What is Wrong With Game Development?

Warrior-GS writes "Seamus Blackley, who has done everything from work at Looking Glass Studios to evangelize for the Microsoft Xbox, sounds off on what's wrong with the relationship between developers, publishers and their audience. Also, as part of coverage of the D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas, GameSpy has chats with Miyamoto about The Wind Waker and Yu Suzuki about his gaming influences. Some interesting reading."

Comments

Nothing's wrong IMHO

[$$$exy Gwen Stefani]

I've found the latest crop of games to be really great. For instance, Battlefield 1942 and Metroid Prime are probably two of the best games I've _ever_ played in my life.

I think maybe the companies put too much stress on the developers to create hits, but as a part-time developer, I think it's easier said than done to just create a smash hit out of thin air. Everything's already been done, or so it seems, so really original and entertaining gameplay+graphics is a tough combination to create.

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[zwoelfk]

I think maybe the companies put too much stress on the developers to create hits

I can't agree with this. Although, I would like to work on games purely for the sake of the art, or to build something my friends and I could play on weekends, the truth is that very few games make good money for the developers. The "hits" take the lion's share of the profit (more than 90% by most accounts) - so these are the games that keep publishers and developers afloat. If you aren't interested in hits, fine... just don't expect to be in the business of building console games for long. (Although I believe there is a market for cheaply developed PC titles)

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[Junior J. Junior III]

Just because the products are good doesn't mean the process is good. Look at sausage.

Also, citing two outstanding titles doesn't mean anything for the industry as a whole. OK, so there's two great games. How many bad games are there? Are they worse or better than the bad games of the past? Are they more or less plentiful in terms of percentage of titles?

What is the cost of a game that flops? Is the risk taken by developers greater or less than in the past? What's required of the developers to overcome the obstacles? Long hours? Burnout? Taking safer risks and not innovating too radically?

There's a lot of questions that need to be looked at before you can say the industry has nothing wrong with it. I'd say the industry is healthy, and is even doing well, but that doesn't mean everything is peachy.

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point of the article (you did read it, right?) is that a hit-driven market is bad for everyone, especially the developers.

But that's the way publishers want it, because it gives them 95% of the revenue.

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[Doomdark]

Everything's already been done, or so it seems, so really original and entertaining gameplay+graphics is a tough combination to create.

I disagree; I think the idea of "everything's already been done at least twice" is a common phallacy. Some people claim that all good music has already been done, or all good movies, or even all good paintings.

And yet amount of permutations for basic components of music (melodic, harmonic, rhythmic), literature (themes, characters, time, style) or, computer games (ones similar to literature), is pretty much infinite. There will _always_ be room for new things in any of above-mentioned forms of art.

I agree with the article. Lack of innovative games has more to do with business objectives of predictable revenue than with not having room to explore that limits original games. 20 years ago technology was limiting things much more; nowadays it's almost a moot point, at least from game idea point of view. Any interesting non-novelty gameplay idea can probably be implemented on standard gaming system of choice. But since coming up with a new idea IS more difficult than refining an existing idea (I'm not arguing otherwise), the risks associated just make it so much more compelling to "just write yet another sequel of a hit".

Funnily enough, this is just one of those problems with short-sighted businesses. Without new innovative hits, there won't be chance for new predictably profitable sequels. You can only do so many sequels from a certain theme, with lowering profitability... and then have to move on.

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[ginnocent]

No, _we_ put the pressure on the programmers.
Something like 95% of published games make a loss.
You rightly point out that really innovative gameplay and graphics require real talent and dedication to conjure up, but _we_ as gamers simply don't buy the games that are lacking.
The studios are under constant pressure to deliver something that excites our jaded palates or go bust.

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[SpikeSpiff]

Just because the products are good doesn't mean the process is good. Look at sausage.

I disagree. There are two perspectives here, and we are switching between them. As a gamer, I could care less how screwed up the development process is (barring major immorality/illegality) as long as they make good games.

Further, I don't care if 99/100 games suck. I'll depend on friends, slashdot, gamespy, and sales figures and so forth to screen the wheat from the chaff.

And there is plenty of wheat out there. Counterstrike for goodness sake. WCIII and Starcraft. Civ, Sims. Everquest and all the clones. More than any serious person can ever play.

From the perspective of the developers, I sympathize. But I'd be a lot more interested in hearing how the WCIII add-in is going.

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

... is a common phallacy

'Fallacy', perhaps? There's a Freudian slip if ever I saw one!

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[kscguru]

I disagree; I think the idea of "everything's already been done at least twice" is a common phallacy. Some people claim that all good music has already been done, or all good movies, or even all good paintings.

Yes, yes, yes!

Everything WE KNOW HOW TO DO has been done at least twice. I see an idea, I'll use it to do something, someone watching me will copy the idea and do something else, until eventually everyone gets sick of my idea.

But what about anything we DON'T know how to do yet? Duh! It hasn't been done yet! Come up with an original idea, useful enough that other people like it, and suddenly that idea is everywhere, and the whole process repeats.

So to anyone who says "Everything has been done already", I'd like to know what makes you so absolutely sure that you're right. What you're really saying is that you haven't come up with anything new, and are complaining about not being able to magically turn a "old" product into a "new" product and make gobs of money like the last "new" product. Well duh! We consumers may be stupid most of the time, but we aren't completely ignorant.

One of the very common business fallacies (IMO) is to assume that the past predicts the future. If something sold well before, then it's going to sell well in the future. I admit the past is a pretty good indicator of the future, but historically, when you're wrong, you're really wrong (Great Depression anyone?). So to any future game publishers out there, repeat after me: "The past does not predict the future. The past does not predict the future. The past does not predict the future."

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[kNIGits]

I disagree; I think the idea of "everything's already been done at least twice" is a common phallacy.

No, a six inch penis is a common "phallacy".

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[mad.frog]

As a gamer, I could care less how screwed up the development process is (barring major immorality/illegality) as long as they make good games.

Would you consider the refusal to pay overtime (as mandated by various U.S. labor laws) as "major immorality/illegality"?

Such refusal is common practice in the industry.

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[SpikeSpiff]

Sure I would. So sue them.

Seriously.

I'm not going to check on that issue before I buy a game though.

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[FreekyGeek]

Yes, there are some good games. But there could be a lot MORE good games if the system for making them weren't so broken. Let's face it, for every really good game, there are 20 mediocre games and 10 really bad games.

In my opinion, the fault lies 90% with the publishers. Most games that get published *could* have been a lot better, and *would* have been a lot better, if it weren't for interference from the publishers in the development process.

The comparisons between the game business and the movie business are striking. Game publishers make exactly the same mistakes movie studios make:

1) Just about the only thing they ever want to make are tired retreads of genres that have been done to death. Bring a new, fresh idea to them, and they run in horror, screaming "No one's done it yet!!!" Game publishers and movie studios have a "dual personality" problem in that they are always looking for the smash hit, but refuse to fund anything that hasn't already been done ten times before because they don't want to take any risks.

2) In the game business and the movie business, the biggest hits are nearly always created by development studios and movie production companies that have the cash to go it alone, to make the thing themselves the way they want to make it and tell the publishers and studio where to stick their tired old crap. Take a look at the list of the top 10 bestselling games of all time and count how many of them are sequels or even fall in any genre that existed before - precious few. If anyone but Will Wright had suggested to a game publisher to make a game where all you do is make little computer people eat, sleep, and poop, he would have been laughed out of the office. And now The Sims is the best-selling game of all time.

3) Game publishers and movie studios are filled with middle managers who are nothing more than frustrated "wannabe" creative people. They didn't have the talent to make it in a creative field, so now that they have power over the creative people, they think that qualifies them to stick their grubby fingers into the creative process. In the movies, it's focus groups and script doctors. In the game industry, it's "producers" who have never designed a game in their lives but insist on making changes to the game design which the developer has to include if they want to get paid. They think they're qualified to "improve" a game design that's been created by a team of experienced game designers. If the "money people" would just step back and let the creative people do their jobs without second-guessing, the end product would be much higher quality and make a lot more money.

The most amazing thing about both businesses is that the people who own the big game publishers and movies studios are constantly having the above two point proven to them in very clear financial terms, and yet they still Just Don't Get It. Even though it's been proven time and time again - on the bottom line - that the more they interfere with the creative process, the less money they make, they still seem to think that since they are paying the bills, that makes them smarter than the creative people and thus they feel entitled to put their grubby paws all over the product.

In short, game publishers are just as stupid and shortsighted as movie studios. They constantly reject any idea that has the smallest amount of risk associated iwth it, and then they cry because people get tired of buying the same old games over and over again with different graphics. Then, when someone finally manages to make a new and unique game, and it sells millions of copies, do they learn from this? No, they go right on doing business the same way they always have, assuming that the successful game must have been a fluke. They figure "well, we are suits working in a big company with lots of money, so that makes us qualified to judge what will be a hit."

Most people assume that there aren't more good games because "it's all been done" or that there's some kind of shortage of great game ideas. Work in the industry for a while and you'll find that great game ideas are a dime a dozen - every designer has at least one, or maybe a dozen, ideas for games that would sell very well if done right. The game industry is busting at the seams with great ideas. But those ideas will most likely never see the light of day because game publishers simply reject any game proposal that does not start with the words "This game is just like ..."

So thanks to the shortsightedness of the publishers, we're stuck in a Catch-22 situation where the only way to make a truly great game is to pay for it yourself, and the only way to be able to afford to pay for a game yourself is to make a truly great game.

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[mad.frog]

We thought about that.

But they have a *lot* more lawyers than we do.

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, well then you're SOL anyway. Forget it.

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[jorleif]

But that's the way publishers want it, because it gives them 95% of the revenue.

Always those evil publishers, eh. I don't know if I read the same article you did but what I thought it said was that publishers wanted repeatability and therefore prefer sequels and license games. Developers who want to create great games should not develop what they believe that the publishers want, because the publishers are trying to solve a completely different problem than the game developers.

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[GlassHeart]

I'm not going to check on [refusal to pay overtime] before I buy a game though.

An emerging line of thinking is that consumers can and should gain visibility into how things are made, and actively choose the companies that use processes they like. This is the line of thinking that pushes Nike to end child labor practices, tuna fishermen to use dolphin-friendly nets, etc.

In this case, individuals have very little recourse against an abusive company. First of all, the job market is really bad. Secondly, they are probably well paid, relative to the rest of the society, and are probably "exempt" employees. Finally, court cases can take many years and much expense, and is rightfully only a matter of the last resort.

I'm not trying to be sanctimonious. I'm just pointing out that you have in your hand the power to affect the way these companies do business, and you're choosing to ignore it. That's not wrong, but I find it unfortunate.

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[SpikeSpiff]

You raise an interesting point in regard to my rather flip statement.

I think you have cites some interesting spots where this could be employed. However, I think, the games industry does not rise to that level. There is nothing going on that is not entirely optional, and further, any appropriate sanctions should be and are addressed by federal labor law.

A broader question, unaddressed, is what rises to the level that I as a consumer should pay attention. Certainly development process does not. Corrupt labor practices, unchecked by law, might.

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[GlassHeart]

what rises to the level that I as a consumer should pay attention[?] Certainly development process does not. Corrupt labor practices, unchecked by law, might.

I don't know if I made clear enough that different people will feel different levels of responsibility towards companies they pay, and I'm not judging anybody.

In my ideal world, shoddy development practices like 100 hours of work a week will show up in the final product, and consumers will recognize and reject it. All without really paying attention to how things are done, because the end result speaks for itself.

In the less than ideal real world, if you don't want to contribute to a cycle of something you dislike, then you need to take stand with your dollars. It will mean that you get new games fewer and farther in between, and they might even be more expensive, but maybe the developers will manage to stay in the business longer, and maybe make a better game.

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[The Raven]

14 deaths in 20 years... how many millions of truckers are on the road at any given second, yet only a couple die a day. The trucking industry has a MUCH better record.

The shuttle has only a 98% non-fatal mission rate... imagine if you had a fatal car crash every 50th time you went out.

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[jafuser]

Everything's already been done, or so it seems, so really original and entertaining gameplay+graphics is a tough combination to create.

True, though it's hard to say...

Is the MMO space sim 'Earth & Beyond' based on Elite, or would it have come about anyway, even if Elite had never existed?

Same goes for Wing Command, Freespace, etc... Someone would have thought of it eventually.

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[malachid69]

"Everything's already been done"

Yes, I know everyone is commenting on the same aspect of your post.... but I chose to reply to you instead of to one of the derivatives below...

I would have to argue that everything has NOT been done. For example, when Piers Anthony made his Incarnations of Immortality series -- that was a very unique writing style. We STILL haven't seen that in Movies. Global Chess was a very unique approach to Chess. The only similar games I have seen are ones that were made as direct rip-offs of theirs. And Uplink, as far as I can tell, is a fairly unique computer game. Though it gets redundant after awhile, I found that I (and even my girlfriend) quickly became addicted to it.

I don't think we can say everything has been done. That just makes us feel pessimistic about our ideas. Even taking two current ideas and mixing them together can be unique.

Personally, I think the biggest problem standing in the way of great games is the fact that most developers who have an interest in writing games don't have a financial situation that allows it -- ie: we have to work in the real world instead of writing games. I live in the Portland, Oregon area -- and we have HUNDREDS (probably actually THOUSANDS) of unemployment developers here. If a "good" game company were to start up here, I am sure they could come out with some great AND unique games.

The problem is simply the finances. If we don't have enough money coming in so that we can go off and write games, we spend all of our time working for someone else.

Re:Nothing's wrong IMHO

[tomhudson]

Actually, the individual shuttles have an even higher failure rate.

Endeavor's only got 21 flights under its' belt, Atlantis has 28, Discovery has 30.

Challenger was lost on its' 10th flight, and Columbia on its' 28th.

What are the odds of any of them getting to 50 flights? Pretty much nil.

What's wrong about the video game industry

[dzym]

What's wrong with the video game industry is that Doom 3 isn't released yet.

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[nomadic]

I bet Doom 3 will epitomize what he said is wrong with the game industry, i.e. unimaginative sequels with little innovation.

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[Selfbain]

Ya but it'll probably have some big fucking guns and lots of things to aim at.

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[Anonymous Coward]

I've yet to see it from that company.

knocks on wood...

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[nomadic]

Huh? What about Doom? Or Quake? Or Quake 2? Or Quake 3? Or Abuse? Or any game except Doom 1?

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[fredrikj]

Duke Nukem Forever, you mean.

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[Stone Rhino]

Abuse isn't from "that company." (id) It's from Crack dot com, now dead.
Though it does kick ass.

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[nomadic]

Oh yeah. Didn't like Abuse much.

Anyway my point was just that most of the stuff Id has released hasn't been very good. Impressive technically, but not that good.

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[Anonymous Coward]

Going from doom to quake 2 was a huge step, first time I ever saw an AI that could duck my shots. Atmosphere is always there, same with quake.

Quake 3 brought a level of skill to mp for newbies. They engine is what the seller is or was anyways that I was refering to. I still would have bought it just for the pretty pictures though.

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[Tellarin]

no, what's worng is duke nukem forever not yet released.

but if this game is released at all and it proves an advance so big from the previous (like the last did)
it might show that you continue a series in great style.

but i for sure am for the "try new stuff" kind of thing.

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[Galvatron]

Depends what you consider innovation. I think you're probably right if you mean it will be thin on the plot. You're completely wrong if you mean it'll be a simple recycling of the Quake 3 engine. Licensing the engine is more important to ID than selling the game itself.

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[nemiak]

When was the last time an innovative, imaginative new game was released?
I think the golden years of gaming are long gone.

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[Scum Puppy]

My friends and I are sort of "game afficiandoes" in as much as we all play games, but have pretty divergent interests. However, we can all agree on this: ID stopped making games a long time ago. What they do is make something that shows off their engine instead, and then other companies (Raven and whoever did the Jedi Knight series) license the engine and make something out of it which people actually like. I've got a feeling that the EPIC and the Unreal engine is heading the same way. For this reason, I'm going to have to strongly disagree with you about little innovation: the content certainly isn't, but the engine itself is bounds ahead of the previous one. I think the Unreal people have been more innovative as far as FPS gameplay goes, but not by too much. It is this lack of gameplay innovativation that made me sort of curse FPSes past Unreal Tournament, though; they stopped being fun.

As far as a lot of other game types go, this is far too accurate, sadly... I just hope Homeworld2 doesn't turn out that way...

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[nomadic]

On the console side, Shenmue and Ico.

On the PC side, Deus Ex and..uh..there might be a few. Can't think of them now.

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[DrStrangeLoop]

i wish people would stop calling id softwares quake/doom series games "sequels" or "uninnovative". in my opinion, these games serve a higher purpose: they put us closer to virtual reality with each title, which is a good thing. they have very few things [or goals] in common with tetris or c&c.
-strangeloop

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[Jagasian]

I still play the original Quake, on a daily basis, 6 years after its release! I think that Quake is a great game! It added true 3D gameplay to the first person shooter genre, in addition to multiplayer over the internet. No other first person shooter, to this day, offers the fast and furious deathmatch gameplay that Quake offers. Just hop onto a server running "The Bad Place" map, along with 15 other people. Its a blast!

Those things might seem common today, but then everything that The Legend of Zelda does is common today. Is it a bad game?

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[dzym]

The last jump was from a 2d platformer to a 2.5d fps shooter. This jump will be from a 2.5d fps shooter to a 3d fps shooter. The same jump that id successfully made about 7 years back now.

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[nomadic]

The point is when all is said and done it's still not a very original game. True 3d gameplay was nice, but not exactly innovative; everyone was aiming for that at the time.

As far as I'm concerned, the UT series left Quake in the dust when the first UT came out.

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[nomadic]

Well that's the problem. I'm sure the engine will be brand new, but you need more than the engine to make a game.

Since Id sells full-fledged games they deserve criticism. If all they did was make and license the engine I wouldn't criticize them.

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[Anonymous Coward]

Virtual Reality?

Big giant space zombies ripping you apart while you wield your chainsaw-gun?

What kinda fucked up reality do you live in? And why do you need video games?

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[JPriest]

Grand Theft Auto 3

It represents the first major game in a new generation of games.

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[Xenographic]

Don't forget that it should trigger the gamer upgrade cycle, perhaps single-handedly revitalizing the tech sector ;]

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello?? it was the first real mass tcp/ip game EVER! the first game to introduce its own language to "mod" the game...get a clue!

Re:What's wrong about the video game industry

[Jagasian]

We will see if people are still playing the original UT series over 6 years after its release. In addition to making new maps, mods, servers, and clients for the game. Everyone is shooting for a cure for cancer, and the first to come up with one will be an innovator in my book.

Honestly, I doubt you are even aware of the numerous mods for the original Quake. Nearly all of your UT game types were already done years earlier in Quake, in addition to many many more. Don't talk about innovation, unless you know what you are talking about. UT is nothing more than a Quake clone. Quake was the first massive TCP/IP, true 3D, easily modded, first person shooter. Name even one thing that is innovative, which UT added to that mix. Sure its real meat and potatoes stuff these days, but then again, all innovative things tend to become the core of some industry.

Really wrong?

[Blaine Hilton]

Theres nothing wrong, some do it "wrong", but then people buy games from that "other" company.

