
There are more games being developed today, so yes, so just by pitching quarters into a shot glass, some of them will make it in ... these are the good games while the rest are just "wanna-be"s ...
... and No, because as pointed out in other comments, gameplay seems to be sacrificed for all the glitzy eye-candy ... if the gameplay sucks, however, no amount of incredible awe inspiring 3-D rendering is going to save that game ... a 10 year old game with a 2-D format with good gameplay is far superior to any polygon 3-D game that has choppy, inferior gameplay ...
For example, one of my favorite games of all time was NHL95 - the graphics were not that great but the gameplay was incredible and the command button interface timely and responsive ... later offerings that moved the game setting to a polygon based plan suffered from poor gameplay (though I haven't seen the last year or two ... so it might be improved now ...) ...
The other point is that as the game worlds become more complex, so does the learning curve in new players learning how to play ... while some are eager to dive into a 100+ page manual like Opera on a baked ham and study all the intricacies of a game, most like to learn as they go, and something that is too complex and not intuitive enough is bound to shoo them away ...
AZspot
Maybe it's just me, but it seems like all games these days really push game length and complexity a bit too far. RPGs advertise "Over 100 hours of gameplay!". Don't they realise how long 100 hours really is? Even if I somehow managed to find 2 hours _every day_ to play the same game, it would take me almost 2 months to finish it. Sure you can probably speed through the game in "only" 60-80 hours, but who wants to be rushing the whole time either? I've bought lots of games that are sitting on my shelf still in their shrinkwrap because I haven't had time to finish the ones I bought before them. I really want to play them all, there just isn't time.
Complexity seems to be a huge selling point too. I don't want everything in my games to be like real life. Real life just isn't that much fun. Say I have to mow the lawn in some adventure game. I don't want to have to find the gas can, fill the mower up, try for 10 mins to get the thing started and manually walk the mower around the yard. That's work. Granted this is an extreme example, but it gets my point across.
Some of the absolutely best games I've played in recent years have been the ones that are the simplest. Parappa/Space Channel 5/DDR, and the other new music games, Intelligent Qube, Castlevania: SotN, Wipeout XL, and even Q3A falls into this category. Simple, innovative, intelligent, and above all, fun.
My equation:
gameplay = Story, AI, complexity, how many hours can be wasted without you knowing time has passed at all
A= game with worse/bad/no graphics
B= game with freakin' holo emitters
if gameplay of A = gameplay of B then B
if gameplay of A worse than gameplay of B then B
if gameplay of A better than gameplay of B then A
Simple as that! And in my opinion most games fall into the last category.
*<look south> "you don't see a 'south' here!"*
Biz2024
I am a fan of Flight Sims and the more realistic the better as it relates to realistic flight characteristics, i.e. you fly into a mountain you die, not come out the other side unscathed. I also like realistic instrumentation, scenery etc. I want an Me 262A to look like an Me 262A. -rant mode off
Mojo
People find different things fun so it's kinda hard to say if games are were more fun 10 years ago, I for one find complex games interesting and as long as the ui isn't too hard to figure out I would define the game as 'fun'. (NOTE: I love rogue-likes, so this isn't exactly true, but with the commercial stuff it is, strange eh?)
Now I do like to play fairly simple games like q3a or ut (simple as in gameplay) from time to time, when I have nothing else to do, so I could define them fun as well.
But I suppose this has also something to do with that 10 years ago fewer people had access to computers, now they are quite common place. Many people have already played multiple types of game, 10 years ago quite a lot of that stuff was new, now it's just a part life...
C'mon! Do you REALLY want to go back to playing Pong? Jumpman? Atari 2600? Those were fun because they were all we had, and the concept of computer games was new. Sure, they captured elements of fun play...but if they were really that great, we'd be playing them now instead of thousands of hours of Quake.
Do you remember all the games that sucked? The multitude of games that we played only because they were the only games available?
Things haven't changed that much. Some current games are great fun; more suck. Some past games were great fun; more sucked. The technology hasn't changed things that much other than visualize and refine that which was barely doable on a 2600. Back then, we ran around mazes shooting at bad guys; today, we run around mazes shooting bad guys - the only difference is the experience is much more believable.
I'll take Quake over Pac-Man any day.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
-pf
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...for a poor game. One of my favorite all-time games to play was Combat on the Atari 2600. Even by 2600 standards it had pretty lame graphics, but it was a blast (and a sure way to wear out those awful joysticks!). Why? Because the gameplay was FUN. It had a whole bunch of options (tanks, bouncing bullets, big planes, little planes, etc), you could play over and over and over with few delays, and it was truly competitive -- there was a great mix of luck and skill.
It's like the BASF slogan - Graphics don't make a great game, they make a great game better. How many times have you said, "the graphics were cool but the game was okay" ? If the game is really fun you don't even worry so much about the graphics.
