Slashdot Mirror
The Future of Game Dev (Except in St. Louis)
ksquire writes "Ben Sawyer, of Digitalmill, has published an interesting article at Avault.com about
the past, present, and future of game development.
Sawyer argues that the game industry is going more and more toward 3rd party development tools and '4th party' publishing -- meaning that game developers are essentially tool developers for game enthusiasts to create mods (also using tools like Alienbrain or Discreet's
GMAX).
I'm really curious as to whether the Slashdot community thinks we'll see a future era of standardized game tools and developers courting modders, or if we'll continue to see more specialized game engines. Maybe a greater PC / Console split?"
Meanwhile, over in St. Louis, the Free Expression Policy Project has filed an
amici curiae brief
by 33 media scholars saying that "Most studies and experiments on video games containing violent content have not found adverse effects."
They're trying to stop the county from banning violent games --
Wired has the story.
ksquire points out that "Sawyer also wrote an article, Serious Games: Improving Public Policy through Game-Based
Learning and Simulation, which was
discussed on slashdot."
netphilter and TCPALaw get credit for the Wired link. Previous Slashdot stories on violent gaming include this one and this one.
TCPALaw's full comment was (minus a dangling modifier): "Wired has a nice story on the St. Louis ban on violent video games. If the ban sticks (it was upheld by Judge Limbaugh against a constitutional challenge... Rush Limbaugh's uncle ... the same judge who struck down the federal ban on junk faxes as an abridgment of free speech - go figure) it could be extended to MP games available to play over the Internet."
I've seen a HUGE decline of arcades here because of this ruling, many of them have closed. The local mall near me used to have an arcade...until they put in a police substation across the hall. I hate it here because of stupid stuff like this.
Look at Half-Life. I can still, after how long now, fire up Half-Life and join a decent game.
;)
Hell, I can still find Quake 2 servers around, and there's still a few Quake 1 holdouts.
Gamers love mods. For the developer, it gives them a chance to experience how games are made first-hand and also gives them an arena to show off their skills to existing gaming houses.
For players? Depending on the mod community, it's like buying one game and getting ten in return. And everyone likes to save money, eh?
Having just started a game development project our major goals include cross-platform compatibility (ala SDL / OpenGL), modularity, and open formats.
How popular would Doom and Quake be without these things? Part of the fun of these games is the possiblity of expansion and innovation by peers. For example Capture the Flag was a user mod that was incorporated into later versions of the Quake series.
I hold a patent on sigs...
What would be cool to standardize would be the 3D modeling language and behavior scripting representations. After that it is a matter of compiling the world models and behaviorisms into the games custom binary representation.
We aren't that far from this now. There are a number of *common* engines. Various generations of Quake and Unreal seem to be used in all sorts of games. If both of these could compile levels and models designed in a standard 3D editor, others would surely follow.
I've seen alot of companies hiring people based off of their proven abilities in the mod field.
Likewise, I've seen people use their contacts in the mod community to get better jobs.
With some of the newer games coming out with good tool support (Unreal 2k3 has dedicated programs included, for example) for people to make their own content (be it maps, models, sounds, what have you), I fully expect game companies to actively search out mod teams.
Obvious case in point:
Think about what Valve would be doing right now if it wasn't for a very small number of mods.. (Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Action Half-life, etc... Especially Counter-Strike)
This perspective only holds in the PC game enthusiast market. The PC market is only a fraction of the total videogaming market and the enthusiasts are only a fraction of that.
The really big market for games is not on PC but on consoles, where customization is pretty much unheard-of. If you think that the industry is getting large enough that 3rd parties can create a market selling tools or libs or whatever, then that's absolutely correct and has been so for over a decade. If you think the market is going to 'decentralize', think again.
Check out the list of scholars who are particpating in the brief. Only a handful are psychologists, and that is the faculty which is perhaps best suited to investigating whether there is any connection between observation of violent behaviour and violent behaviour. A brief read of the bio's of the scholars further indicates that most of these people are stepping well beyond their area of expertise.
I would have thought that a brief to the court would carry more weight if the people lending their name to it had standing in the academic community in that area of research...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
From the wired article: One studio recently signed a deal to make Doom a motion picture. /. story about this by now, or did I just miss it?
At first I presumed they meant the failed attempt several years ago, but then I found this article on Yahoo dated last Wednesday. I figured we would've seen a
NWN is an excellent example of standardizing a game engine so that the core rules, interaction, etc is easily understood, and expandable.
Even if the engine itself is closed source, Bioware et al give a developer everything that they need to expand the game with a professional level editor, object scripting, and releasing server software.
These things show a commitment to the gaming community, allow for the game to become near infinately expandable, and give the users as much (or as little) of the behind-the-scenes action as they want.
I haven't played around with the editors enough yet, but if you could create your own weapons, armour, and races, you could even expand the world from the medieval/fantasy to Sci-Fi, Horror, western, etc, the same way the core rules have been expanded in the pen-and-paper version.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
It's never black and white with anything. Do video games cause all kids to commit violent acts? No. Do some video games cause some kids to commit violent acts? Probably.
Children that watch other kids do things mimic them but the way to overcome that is to ensure that there is a good moral foundation ( which comes from parents )
Have we seen a spike in violence in children since video games became more prevalent? Yes. But why is the question. You'll note that this is the same time that most families had to start having two working parents ( to supplement income ) and so there isn't somebody to monitor tv, games and other media. Nobody there to comment on this being done in the game. Nobody to say "we don't do that in real life".