Promotionalism

[Tuxinatorium]

They put too much emphasis on advertizing it to death and not enough emphasis on developing a quality product. Advertizing is the scourge of the free market. It doubles or triples the price of many goods while contributing nothing to their value.

Re:Promotionalism

[symbolic]

This is actually a very interesting comment, since it relates to the very issue that's being discussed in the article. It seems that any industry that involves any kind of publishing entity, faces the same problems. Publishers are in it to make money, and they'll do what will make that happen - even if it means throttling back things like creativity and innovation. What I'd like to see (and quite frankly, what I'm surprised hasn't happened in a more visible given the presence of the internet), is for publishing companies to fall by the wayside, while the creative types establish either a centralized or easily-accessible e-distribution channel.

This whole publishing thing, it seems, is just BEGGING for a different, more efficient business model (both monetarily and in terms of intangible factors like creativity). Games developers who aren't with any of the 'big few' who make big bucks on a good release, are stuck with working with publishers. I get the impression that publishers often make the process more tedious, and are in a prime position to lower the integrity of the process by dorking around with royalties, net revenue figures, etc - all of which are used to ascertain how much the game developer gets paid. I'd love to see this process changed so that games developers, like music artists, get more of what they deserve, and and a lot less of the burden introduced by the current business model.

Re:Promotionalism

[sql*kitten]

Publishers are in it to make money, and they'll do what will make that happen - even if it means throttling back things like creativity and innovation.

You're confusing cause and effect. The way to make money - and the publishers know this - is to sell the market what it wants at a price it is willing to pay. Gamers as a group say they're interested in quality, but their actions tell a different story, as they rush out to buy the latest sequel. Guess which one, speech or action, actually results in dollars changing hands?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that any gamer who has ever bought any sequel, or any generic first-person shooter (or any game that fits easily into a "genre") is a part of the problem.

Re:Promotionalism

[civilizedINTENSITY]

If marketing and advertising where about determining what the market wants and communicating to them when you have it, there would be no problem. In fact, the problem is that marketing and advertising are not about communication so much as coercion. Hence the nearly ubiquitous cynical take on any percieved form of advertisement. Were advertising to approach (prior decades') journalistic standards it would serve a social function.

Re:Promotionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

The way to make money - and the publishers know this - is to sell the market what it wants at a price it is willing to pay.

Which explains why game players complain constantly about low quality and high prices.

Try again.

Publishers TELL the market what they want. THAT'S how they make money.

Re:Promotionalism

[tdelaney]

That does depend somewhat on the sequel. Buying Fallout 2 because you enjoyed Fallout so much is not being part of the problem for example. Fallout 2 was an improvement in some ways (interface), and a regression in others (primarily storyline), but it was quality, just like the original. Most importantly though, it bucked the trends that were starting towards realtime play (Baldur's Gate came out at around the same time).

OTOH, buying Fallout Tactics without trying the demo is being part of the problem. FOT probably sold more than Fallout 1&2 combined (in particular, it sold more at full price) but from all I've read and from my playing of the demo it's really got nothing to do with the ideas behind Fallout. It's just an isometric tactical shooter which happens to use the SPECIAL system and hence capitalised on brand recognition. People buying FOT promoted the idea to publishers that real-time combat variants were "it" and turn-based should be abandoned.

Thank goodness for Troika. Can't wait for Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil ...

Re:Promotionalism

[symbolic]

You're confusing cause and effect. The way to make money - and the publishers know this - is to sell the market what it wants at a price it is willing to pay.

I think you're being a little too generous. The publishers sell the market what they know works. They know it works because they've already done it - that's why sequels are so common. Granted, any given sequel can sport some really poor gameplay compared to a prior version, but all things being equal, it's probably the option with the least amount of risk and the greatest potential ROI.
I'd also suggest that while it might appear as though this is what the market wants, but it's also all the market has to offer.

Re:Promotionalism

[Scanline]

I bought FOT after playing the demo, 'cause I really liked the gameplay since you could play it in turn based mode. On the other hand I regretted having paid for it since it was so buggy and Interplay did a real crappy job supporting it and getting patches out, probably because they had massive financial problems at the time.

Re:Promotionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Advertising is not the problem with inferior goods. Advertising is just another medium of information exchange, and if you don't like to buy products that are advertised, then don't. That is the beauty of the free market. Just because people who don't have the time/energy to read reviews and would rather cast their lot to the best funded players in the market doesn't make them wrong, it makes them pay more for a good than they have to. Some people actively choose this convenience, including myself, on some products I don't particularly care to research. I do agree that product quality could be improved if there weren't as much emphasis on developing a marketable product, due to the fact that I'm not the typical game player, but that is a different argument altogether... (and decidedly antimarket...)

Re:Promotionalism

[5KVGhost]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that any gamer who has ever bought any sequel, or any generic first-person shooter (or any game that fits easily into a "genre") is a part of the problem.

Be careful, that limb looks pretty fragile. If a gamer likes a particular game and wants more of the same, or something similar to it, then there's nothing at all wrong with that.

At various points in time gamers (and game companies) have been particularly enamored with first-person shooters, flight simulators, platformers, mazes, puzzles, RPGs, wargames, god-games, side-shooters, sports simulations, and lots of other categories I don't have time to type. There have been good original games, bad original games, good sequels, and bad sequels.

And as a result, excellent representatives of all those genres are available right now for anyone to play who wants to. Ultimately people will enjoy them or not based on the merits of the individual games.

Re:Promotionalism

[Tuxinatorium]

It is not a medium of information exchange. It is an extremely unproductive and wasteful brainwashing contest. It inflates the prices of goods while providing no useful service to the consumer, because there is no correlation whatsoever between the quality of a product and how much it is advertized. Advertizing is a wasteful middleman whose costs should be minimized in the interest of the common good, but the self interest of the companies leads to this ridiculously inefficient system. Also, it's not like you can just always choose to buy the generic products that aren't advertized, because they don't exist in restaraunts or in most small stores.

Re:Promotionalism

[Art Tatum]

Marketing and advertising *are* about determining what the market wants and communicating to them when you have it.

* People want to make a lot of money
* The best way to make a lot of money is to have something a lot of people want.
* Ergo, you have to find out something that a lot of people want and find a way of letting them know you have it.

But there's a fly in the ointment: a surprising amount of other people are doing the same thing. So, you have to try to make your voice more noticible than theirs. One way you can do this is to make it heard more widely. Another is to make it a more appealing voice. This is done with the fruit of research in psychology.

To many, perhaps even yourself, this seems like manipulation or coercion. That perception is not really correct, but it *feels* like it because psychology holds a mystique for many people that equates to "black magic." "They're using psychology to make people want what they're selling!" Or even worse: "They're using psychology to hypnotize people into buying what they sell."

The fact that you can feel this way is evidence that it's false. If they were *really* able to practice "magic mind control", you wouldn't realize you were being controlled.

All that's really going on is that they're using psychology to make their product as pleasant (in a very general sense of the word) as possible to the average consumer.

This is very much like what you do when someone visits your home. You don't grab a beer and throw it at them saying, "I hope that's what you want to drink 'cause it's what you're getting! Wanna hear me fart the Blue Danube?" OK, so some people might enjoy that. But most would feel very uneasy and wouldn't want to stay in your home very long. They would probably want to leave as soon as possible. And then they wouldn't be around to take part in a great discussion you had planned.

You also don't show them your kid's messy room. Yeah, it's the *truth* about how you live, but it's not pleasant, so you don't show it to them. You want to have a good discussion and a nice dinner. That won't happen if they're disgusted.

It's the same way with advertisers. It's merely a tool to portray a company and the things it sells in the best light and to make them as appealing, pleasant, and memorable as possible. And there's nothing wrong with that.

You just have to remember that things may not be as nice as they look. The same way you wouldn't necessarily have as much fun living with people that you had a great time visiting with. Real life has warts (and messy bedrooms) that you don't see with a brief sanitized inspection.

Re:Promotionalism

[jafuser]

For company expenses, let's take:

1. Research & Development
2. Marketing

Now as Marketing techniques continue to get better and better, it will mean that companies will continue to shift more and more money into the budgets for #2 than #1.

This is why we're getting more crap today than ever before. Marketing is getting better at fooling us, and we just keep falling for it.

Eventually they'll find a way to sell us a chunk of granite for $50 bucks and convince us that it's the best 3D game ever, and we'll happily buy it.

Re:Promotionalism

[Tuxinatorium]

No, advertizing is all about making people think they need/want things that they don't really need, and making them think brand Y is better than brand X without any logical reason. It has nothing to do with communication and everything to do with psychological conditioning.

The fact of the matter is that there is no correlation whatsoever between the actual quality of a product and the amount it is advertized or the extremeness of the advertizing claims made about it. Since there is no correlation, advertizing serves no comunicatory purpose. It is simply background noise trying to bang nonsense into people's heads.

no requirements gathering phase!!!

[stonebeat.org]

for every software engineering project, there is a requirements gathering phase, in which the customer is queried about the requirements. the customer give some vague requirements, and the design team work with those requirements.
being the buying customers of the games, we should be queried on what we would like to see in the game :) just kiddin... :)

Re:no requirements gathering phase!!!

[zwoelfk]

Typically, users are queried by publishers at different levels. Sony is especially keen on this. However, most Slashdot readers probably refuse to participate on principals of anonymity. Did you fill out your registration card and return it to Sony with the games you like and additional comments? Probably not. Have you logged on to Sony's site and returned feedback on what you like, want to see, etc? Probably not. But there is a large group of people who /do/ do this and they weigh heavily in Sony's conception of what their typical user is (Sony even has a lame word for them: "Imaginator") - and thus on what games they will push for development and advertising.

Money.

[Renraku]

Money is what's wrong with game development. Someone puts it in the head of the programmers' management team that every day they spend working on a game is a day in which they lose money amounting to both operating costs and potential profit.

In fact, they seem to think that if you release a game half-done it'll make more money than a game that's complete.

Re:Money.

[fatgraham]

In fact, they seem to think that if you release a game half-done it'll make more money than a game that's complete
Its more of a case of a half-done games are going to be forced out, (released early) and going to take less of the publishers money whilst its being developed

Re:Money.

[sql*kitten]

In fact, they seem to think that if you release a game half-done it'll make more money than a game that's complete.

Despite what you might think, most manager's aren't stupid. Any MBA newbie can look at a spreadsheet and see which games made the most money and which cost the least to develop. You know that MS Project can automatically report on which parts of a project overran, who was managing those tasks, who was assigned to actually code them? Must be nice to have a piece of software that can do your job for you*.

When the market stops rewarding the first and starts rewarding the best, then managers will change their policy, but not before then. All those people who bought Daikatana (or games like it) are guilty.

* I said that to a PM once, she sighed and said yes, I wish I had something like DBA Studio ;-)

Re:Money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite what you might think, most manager's aren't stupid.

This has to be a troll.

Any MBA newbie can look at a spreadsheet and see which games made the most money and which cost the least to develop. You know that MS Project can automatically report on which parts of a project overran, who was managing those tasks, who was assigned to actually code them?

Ah, of course. A list of who to blame, complete with pie charts and graphs. Do you have any idea how fucking lame this sounds? Can't you just see the six figure assholes clicking around their spreadsheets trying to find someone to fire?

People actually claim the game industry isn't fucked? Please.

Must be nice to have a piece of software that can do your job for you.

Yep. Makes it that much easier for yuppity-fuck managers to throw people out in the street so they don't get their wide asses fired first.

When the market stops rewarding the first and starts rewarding the best, then managers will change their policy, but not before then.

Managers are only interested in their own paycheck. They couldn't give a flying rip-shit about the game, company, market, or anything else.
It's the game media that drives early release of shitty games.

Re:Money.

[chrisd]

While this isn't how we run Damage, one thing you are not taking into accoutn is funding cycles and how they completely subvert what most professional developers would consider a proper development model

Chris

Re:Money.

[SpikeSpiff]

Money is what is wrong with game development. We should all be running free character-based GPL MUDS writing in MS BASIC.

If that prick Carmack would give back his Ferrari, we could have some good games.

Seriously though, like democracy, the free market is the worst way to develop games, except for all of the other ways.

Re:Money.

[Paradise Pete]

The Space Program: Fourteen deaths in 20 years? Imagine seeing those kinds of statistics in, say, the trucking industry.

Unless you compare it on a per-truckload basis, of course.

Re:Money.

[Natdog]

It also decides what games we'll ever see. I don't know if you've heard about this, but Konami of Europe has decided to deny all of Europe Suikoden 3 because they felt it wouldn't make a profit for them.

Also, Suikoden 3 was pulled from the shelves in the states here as well. Konami has yet to comment on that, but I wouldn't rule out that Konami of America agreed with Konami of Europe about the profitability issue.

Things like this frustrate me to no end, because these are good games, and much more fun to play (at least for me) than some of the crap that's being pushed out on the market, but time and time again the all mighty dollar will forever get in the way. But eh, it's a business, so I guess it's to be expected.

The ironic thing is that if an independent group ever translated Suikoden 3 into German/French/Italian and released it over there, Konami would shut them down faster than they could blink, crying "Theft! We're loosing money!" all the way, but eh, it's a business.

Re:Money.

[SpikeSpiff]

How about per mile? I don't know. I just think it means we shouldn't panic.

Re:Money.

[Pvt_Waldo]

And then there's Valve

Re:Money.

[len_harms]

Some games no matter HOW long they took will never be done. Hmm that does not sound right. How about no matter how long they took they simply can not gold plate what is a lump of dog poo.

I keep going back to games that are fun to play. The ones coming out now are just 1 time play games. I have bought maybe one or two games in the past few years that I would play again. It was not because they were 'half-done' or not ready. It just that most were not that fun to play. They keep thinking if the just add MORE graphics to it the game will get better. Well it will not.

Bought Xenosaga yesterday. The thing started off just fine. DEFINATLY some potential for it. However after the intro the game has started to degen into a lame whiny story of a game. Im not done with it yet. However if it does not improve with the story I probably will just stop playing it half way through. I have done this with more games than I want to count. I think I was not the target group for it. But I will give it a few more days of play time to find out. After that it will go on the shelf.

The one game lately I keep going back to even after a few weeks playing something else has been dungeon siege. It has that me vs the computer going for it. It also has the 'oh just a few more guys to kill and I will go to sleep' going for it also.

Usually if I am not still playing a game after a week. It will never get played again. Not quite sure what sort of games I want to play. But I am very sure that it is not the 1st/3rd person shooter with really wizzy graphics with some dull story line.

Re:Money.

[Anonymous Coward]

And then there's mod teams that sell out to a developer that hasn't released a new game in 5 years.

Re:Money.

[andr0meda]

I am sad to say this is actually true. Publishers just care about living through the year, selling something, then sitting through the next year..etc.. instead of going the extra mile and let the content mature. I'm not gonna go into any details, but if I ran my own studio & concept, things would be very different.

It's not that we're not able to be creative, it's that selling "a" product is more important than creating "the" product, because of tight deadlines.. I guess you all know that games HAVE to be ready in september, because they need to be in store by december? No. Games don't have to be ready. They ARE ready or they are not. The problem is it costs extra money. Money they have, in some cases at least, but money they don't seem fit to spend.

But I'm not a manager.

Re:Money.

[Art Tatum]

the free market is the worst way to develop games, except for all of the other ways.

Heh. Nicely put. Except the part about Democracy. Democracy really sucks. But a Republic is nice. :-)

Re:Money.

[Paradise Pete]

I just think it means we shouldn't panic.

No argument here.

+5 insightful

[kingkade]

A quote from article:

Shigeru Miyamoto: For me, the most interesting thing about video games is taking the controller and using it to move something around on the screen.

Hmmm, indeed. Is everybody sure this is the actual genius behind the classics like SMB?

Re:+5 insightful

[tc]

I think he's saying (possibly poorly translated), that it's the controls, and how the user actually engages with the character(s) they are controlling. That point of contact is the key thing to get right.

That's one thing he's nailed beautifully in his titles, and it's probably one reason they're so well received.

Re:+5 insightful

[$$$$$exyGal]

Which article was that in? I couldn't find it :(.

Here's another funny quote (not Miyamoto):

... gamer culture is new and frankly has a strongly negative social connotation.

Thanks for being frank ;-)

Re:+5 insightful

[igomaniac]

What do _you_ think makes a game interesting? The packaging? The scantily clad women? The fact that you get to be james bond? Please...

Games are about user interaction, that is taking the controller and using it to move something around on the screen. There are far too many game developers who forget the fundamentals. Actually it is a mark of a true professional that they focus on the fundamentals, this is why Shigeru Miyamoto has developed an unprecedented string of hit titles and is respected by almost everyone in the industry...

Re:+5 insightful

[waveclaw]

Shigeru Miyamoto: For me, the most interesting thing about video games is taking the controller and using it to move something around on the screen.

Hmmm, indeed. Is everybody sure this is the actual genius behind the classics like SMB?

Can't be, everybody knows the most interesting thing is watching the characters play out a dramatic and artistic movie everytime something happens (a la Blood Omen 2, Final Fantasy 8.) Doesn't he know how hard it is to create a program that takes input from the player and actually does it on the screen!?!?

Furthermore, there is no need for the player to control his/her character (Myst, Riven.) They are just there to fork over the dough for our cheeply made, low budget movie clips! How dare he malign our marketing model.

Gamers *playing* games. Hummprf. The nerve...

Re:+5 insightful

[Azureflare]

Well, I feel it might be that Miyamoto is referring to the ease with which you control the player on the screen. SMB you had four buttons (start select A B) and directional arrows. The simplistic interface makes the game intuitive (at first) and easy to use (at first) though the game has a very steep curve towards the later parts of the game. You have to get really good. But the cool thing is, there isn't the mindless "point-and-click" It's more about timing. Modern console games have made it certainly more complicated (with a bajillion buttons) but there's still that synchronicity that happens that is very cool, and is very important for making a game fun. It's not the spiffy graphics that necessarily make a game fun. I found games like NWN and DS to be fun at first, but after the nth repetitive level with the nth repetitive bad guys, it lost it's appeal (also the fact that the games themselves were incredibly easy, IMO.)

Re:+5 insightful

[kingkade]

good point, well-designed controls can make it feel like the game character is an extension of the player, and movement of the char is practically second nature.

The reason i say this: remember in some super mario bros boards, when your char is traveling along the top of the ceiling, just offscreen? when you move the character around and you jump over holes (to keep from falling down throught the ceiling, or whatever), you can actually *feel* where mario is going to land :) I always thought that was freaky, but cool sideeffect from these games, maybe from playing too much. but now i think it might be because of intuative controls.

Re:+5 insightful

[civilizedINTENSITY]

There are two points of contact, and they form a feedback loop. The controls, and the display. His statement involves both. It is engaging the cusp of these two sides of the loop that is crucial. We, the gamers, form said cusp.

Re:+5 insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

Shutup asshole. You couldn't carry Miyamoto's shoelaces.

Re:+5 insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say that he's addressing the simple sense of whimsy that comes over a gamer who's enjoying a good game, exploring what he or she is able to do on the screen with just a pad and some buttons. For new or novice gamers, controls are the first hurdle to overcome, but Miyamoto's games have always controlled very well.

I'd say that a modern developer who has grown up with all of these things taken for granted is a person who is much more likely to have forgotten all about the basics. But as one of the industry's pioneers, I think it's refreshing that he hasn't forgotten what that feeling feels like.