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The truth is out th- oh, wait, here it is...
First: The off topic part (don't worry, there's an on topic part to this too) I noticed that too - for a different reason! Jumpman and Jumpman Jr were two of my favorite games for the C64. I still have both of them, and my SX-64 to play them on ;-)
When I started getting into the idea of quitting what I do for a living, and going to game programming for a living, I hunted down Randy Glover, and chatted with him off and on. I've got the rights, and am developing a whole new Jumpman game - Jumpman: 2049. All the original Jumpman and Jumpman Jr levels are in there (as hidden items you have to find ;-), plus an unknown number more (IE - they ain't done yet!) For now - play Jumpman on an emulator - there's pleanty that can do it. But in the future, you can get the chance to play a whole new Jumpman! :-)
As for are game getting more fun, etc. WAY too much time is spent on the technology behind games, and not enough time on the game it's self. Someone gets a good cool idea (like the blood difussion in water mentioned in the article) and while it does provide a chance to make a more 'emmersive' environment for the gamer in some ways, the resources could have be better utilized, IMHO. It's not that the game ideas these days sucks - they don't all suck (some do.) It's just that focus on technology. I remember talking to an agent I'm using for getting a couple of titles published, and I mentioned Jumpman - and one of his questions was basically "Could it be done in 3D?" For those who don't remember, Jumpman was a combination of platformer and somewhat puzzle game. Utilizing 3D just for the sake of doing it wouldn't lend much to the game (PS: Randy Glover is ALSO doing a second Jumpman project while I'm doing Jumpman: 2049 - it IS in 3D, and looks like it might work well, but don't think 3D as in Mario World, etc. Quite a good transition). Utilizing technology in a game where it makes sense, where it helps gameplay, where it helps immerse the player in your design, and where it truely makes the game more fun is important. Unluckly, too many publishers was buzzword compliant games, too many developers just want to use the technology for the hell of it, and too few people involved stop and ask "What is this REALLY doing for our gameplay?"
Of course - this could just be a bunch of BS. I could just be looking back at the 'old days' of games, and trying to compair them to todays counterparts. The gap in technology between the different generations of games that it's now compairing apples and oranges.
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
I remember an interview with a lead developer at Lookglass, during the development of thief. The interviewer asked the question, "How do you make the tradeoff between making something realistic and adding good gameplay?"
:)
"If reality was so much fun, people wouldn't need to play games."
That pretty much sums it up. Lots of people like "realistic" first person shooters. There's nothing wrong with that, but the people who prefer realistic FPS games over games with extremely well balanced gameplay (like Thief and Quake 3) usually have trouble with the "suspension of disbelief".
Myself, I have no problems believing I can carry 8 weapons, each weighing 40 pounds, and 1000 pounds of ammunition, and then jump over a 6 foot tall alien, doing a perfect 180 before landing. I guess I'm just gifted.
-Ted
Agreed. However, sometimes it is taken too far, and ends up making the game annoying and cumbersome, not more fun or interesting. Compare Civilization to Colonization. In the latter, there was far too much micromanagement for my taste, and I ended up getting bored really quick. Civilization, however, can still captivate me. :-)
-pf
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anyone ever play this?
... I logged MASSIVE hours and it was extremely fun with pacman level graphics. I was thinking about developing another game just like this because with current computer power the number of people online in this world at one time could be HUGE. ....
what do you think?
it was a simple 2D D&D world in which everyone was a small pixelated character but you could interact with people and fight monsters
A MUD (multi-user dungeon). The game is all text, yet it's just as fun as any other game that's graphical that I've ever played. Chalk it up to my personal preference if u like, but then log on and ask all of the people who still play it, there's about 65 people on at all times average, why they're not playing EverGay or Ultima GoneLine.
Screw graphics if the gameplay's not there.
The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all, is the person who argues with him.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
My personal opinion is that I think immersion = fun. If I can play systemshock 2, and a zombie sneaks behind me, shouts and hits me, and its scares me enough to jump and get killed, then I'm having fun. If I'm playing halflife and am running for my life from 20 aliens firing at me, I'm having fun. The immersion is why I play video games.
.sigs??
-- Don't you hate it when people comment on other people's
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
- VZones, the inheritors of the Habitat legacy.
- ActiveWorlds aka Alphaworld, VRML-like without using VRML, the most impressive of the bunch.
- Blaxxun, actually does use VRML but looks like IRC with a VRML plug-in viewer tacked on top
- The Palace, made by the original Habitat authors, doesn't have any pretense of being 3D so it focuses more on chat.
- Rational Rose for yet another webbrowser with avatars built in.