Studies and statistics are often misleading and misused. A prime example that we learned in a Psych 101 is that of Churches and Crime rate. Did you know that in areas with more churches there is a higher crime rate? Considering that astounding revelation we should ban churches since they obviously lead to crime.
The issue is that there isn't a direct relation, but rather a common factor between the two. Where are there more churches? In higher populated areas. Where is there more crime? In higher populated areas. The problem for higher crime is increased population, not churches.
However, those in congress and those doing this study use common link evidence and say it is a direct relationship as if anything is so black and white
Games in the US do have a rating system, the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board). It's completely voluntary, and all publishers have their stuff rated. Unlike movies who fought tooth and nail against ratings.
It's also more specific than anything on movies or TV. A game doesn't just get M for Mature, but there's a short list of icons explaining *why* it got the M. Ie; Language, Adult Situations, Realistic Blood and Gore, Cartoon Blood and Gore.
Thing is, while most retail outlets are now refusing to sell M rated games to minors, there's still a big whoopty doo because of things like Columbine, where the fact that the shooters played video games was blown out of proportion.
Right now one of the big "targets" of the video game lobby is Grand Theft Auto 3. Now first off you have the title, then you have the box art covered with stylized mobsters, pimps, and prostitutes. Then you have a fairly prominent M for Mature, with underneath: Adult Situations, Coarse Language, Violence, Realistic Blood and Gore.
Yet noone clues in that this isn't a game for 6 year old Billy.
AFAIK, there's no legal accountability if Billy gets the game. Thats what they want, and they wouldn't dare hold the parents or gaurdians responsible for their childs welfare. It must be someone in corporate america's fault.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I'll bet most parents today would advocate a game like D&D that promotes actual problem-solving and creativity over trigger-finger-reaction games. Just another sign of the times.
"Timmy, why don't you play a nice wholesome game like Dungeons and Dragons with the kid next door instead of making his head explode like a blood sausage with a sniper rifle? There's a good boy."
-the walrus
The future of gaming is what every NES/atari/old school gamer has dreamed of. They always complain that games today are just copies of what is popular (how many quake/fps copycats can you name?).
Well, modding is changing all of that. When a game comes out, modders push the limits of the engines to do anything they want... the clincher is... they do it for free.
Now, for game designers to still make money, they have to come out with new and unique ideas. Doing your standard FPS ain't gonna do it anymore. Even single-player FPS with great plots are being done with mods. The games of tomorrow will have to be bigger and better than mod writers (or have a bigger and better engine), which means the days of the FPS copy-cat will soon be over.
Also, to note, some publishers are encouraging the modding community to step forward into the gaming industry. Just look at Garage Games. They are selling their Torque Engine (the engine behind tribes 2) for $100 for a non-commercial license (and if you make a commercial product with it, no problem, as long as garage games is your publisher).
Let the mod revolution continue!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
In 1972, he invited Long Island mother Ronnie Lamb to bring her message to his show and launch her campaign to ban video games.
WTF was the violent video game in 1972? Death pong?
Did her Little Tommy kill somebody with a ping pong paddle? This is just silly.
Murphy was an optimist.
I think the underlying assumption is still sound, especially when most consoles now have HD's and network connections.
Even before those were availiable some games let you at least edit levels and save them on memory cards.
With network support, we might well see console makers host a mod site that would let console owners post new levels or perahps even TC's (like UT mods when the current UT client is put on the PS2 or XBox).
The exciting thing about console makers hosting mod sites is the possibility they could pay for licences in some universes (like Star Wars, or The Simpsons, or Land of The Lost [how much would that licence be? $9.99??]) and then hold contests to have people create legal mods using licenced content. At least that's what they would do if they had a shred of sense.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A game engine that allows a user modification later is just gravy. We've pretty much have seen this as a marketing tool to get our game off the shelves and into the hands of gamers. The great success of the Quake and Unreal engines prove this. At first, just to play the Counter-Strike mod, you had to purchase Half-Life.
Currently, only independent developers are using these third-party engines. The main reason is that they lack the resources ($$$, time and people) to create their own engine. These groups quickly find that their engine lacks the power or doesn't handle game functions as they would like. The best games will have the game design create the engine and not the other way around.
Let's face it. To have a AAA title, you need to have your own proprietary engine. Those that use a high-end Quake or Unreal engine will often have to strip out and insert new code to make it work. (Wasn't Half-Life 85% new code?)
I only expect to see more proprietary engines being created (as it always has been) and the ability to create user modifications as a marketing tool to increase sales.
I have to go one further here. I agree that the death of the pinball machine was the beginning of the end, but I believe the arcade's final nail in the coffin is the advent of the higher-power home consoles. Before the Super Nintendo and such, you had to visit your local arcade because the best games were only available on the robust hardware, but now... Every kid has a equally powerful system parked under their television at home. Man, I remember putting about $10 a day through my local street fighter machine but nowadays I could buy my own copy instead for the price of a couple of days' play. (i'm not ignoring the rapid adoption of PC's, its just that PC's have only become common for the average Joe over the last 10 years or so. Before that, it was enthusiasts only!) Consoles brought gaming to the masses, and will continue to do so.
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...