Try to remember how cool it was and how overcome with awe you were when you picked up your first great video game and just tried doing everything that you could, because games were a new phenomenon to you. Remember what it was like (or imagine what it might be like) seeing your own kids enjoying well-designed video games for the first time. ...and people wonder why Nintendo does so well with gamers of all ages.

Re:+5 insightful

[roman_mir]

He said: "For me...", so what's up with you?

Re:+5 insightful

[Omerna]

Actually it's because Mario stayed in the middle of the screen when you were running forward... you naturally looked to the middle of your TV and hence where he was gonna land.

Re:+5 insightful

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

compared to seamus blackley? He said in the article, "The number one problem we have with design is that we don't know who we are designing for..." YET Miyamoto knows exactly who to design for, and can shit hit titles out of his asshole because he knows what he's doing.

And to think.. Seamus Blackley said that Miyamoto was what was wrong with the gaming industry... I therefore conclude that Seamus blackley is officially "Full of Shit."

Re:+5 insightful

[JPriest]

That is the largest problem with the XBox and one of the reasons the PlayStation has been so successful.

Re:+5 insightful

[WNight]

Oh yeah, yet another mario or zelda clone! Wow, Nintendo is so much fun.

Playing Nintendo games is the intellectual equivalent of being a co-driver in NASCAR. "Left. Left. Straight. Left. Left. Straight."

It's trivial to shit hit games when the bar is so low.

Problems with Game Development

[podperson]

I found Seamus Blakely's remarks interesting but hardly exhaustive. It seems to me that the simplest way of describing the problem with the games industry is this: "Hollywood".

As computer games have become big business, the process of creating one bears a striking resemblance to the process of developing a film idea: no-one (as William Goldman famously said) knows anything, and they're all terrified of risk.

1) Avoid Technical Risk -- don't develop new game engines. Use an existing engine and plug new content into it.

2) Avoid Financial Risk -- sequels do better than new titles, so invest in sequels.

3) Aim for the lowest common denominator -- dialog needs to be localised, so avoid too much of it. Everyone understands explosions -- so do lots of them.

4) Spend as much on promotion as development. The key is to sell a lot of copies at full price really soon after release, because if you don't, people will figure out how unoriginal your game really is and you'll be selling at a tiny margin.

And as in the film industry, most of the interesting stuff is done by small independent developers on shoestring budgets. Of course, once they have a hit they get converted into a commodity product that spawns huge budget low innovation sequels.

Re:Problems with Game Development

[nomadic]

3) Aim for the lowest common denominator -- dialog needs to be localised, so avoid too much of it. Everyone understands explosions -- so do lots of them.

Best example would be the Ultima series. Started with little dialog, moved upwards, peaked at Ultima 6 where you typed in keywords. Then Ultima 7 went to the mindless "choose-your-response" system that everyone does. Depressing.

Re:Problems with Game Development

[fatgraham]

Of course, once they have a hit they get converted into a commodity product that spawns huge budget low innovation sequels.

The problem is, if you change it too much, people will complain that it wasnt anything like the original, and then wont sell. (see points 1 & 2)

If your big flagship product doesnt sell you go under and then cant make "original" games that only the minority will buy

Again, the problem is, theres too much money invested in games.

Publishers pay millions for liscences, publishers pay developers millions to develop it, developers pay millions(ish) to Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony to develop on their platforms

If it doesnt sell, A LOT, theres problems.

Re:Problems with Game Development

[stevarooski]

Great post. I once thought of working in this industry, but an internship with a large game company cured that quickly. Some thoughts based on my experience:

1) Avoid Technical Risk -- don't develop new game engines. Use an existing engine and plug new content into it.

The use of 'middleware' is an increasing trend. Even larger companies that don't use middleware will do an engine rewrite for each new console and then spend the rest of the time recycling. Yeah, maybe this is a great idea from the business side of things, but usually doesn't lead to terribly innovative games. Whats interesting is how the middleware industry is growing based on this fact. I have no stats to back this up, but even with notable exceptions it seems that its rare that a game house develops their own engine anymore.

2) Avoid Financial Risk -- sequels do better than new titles, so invest in sequels.

This is true, but even more so its liscences that are becoming the investment of choice. Games based on movies/TV shows/etc can be outsourced to a starving studio on a ridiculous deadline, stuffed into a middleware engine, and released as quickly as possible. Some aren't too bad, but the majority make a quick buck then die fast, glutting the market with crap.

4) Spend as much on promotion as development. The key is to sell a lot of copies at full price really soon after release, because if you don't, people will figure out how unoriginal your game really is and you'll be selling at a tiny margin.

Absolutely true. Example: EA spends serious money on adverts on ESPN, etc. Aside from the usual print ads, commercials with atheletes, etc, they also paid ABC to have Monday Night Football use Madden 2003 for instant replays. The amount of money spent in marketing was staggering, and for this reason it blew its competitor--NFL 2K3--out of the water sales-wise, even tho 2K3 was in many ways a more solid product.

It seems like gameplay innovation in the industry is such a huge gamble that its just not worth it to most studios. There was an article in PCGamer a while back about how Dungeon Seige got funding originally. The programmers were getting paid off the founders credit cards for a while until Microsoft picked the project up. God, the faith it would take to pull a gamble like that off. . .

My .02!

Re:Problems with Game Development

[zaffir]

Great, great points. Especially the lowest common denom one - big boobs, tight clothes, and lots of explosions sell. However, i don't see anything wrong with using someone else's engine. You don't have to reinvent the wheel (but you are allowed to tweak it to your liking), which means the company can spend more of its dev time making good content and not have to worry about completely designing and debugging and spending money on their own engine. That also leaves the engine work to the people who really know what the hell they're doing when it comes to 3D (it seems that FPSs are the only games, atm, that have liscensed engines). Engine liscensing allows developers who might lack the more advanced technical skill to still make a great game.

Re:Problems with Game Development

[0000 0111]

1) Avoid Technical Risk -- don't develop new game engines. Use an existing engine and plug new content into it.

It's not bad that they prefer to use an existing game engine. Really. At this point, game engines are really like the DVD player is to Hollywood. The amount of effort and talent that it takes to harness new technology as fast as it comes out is huge. Better to subdivide that task off to other sectors of the industry than to push it in-house. I'm not knocking what you're saying but I think the situation has changed in the last few years so maybe what you're saying isn't entirely relevent with this particular example. I agree with all your points for the most part but using an existing engine is not limited to or consisting only of "plugging in new content". At this point I believe we're actually better off on every level by companies taking advantage of the latest offerings from the game engine developers.

Re:Problems with Game Development

[Anonymous Coward]

Best example would be the Ultima series. Started with little dialog, moved upwards, peaked at Ultima 6 where you typed in keywords. Then Ultima 7 went to the mindless "choose-your-response" system that everyone does. Depressing.

Actually, I liked Ultima 7 for that very reason, I felt it made the story more fluid and minimized the boring guess work of "which word do I need to say to this asshole so I can get on with the quest?"

Re:Problems with Game Development

[Torgo's Pizza]

I found Seamus Blakely's remarks interesting but hardly exhaustive.

Blame the interviewer. My guess is this guy with 2 years of experience working on his high school newspaper grabbed him between conference sessions and asked for five minutes of his time. After whipping out his tape recorder and asking his five questions written on a tattered notecard his clicked STOP and he thought he had his story.

No followup questions at all. I mean, Seamus made some pretty bold statements. Like not following a design document because it "limits creativity". What the hell does that mean? Game developers shouldn't use a design document at all? Use one, but don't let the publisher see it? I'd be all over that statement, but no... we're forced by the interviewer to move on. Good grief? Doesn't anyone writing on the game industry have a journalism or English degree?

Re:Problems with Game Development

[Anonymous Coward]

I know what you mean. I wanted to get in the foo industry, but then I saw how things worked at a big foo company. Now I'm like no way!

Re:Problems with Game Development

[Backward Z]

You know, I have a really hard time agreeing with that. What you say is very true, but there's something that's striking a bad chord.

The only really great game I can think of that used another game's engine was Half Life. Even then, the Quake engine was HEAVILY modified. There's all sorts of other "me-too" FPS's out there that use the UT or Quake engines, but for the most part, those bore me to death. Games that really stand out in my mind are games that couldn't have possibly used the engine from another game.

When Epic or id make an engine, they're making the engine for their game, Unreal or Quake, right? (Humor me here, I know UT and Quake are nothing more than tech demos to show off the engines these days, but just follow me) These guys, they sit down and they build an engine to do really cool 3D stuff and acheive basic principles of gameplay that are standard in the industry. It's the same idea already stated here about making sequels. I can easily see some producer saying, "X game did well and IT used the Q3 engine, so why can't you?" It's financially secure, sure, but restricts development, because it's not made for X game. It's made for tons of games. That's why Quake and UT are straight up boring deathmatch/CTF games. That's why there's no depth. They're falling to the lowest common demoninator.

Let's look at the real standout games of the past while in my mind: Rez, Silent Hill 2, Contra: Shattered Soldier, Ikaruga, Zelda: Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, Mario Sunshine, Eternal Darkness, Splinter Cell, Steel Batallion, Guilty Gear X2, etc. These games could not have been accomplished on someone else's engine. You can tweak an engine all you want, but in order to make a game that really fits like a glove, you've gotta build your own that's designed specifically for that game.

Now, there are exceptions to this. Sega used the Jet Set Radio graphics engine for a few of their arcade titles, but that's where similarities ended. GTA VC used the GTAIII engine, but it was also THE SAME FRIGGING GAME. The THPS engine's been passed around quite a bit, but then again, all those XTREME sports games are the SAME FRIGGING GAMES, too.

Liscensed engines stand in the way of innovation, for sure, and if you ask me, innovation is by far the most precious and important thing in video games today. Because what the world really needs is another deathmatch game. Or more crappy platformers that try like hell to look like Jak & Daxter. Or more stealth action games with retarded enemy AI.

Next thing we gotta do is convince the magazines to hire reviewers with brains in their heads. That would help, too.

Re:Problems with Game Development

[Erasmus Darwin]

"GTA VC used the GTAIII engine, but it was also THE SAME FRIGGING GAME. The THPS engine's been passed around quite a bit, but then again, all those XTREME sports games are the SAME FRIGGING GAMES, too."

Uh, don't GTA3 and THPS3 both use the Renderware engine? And yet those two aren't "THE SAME FRIGGING GAME".

Re:Problems with Game Development

[ShwAsasin]

GTA VC used the GTAIII engine, but it was also THE SAME FRIGGING GAME!!

Both games use the RenderWare platform. VC is a far better game, in terms of overall depth than GTA3. It's a good worthy sequel.

Re:Problems with Game Development

[Anonymous Cow herd]

What in the name of Bob does the game engine have to do with gameplay? Licensing a game engine allows developers to spend more time on what's important: gameplay, content and story. Saying licensed engines are bad is like saying movies are bad because it's all the same thing, dyed celluloid scrolling past a projection lamp.

There are plenty of "great" games out there that use, for example, the Quake engines, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Jedi Knight II, Half-Life, and its derivative, Counter-Strike. Nearly all the games you listed up there were console games, which is really financially an order of magnitue different on all scales from PC development.

What it all really boils down to is that if your game is crap, it's going to be crap regardless of whether it's done with the Quake engine, an in-house engine, or ascii graphics.

Re:Problems with Game Development

[Hast]

Doesn't anyone writing on the game industry have a journalism or English degree?

That's a rethorical question, right?

Re:Problems with Game Development

[Backward Z]

It's hard to argue that PC games aren't going down the crapper, man.

I'm not saying liscensing is a bad thing, I'm just saying in many cases, it will stand in the way of innovation. MoH, Jedi Knight, CS, those are cool games, whatever, but nothing people will still be talking about five years from now like they will games like Metroid or Splinter Cell.

All the games you listed have one thing in common, they're first person shooters, excuding Jedi Knight's third person lightsaber mode. I'm of the opinion that FPS's are way overdone and I've been tired of them since Duke 3D, making a few exceptions along the way to play them, like Half Life or Halo or something, but what they really need is someone to really push the genre forward, which no one has, unless, again, you count Metroid, which is a FPS hybrid. And don't say Halo. Halo did nothing to push the genre forward that Half Life already hadn't.

A while back, I figured out the big difference between PC and console games. Console games take a more cinematic approach to gaming. There's a story, there's a set path to follow, and when you finish the game, it's over, unless you want to go back and find easter eggs. PC games are mostly time sinks. 99% of PC games on the market today are either FPS's, isometric strategy games/RPGs, MMORPGS, or sims. They're time sinks. FPS's, you play multiplayer until your ears bleed. MMORPGS, you play until your ears bleed, online strategy games, you play until your ears bleed. In the end, you get some sort of ladder standing at best. Single player definately takes a backseat to the multiplayer, where they can string you along for months with patches and upgrades, which cost nothing, then expansion packs, which cost usually $30. And then, there's the mod community, that really pisses me off. People buy Half Life for Counterstrike or Day of Defeat. NOT for Half Life. Same thing with UT mods. The problem here, we've got good, dedicated designers that are selling copies of games that see no benefit other than the stresses of a community demanding more. Quake would not survive without the mod scene, college students everywhere working for free to fill Carmack and Newell's pockets.

The PC market is crap, man, and ain't no one going to convince me otherwise.

Re:Problems with Game Development

[podperson]

It's not bad that they prefer to use an existing game engine. Really. At this point, game engines are really like the DVD player is to Hollywood.

I think you're being a tad obtuse. There's a difference between the DVD Player and the game engine! There's also a difference between using middleware to -- for example -- handle 3D sound or video, and adding new content to an existing engine. Complaining about Middleware is like complaining about OpenGL and DirectX -- you mean you want to write EVERYTHING from scratch?

E.g. all games based on the Quake and Unreal engines have, so far, been pretty much the same. So have a bunch of games based on similar, less popular, engines.

One of the most innovative titles in recent years -- Thief -- could have been built using an existing engine (and Thief III is being built using Unreal), but it wasn't.

You need to bear in mind that the top engines, such as Unreal and Quake, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to license -- this money doesn't come from nowhere; it comes from someone who wants to avoid risk, etc. etc. and so once you license a name-brand engine you're already locked into Hollywood problems.

Let's go back to the DVD analogy. I can make an innovative short film using digital cameras, edit it on a Mac, and deliver it on a DVD -- all for a few thousand dollars. If I think I have a brilliant idea, all I need is to max out my credit card, lose a lot of sleep, and voila.

Games

[Selfbain]

Is it just me or does everyone else think that the older systems, like the atari and nintendo put out way higher quality games (as far as gameplay goes)than the modern systems seem to provide?

Re:Games

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously more time and money gets spent on marketing, getting that lens-flare right, or getting the texturing perfect, than the actual gameplay itself.

Re:Games

[Trurl's Machine]

Is it just me or does everyone else think that the older systems, like the atari and nintendo put out way higher quality games (as far as gameplay goes)than the modern systems seem to provide?

I disagree. I am a veteran of the 8-bit era ("Commodore r0000lz!"), but if I would have to name the best computer games of all time, I don't think I would mention any pre-1995 title. The best game ever is in my opinion "Deus Ex" - in terms of gameplay and storyline it's unbeatable by anything available on 8-bit machines. It's the first computer game I ever played, that I have found equal to a good science-fiction novel or movie. And the storylines of "Tomb Raider IV: The Last Revelation", "Max Payne" or "Return To Castle Wolfenstein" - they aren't bad neither. I would never trade these games for the text-based adventures of my youth. I don't think anything is wrong with game development, if they make them as good as they are.

On the other hand, anybody knows if the Level 9 adventures are somehow available now?

Re:Games

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. The last game i really played to end in singleplayer-mode was Warcraft 1. Starcraft was cool in Multiplayer, but not that fascinating with its nevertheless great story. I don't really know why this older gems are better, they just are. I enjoyed the dialogs in Simon the Sorcerer, but newer Adventures are somehow boring.
But there are gems! Why do people play simple-games like Clonk, DrugWar or Web-Flash-Games? These are fun, pure, simple, brilliant.
But to one point our times have: Multiplayer. Counterstrike is enormous and more often played than PacMan i suppose, but could you imagine, what the developers of PacMan had created, if they would have had such an available internet?

Re:Games

[jkeyes]

That is 100% true, I do believe the new systems have created the type of gamer known as the Graphics Whore, they only care about how things look, not gameplay, storyline or gasp even if its fun only the looks. I do believe these people should be rounded up and shot. Oh and if anyone cares planetgamecube.com has audio from the DICE roundtable.

Re:Games

[Anonymous Coward]

Graphics are still in development, they will be for another 10 years or so. It's just now it's really starting to get interesting (all that extra cpu on the new machines).

Re:Games

[brave1]

I also wonder if the "old school" games were generally more fun to play. The old Atari/Colecovison/Intellivision games had an advantage over the the newer games: simplicity. The early games were mostly pick up and play. Nowadays, it can be a serious commitment to learn a new game. I believe that's one reason why sequels and "rehashes" are so popular: They lower the amount of time that return users have to spend learning the new game. People like new things in a familiar package (Like "New" Tide).

Re:Games

[eglamkowski]

Not really - such a huge number of games were released for the older systems, but we only remember the best of those games.

Today, you see a huge number of games released for your current system and are reminded every time you walk into a video game store of the ratio of good to bad games.

Re:Games

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'd really rather be playing Space Invaders or Bubble Bobble than Splinter Cell or SSX. Damn new consoles, everything was way better before.

Re:Games

[texaport]

With the trading day almost over in Japan, Sega shares have dropped significantly according to Reuters story ID2313076. Reports of 'White Knight' Bill Gates buying them: "shares were down 5.41 percent at 700 yen after falling as low as 666 yen" ... sure enough, Microsoft at work here with that bottom range!

Re:Games

[MyAss]

You think Deus Ex is better than System Shock 1 or 2?

Lost in translation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he said something else, *cough*tenticlerape*cough*, but they translated it differently.

Re:Lost in translation?

[Anonymous Coward]

You spelled tentacle wrong, shithead.

Were you trying to make a joke about anime? If so, you failed: miserably and unremarkably.

Gamer's know what they want!

[Metallic Matty]

Sometimes we'll sit around when we're bored and think of ways games could be better; different implementation systems and cool ideas that would just kick ass in games. Developers should just randomly show up at lan parties and ask questions. =)

Re:Gamer's know what they want!

[Threni]

Gamer's Know? What is that - the name of a bar?

What used to happen was there'd be `copy parties` in Europe; this was in the `80's and `90's, when all game/demo coding was done in Europe, as Americans didn't have a clue (though it was cool to host the BBS's there, as it was cheaper to leech from them due to the calling card scam scene). People would do demos and copy cracked (note `cracked`, not `hacked` ;) games, and some of them would get together and write games, and start little companies. Many of the best game coders in the `90's (and now, i guess) started that way.
But with the general obsession with new 3d hardware, polygon count and money, only accessible games are produced - it takes way too much money for just a coder, artist and musician to produce a game, and the distribution is all stitched up. So, instead of being able to look at a game and see immediately whether its an ST, Amiga, PC, console etc, it's just impossible to tell them apart. That goes for the games too. There is precious little originality, next to no intelligence required to play the games.