If graphics are so much better, why are these companies sort of floundering while IRC services like EFnet, DALnet and Undernet are getting swamped with 50,000 + users during any given minute of the day? It makes me think heretical thoughts about the product I'm developing now.What I really miss are the BBS door games. Even though some of them were not the best, I refuse to let that ruin my impressions of the ones that I consider classic. TradeWars 2002 comes to mind. :)
In practice, many door games DID suck; however, there were also lots that people would play to build a community and to have fun, even when there were already games with "prettier" graphics floating around out there on the market. It didn't matter that they were ANSI graphics, and that it took 5 seconds to load a screen.
Lots of the door games DID offer open ended gaming, and were not just MUD's. Some were, and they were lacking something.
Yesteryears computer games mainstream where what people wanted, then they began to want more from them. Whats the point of playing a game even if you win you get no return right? Hence Multiplayer games. Whats the point of playing online when you just repeat over and over and over what you do, this is fun for a while or once in a while but every day or every other day? Hence MMPOG (massivly multiplayer online games,
did i get that right?). Where you have a history and a future, but are not bound to it, starting over or reversing your gameplay is possible. You can both the bad and good guy. You can interact in ways other than fight, win/loose, fight win/loose.... you make friends, enemies even stress over these types of games... eventually people will want more. As a whole if you say the games are funner becuase they fullfill the users craving for more of a second-third life with all that comes with it including stress and long term emotion, then your answer is yes. The games are funner in the respect that they portray life as people want to live theirs but may not be able to.
The gameplay has also got better:
1. AI
2. Graphics
3. Sound
4. Scalability
5. Human interaction
6. Controls
7. Voice integration
8. Ongoing and everchanging (MMPOG)
-------------------- Success is a Journey, NOT a Destination....
it starts with the simple question: "Are computer games any more fun now than they were 10 years ago?"
Which is, unfortunately, the wrong question. At least, if you're directing it towards *everyone*, and talking about *every* game. "More fun" is an almost dishonourably subjective phrase and one cannot just go ahead and ask it with a straight face and expect a logical answer. In the interest of proving this, I'll share my point of view.
Yes. The games that I play now are more fun than the ones that I played 10 years ago, and not because they are newer. I think the point of new gaming technology is to create new genres, not just keep rahashing the old ones with a higher polygon count. As an example, let's try Unreal Tournament. Admittedly, one of my own personal favourite games. The multiplayer FPS gaming genre has been around since Quake (okay: earlier, but it sucked then), but a game with the sytle, gameplay, and subtle complexities of UT have only been technically possible in the last two or three years.
Or how about racing games? I cannot imagine myself getting excited at watching little blocky cars whirr around a similarly blocky racing loop. No, something more is needed. In my case, I require a feeling of speed. No racing game will ever top the feeling of utter quickness of the classic WipeOut XL for the playstation.
Now, things like puzzle games (tetris), adventure games (zelda), and jumpers (mario) have their place. But that place is not for me. I never did like either Atari or NES when I was growing up. I had a far greater time tinkering with my Tandy 1000 80286. I just wasn't interested in something that looked so obviously fake. My first system was a Super Nintendo, but I didn't really start getting into serious console gaming until Squaresoft started releasing a few of their 16-bit classics (FF3, Chrono Trigger, etc).
Oh hell, I'll get off my pedestal now.
I find latly that the interface and programming on games to be quite bad.
Take BauldersGate2 good storyline, bad programming, managed to suffer though it and
finish the game though. Wizzards and warriors- interface so horrible it didn't pass 15 min with me. Take a look at your cpu usage in these games... it is at 100% usage 99% of the time! even when nothing is happening onscreen.(no matter how fast a cpu you had)
I hope for all the fans waiting for Neverwinters Nights out there, that a decent programming team is on the job. (at least they have showed off a few good things)
How many hours did we play moria, rogue and nethack? The joys of coming accross the dead body of somone else who played the game was interesting.. (till you found out what killed them:)
Enough ranting - back to work before somone notices.
Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Quake (any)
Mechwarrior 3 (great fun between crashes)
It can be done right, but it seems like too many game designers rely on flashy graphics rather than actually making a good game.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Different games have different styles and are appealing for different reasons. Some games are excellent with very abstract renditions, and others are interesting because of their immersive and/or realistic graphics.
To me, Myst and Riven were interesting only because of the graphics; I found the game play mind-numbingly dull. And nethack, to me, still has more interesting game play than any version of Diablo. Quake and HalfLife are somewhere in between: their game play can be interesting at times, and the graphics and "tourism" aspects also contribute significantly to the game.
Besides, I would think people who find current 3D games "realistic" must have had something other than a bagel with their morning coffee.
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
The article really discussed two different points. One is, "are games more fun now than they were ten years ago"? That question is asked more or less constantly by the gaming magazines. My personal opinion is yes; I did in fact have more fun with Baldur's Gate 2 than, say, Pools of Radiance. OTOH, that's extremely subjective-- I'm a lot older now than I was then. But I do feel that when we reminisce about the old titles such as Wasteland, we forget the huge annoyances like having to copy the entire directory because you only got one save game, or having to leave a weight on the spacebar to regain hit points while you went off to lunch (note that these are design improvements, not graphical ones!). Here are some opinions on the issue from Gamespot's Question of the Week.
The other issue he brings up is the difficulty of content creation on such a massive scale. That is a much less valid concern from a "will it ever happen" standpoint. Obviously we need better ways of developing content. But that speaks to tools. No one codes games from scratch in assembly any more. In the future, no one will make all the 3-D models from scratch either. The obscene amount of work that goes into creating a new Everquest zone will seem silly ten years from now, when most of the basic stuff like terrain, trees, a couple of houses, even a few NPC's are put in there automatically. Designers will add and subtract; they'll give some initial parameters; they'll do the stuff by hand that they really need to tweak, just like coders occasionally optimize a method or two into assembly.
A game with great graphics will be bought and shelved. It won't stick around as newer, more gimmiky graphic games are released. OTOH, a game with good gameplay will last simply because the player enjoys the game. This "good gameplay" mark would include the storyline, input controls, reward system, point system, etc. These change depending on the kind of game you are playing.
Sometimes simplicity is the key to great gameplay. Pong, for instance, is a classic game that still has play value even today. What... two sticks and a ball. Not much in terms of graphics, but the way the game is played is just fun. So what makes Pong exciting and Dakitana boring? I dunno. In pong, the rules are simple and there is a direct challenge to the player. In Dakitana, there are good graphics (well.. so say some people) but the gameplay is boring and repetative.. no challenge.
I used to play LORD (Legend of the Red Dragon) and Tradewars almost non-stop 24hrs a day on many different BBS's. The graphics were low scale (mostly text with a few ANSI screens) but the gameplay was addictive and very rewarding. You were challenged, entertained, and stimulated in a way that a lot of games still don't capture even today.
Kingpin is an example, for me anyway, of a good story melded with a good graphics engine. Even though the ending of the game is lacking, the inital portions of the game draw the player into a rich story that made me overlook the downsides of the quick release.
heh, Just as I read the article, I fired up Miner'49er on my 64 and Jumpman on my 128... heh..
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
I remember when I first played Mario64. Sure, I loved the old donkey kong, mario bros., super mario bros. for the nes, etc... Mario64 was the first game that I played where I exclaimed "This is what games should be like".
There are certain games where fancier graphics can help out. Simulation games of various sorts, especially wargaming and flight sims and sports games. Then there are 'world tour' games where you have some sort of adventure game where the whole point is to transport you to another world, not unlike a good book or movie.
The category of game that has been neglected with the rise of graphics are the highly abstract games, like poker and chess and even games like Monopoly or Clue. Games with highly artificial pieces and rules. Tetris is a good example of this. Even a game like Tempest falls into this category. Games that don't pretend to simulate anything. Chess vaguely has some ties to wargaming but not many, and what is poker simulating?
That's the place that shareware, freeware and open source developers should be heading. Skimp back on the graphics and just create simple games that don't suck down CPU power, except possibly for the AI. And take advantage of modern computing by having the facility for networked play.
Hmmmm...did anyone actually read the article or are they just keying off of the blurb on Slashdot? Go read it. It isn't saying quite what most people here think it is saying. It's not putting down modern games or saying that old skool games were better. It's a history of increasing game complexity and whether the escalating requirements have inherent limits, considering the goal of creating marketable and fun games.
Here is an example. Remember that Sega arcade game where you ski downhill and control your player by standing on a wobbly pedestal?
The first time I played that I was blown away. I was so focused on the aciton, and so enveloped by the big screen and sound coupled with my motions I thought I was going to get frostbite. However, my immersion quotiet has been raised over the past 4 years. now it takes MUCH more to get my heart racing, and to really get me into a game.
this is why arcade box manufacturers need to come up with a machine that goes beyond the joystick and Cathode ray tube. That design has just about reached it's limits, and it's not nearly immersive enough anymore.
tcd004
Are games better today than they were yesterday? Hardly. But are they more immersive? Absolutely. The more immersive games get, the greater the symptoms of withdrawl they produce in the people who stop playing them, and the more gametime they enforce. Computer games are a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, after all, which is not a bad thing in healthy players -- you can equally say that football is a form of OCD. But as we all know, obsessives are the ones who consume with the greatest appetite, and this translates into hard $ for companies. Gameplay is important too, make no mistake about it. But immersiveness goes a long ways towards compensating for poor gameplay any day of the week.
-- Anne Marie
Graphics are a bonus. I love nethack, and some of the best games I've ever played have been text based. Younger gamers can't deal with games without cutting edge graphics. With games like Ultima IX, Homeworld, etc. out, people expect good graphics to go along with good gameplay.
No time for