What is needed is some sort of punk ethos to give the current situation a kick in the pants - all this Doom and racing car and RPG crap is, to my mind, equivalent to the bloated, self-indulgant prog-rock/disco crap of the mid 70's.

Re:Gamer's know what they want!

[zwoelfk]

If you don't think developers play games like everyone else, you're nuts! It's not like we're off in some secluded island together hatching designs in a vacuum.

If you have a really cool idea, have you considered actually emailing a development team about it? Geez, it's not that complicated. Just don't be surprised if there is actually a good reason why your concept isn't in the game already. Or if like a billion people haven't already thought of it. But send it anyway! Who knows?

Re:Gamer's know what they want!

[Metallic Matty]

Sure they're gamers. Hell, I'm sure they all are! =)

Re:Gamer's know what they want!

[chrisseaton]

Perhaps if game designers didn't spend their time reading slashdot...

(cracks whip)

Get back to work!

Re:Gamer's know what they want!

[Cuthalion]

The real problem with a punk ethos succeeding is that the development scale of games is so much huger now. If you make a game that looks like Ultima5 today, nobody's going to play it (to those 4% of gamers who are going to respond and say otherwise, you aren't enough). So you have to make it look flashy and feel polished and use modern hardware and blah blah blah, and by this point you already need a team of at least half a dozen people, which means even if you're working for free, just keeping everything organized between all these people is a lot of work.

Re:Gamer's know what they want!

[Threni]

Maybe there's no money in it, but that hasn't stopped writers, musicians, artists etc from pushing the envelope and coming up with new genres, or outstanding pieces of work within existing genres.

But sure, I guess theres'a chance that it just isn't possible to produce a great game AND make a lot of money any more.

Original game, commercially successful game : pick any one.

Re:Gamer's know what they want!

[Karhgath]

No they don't. Gamers only know about what they are given to play with, unfortunately. Gamers can only find ways of IMPROVING actual games, they know nothing about game design. When I say gamers, it means 'most gamers', including the casual gamers and deer hunter fans.

Gamers play game A, a FPS for example. He'll find a list of hundreds of items to make game A better if he's a creative gamers that cares, otherwise he won't even think about it. However, these are just additions and changes to a specific game, or 'genre'. Gamers are blinded by the games they play, the games they are given, simple. Gamers usually aren't creative enough to think about a new and innovation game. That's why good game designers exists. If people like Sid Meiers and Miyamoto never existed, and only gamers would make games, the industry would be in a lot worst condition.

This is the problem with the industry. They can only make 'game A, which is game B with better X, Y and Z.' Good designers are able to come up with new a fresh ideas. Not revolutionary or anything, but fresh and new. However, since gamers are blinded by what they play, and only want to improve the games they play, these games either sells poorly, or are smash hits. No in-between. Gamers either give it a chance and see how great it is, or they don't bother and miss on an incredible game.

Great designers are few and far between. Anyone can think about how to make product A better, whether or not it's a game. However, to come with the idea of product A, it doesn't take a consumer/gamer, it takes a great mind(or many great minds).

Consumers, which gamers are, simply don't know what they want. They only know how to improve what they are given.

That's why focus groups and surveys and such are just the wrong way to do it. However, since making something people 'want' makes money, that's what they do, simple. That's why you get cars like the PT Cruisers that is just a piece of crap, but hey, it's popular because that's what drivers wants. Same with SUV. You could extend this problem to Democracy as a whole, but I won't even try to go near there, hehe.

Designers should make a game for THEMSELVES, not for the gamers.

Look at Blizzard. They make games for the gamers. Sure, they are very polished and incredibly detailed games, but they are just more of the same. However, since they make games for the gamers, they make tons of money. I love blizzard games, but you can't say they are innovative or anything, just more of the same, but MUCH better.

Look back at Looking Glass. They really created innovative games, for themselves and not the gamers at all. System Shock 1, Thief, Terra Nova, and some more. They created some new 'genres' themselves. The company failed, despite the critical aclaim and incredible games. Why? Simple, it wasn't 'more of the same', it wasn't what the gamers were feed with. Gamers didn't bother to try. Now, tell me capitalism doesn't have problems with innovation?

Back in the days, gamers would try new things, gamers were really all-around gamers. Today, we have gamers who 'camp' genre, who only buy type A games, like FPS, RTS, etc. They won't even bother to try other games, and won't give them a chance if they do try them.

So, the problem is as much with the gamers than the developers than the publishers.

Re:Gamer's know what they want!

[Anonymous Coward]

A five player risk game, that gives orders to 512 players in a first person shooter. A passing through railgun fight through tiger woods golf course. A very good pool game in Duke4ever....

It may cross over some day.

Re:Gamer's know what they want!

[mythr]

That really is a cool idea. Unfortunately, more than half of the 512 players would be team-killers that don't care at all about orders, so you might as well go back to the random number generator... Call me a cynic, but it seems gamers are the worst thing to happen to gaming. :(

Re:Gamer's know what they want!

[Anonymous Coward]

>a game and see immediately whether its an ST, Amiga, PC, console etc,
it's just impossible to tell them apart. That goes for the games too.
There is precious little originality, next to no intelligence required
to play the games.
>
>
Bullshit. Take a look at the latest crop of PS2 games from Japan like Zone of the Enders 2 and Dark Cloud 2. They look and playing *NOTHING* like PC/Xbox games. If you want originality in a game buy a PS2 and dump the PC and the PC game market.

Game reviewers and the common man...

[SetarconeX]

I was happy to see that he pointed out that there is a fairly sizable difference between game reviewers, and the average gamer. Now, don't get me wrong, I love Gamespot and IGN as much as the next guy, and I always yank a few reviews before I buy a game, but most of their reviewers have a different philosophy than I do.

They sit there and carefully and systematically work through each game, taking notes on the sound, music, graphics, etc. They evaluate the game the same way Roger Ebert carefully picks through a movie and sees it's good bits and bad bits.

But then, every once in a while, the normal non-professional movie fan just says "Fuck it," and rents Six String Samurai.

It's the same thing with games. I mean, I loved the depth and careful construction that went into the last Final Fantasy game. I appreciate the graphical detail in the last Warcraft game. But unlike a professional game reviewer, I'll occasionally just say screw it all and toss a quarter in the Ms. Pac-Man machine in the local arcade.

The average gamer often just wants something fun. Games that start as 300 page design documents just don't sound fun, no matter how much effort went into them. Now, maybe if the game started out as a 15 page comic book.....

Re:Game reviewers and the common man...

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're saying touches on a lot of things that I find difficult to articulate.

I agree with you that there's something wrong with what reviewers are emphasizing in their reviews. However, I'm not sure that I what reviewers focus on is necessarily bad or irrelevant. I'm not even sure it's the reviewers per se. In fact, I wish I'd see more thoughtful criticism and analysis of games.

What you're referring to when you say "the average gamer often just wants something fun", I think, is the sense that the game is being lost for all of its shell. The industry is constantly emphasizing things like the latest graphics engine, the smoothness of the UI, or whatever, and neglecting things like "is this, at its core, a fun game to play?"

I'd differ with you in suggesting that this is a result of the reviewers. I'd posit that in most genres, the problem isn't the reviewers, it's the lack of material getting to them. Perhaps it's the fact that games aren't being developed, perhaps its the fact that the games that are being developed aren't getting the coverage, perhaps it's a vicious cycle.

I good example of a genre where I think gaming has gone the right way is text adventure, and adventure more generally. It's not everyone's preference, I know. But there are those of us who find those games fun, regardless of the basic engine of the games. And for us, the games are fun, and there is plenty of innovation. Plenty of freely available games by individuals, plenty of reviews by plenty of people, communities of players who partake in playing and criticizing the games, and a burdgeoning independent commercial industry (where good games written by individuals cost 15-30 dollars). The genre of text adventure has expanded so much, that it is often more appropriate to refer to it as "interactive fiction." The creativity, diversity, and experimentation, all within the realm of interactive fiction, text adventure, whatever, is completely amazing.

Much has been made of "the death of adventure gaming". I think it couldn't be more off base. What's really happened is that adventure gaming has become isolated from the commerical industry driving gaming genres such as FPS and RTS.

Why aren't we seeing more innovation in other genres, like strategy? It seems reasonable to me that we should see more experimentation from independent developers with strategy. You need good graphics, sure, but that doesn't have to be photo-realism--it could be symbols, whatever. What really matters is the gameplay itself.

It seems to me the fundamental problem in gaming right now is a lack of innovation in fundamental gameplay. That lack of innovation is associated with a bunch of stuff: lack of experimentation, lack of variety, lack of acessibility, and so forth and so on.

When it really comes down to it, what I'm getting tired of with commercial gaming is seeing the same games over and over again with different graphics engines, different storylines, or different pictures. I'm amazed when a sequel is released, and the only change that's made is technical improvements to the graphics or the AI. Not that those aren't important, but shouldn't a new game involve improvements and innovation to the game?

Games are just getting too expensive for everyone--the developers, the players, and so forth. Part of it, I think, is due to a lingering paradigm in which true "game innovation" implies pushing the hardware envelope. There needs to be a recognition that games can be fun even without pushing the limits of hardware. Games need to be less expensive to produce, so that developers can take more risks. They need to be less expensive so players can take more risks in buying and playing them.

Re:Game reviewers and the common man...

[Anonymous Coward]

PC Gamer usually has a monthly poll of their writers/editors that asks what games they've been playing lately. So what if a game got a 90% or an A+? What matters is if the people come back and keep playing it. Theres some games I just loved, thought they were really well done, Thief II for example. Can't say I've played it since it came out.

On the other hand, I just spent a good deal of time yesterday playing Simcity 2000 (ok, bad example it might have gotten great reviews.) I recommend playing as many games as possible before you make any purchases. Uh, rent them (video games), play them at a friends'. You'll save alot of money this way, or have money to buy all the really good games.

Re:Game reviewers and the common man...

[mypalmike]

> Games that start as 300 page design documents just don't
> sound fun, no matter how much effort went into them.

By the same argument, a movie that starts out as as 300-page script shouldn't be entertaining. The thing is, this tome is not truly where a game or movie "starts". The 15-page comic book is really the starting point, but a team needs more than that to understand what they are trying to make. So they write out their ideas, inspired by the comic book (or whatever). As long as the document is considered flexible, I don't feel it reduces creativity. It's up to project leaders to encourage their developers to create organic design documents. For example, if a team uses MS Word to make it, it seems set in stone as soon as it's typed. But if they set up, say, a wiki web thing or something for the team to use, it encourages a sort of "controlled creativity".

I've worked on games with either no design document or the 300-page brick, and the lack of focus caused by the "no design doc" approach makes the latter much more preferable. In any event, the 300-pager projects usually complete within an order of magnitude of their planned schedule, which is something I've never seen on a project with no design doc.

-_-_-

Re:Game reviewers and the common man...

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

The average gamer often just wants something fun. Games that start as 300 page design documents just don't sound fun, no matter how much effort went into them. Now, maybe if the game started out as a 15 page comic book.....

Metal Gear SOlid 2 had a heavier script than the obscenely scripted Metal Gear Solid 1 did.

Guess what?

IT. WAS. FUN. Not only that, it scared the crap out of me at times.(Note: Huddled up in the dark while trying to avoid guards = bad. Neither is huddling up in the dark listening to the Colonel go whacko).

Where's the problem? The implementation of the huge design document. Sometimes it's a success. Sometimes you end up with Daikatana.

Re:Game reviewers and the common man...

[Anonymous Coward]

A good design doc can be a godsend. One that is poorly done can be a useless chunk of paper waiting to be recycled.

However I have seen many good docs and many bad ones. This is not just a problem in the gaming industry. Some have alot of words but say very little. Others are just a few pages long but are enough to write a huge program.

If you have not thought it mostly through you probably should not be coding it. Even if your inital thoughts are totaly wrong. At least you have something to sell to someone. Other wise you will never get time to code even one line. In a busness if you can not articulate what you are going to do. No one will give you money. This is not .com land. This is a busness :)

Re:Game reviewers and the common man...

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Romero, is that you?

The answer is clear

[Omega's Wildfire]

Video games are evil! They inspire the youth of our nation to kill and... All been said before. Game developers should work on quality RPGs and 1st person shooters instead of quantity.

Re:The answer is clear

[some damn guy]

"Video games are evil! They inspire the youth of our nation to kill and..."

I agree. I'm keeping my kids away from those things. They're going to play something safe like Mazes and Monsters instead.

[OT] Anyone in the game development biz?

[symbolic]

I have a younger friend who is considering some level of involvement in programming/designing games. Particular questions include:
- What specialized areas of knowledge will be most useful (math, physics, for example?)
- What's a reasonable expectation for an annual income?
- If one is using a pre-existing gaming engine, what exactly is it that needs to be programmed (he's thinking c++)?

Basically, he's wondering if he can turn his passion for playing games into one that involves creating them, but he also wants to sure he won't have to starve in order to do it.

I hope this isn't too far OT.

Re:[OT] Anyone in the game development biz?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell him to start by writing games. Start by writing a crappy text-mode adventure game, just to learn C. A few friends will play it because they are your friends, that's all. That try for something bigger.

Write in your "spare time". Short cycles are best, don't spend 2 years in the basement writing the Great American Novel Game. Say to yourself, I'm going to write a game to show my friends next month. Get something playable next month.

If you don't have something awesome in two years, take your collection of work to a game interview. If you do, put the first 2 levels up for free on download.com, and get an account on kagi.com to sell the next levels. See where it goes.

Income ? Expect to have to keep the day job for a long time.

Re:[OT] Anyone in the game development biz?

[zwoelfk]

There are thousands of sites devoted to game development. Start there.
And just make a game. Copy something simple just to see what it takes.
There isn't a magic answer to these questions. There are lots of different routes and specialties and they change all the time. Just be a good programmer and study whatever you can.

Re:[OT] Anyone in the game development biz?

[Cannelbrae]

Specialized areas? All the math he can learn. Other than that, it depends entirely on what area he is interested in programming. AI? Sound? Graphics? Networking? Physics? Those are all specialized jobs.

If he can find one that he likes to focus on, all the better. Being a specialist first, a generalist second -- its the only way to stand out from all the other generalists. :) Oh, and learning to communicate with humans is generally a necessity, so be sure to focus on it.

Income? Depends entirely on where he lives. Anything from 15k to 40k starting, up to 35k to 100k once he has several years of experience. In general, take whatever a buisness c++ programmer makes in the area and lower it a bit. Of course, this assumes that the current tend of outsourcing to India/other standard locations slows.

Developers buy existing engines either as a kit or as a foundation. Many developers use it as a foundation to allow content producers to start working day 1 instead of having to wait for the programmers to write the renderer, get everything stable, etc.

Typically, huge chunks of the licensed engine are ripped out and replaced with inhouse code specialized to the title. Anything in the engine is fair game for rewritting.

The game logic generally is always written per game, so he can count on that.

Main suggestion:
1) Specialize in something like physics or networking which isn't saturated (like 3d).
2) Start out early, getting involved with teams making games as quickly as possible. Any of the mod communities out there are wonderful for building these skills.

Re:[OT] Anyone in the game development biz?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most game development these days is done in Visual Basic, because computers have gotten so fast that programmers find that they can save a lot of development time working in a language that is so easy to use. In the old days, a programmer might be able to make a few lines of progress in a day, but with the modern Visual Basic tools, the entire game can be fleshed out into a playable demo in 2 days, or 4 if you're a beginner. I'm talking about a game like Quake here, not some tic-tac-toe clone.

The most important things to study are history, because the best games have to be historically accurate. There's a huge demand for historians to develop historically accurate games such as Age of Empires. That game lets you simulate combat between ancient empires, and if you want to recreate the epic battles between England and Korea in the middle ages, you'd better know your history. After that, math is important, but not as much as you think. Basic arithmetic is pretty much all you need, because the computer can keep track of the tough details by itself. That's why they make computers, after all.

With these kinds of skills, and a good focus, a starting game programmer will make more than 6 figures a year, and now that most people have high speed internet access they can work from home a lot of the time. Good luck, and I hope to see your younger friend in the industry in the future on my team!

designing games

[suhit]

I am taking a game design class at school and here are some readings that you all may find interesting. I wonder whether after reading the articles below and sticking to the concepts, will we become better game developers?

"Game Engine Anatomy 101" by Jake Simpson - http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,594,00. asp

"Formal Abstract Design Tools" by Doug Church - http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19990716/design_ tools_01.htm

"2000: Formal Design Tools: Emergent Complexity, Emergent Narrative" by Marc "MAHK" LeBlanc - http://www.algorithmancy.org

Re:designing games

[Anonymous Coward]

Doug Church? MAHK? Wow! I remember these guys, thanx for the links!

Tels

I'll tell you whats wrong with the game industry

[t0qer]

Lack of innovation, thats right, a serious lack of innovation, and too many "me too" games.

Waaaayy back in the day, the atari 2600 was the #1 console. It died a horrible death mainly because of all the crap "me too" clones of astroids, combat, and pac man clones (actually the 2600 pacman stunk like turds)

Later we got the nintendo 8-bit. OOh wow, easter eggs in mario, now every game has easter eggs and secret codes. Now everyone wants to program platform games because "If mario is such a popular platform game, mine should be too!"

Later we saw the puzzle game "me too" phase where everyone and their brother was doing some sort of "tetris" clone. Nintendo had Dr. Mario, Sega had columns, Atari came out with some shit game called "klax". For a while there it seemed everyone and their brother was trying to do some spin on tetris.

Now it's the same old crap, and game companies STILL haven't learned their lessons. Yay we have procedural textured mapped polygons on a box that can do 3gabillion vertices per second. Who cares about the game! Just look at those fill rates! Wow look it's tetris, but it's better because it's IN 3D WOW! Yeah i'm just lining up at best buy before they open so I CAN GET MY COPY TOO!

I suppose when they release the next generation of consoles, we're going to see the same old crap, but with more wizzbang graphics than you can shake a stick at.

In the words of Roddy Piper, "It's like putting perfume on a pig."

Half-right

[tc]

"Seamus Blackley is a brilliant man that's never at a loss for words."

Well, that's half right, he certainly does talk a lot. Honestly, I think the main thing that's wrong with the games industry is pricks like Blackley who are more interested in acting like rock stars than in making games.

Re:Half-right

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, he struck me as a huckster too.

Re:Half-right

[scot4875]

Also, he gave only one example to back up any of what he said ('GTA was Pac-Man...'), and even that was very nebulous. I don't know whether this is because he was just talking out his ass (likely), or because Gamespot reporters are not journalists (most likely it's a combination of the two).

It's just amazing what people will allow to be spoon-fed to themselves these days. Blackley is the epitome of this.

--Jeremy

Re:Half-right

[Anonymous Coward]

What is Wrong With Game Development?
Warrior-GS writes "Seamus Blackley
- - - - - - - cut here - - - - - - -

Developers have too much pressure

[$$$exy Gwen Stefani]

A programmer can only code for so many hours every day. It's not like turning a light on or off; programming takes time, the right moment, and deep concentration to be done right.

I love programming. It's like a cross between a fine art, such as opera, and a deeply complex science, such as molecular physics. There's a math portion of it, and there's an art portion of it. But the bottom line is that there's no business part of coding. So, when managers and the other suits try to tell the coders, "OK, well put in a good 8 hrs of coding today, and Mike and Punjab will as well, and we'll have 24 hrs of coding done today on NewGameApp v1.0." Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.

Go read Mythical Man Month [Link]. It's all about these typical manegerial expectations and how they're blatantly wrong.

You want to fix game development? STOP WORKING THE PROGRAMMERS SO HARD.

Re:Developers have too much pressure

[nomadic]

The problem can also be when coders pretend they're designers. Some call put it off. Many can't.

Re:Developers have too much pressure

[sql*kitten]

So, when managers and the other suits try to tell the coders, "OK, well put in a good 8 hrs of coding today, and Mike and Punjab will as well, and we'll have 24 hrs of coding done today on NewGameApp v1.0." Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.

Which is why PMs go round and ask programmers, "how long do you think it will take to code this?" (this being described in a functional spec sent round earlier). Then they take the number, fudge it (multiply by 1.5 or 3 or maybe even more, depending on how well you know that developer's history) and enter that into the plan. Then you can reasonably say, programmer X should have feature Y completed by time Z. The project plan might have 1000 person-days on it; a team of 25 should be able to get that done in 40 days.

I love programming. It's like a cross between a fine art, such as opera, and a deeply complex science, such as molecular physics.

Unless you are at the cutting edge of theoretical research in a top-ranked CS faculty, or a Fellow at a major corporation, that simply isn't true. Programming is a skilled craft like carpentry. A few programmers are cabinetmakers, most are in the construction industry. Anyone who likens it to "fine art" is either pretentious or inexperienced.

Re:Developers have too much pressure

[Anonymous Coward]

" The project plan might have 1000 person-days on it; a team of 25 should be able to get that done in 40 days."

Hofstadter's Law:
It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account.

Re:Developers have too much pressure

[Anonymous Coward]

The project plan might have 1000 person-days on it; a team of 25 should be able to get that done in 40 days.

If you had ever done any real work in the real world, you would have known that those 25 people need to communicate with one another. The overhead of that is extremely significant to the project duration.

It is as if the mythical man month never happened...

Anyone who likens it to "fine art" is either pretentious or inexperienced.

Anyone who cannot see the art in programming is not a programmer. He's at best a pretentious wannabee.

Re:Developers have too much pressure

[mad.frog]

Interestingly, a top producer at my former employer (a game studio) told me explicitly that he didn't believe the whole "mythical man month thing" (his words, not mine).

Re:Developers have too much pressure

[stanmann]

Anyone who cannot see the art in programming is not a programmer. He's at best a pretentious wannabee.

Actually, he is probably a coder... one of those disgusting people who learned a programming language, and believes that knowing how to turn a design document into code in that language makes him a programmer, when in fact he will be replaced by an automated code system some day.

Insane release deadlines?

[some damn guy]

Games should be released _when they're done_ and not a day sooner. Duh. It's not just an art vs. business thing either. Releasing a buggy or incomplete game is just a stupid business decision bent on making Wall Street's quarterly earnings targets- instead of improving the long term success of the company.

Oh, and people who have spent most of their lives passionately making cool games should realize selling out to a greedy, stupid and public company like EA isn't necessarily going to make their lives better- even if they are very (very) rich.

Re:Insane release deadlines?

[Dixie_Flatline]

Y'know, a lot of people say this, but I think only half of them believe it. It seems to be policy here at BioWare to try and release games when they're done, not when marketing says we're supposed to. And yet, when we miss a ship date, people are kind of upset. Meeting deadlines is hard, especially when you're trying to guarantee quality.

I agree with you, BTW. I've seen a lot of games that could have used an extra 6 months in development, and would have been show stoppers if they had had that extra time.

Re:Insane release deadlines?

[Snowspinner]

But if you fail to meet an earnings target or two, you lose all your financial backing, and then you no longer have a company to get long-term success with.
Investors want results. They want to know that they have not invested in the next Duke Nukem Forever. Accordingly, companies are expected to release.
The real problem is that, despite its massive sales, game programmers are paid less than the industry average. Which, combined with the financial problems of many of the top companies (EA, Sega, Vivendi Games), makes me wonder if the industry isn't actually headed towards another Atari Bust.

Re:Insane release deadlines?

[mijok]

But how do you synchronize marketing with a "it's done when it's done" schedule? Buying advertising, retailers, publicity - everything outside the coding itself requires a schedule planned well in advance.

Re:Insane release deadlines?

[some damn guy]

Yes, it sounds trite, but I really believe an excellent game is the best marketing intrument of all. Dominating the conversation around the lunchroom/dormroom/office about what games are worth playing is the most important battleground when it comes to selling a game, I think.

People buy the game, toss all the fancy-ass packaging in the trash and pop the CD in. They had better be blown away too, because more and more games are staking their success on online play- and you know people are going to be playing what their friends are playing. If you are capable of producing an awesome game, you had better do it, because if you don't you'll only sell enough copies to get the word out that your game isn't worth a damn. If you have great marketing, you'll just do that faster.

Re:Insane release deadlines?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, peoples problem with Bioware is Bioware said there would be a release pretty much at the same time as the windows release, and we find out that like 5 months after the windows release, they still hadn't figgured out what they were going to do for silly little things like SOUND and MOVIES.
Then the game was going to be released in Fall, then Winter.. And maybe a beta will be pushed out the door by the very end of winter, but the full working game probably won't be ready till over a year from the windows release.
We appreciate the game being ported to linux, but feel lied to. It feels like we were being lead to believe the game was almost ready when things were far from done. There was hype about it being crossplatform from the start, but seemed to be no thought given to major game engine components under linux..
And on top of it it seems we won't get the toolset at all, which is a major portion of the game. Bad planning and poor decisions about how to release information and string people along are what bothered us, not the development time itself.

Re:Insane release deadlines?

[tc]

I buy into the sentiment to an extent, but still think there has to be a balance. As with any creative endeavour, "when it's done" is a matter of opinion, and some people (often the key creatives) will never think it's done. There's always something you could improve, given just a little bit more time. Sometimes, it's better just to ship and move on.

Giving people nearly unlimited time doesn't guarantee results. Does anyone believe that Duke Nukem Forever is going to be a killer title? Or will it be another Daikatana?

Deadlines sharpen the mind. It's the student essay syndrome.

Video games are not just software anymore

[UpLateDrinkingCoffee]

Just like movies are not just pictures on film... they are a "production"...

Video games nowadays are becoming much more complicated beasts and require much larger teams... they are much more a product of their process and much less a product of the talent creating them. If the process is broken, you get crap no matter how good the individual developers are. All is not lost, though... Hollywood uses the same model. I think we will see the video game equivalent of a "Director" emerge... someone who manages the process to create something of quality. I think companies like Blizzard already do this well (although their "Directors" are fairly anonymous, I'll bet they are there).

Re:Video games are not just software anymore

[quantax]

This game developer equivalent of a director has existed from the start. It is called a 'project leader' who oversees the entire game development effort. But much like a film, this is more of a collaborative effort than 1 guy saying 'roll, action!' all the time and calling all the shots. If you want to know why video games are sucking more and more it is mostly because of 1 thing: publishers. They have the money, the method of distribution and they wanna see a game that will sell. This is why games like BMX:XXX or DOA:EBV can exist and get plenty of money.

Re:Video games are not just software anymore

[Soul-Burn666]

Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault was pretty much "directed" by Steven Spielberg.
When you play, you truly feel like you play a part in a war movie.

Re:Video games are not just software anymore

[eglamkowski]

I remember playing Day of Defeat and finding it entirely too disturbing. I'm love studying WWII, but those who really died couldn't just respawn. I had to stop playing after just a few minutes on the Normandy scenario.

Re:Video games are not just software anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

You're basically talking about auteur theory vs. collaborative efforts. I agree, it's just like film; some films are the product of the efforts of the many team members involved, while others can be seen as having an unmistakeable, distinct voice to them (namely, the voice of the auteur). I think it's already quite possible to speak of a "Miyamoto game" or a "Kojima game" just as you would a "Kubrick film."

Finally

[AvantLegion]

"Most gamers cite lack of time second only to social pressure as their reason for leaving gaming. Yet we make games that require 10, 20, 30, or more hours for the gamer to fully enjoy."

Finally, it's being said. I had time to play endlessly long games when I was in junior high, but now in college, I just won't touch the 30 hour game (let alone the 70-100 hour group!). I don't have that kind of time. Maybe the "no-life" crew still has that kind of time to blow, but I'd say a good majority of us have outside engagements. And what's more, I'd MUCH rather play 3 excellent 10-hour games instead of one 30-hour one.

Re:Finally

[coneal]

"I'd MUCH rather play 3 excellent 10-hour games instead of one 30-hour one."

There's no question that quality should come before quantity, but we also shouldn't be giving game developers the message that no game should be more than 10 hours.

What do you think - if they make the games shorter they'll charge us less? If you don't have time to play a 40 hour game this month, then play half of it now and half of it next month.

This reminds me of the diet craze, due to which in certain stores you now pay almost twice as much for half the calories. If you don't need that much, don't eat as often. Don't get the industry to charge all of us more for less product.

Re:Finally

[KiahZero]

I'm sorry, but I can't agree with this. Why should I have to pay $50 for a game that will only keep me occupied for 8-10 hours? That just seems ridiculous to me... I don't think I would buy a game that short. It's not like you have to play it continuously, you know. Most of these games have this nifty 'save' feature.

Perhaps if prices were lowered, I could understand wanting more shorter games, but still... I couldn't help but feel ripped off after the abrupt cliffhanger ending to a certain GBA RPG that will remain nameless.

If you ask me, making 'shorter games' is actually just an attempt to make more money.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Just spread your playing time out over several weeks/months. What is the big deal?

Re:Finally

[AvantLegion]

I'm sorry, but I can't agree with this. Why should I have to pay $50 for a game that will only keep me occupied for 8-10 hours? That just seems ridiculous to me...

Ever buy a Resident Evil game? Or Metal Gear Solid? Or Medal of Honor? Panzer Dragoon Orta? There are actually a large number of highly successful games that are about that long.

It's not like you have to play it continuously, you know. Most of these games have this nifty 'save' feature.

You've missed the point by a good mile.

1) Playing a single game in short increments over a long period of time grows old fast. Any sort of plot continuity is lost in one's head. The game feels tired.

2) I don't want to play one game forever! A number of awesome new games come out each year. I want to see what they have to offer. I don't want to be stuck in the ENDLESS MEANDERING RPG instead. I could play Splinter Cell and Metroid Prime and Resident Evil 0 and Panzer Dragoon Orta and Syberia and ICO, OR I could play Xenosaga. Guess which one I'd have more fun doing? Guess which one I *am* doing?

Re:Finally

[Unregistered]

Of course then this makes games last longer. That's one thing i loved about GTA. It took forever to beat, but i didn' have to buy any new games in that time.

Re:Finally

[AvantLegion]

What do you think - if they make the games shorter they'll charge us less?

No. I think I'll play a 10 hour game with 10 hours worth of ideas, instead of a 40 hour game with 10 hours worth of ideas.

Re:Finally

[Guitarzan]

How long did metroid prime take you? :)

Re:Finally

[KiahZero]

Ever buy a Resident Evil game? Or Metal Gear Solid? Or Medal of Honor? Panzer Dragoon Orta? There are actually a large number of highly successful games that are about that long.

No, I haven't bought any Resident Evil games. Or any of the other ones you listed first. Why? Because they're too damn short. I'm not going to shell out $50 for a game that isn't going to last me more than a few days.

And you know what? You can go ahead and buy all those games... I'll be just as entertained by the one RPG, and have saved about $300.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't touch a 10 hour game unless I see it in the bargin bin for $10.

An excellent 10 hour game is an oxymoron.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but those 3 10-hour games will set you back the cost of three games.

Plus, RPG gamers who end up buying short games feel cheated. You underestimate the size of this group; understandable since you probably aren't a part of it.

If any modern Zelda game were released as a 10-hour jobby, you could expect riots in the streets and crumbled buildings. Lots of us RPGers/ARPGers are heavy, angry motherfuckers. I know I am.

Re:Finally

[Sigma 7]

1) Playing a single game in short increments over a long period of time grows old fast. Any sort of plot continuity is lost in one's head. The game feels tired.

Although I agree with your statement, there is a minor problem with your reasoning.

Personally, I either remember plot continuity over a long period of time or forget it within 5 minutes. For example, I can play one mission/day and not lose track of the plotline. This is accomplished through saving at the beginning of the mission and reviewing the prologue/briefing/situation upon a reload. However, in the case of Warcraft III, I forgot what "Frostborne" was between two missions played within a short period of time. (Probably would have forgotten it anyway...)

There are a few games (such as the Civilization series) that are effectivly stripped of any plotline, are infinitly replayable as demonstrated by webpages (which may be defunct by now) containing lists of challenges to do when you are bored. Of course, I can't really believe some of these challenges: getting a 350% civilization rating, or building a spaceship while the time is still in 10 year increments, world conquest using the weakest units possible, etc.

Re:Finally

[Thrakkerzog]

I'm not the original poster, but Metroid Prime took me a little over 27 hours, with 89% of the scans.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Length = quality (or "value") is definitely an outmoded way of thinking about games. I've been suffering from "too many games, too little time" syndrome for some time now, and have accrued quite a backlog of games. I'm fairly confident that there is a market for short games that sell for less--I think it should be just like DVD films. There are, at most, a few hours of entertainment there, and they retail for ~$20. Why can't quality games that last a few hours and retail for ~$20 be made? I suppose I already know the answer: if you're going to develop a three-hour game, you might as well develop a ten-hour game and sell it for $50, since development overhead is such that adding filler is encouraged.

Re:Finally

[AvantLegion]

> How long did metroid prime take you? :)

About 1/5th of Xenosaga. ;)

Re:Finally

[AvantLegion]

This is accomplished through saving at the beginning of the mission and reviewing the prologue/briefing/situation upon a reload.

This may work for some games, certainly, but in an RPG (the main target of my current derision), the game's not broken up into "missions" exactly.

There are a few games (such as the Civilization series) that are effectivly stripped of any plotline, are infinitly replayable as demonstrated by webpages (which may be defunct by now) containing lists of challenges to do when you are bored.

Yeah, I've seen people do this. It's also like people that have to find every hidden package in a GTA game or whathaveyou. I'd much rather move on to a new game and see what the next game has to offer. Is it more fun to dig for every minor little hidden nugget in GTA than it is to play through the main game of Metroid Prime or Splinter Cell? For me, the answer is "no".

There are certainly special games that open themselves up to replayability. Civ and others are one example. A good sports game is another. These are a little different situations than what I was trying to address, which is the long single-player game that drags on and on. Perhaps I wasn't especially clear in that distinction. At any rate, you seem to understand the point. :)

However, in the case of Warcraft III, I forgot what "Frostborne" was between two missions played within a short period of time. (Probably would have forgotten it anyway...) There are a few games (such as the Civilization series) that are effectivly stripped of any plotline, are infinitly replayable as demonstrated by webpages (which may be defunct by now) containing lists of challenges to do when you are bored. Of course, I can't really believe some of these challenges: getting a 350% civilization rating, or building a spaceship while the time is still in 10 year increments, world conquest using the weakest units possible, etc.

I can think of a couple things of the bat

[Rooked_One]

1 - the developers don't really know how to cater to all of their audience. One person that likes HALO might not like C&C.

2 - No change of the storyline. As soon as someone integrates diablo2 with doom3 we will have a game everyone can enjoy.

3 - NO FREAKIN COOP GAMES. I'm personally very sick of playing Quake1 coop over and over simply becuase its the basically the only one out there. I'm sure there are others, but they've hidden pretty well from me.

4 - graphics card manufacturers. It takes much longer to port a game for multiple vid cards that it does for just one, and you get much more performance if it was just one. ATI and Nvidia need to agree on a set of standards - that would help immensly.

Re:I can think of a couple things of the bat

[Hydrogenoid]

3 - Do not forget Serious Sam, if you are into mindlessly killing things with your friends.

Re:I can think of a couple things of the bat

[Cannelbrae]

1 - So what? Isn't that true of pretty much every product? You can't make a game that appeals to everyone; you pick a niche and try to own it.

2 - What does story line have to do with diablo 2/doom 3? While diablo2 was very enjoyable (and I am sure Doom3 will be as well) that doesn't suggest that mixing the gameplay would be a benefit.

As you mentioned in point 1, someone who likes click fests might not like shooters. If you put both in the same game, you are making something that doesn't appeal to either audience.

Note that I am not saying such a game couldn't be successful -- instead I am suggesting that by missing genres, you face dangers as well. Your product loses focus; look at C&C/Renegade.

3 - There are coop games (NOLF2 being the first one that comes to mind). Unfortunately, not many people experience the fun of taking on a shambler with their mates. If coop sold enough titles to be profitable as a primary feature, there would be more such titles.

4 - Those standards are called GL and DirectX. :) Unfortunately, there are driver bugs, minor differences, etc. Always will be.

Re:I can think of a couple things of the bat

[UnknownSoldier]

> 3 - NO FREAKIN COOP GAMES.

I know, I love co-op games too, but they just cost too much money to make, and don't make enough profit to "justify" making them. Exceptions, are when it doesn't take too much work to make multiplayer co-op (ala Diablo 2)

> I'm personally very sick of playing Quake1 coop over and over simply becuase its the basically the only one out there. I'm sure there are others, but they've hidden pretty well from me.
Check out Serious Sam -- you can make the enemies scale up by people in the game, and/or just make then +x% harder.

Cheers

Re:I can think of a couple things of the bat

[Soul-Burn666]

OH YEAH!

There's nothing like running with a couple of friends into a large field with thousands of enemies, all guns blazing!

Very enjoyable, even on high pinged servers!

Re:I can think of a couple things of the bat

[mrmag00]

Amen on number 3. Quake 1 co-op wasn't really ment to be, but I still had a heck of a lot of fun doing it.

Gameplay, Fun vs. Cool and Eye Candy

[securitas]

High-quality gameplay back in the old days was the sole focus of developing games. They didn't have the gimmicks of fancy graphics or the capabilities massive hard drives or even memory. It all had to be stored in a ROM that fit into a few kb.

The gamplay was great because it had to be. I recall seeing an interview somewhere with Nolan Bushnell of Atari fame saying as much.

The concept of FUN was a core idea. It sounds simple but the core idea nowadays is often COOL. What's cool is not always what's fun. That is a lesson that many producers need to learn. (I say producers because the developers are rarely in control of the games they work so hard to create.)

Just because you can use the latest eye candy it doesn't mean you should. I like great looking games as much as the next person, but I like great-playing games even more.

Re:Gameplay, Fun vs. Cool and Eye Candy

[OblvnDrgn]

It's also nostalgia. Some of the games that you pick up on Atari and Nintendo are really good, and still fun if you get past the lack of graphics that we've gotten used to with today's games. But you know what a vast majority of them are? Absolute crud.

I can't believe you can say high-quality gameplay was the sole focus of developing games with a straight face. There were a slew of sequels and license tie-ins then too. I'd say there's an even greater signal to noise ratio these days, but we see all the garbage that gets published today, and forget all of the horrible things that came out back then.

Oh, and the other thing is that there is one key difference that made some games back in "the day" really fun, is that games never used to end. It was just a point race against yourself until you weren't good enough to keep up at that speed/difficulty. Things have levels and end these days. That's the only real difference that I've noticed.

Re:Gameplay, Fun vs. Cool and Eye Candy

[Anonymous Coward]

It all had to be stored in a ROM that fit into a few kb.

"A few" means more than three and less than five, BTW. Part of being 0lD Sk00L is remembering which game introduced bank-switching and introduced the amazing 8K ROM.

Google that, bitches! Ha ha ha! Of course, you can't.

Re:Gameplay, Fun vs. Cool and Eye Candy

[Anonymous Coward]

The lack of game endings may explain the popularity of FPSers today, specifically CounterStrike and Battlefield 1942.

Re:Gameplay, Fun vs. Cool and Eye Candy

[swv3752]

A few times flipping the counter on Asteroids and it got boring. :)

Re:Gameplay, Fun vs. Cool and Eye Candy

[Ciel]

It's also nostalgia. Some of the games that you pick up on Atari and Nintendo are really good, and still fun if you get past the lack of graphics that we've gotten used to with today's games. But you know what a vast majority of them are? Absolute crud.

Indeed. Although I am sympathetic with the original author's position, three words alone should suffice to draw doubt to the claim that the old school was invariably the better school: "Drown Baby Moses"

Re:Gameplay, Fun vs. Cool and Eye Candy

[nosa]

High-quality gameplay back in the old days was the sole focus of developing games. They didn't have the gimmicks of fancy graphics or the capabilities massive hard drives or even memory.

I disagree. Remember that fancy graphics and eye candy are relative. When the NES was first released, it had amazing graphics compared to older consoles like the 2600 or Colecovision. Certain NES games depended heavily on graphics or other gimics. For example, Ninja Gaiden is a passable action game that featured silent movie-like cutscenes and nice graphics. At the time, the buzz about the game wasn't the gameplay, but the cutscenes that pushed the graphical envelope of the system. Final Fantasy I was basically a plain, vanilla rpg with slick graphics and presentation. There were also a slew of horrible, almost unplayable games (Track & Field II & Golgo 13 come to mind) that featured beautiful graphics and even digitized voice, but totally lacked gameplay. As for gimics, remember the stupid robot? Or how about the power pad? And don't get me started on the 2600. Fore every Pitfall or Joust there were dozens of horrible, unplayable games for the system.

However, the good games from the 8-bit era were great, and I agree with you that they are still better than most modern games.

Re:Gameplay, Fun vs. Cool and Eye Candy

[Havokmon]

I can't believe you can say high-quality gameplay was the sole focus of developing games with a straight face.

Come now! You really think those guys were just out to make money when they created Oink!?

Please.

Re:Let me guess....

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of ID's work could be concidered open source. ID has popped the cherry for 1000's of programers/wannabe developers.

The gaming industry as a whole allows easy access to employment if your any good. I've watched at least thirty people go from newbie to getting jobs at some of the biggest companies and still are friends with a few.

I know!

[NDPTAL85]

How about a game about disaffected 30-something black bloc anarchists who go around trashing Seattle during a WTO meeting!

This way we get a cool "rebel without a cause" video game AND we get to co-opt the anti-globalization movement and sell it back to the very people who are supposed to be so anti-commercial in the first place thus compromising their "street cred!"

It's already been menttioned...

[Zenithal]

... but it's worth saying again.

I think money and time are largest reasons games haven't been making big leaps forward. Right now I'm working as a rather bland game server developer professionally, and as a RPG game developer part-time at home, and I can tell you the only issues I'm constantly fighting are time and money. Not how to integrate creative game ideas, not optimization, not balance and not storyline. All the things that when focused on create a better game.

There's been a post already talking about greed in the commercial market, well that's partially true, but the simple fact is that a game is a huge piece of work, and only the best games make money for any extended period of time. That maks game development very difficult to be profitable with. Think of the difference between Office and a game isn't their inherit complexity - but the time that they can stay on the market and make money.

If you think that writing an application like Word or Excel is more complicated than writiing a 'good' game, you're wrong. In fact in many ways writing a good game can be more difficult because it requires SO MANY variables be perfectly in sync. Artists, developers, scripters... people work around bugs in Office, they return games that aren't fun. On top of which Office type things may be resold later with bug-fixes and inhancements whereas all of the assets in a game have to be redone, even if the engine doesn't.

And already considering all of these things, games only make between 50-70 bucks a sale, and the Office's of the world are making 3 to 5 hundred.

If you consider it for a moment, games are targetted (largely, not always) at the youngest market groups, the ones that are often most critical of gameplay, the shortest attention spans, and the least money. The last factor is especially noticable when you realize that no company ever mass purchased a game to standardize it on all their desktops.

Anyway, I could continue to rant about this for ages, but the truth is I want to get back to work. I'm already months behind on my personal game project, and there are months left on it.

No.

[juuri]

No, Doom 3 is what is right with the game industry.

By not releasing the game until it is really complete and the finished product matches the initial vision of the developers we are much more likely to get a quality effort (a few exceptions with standing). Too many developers are now driven by quarterly reports and rush shoddy efforts to the market.

Re:No.

[Wyatt Earp]

Doom 3 and Id's idology, as well as the problems with SimCity 4 are illustrations of what is wrong.

Id has indicated that no matter what hardware the gamers have will not be enough for Doom 3, while I understand that games have pushed hardware upgrades in the past, usually it was due to new technology in the game (3D engine changes, multiplayer, etc) Id is simply making a game that is going to overwhelm almost everyone's hardware and they think that is cool.

SimCity 4 was shipped and it's slow as crap on machines twice the recommended hardware on the box because they put too much crap in there going on.

Game designers have a case of the God-complex in many cases, and I say that's what is wrong in the industry.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea...

I hope Doom3 won't be half-done as Moo3 is.

Re:No.

[Dark Lord Seth]

Game designers have a case of the God-complex in many cases, and I say that's what is wrong in the industry.

No, that's mainly because of nVidia, ATI, AMD & Intel "sponsoring" new games probably...

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've errr....played the alpha. Terror fits nicely.

ID hasn't missed a step for the people that enjoy their games. IMO I think they make them cause the want to.

Re:No.

[Twister002]

Id is not simply making a game for the sake of overwhelming everyones hardware. They are bringing cinema level graphics to the PC. Everytime Id has released a game, the envelope has been pushed for the better.

Do you think that Valve or Fox or EA or Blizzard could have made Half-Life, No One Lives Forever, Medal of Honor, or Warcraft III by building it on the Commander Keen "engine"?

Re:No.

[Wyatt Earp]

Games do not always need "cinema level" graphics. It's game play that is needed.

I started to feel that Id went down the road of eye-candy over game play with Q3A. Game play lacked there, then I tired RTcW and felt that it too ran a little too slow and the game play was a little lacking while it went for eye candy.

I understand the need for development, I don't understand the desire to overwealm the current generation of computers.

Re:No.

[ComputerSlicer23]

Remember that Id doesn't sell games any more...

Let me say that again. Id doesn't sell games any more. They sell game engines. Specifically they sell 3d FPS type game engines. Technically, I suppose you could base a RPG off their engines, but that's not very interesting.

Basically, Id makes a high quality game, releases it, causes an upgrade cycle on hardware. This creates new level of quality that is expected in terms of graphics. The game isn't supposed to be great, grand and glorious as nearly as I can tell. It's supposed to be visually stunning, and cause a commotion in the gaming industry, so people will license the new game engine and do much cooler more innovative things with it. I've lost track of who uses whose gaming engine, but my guess is that Id makes at least as much money off the licensing of the gaming engines as they do off the titles they actually sell any more.

They create games that force upgrades because it establishes a new plateau for games, and creates demand for their true product, game engines. This works because everybody knows that Id has the best engines, that are the most reliable, and after they see the wicked "demo game" Id's come out with, they all to play games like it.

At least that's my theory.

Kirby

Re:No.

[a_peckover]

Yep, everyone else in the industry gets scared by what id has done, realises that they can't possibly compete with id's new engine before id comes out with a new one that makes it look obsolete, so they licence the new Doom\Quake\Doom again engine from id, and id makes big bucks. And by the time a decent enough number of people have a gaming rig capable of playing it at >5fps those licensees will have developed many more games based on the engine.

#4??

[cadallin451]

What happened to DirectX and OpenGL?

EMPLOYEES DON'T MAKE DECISIONS

[YOU ARE SO FIRED!]

"ATI and Nvidia need to agree on a set of standards - that would help immensly."

It's the whole Netscape v. IE html tag thing (or Microsoft v. Apple v. *nix (insert favorite difference here)). They incorporate/add/change things in order to leverage their product. If they get something to be adopted that's exclusively theirs and people think it's super cool, they've instantly gotten a leg up. They don't care what a pain in the ass it is for the developers because developers will use whatever various protocols are popular (like focusing on DirectX or Glide instead of OpenGL or programmable vertex doo-ma-hickeys) because those manufacturers have a market hold and the developers want a piece of it. It's an endless cycle until everyone merges into one uber-corporation called "ALL (not the detergent)" and everyone has ALL brand socks and ALL brand computers that we type on to use ALL ONLINE to order more ALL socks (and maybe the DVD of ALL: THE MOVIE). Then ALL (the detergent) will sue them and make a fortune off royalties and... and...

...well, I'm getting ahead of myself. You're fired for trying to explain things rationally and undermining my authority. See Lisa at the front desk for the charred remains of your belongings.

Re:EMPLOYEES DON'T MAKE DECISIONS

[Billly Gates]

"It's the whole Netscape v. IE html tag thing (or Microsoft v. Apple v. *nix (insert favorite difference here)). They incorporate/add/change things in order to leverage their product. If they get something to be adopted that's exclusively theirs and people think it's super cool, they've instantly gotten a leg up.

Its this kind of thinking that we agree that you may not necessarly fit in with our company. We are a company dedicated to growth and interopability because our customers demand it. We care about lower product and support costs and not vendor lock in. Since you do not fit in the catagory I am afraid we have nothing for you to do. I am going to have to ask you leave. Maybe you could apply for a position at Microsoft, apple or some other proprietary company but you do not fit in with what we are looking for.

...ps please wait out in the lobby while security clears your desk. This is just a security procedure since you work in IT. Ignore the humiliation of everyone staring at you why two uniformed security guards escort you outside and box up your desk. Thank you...and get the hell off our property!

Billly Gates

What are you talking about?

[Anonymous Coward]

1 - the developers don't really know how to cater to all of their audience. One person that likes HALO might not like C&C.

So, developers should somehow make games with universal appeal? How? You can't please all of the people all of the time, in any medium. Name a tv show that gets 100% of the audience, or a book that everybody likes.

2 - No change of the storyline. As soon as someone integrates diablo2 with doom3 we will have a game everyone can enjoy.

I don't even know what you're trying to say here.

3 - NO FREAKIN COOP GAMES. I'm personally very sick of playing Quake1 coop over and over simply becuase its the basically the only one out there. I'm sure there are others, but they've hidden pretty well from me.

Rainbow Six?

4 - graphics card manufacturers. It takes much longer to port a game for multiple vid cards that it does for just one, and you get much more performance if it was just one. ATI and Nvidia need to agree on a set of standards - that would help immensly.

It's not the games developers that have to build in support for various graphics cards, it's the designers of the rendering engines that the games use; Direct3D, OpenGL.

A simple question...

[sheetsda]

When was the last time you played a game you honestly thought was innovative?

For me, it's been a long time. IMO GTA3 is close but not quite ground-breaking. The concept was new, missions in a big city as a gangster, but it still had a lot of old concepts like shoot stuff, blow stuff up, shoot stuff, drive cars, and shoot stuff. There are two games I'm looking forward to playing: Star Wars Galaxies and Doom3, but I can't say either of them are anything new once you get passed the fancy graphics. Where are all the radically new ideas for games like we had 10 years ago?

Re:A simple question...

[meringuoid]

When was the last time you played a game you honestly thought was innovative?

Probably the original GTA. The London expansion was too easy, but quite possibly the best fun I've had in a game in years. Zipping about the place on a Mod scooter or in Austin Powers' car... ah, the memories :-)

Obviously I'm going to buy Orion 3 at the first opportunity (damn late release in .uk, gits gits gits) but the game that I'd go mad for would be a 3D version of Solar Jetman. Something similar to Descent would do the job quite nicely, I think.

Re:A simple question...

[Anonymous Coward]

animal crossing
rez
frequency
dance dance revolution
dynasty tactics
cubivore
robot alchemic drive
steel batallion
gitaroo man
the sims

all within the last three years, all completely revolutionary, all radically new ideas.

almost no one bought them though.. you arent bothering to track down the truly innovative games, and are wasting your time with another mmorpg, another fps, and another gta-clone. if you dont support new ideas, no one will waste their time and money developing them.

schmoko.

Re:A simple question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a little bit pleased with 'yerself.. aintcha ! ... And rightly so, rightly so..

Re:A simple question...

[slim]

When was the last time you played a game you honestly thought was innovative?

Jet (Set|Grind) Radio. The graphics and general atmosphere set it apart instantly (especially when it first came out, and Cel Shading wasn't being used by everyone and their dog), but it was the unique way the game made you look at your environment that made it innovative. Everywhere, something to grind on and jump off, yet as a way of getting from place to place, not just for the sake of tricking (as in Tony Hawk Pro Skater).

The Xbox sequel adds little in the way of innovation, but it's still a cracking game.

Of course, brilliance and innovation does not automatically equal sales.

Just my 14,1 �re...

[WegianWarrior]

So... whats wrong with game development? Or rather, why does the games of today seem to suck compared to the ones I played when I was young?

I think there are many reasons, some off which has ben adressed by other posters. Still, beeing me, I'm gonna list up the ones I think are among the most important.
- Lack of any attemt of original gameplay. Most, or all, of todays games are simply 'more of the same'.
- Too much focus on 'eyecandy'. Modern games look the part, but often I find that too much development has gone into good looks, and too little into things like plot, levels and gameplay.
-Rehashing of old ideas. What is 'Medal of Honor'? Simply a better version of the original 'Doom'. And what was 'Doom' in the first place, but a souped up version of the original 'Castle Wolfenstain'?

Don't misunderstand me. I still buy and enjoy games... but I'm not sucked in as I was before.

The downfall of the gaming industry, I feel, began when the graphicsadaptors started becomming good enought to allow for 'nearly real' gameplay. That shifted the focus away from good games and towards games that looked good. Maybe because it was easy to describe a scene where you had to feed a 10' carrot to a mutant spacebunny as long as you had to rely on text, but impossible to do it visually. That, and while a textphraser could actually make sence out of what you wrote, a visualy based game was dumbed down to walk about and clicking on stuff.

Maybe a game like Valhalla could solve that last problem - eyecandy and a reasonable smart textphraser.

Ever thought you might be the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I am taking a game design class"

game development

[voya]

Resource links for people interested in getting into the game industry

I found it to be very helpful.

Seamus Blackly is a complete tosser...

[igomaniac]

And I don't know why anyone bothers listening to him. I've been making games for 10 years now and I have seen quite a examples of how not to do development...

Saying that a 300 page game design stifles creativity is completely wrong, unless for some reason your publisher is requiring you to stick to the letter of it instead of being flexible. How do you think you get a team of 20+ people to produce a coherent game? Normally you can't see which parts of the game was made by which artist and so on, why? BECAUSE THERE IS A GAME DESIGN DETAILING HOW THINGS SHOULD LOOK AND WORK. Of course if something is not fun, you come up with a new design for that part and update the game design document accordingly.

He also seems to think that everyone can do business like Microsoft where it does not matter how much money you lose because there is always the operating system monopoly there to feed you... Saying that developers make bad games because they have to make them on a budget and a timeschedule is of course true, but not very interesting as this is likely to continue to be the case for the foreseable future...

... And on the matter of Focus-group driven design, well I've tried it and I can tell you that there is a reason you don't hire 13 year olds to write your game design. You can see if they like the game or not, but if they don't like it they will not be able to put their finger on _why_ they don't like it -- there's always something to critizise, some dodgy texture or some little glitch. One game I worked on had a bug in the collision response code used for one of the focus groups and they came back with lots of critisisms, but all of them missed the real reason the game was crap. When this was fixed, they came back with positive comments instead...

Re:Seamus Blackly is a complete tosser...

[civilizedINTENSITY]

So if its truely necessary for 300 page reference manuals for 20+ people to work together, then perhaps the problem is having 20+ people on a team.

Re:Seamus Blackly is a complete tosser...

[Anonymous Coward]

One must always remember that Seamus was responsible for one of the most stunningly bad games in recent memory. (Some of the incriminating links from the original Usenet article have gone stale, so here are some handy wayback links to the developer puffery on the game's physics, audio, design, ai, and art.)

Re:Seamus Blackly is a complete tosser...

[eglamkowski]

That depends. I sure wouldn't want to work with 20 other programmers, but if you've got, say 4-5 programmers, 1-2 designers, 2-3 sound/music guys and 15+ artists, that's quite workable and is 20+.

Re:Seamus Blackly is a complete tosser...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, you make Metal Gear Solid 2 or Mafia with 5 people. See you soon.

Re:Seamus Blackly is a complete tosser...

[Backward Z]

I am 19 years old and I've done focus testing for Sony and THQ. I agree with your criticism of focus testing being useless, but have some ideas for how to improve it.

Ok, first off, let's talk about the product. If you hand me shit and ask me how to make it better, I can say give it more weapons and give it more levels, but bottom line, it still stinks because it's shit. I tested WWE Crush Course (they didn't make me sign an NDA on that one) and had absolutely no useful advice to give, other than scrap the project and give the team something better to work on. If a game in flawed from the beginning, nothing will fix it. Making a car combat game with wrestlers is a BAD IDEA.

Secondly, I've also noticed how people focus on the wrong things, but you have to account for that, as well. You say there was a collision response bug they nitpicked. Come out and say before they play the game, "There's this collision response bug we've got going on right now, but just pretend it's not there. It's something that WILL be fixed that we already know about. What we need from you are ways to fix things that aren't so obvious." I tested Summoner 2. I didn't have much nice to say about it at the time. The game seemed completely unimaginative at the roots. There was a lot of pretty stuff going on around that, and it was obvious that was the focus of the game, but fundamentally, I felt it was a brawler with level building. They basics of gameplay were so boring, I really couldn't give them any usable feedback about the special moves they were wanting to evaluate.

Really, the only good game I've tested was Amplitude (at the time, still called Frequency 2). It was obvious that graphically, it hadn't come together yet. They had a solid gameplay model in place with the fundamentals down. I was able to give really useful feedback. So useful, I was asked to do another group in the same week. And I don't mind taking Sony's money. Already, they had a handful of songs playable with good notes, they just wanted to know how to focus the look of the game, avatars, and multiplayer displays. Since we had something to work with, everyone in the room was able to give feedback that was useful to a degree (nevermind the couple of completely braindead morons in the room). Says something for development order. Add the bells and whistles later, get the gameplay down first. Everyone seems to miss that.

I had some friends that focus tested Jak & Daxter and Sly Cooper. They told me about the criticisms they had at the groups and later, when I played the games, they were fixed. Good arguments, too, like one of them pleaded in the Jak & Daxter session to make the chick's boobs smaller. Which they did. Which I applaud them for.

So this wasn't so much for the other readers of the board so much as it was for you. If you want groups to be successful, try recruiting people from outside game stores or something. Make sure they're gamers. I don't know how people get recruited for these things, I work on a friend of a friend basis, but some of those people simply don't belong. It takes some understanding of design in its most rudimentary form in order to give good criticism. When I play a beta, I see unbalanced gameplay and dodgy textures as something that is obvious and can be worked out. Other people won't see it that way.

I had another friend who did a Tomb Raider group where EVERYONE other than him was asking for bigger boobs on Lara and a nude code. Wrong people.

And if you work out of the San Francisco bay area, I'd gladly do some testing for you.

Ok...

[badasscat]

Blackley's comments are all well and good, but will someone tell me exactly what he's done to improve things? He's been directly responsible for 2-3 games in his career, none of which were particularly earth-shattering. He seems to be most famous these days for leaving Microsoft. Is this really someone that developers and publishers should be looking towards for inspiration? The proof of any theory is in the results, and so far I haven't seen Blackley's new company spewing out anything amazing that the world should be paying attention to. All I've seen is Blackley himself using his company as a platform to complain about the industry.

Meanwhile, guys like Miyamoto - working at the largest game developer in the world in terms of sales and the number of projects released yearly (yes, bigger than Microsoft) - keep on churning out games like Pikmin and Animal Crossing, which I would consider pretty innovative. Then the guy gets derided for saying things like "what I find most interesting about games is being able to push a character around the screen with a controller." Well hey, ever think maybe the guy's onto something? He's only the most successful individual game developer and producer in the history of video games, going back to the original Donkey Kong. Again, it's the results that prove the validity of a theory, and Miyamoto's theory has always been that simplicity and innovation are what count. He doesn't go around complaining that the publishing system is broken; he works within that publishing system and continues to make great games (and games that sell quite well - when less than a million is considered a "failure", you know you've set the benchmark pretty high).

I'm not sure the system is broken when we continue to get games like Super Monkey Ball, Rez, Animal Crossing, Pikmin, Samba De Amigo, Dance Dance Revolution, and plenty of other highly innovative games that very often become popular without the name recognition that "branding" provides. And I don't see Seamus Blackley's name attached to any of these games.

I think we need to all finally agree that Blackley is not worth talking about. He's at best a footnote in video game history; one of the two guys who convinced Bill Gates to release the Xbox. But he's no longer involved with Xbox and didn't do much but evangelize it while he was. And I don't see him doing much of note since leaving Microsoft. Miyamoto, on the other hand, says lots of things that lots of people don't seem to "get" but has been directly responsible for 4-5 major hits and highly regarded games in just the past year, with an indirect hand in 20-30 others. Whose opinion counts more here?

Re:Ok...

[ConsistentChaos]

What's funny is the game that Blackley's name is attached to:

Tresspasser.

Sums it up, I think.

Re:Ok...

[Mac Degger]

Hehe..good point. I hadn't noticed it before, but it leads me to the conclusion that the problem with the gaming industry is that the american games suck. Look at the innovation coming from Japan, China, England, Russia and the former Soviet Union (all the titles you mentioned before, those rediculous but fun Japanese titles soon to be released on budget [a mosquito sim? But it's a cool game, apparently]Operation Flashpoint, GTA, Startopia, soon to be released in the western world Paradise Cracked and the WIP which is S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and many others).

And it can't be the production method: Konami, Nintendo et al have huge teams and budgets too. Or the distribution/publisher deals. I think it's got more to do with famous moviemaker Samuel Goldwyn's quote "You can never go broke underestimating the taste of the american public".

Isn't it obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Needs more Shatner.

Depends.

[Anonymous Coward]

Games like Contra and Bionic Commando (NES games) have yet to be challenged in terms of gameplay and entertainment value.

However, games like the Kessen series (PS2) and the newer Mechwarrior games (Save that one for the X-Box) have breathed life into stale genres.

I'd like to point to Moo3 here, but I haven't played it yet. However, Moo2 can easily be called one of the greatest games of all time. I'll be horribly disappointed if Moo3 is nothing more than eye candy..

Now, on the other hand, you have games like Squaresoft's endless Final Fantasy series, which were, IMO, lackluster from the start. Nowadays, they're nothing more than clicking a few buttons occasionally while you watch video cutscenes.

You also have such great 'gameplay' as that which can be found in DOA: Extreme Beach Volleyball. Now there's a fun game! No, really! It's fun ogling blocky chicks that all have the same body!

Frankly, the gaming industry hasn't changed since the days of the 8 bit console. There's still gems out there, and they're still floating in a sea of shit. The problem is that the gaming industry is much, much larger now - so the gems are harder to find.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go code up Killed in Action: Extreme Dog Beach Volleyball!

Yarr.

Re:Depends.

[Selfbain]

Well I played Warcraft 3 recently and I found that I was more interested in finding out what was happening next than in building the city OVER and OVER and OVER and OVER again. So I just started cheating my way to the end and by the time I reached the end, I realized I might as well have just watched a movie. I'm not saying its a bad game but after playing WC2 and SC, I think I'm just bored to death with building those cities.

Re:Depends.

[DrPascal]

"Games like Contra and Bionic Commando (NES games) have yet to be challenged in terms of gameplay and entertainment value."

Oh boy ... an Anonymous Coward of my tastes! Bionic Commando, The Super Marios and Zeldas, Super Metroid, and Castlevania 2 are pinnacles of fun. Any game that had the genius to copy them (Castlevania for the PSX copying Super Metroid, etc) ended up being winners.

Who cares if everything has been "done" already!? Do it again! I'm all for another 2D Metroid or 2D Zelda.

Wanna bet?

[Xeth]

For the business to truly be on par with music, television, and movies, it needs to address its problems.

Yeah, I'm sure a GIAA would make lots of people happy...

DirectX is the probelm

[Anonymous Coward]

A proprietary library like DirectX is the problem with most game companies. Sure it save time and money, but lacks being portable.

Re:DirectX is the probelm

[eglamkowski]

I don't think so - most hard core gamers will buy Windows just to play games, and most non-hard core gamers (i.e. the Wal Mart crowd) is already running windows anyways.

Macs and Unix are still just a drop in the bucket, OS wise. OpenGL, while it mostly works, isn't the bestest thing in the world.

Anyways, a good development house will have their own video library that wraps all the DirectX stuff, making it possible without too much pain to port to another library by just linking in a different DLL with the same wrapper functions (or maybe even use the same library but just with different state flags set!). Most don't do the port cause the market isn't there, but it isn't as horrible a thing as you might imagine.

Don't Be a Pro, then

[Sloppy]

Quoth Blackley:

"The number one problem we have with design is that we don't know who we are designing for. Are we designing for ourselves? Are we designing for publishers? Are we designing for EB salespeople? Are we assigning for reviewers? Are we assigning for the audience? The problem right now is that we're designing for publishers and not the audience. Designers are thinking about what will look good to a publisher and this is just remarkably stupid because designers have no idea of what publishers are actually looking for and why."

I knew this guy in highschool, and we sometimes worked together (loosely) on amateurish, juvenile, but fun games. It was fun, because we were doing it for ourselves. The only limitations to our creativity were 1) technical limits (e.g. a VT100 doesn't display naked chicks very well ;-) and 2) our own minds.

Now he has a Master (publishers, the market, whatever) and it's not for himself anymore. That's the problem with turning pro: in the end, the only thing you really do for yourself, is get your paycheck. I face the same problem in my job; I don't always get to do what I want. That's why it's called "work" instead of "play."

Don't like it? Quit working 16 hour days, and save some of that passion and energy for your amateur projects after you get home. The market never shares your values. If they did, they wouldn't have to pay you.

He seems to think the problem is with the middlemen, though, and that he would be happy to serve the end users (the "audience"). I'm not convinced this is really the way to happiness either (ahem, I said: the market never shares your values) but I guess he disagrees. I guess it is a fairly decent compromise to have at least a little fun, but still make a buck.

Seamus Blackly is a complete tosser...

[igomaniac]

and I don't know why anyone listens to him.

He thinks 300 page game designs stifles creativity, but how does he suggest you get 20+ people to work together to produce a coherent result without a detailed design? Idiot.

Furthermore he thinks that it stifles creativity to make a game on a budget and with a timeschedule... Well, of course it does but unless you have an operating system monopoly paying your bills this situation is not going to change anytime soon. Idiot.

And his suggestion to use focus groups in game development -- I've tried that, but the average joe is not a game designer and does not produce valuable feedback apart from "I like it" or "I don't like it". One example of why this fails is a game I worked on that had a bug in the collision response in one of the focus group builds -- it was slated by them, but _none_ of them mentioned the collision response being bad. Idiot.

Games...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this article is trying to address why the production companies can't call a predictable hit and are looking for a *just add water* receipe.

IMO, 80% of games *fail* cause they're incomplete due to ($place money here$). There has always been a few great games that come out every few years, hell I still play duke3d if the inspiration hits just right. Mind you; it would be nice to see a real scripting engine come out that can tell a story in the FPS genre with out guns and a storyline to get lost in.

On a side note--I've always wanted a well scripted game that manipulates me into sitting in a smokey country bar with Dwight Yoakam rhinestones and all, playing to a rowdy crowd of hicks. But my tastes my be a little pecurliar.

Re:Games...

[Anonymous Coward]

"that manipulates me into sitting in a smokey country bar with Dwight Yoakam rhinestones and all"

I had a script for that very scene for [Raven's] Star Trek voyager holodeck. Didn't turn out though.

Re:Games...

[eglamkowski]

It is interesting to see that many of the best games out there (Half-Life comes to mind) are games that were not subject to milestones or budget limitations or skew schedules. Games that developers could develop on their own terms.

Publishers don't like to let developers develop on their own terms, even though the best games are done that way.

They need to be more venture capitalist minded - sure, 10 out of 12 will go bust, one might break even and the 12th one will be a big hit that makes more money then was lost on all the rest.

But they are too risk averse, so we get crap.
*sigh*

No realistic driving sim?! Heard of Gran Turismo?

[coneal]

OK, so as far as I know it's only available on the PS2, but Gran Turismo 3 is so realistic it hurts.

In GT3 you have to get different levels of licenses to drive in the different classes of races and even getting the early licenses is challenging. You make $$ from winning races (highly ghetto races to start with) and as you get enough you buy better cars and mod them. There are so many mods; I have no clue what most of them are, but the game handily gives you before & after horsepower figures (for the power related mods) in your current vehicle.

And the racing is awesome. Great graphics, great sense of speed, but most importantly every little thing you do with the controls has an impact. Some cars handle it better when you take a short cut through dirt and grass on the side of the road than others. The rear wheel drives are soo hard not to spin out. Each car is different in it's feel and road handling, etc.

Anyway, are there problems with the game industry? Yes, of course. However, it's preposterous to suggest that there are no good games out there.

And if you think there are no good driving sims, you must be playing the wrong ones. Unless you're looking for a good non-racing driving sim ("Supermarket & Back: Station Wagon III"). If that's the case I can't help you.

The value of publishing

[dspeyer]

While I'll grant that adverstising is a waste of resources on the grand scale, and probably harmful in any context, that's not the only thing publishers do. Nor do I mean boxing and pressing. The primary thing publishers do is sort through to find what's worth publishing.

I'm sure I'm not the only slashdotter whose written games for personal amusement. Nor am I the only one whose distributed them to friends and gotten positive responces (I think honestly, but they might have just been being nice to me).

Now picture all those games coming unsorted through some sort of web portal. Combined with buggy games, games which only run on an SGI mainframe, games with trojan horses, over-used joke games (thermonuclearwar, the game that just pops up a dialog saying "You lose") and downright trolls (a game built around goatse.cx).

Now, I'm not saying publishers are the only way to strain this down to something acceptable. Gaming magazines can give reviews (though less than 1% of games would ever get reviewed at all); players would have favorite game authors; there could even be something like slashdot moderation (we all know how well that works -- actually, IMHO, it's one of the better forms I've seen).

I'm just saying that publishers can't just "get out of the way" -- they can only be replaced by something better.

A lot of the ideas here are based on an essay of Eric Flint's. He expounds in detail.

.sig: We go to war with Iraq to prevent them from building nukes and using them against us, destabilizing Pakistan, allowing Al-queada to get nukes, and use them against us -- oh the irony!

Re:The value of publishing

[Anonymous Coward]

The primary thing publishers do is sort through to find what's worth publishing.

So much for the free market.

Re:The value of publishing

[SpikeSpiff]

While I'll grant that adverstising is a waste of resources on the grand scale [...]

No way. Advertising is about helping people find product. It's grease in the wheels of capitalism. It's only a waste in the sense that the cost of processing a check is a waste.

Some advertising is done poorly, and yes, I get spam too, but a lot of advertising is useful to me.

Re:The value of publishing

[kscguru]

It is free market - the value of the publisher is the value of his ability to "sort through".

If you don't like one publisher, go find another.

Last time I checked, Microsoft, Sierra, and Blizzard didn't completely dominate the market. There ARE other publishers out there.

Re:The value of publishing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. EA and Infogrames.

GOODNIGHT EVERYBODY!

Re:The value of publishing

[ThrasherTT]

Now picture all those games coming unsorted through some sort of web portal

How about a /. for games? Throw in moderation and meta-moderation and maybe the gaming community can 'automagically' sort the diamonds from the rough. I know it's a lot different than the free articles that we get here, but at least there'd be a place to go to participate.

Hear a gamer: It's bloated.

[Qbertino]

Same as with everything else. It's hideously bloated and aiming for shareholder value rather than doing the creative fun stuff in between once in a while.
Look at ID Soft, my favorite example: I don't like their games very much nor are they extremely innovative, but they've remained the same 15 head team since god know's when and something like twice a decade they release a game they like and their fans like. Just like it should be.

The counterexample: Dynamics and their last hit Tribes2. Great game. Best Multiplayer only game out there. I LOVE it. It rocks and still kicks UT2k3 and whatnot around the block fun and varietywise. UT2k3 will take another 2 years till they've patched the server overview to meet T2s standard.
Yet the fan base built up to slow for the VCs so they shut them down. That's what happens when you get greedy. Game developers should do just that without getting greedy: Develope games. And nothing else. Then their products would be better, they would be fewer, they would make a fine living and I as a gamer would be happier and have to spend less money on crap. And I'm shure they would be happier too.

Large corps buying independent studios...

[SvnLyrBrto]

What is wrong with game development?

Microsoft, and even moreso: Electronic Arts.

Both are large corperations that don't practice much innovation (Honestly... Madden 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003???), but since the mid to late '90s have been running around buying out smaller developers, milking whatever profits they can out of the franchises, and letting the studios wither on the vine.

It was only a few weeks ago that it was announced that Westwood (now a subsidiary of EA) was closeing up it's Las Vegas development offices. When WAS the last time anything good came out of the C&C series? I bet it predates Westwood's fall to EA.

Westwood in particular stings ME hard, because, before EA, they used to do some REALLY cool games outside C&C. Remember the Blade Runner "adventure" game? That was one of my faves. Do you think that, under EA's flag, we'll EVER see anything from Westwood but more played-out C&C's?

Or take microsoft's assimilation of one of my other previously-favroite game developers: Bungie. I STILL dig out Marathon and Myth every so often. And who else remembers all the previews of what Halo was going to be before gates had it stripped down to become the Xbox's flagship yet-another-generic-FPS.

Back to EA... Remember Origin? Remember Autoduel and Ogre? What about the Wing Commander series? Crusader? BioForge? Remember the excellent storytelling in the old Ultima series? I sure do. What is Origin all about NOW though, under the stewardship of EA? Ultima Online, Ultima Online expansions, and a sequel to... Ultima Online!

Remember "Jane's"? Remember the excellent military simulations of the '90s. 688i, in particular, STILL has quite a following. Quite an achievement for a game released in 1997! Where is Jane's now? Electronic arts. What has Jane's done recently? Nothing since 2000.

Remember when Maxis had a sence of humor? Remember when they released some really WIERD sims? Remember Sim Ant, Sim Earth, and Sim Tower? NOW what does Maxis do? Well, they just released another Sim City... one which I'm told is STILL not as fun as Sim City 2000 was. Oh, and they do expansion packs for The Sims. Quick check of EA's site to be sure.... yup.

I'm sure there are MORE game studios that others could name that have been assimilated by microsoft or EA. The above are mostly my pet peeves in the "large corperations buying and destroying small game studios" world. But I think THAT is the problem with game development. In my experience as a gamer, studios have been so much more creative, and... well... FUN when they were independent. The big corperations seem to forget that games are supposed to be FUN. They just see a trend (FPS, RTS, MMRPG, etc.), and want to milk it dry.

cya,
john

Re:Large corps buying independent studios...

[eglamkowski]

One of the big problems is that people (mostly really just hard core gamers) want better and better "quality", which really means graphics and sound and everything BUT gameplay. But making the highest quality stuff is quite expensive - motion capture is not cheap, and developing the code to support it takes time and money as well. Original music for the soundtack? Also potentially quite expensive.

Small independent developers just can't afford these things. Those Madden games cost millions to make, but bring in tens to hundreds of millions. Only the big players can really sink that kind of cash in development.

I've heard many in the game industry say that production is moving to Hollywood style, with huge budgets, fancy graphics work, entire fresh musical scores, the works. And that's just darn expensive to do.

Re:Large corps buying independent studios...

[Yosho]

Ultima Online, Ultima Online expansions, and a sequel to... Ultima Online!

Actually, they cancelled the sequel to work on the original more. It upset me and quite a few other fans, as the sequel was looking to be very good...

Re:Large corps buying independent studios...

[hhknighter]

I definitely agree. Large companies, the evil of all evil, M$ and the soon to be the son of evil, EA, has really put a dent in gaming. Only critical to PC section of this industry: EA Sports, NBA Live series, degraded in innovation and in realism every season. (Now that NBA 2kX from sega really pounded their faces in on consoles, but still leaving no competitor on PC, hence, it can remain stupid). WTF, T-Mac, Kobe, awesome players, but cannot do x-overs in the speed of light. Controls are out of whack, and innovations are NOT fine tuned, adding in horrible AI (How is it possible that I can get, without "cheating", Kobe, T-Mac, Pierce, Duncan, Ben Wallace, Yao, Q, Jay Williams, etc ON ONE TEAM in FRANCHISE MODE.)

But on the other hand, these big corps did release some big fanatic series, like AOE (AOM did mark the fall of it). Maxis's Simcity 4 was a hit.

Not every game is bad, and some do worth our "undivided attention". But the number of big games did increase as years go by

Re:Large corps buying independent studios...

[lpontiac]

Honestly... Madden 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003???

You forgot Madden 94, 95, 96, 97, 98 and 99.

Re:Large corps buying independent studios...

[aweraw]

I can name another... RARESoft... They came out with some awesome games over the years... Battle Toads, Donkey Kong Country, Perfect Dark, Conkers Bad Fur Day, just to name a few... Your pointing out those examples of companies that used to kick ass until they were assimilated has truly taken away my only real reason to buy an Xbox... THANK YOU!!

Re:Large corps buying independent studios...

[hyphz]

> One of the big problems is that people (mostly
> really just hard core gamers) want better and
> better "quality", which really means graphics
> and sound and everything BUT gameplay.

Many people do want this, but hardcore gamers don't. (Many hardcore gamers I know are happily playing Gridrunner++.)

But yes, the Hollywood situation is a problem - it has been ever since computer graphics/music got so good that game studios have to compete for the same artists/musicians as everyone else, rather than having it as a niche.

Re:Large corps buying independent studios...

[Anonymous Coward]

Jane's? Gone. No longer in the business. Was never in the business anyway, just a military analyst allowing game companies to use their name and some data.
Sonalysts (688i maker) later made Sub Command, no longer under the Jane's name. The other companies using the Jane's name (3 or 4 IIRC) are, AFAIK, gone.

Re:Large corps buying independent studios...

[LaMaia]

> Remember the Blade Runner "adventure" game?
> That was one of my faves

I just picked this up last month at Software Etc.
from the bargain bin ($5). I'm really enjoying
it (even got it to install on an XP box).

Tellingly, I couldn't find *any* mention of
in on EA or Westwood's web pages.

Re:No realistic driving sim?! Heard of Gran Turism

[gl4ss]

cars don't break in gt3..

and the tuning is _very_ simplified(and limited)..

what i want is a proper remake of street rod(and don't come saying i should play motor city online, it ends later this year totally.)

the problem with gaming industry is the same as ever, only few classics come out per year and the rest is crap. also the life span of games has reduced to way too short time to get into a game properly..

what's missing.

[Mir322]

Story = How many games have a story tacked on ~just to explain~ why you're shooting at people or aliens or terrorists? It's not length of story, but quality of story.
Interactivity and joint Story Telling with other living people in a virtual environment. MMO'a remind me of table top pen and pencil gaming of the early 80's. Mud's and dungeon crawls dressed up in fancy gfx, but little more. Sure, there are RPing guilds in EQ, but that's not what i'm talking about.

How many game designers have stopped to actually read Aristotles' Poetics?

Re:what's missing.

[eglamkowski]

Heh - I agree fully. I had the great pleasure of working at Holistic Design for several years, which has designers who have, in fact, read Aristotle and many others. They are fantastic story tellers and excellent writers, but then, they were also the original authors for Vampire (Andrew Greenberg) and Werewolf (Bill Bridges) (commerical: Fading Suns is probably one of the deepest and richest RPGs on the market - go buy it, you'll like it :-)

But many (most?) games are seriously lacking in this regard. I was reading the MOO3 website and they were calling for fan fiction to create the backstory. Bleh.

Realistic?!?

[Rob Simpson]

I don't consider being able to drive full tilt at a wall and bounce off to be a hallmark of realism.

I only played this game briefly on someone else's machine, and I guess the other physics and stuff might have been realistic, but this seems to me to be a fatal flaw.

Re:Realistic?!?

[coneal]

"cars don't break in gt3.." -gl4ss

"I don't consider being able to drive full tilt at a wall and bounce off to be a hallmark of realism." -Rob Simpson

Point taken, both of you. GT3 would be more realistic if the cars could break/crash. And possibly more fun.

However, they had to draw the line somewhere (What do you want, a sim that throws you through a plate glass window when you crash?).

Most people probably want to focus on driving not crashing. And ultimately the game does penalize you when you bump or scrape by lowering your speed, which equates to lost time which causes you to lose races. You'd never get a license for the higher end races slamming into walls.

Now on the turning complaint gl4ss made, I haven't played it with a steering column type control thing, so maybe I only have the primitive screwhead's perspective on that.

Still, for a known commercial game it delivers much more realism than most of the driving games out there.

Re:Realistic?!?

[xenocide2]

About that... it seems that people want real cars over damage models. For some crazy reason, car manufacturers want games to give the illusion that you can't wreck their cars when driving at insane speeds. So its mostly been an either or situation with damage and liscenced cars. Its slightly changing and pretty much obvious and easy to implement, but look at all the games with damage modelling. Then look at all the games with real cars. You should then notice that all the good sellers were liscenced not damage based. Maybe its just that people don't want to worry about wrecking their car, but I think that if you could combine the two it would do very well. I mean, fzero and wipeout both have damage and sell well. (Speaking of fzero, have you seen the latest videos? holy heat effects!).

Re:Realistic?!?

[Rob Simpson]

Good point. Do you have any recommendations for good games that have car (not hovercraft, etc.) racing with realistic damage models?

The last car racing game I bought was Porsche Unleashed for the PC - the review raved about how realistic it was, and I noticed the screenshots had damage indicators and damaged sections on the cars. But when I played it, I noticed that even though I could bang up the car pretty good and get the indicator to change from green to yellow, orange, etc. the car still drove perfectly fine. Aagh.

Re:Realistic?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try the entire Destruction Derby/Rage Racer type line of games.
I forget what the DC generaion Destruction Derby game was, but I remember it being quite fun.

Re:Realistic?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember now. Demolition Racer: No Exit.

ime till the 2 min timout hits.

What is Wrong With /.

[Anonymous Coward]

With the amount of time you have on your hands to post in every story with your brand of vapid comments, I publicly question your $$$$$exyness.

History?

[alamonelf]

Is this not all just little bits of history repeating. If memory serves me correctly this is the time for the out-of-nowhere game that is not quite polished but at times like these we are more willing to except flaws that are unexceptable in booming markets. Also while I rellize my game a minute craving is not being satisfied but Neverwinter Nights by Bioware is a MASTERPIECE OF GAME AND COMMUNITY.

Co-Op Games

[FerakIII]

Co-op games are what I have been waiting for for the last 5 years of my life. Rainbow 6 and the other FPS games are good in co-op mode, but I don't think Co-op has been fully explored by the gaming industry. Where is Zelda co-op mode? Maybe it's out there and I haven't been bothered finding it, but I think there are many Genre's that could be developed into co-op that still haven't been. Co-op in PC games like RTS's would be awesome. But also consol games, when your playing games casualy with mates, the only choices you have are blinking racing games or fighters. I have had countless times sitting round with mates watching them play Final Fantasy series, thinking wouldn't it be cool if we were both involved. Damn it... bring on the co-op revolution.

Re:Co-Op Games

[aweraw]

All hail the Secret of Mana! If I'm not mistaken, there's an action RPG with 4 player co-op comming soon for game cube.. "Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicals" I believe its called...

Why you aren't playing Infinity

[infiniti99]

I have first-hand experience here, working on Infinity for Gameboy Color. Sure, GBC is obsolete, and we really should nuke that web site right now, since it isn't going anywhere, but a few years ago it was hot stuff.

The GBC glaringly lacked RPGs. At the time, I could safely say that the best RPG for the platform was Final Fantasy Legend 3, and that was for the monochrome GB! Infinity was going to change that. It was a game SquareSoft would have made, had they stayed around to make GBC games. Our game played a little like something between FF2 and FF3, with a full 25,000 word story. No real innovation here (except for maybe the battle system), we were simply trying to fill a nitch on the platform. For that reason, we got so many emails from gamers wondering when this thing would be released. After all, their only other choice was Pokemon. Many of them wondered if we would face a similar fate as Mythri, another GBC title that you never saw (both games were highlighed on RPGamer).

Unfortunately, Infinity never saw the light of day because we couldn't land a publisher. We sent a letter out to nearly all publishers, but in only three cases did they contact us back: EA, Nintendo, Crave. I actually flew to Washington to meet a guy at Nintendo (pretty cool place, looks just like the stuff in the pictures), only to be denied an offer. He did, however, show me a GBA prototype with Mario Kart. Sure, Mario Kart is a cool game, but I wanted to play an RPG. On the first day we met with Crave, the guy asked if we could substitute the characters with some from a movie. We tried to get them to go along with the game as-is, and we had a long negotiation period, but they ended up just stringing us along with no result. At one point, their plan was to show the game at E3 2001, but we were denied that also (I even have the 1 poster of the game we had made for the occasion, hanging on the wall behind me right now).

What I learned from all this is that publishers generally only want to take safe bets. Why go for a risky RPG when you can just make Men in Black 2? It pained me to walk down the GBC isle at stores and see something featuring the Olsen twins. How on earth do these games get published, but ours not? It is the sad state of the game industry.

Re:Why you aren't playing Infinity

[Anonymous Coward]

stick it to them, sell the ROM image online.

Re:Why you aren't playing Infinity

[infiniti99]

Yeah, who knows, maybe we'll do that. Unfortunately, there are still some final touches to be done before it is releasable. After the whole Crave incident we just completely dropped the project, and since then it hasn't been touched. We might get the team together again just to put out a ROM, though we've been saying that for awhile now...

Sometimes, it really has all been done.

[__aadkms7016]

In music, I think we have good case studies
now which show that it is possible to "say all
that is worth saying" within a genre. Look
at the "big band music" genre -- by the end
of WWII it had all been said, and the innovators
moved on to create new types of jazz. The
bands that play that music today do it as
historical preservation. Given a set of
instruments, and stylistic rules for
writing to the instruments, there is only
so much one can say.

Re:Sometimes, it really has all been done.

[Squareball]

Quote:"There is only so much one can say"
Really? Obviously you haven't met my girlfriend! ;)

Re:Sometimes, it really has all been done.

[Doomdark]

Good point... and I think same applies to genres in computer games and literature (although to a lesser degree in literature I guess). I might argue that there's always room for _some_ improvement, but after a while it probably makes more sense for most people to either move on (change genre, or break its constraints), or to enjoy what has been achieved as is.

Re:Sometimes, it really has all been done.

[xScruffx]

Really? Obviously you haven't met my girlfriend! ;)

Yours suffers from oral diarrhea as well, eh?

xScruffx

Re:No realistic driving sim?! Heard of Gran Turism

[Fulcrum of Evil]

cars don't break in gt3..

Yeah, it kind of jars you out of the game when you face-plant into a barrier at 100Mph, then just back up. It should at least kick you out of the race.

Here it is

[Illserve]

Games these days cost millions to develop.

Because of this, they have to appeal to the LCD of the computer game public.

This means they have to be very dumb, at all levels. 90% of people won't "get" a smart game.

Back in the day, a game could be wildly successful with a small niche audience, because production costs were so low.

bump

[Anonymous Coward]

well said.

Blackley produced the Trespasser disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

Shaumus Blackley is notorious in the developer community as the guy who screwed up Trespasser, the Jurassic Park game. They had it all - years of schedule, plenty of money, the full backing of Dreamworks, and direct support from Steven Speilberg. But read the reviews: GameSpot says "Trespasser is the most frustrating game I have ever played. Of all the games I have ever reviewed, this one has been the most disappointing. Of all the games I have played, this is the one I am most adamant about never wanting to play again. I don't want to sound mean-spirited, but all gamers should know that Trespasser is a frustrating game, filled with boring gameplay and annoying bugs. It is not fun. It is monotonous and tedious to the point of nausea."

Blackley was the "producer" for that game, and also wrote (unsuccessfully) the physics engine. "Why did physics code that was barely usable actually ship?" says Game Developer's postmortem, which names Blackley as the major problem with the project.

Blackley has since turned to evangelism and punditry, at which he's better.

Re:No realistic driving sim?! Heard of Gran Turism

[Anonymous Coward]

GT3 is a fun game but it's not a sim. It's just a very nice looking arcade driving game that's a bit more realistic than the average "arcade style" racing game.

It's faults? Some of the cars can manage impossible cornering without any braking. The tires don't wear out, the cars don't become damaged, the modifications are not based in reality, I could go on. It's still a fun game, but it's no sim.

Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City are in many ways more accurate and realistic driving simulators. The cars and tires can sustain damage, all the vehicles drive very differently and can even flip over. But the most accurate driving Sim I've seen on the PS2 is EA's F1 sim. Unfortunately, modern F1 cars aren't much fun to drive, because of this I find the game to be an utter bore.

The truth is there are very few driving "simulators" available on any of the consoles. The console market is an arcade market. If you want a real driving sim, you'll have to look toward some PC games like F1GP or some of the rally games. But watch out, in many cases the same game title on the PC will be "arcaded" for the consoles, pretty awful.

Free time

[Apreche]

I've had a lot of free time lately, and I began writing a short paper related to just this topic. The gist is that people are designing video games from a software engineering standpoint or a movie standpoint. And that many video games aren't "games" at all (according to definition 4a in the Oxford English Dictionary, which is the important definition). Many of them are interactive movies or multimedia puzzles. Which, is fine, but because they aren't designed from the correct standpoint they come out crappy. I later go on to discuss how games need to be designed as games, just like sports (which are games) and board games, and card games, etc. Doing this results in higher quality, better selling product.

Game Reviewers - The Problem

[securitas]

They sit there and carefully and systematically work through each game, taking notes on the sound, music, graphics, etc. They evaluate the game the same way Roger Ebert carefully picks through a movie and sees it's good bits and bad bits.

That's only one thing that a game reviewer is supposed to do. They are also supposed to review the game as a whole. More often than most would care to admit, there is nowhere near that level of attention to detail when conducting a review. How many times have we seen so-called reviewers exposed for being nothing more than fanboys on the take from publishers (bribes, junkets and payola)? Or even worse, how often do they write reviews without ever seeing or playing the game in question (fraudulent reviews)?

As long as the publishers know that they can manipulate reviewers by the carrot --bribes, junkets and payola-- or the stick --threatening no review copies of games or no access to staff for interviews-- they know that they can get away with just about anything when publishing games. Is there any wonder why 95% of games published don't make a profit?

At Geartest.com we have faced the latter problem, where publishers will not send us the actual products, even when we occasionally request them.

They send us press releases, screenshots, more PR about promotional offers, bundle discounts and contests, but they rarely send the software.

Maybe it's because we have repeatedly told them that we won't publish non-news, and we won't publish features without direct access to the game in question and/or the staff who made the game (in the case of interviews/features).

Meanwhile, you get self-proclaimed 'journalists' like Marc Saltzman who carve out a cottage industry for themselves while doing nothing to advance serious, legitimate, journalistic or critical coverage of games.

There are an endless number of Web site and so-called 'game press' that are happy to publish PR and advertising and call them articles or features. As long as there are gamers who give these sites and magazines their traffic and pay for this type of PR content, the game companies, their marketing agencies and the publications themselves have no incentive to stop pimping, whoring and publishing lousy games.

No, DOOM co-op was the best.

[antdude]

DOOM co-op was the best. I didn't like Quake 1. Too bad, DOOM 3 won't have co-op. Diablo games did. I enjoyed them.

You young whipper-snappers!

[An Onerous Coward]

I see all the claims about "lack of innovation" in the gaming industry, and while I can't wholly disagree, I think many of the complaints come from simply taking too narrow a view.

What we have is akin to an evolutionary process. Good ideas (easter eggs, puzzle games, platform games) get copied shamelessly, until you have hundreds of games that fully explore the design space. First we had simple games like Breakout and Galaga, because that was really all that computers were equipped to handle. Then when the hardware was sufficiently beefed up, we got scrollers like SMB and Metroid. Within that one genre, a lot of new ideas were incorporated. Just look at how much evolution happened between Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario World, despite sticking to the same "run/jump/scroll" formula.

The way you describe it, Tetris was the only "real" puzzle game, and the rest were merely wanna-bes. That's a difficult assertion to make, since Tetris wasn't even the first puzzle game (Q-bert, for example, preceded Tetris by three years). All that can really be said is that the success of Tetris led all the other game publishers to see the potential of the genre.

It's especially strange that you dismiss Dr. Mario as "just another Tetris clone." Its conceptual lineage is blindingly obvious, but I would say that it was just as playable and addictive.

Ideas get stolen, rehashed, reworked, combined, pushed to the limit, and distilled back down until they're nearly unrecognizeable. What you need to understand is, this process actually strengthens the gaming industry. Sure, it sucks when some company decides to dash off a half-hearted clone of Warcraft. But if a great game spawns ten paint-by-numbers clones and one mind-blowing twist on the original formula, gamers are better off than they would be if nobody had copied it for fear of being "derivative."

Enter Flashback

[Anonymous Coward]

> Now, maybe if the game started out as a 15 page comic book.....

IIRC, Flashback had something similar: starts out as a comic (found in manual), cool storyline, fun gameplay, great sound and amazing atmosphere.
Maybe the closest description would be "2D Half-Life" ;)

you don't know the golden age of gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 50 years old, lots of disposable income, but I'm not interested in computer games.

When I want to play games, the wife and I go to Las Vegas. Nothing better than standing around a craps table, watching the giddy blondes spend their boyfriends' money. Then we have a nice dinner, wine, and we go back to our room and fuck each other brains out.

When a video game can do that, I'll buy.

Re:you don't know the golden age of gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

Bravo! I couldn't have said it better.

Mod parent up +5, Funny and +5, Truth!

Re:you don't know the golden age of gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

I kind of love this post.

I am so out of touch

[thasmudyan]

Wow, a lot of that stuff is just the opposite of what I like in a game:

He feels that more of a focus should be made on the mass-market consumer ...
So, basically we already have the entire entertainment industry boiling products down to the *lowest* common intellectual denominator, and this guy proposes that games design be further trimmed down and be based even *more* on more consumer polling data??? Great.

Yet we make games that require 10, 20, 30, or more hours for the gamer to fully enjoy
And I thought that we already live in an instant-gratification culture that has reduced our average attention span to below 10 seconds! And now we need more ego shooters and mario clones that don't require your brain to be used *at all* because having something esoteric like a story line (or any kind of in-game development process, for that matter) is taking away too much of our time?

Well, that's all not what I think the direction of games development should be. Computer games are becoming a more important social factor every year. Soon, they may take the place of television in the areas entertainment and education, especially for children. I don't care what marketers say, the nature of the games we play *does* reflect and even influence the state of our society. And please, I'm not talking about sex and violence here. But we should think hard about if we want to align our entire society by the lowest common denominator. I think not.

Re:I am so out of touch

[Junks Jerzey]

So, basically we already have the entire entertainment industry boiling products down to the *lowest* common intellectual denominator, and this guy proposes that games design be further trimmed down and be based even *more* on more consumer polling data??? Great.

Sigh. No. "Mass market" simply means "not in an established, harcdore genre." People who get horny about the minor differences in weapons between various first person shooters and combo moves in fighting games...those are inbred fanboys. Designing for them is a mistake.

And I thought that we already live in an instant-gratification culture that has reduced our average attention span to below 10 seconds! And now we need more ego shooters and mario clones that don't require your brain to be used *at all*

Stories have largely been a failure in games. Even if the story would be good by itself, it is almost always completely ruined by being attached to a die/retry style of gameplay (I get to see this plot twist--for the fourteenth time!). And the better the story, the more linear the game. When I hear "games need better stories to advance," I think it's just a way of saying "I'm bored with what games currently have to offer me."

Heathen!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fallout 2 is sui generis and you know it. Two words: "Final Fantasy".

I say "two words" because apparently it's branched into some kind of n-space where Roman numerals don't apply. Also, any kind of Electronic Arts game involving inflated spheroids. Also, any FPS where you sneak around. Also, any left-to-right platformer.

Now go wash out your mouth for invoking Fallout 2 among that rubbish.

Bioforge

[Anonymous Coward]

It was so good, Damn...

Everyone should set up systems with legacy DOS support, dig out said game somewhere (could be hard), and play. Maybe even orgasm mentally.

One major problem about the game was that it was short by today's standards, but otherwise, it was perfect.

Re: Realistic driving games

[climacus]

Grand Turismo is hardly realistic. It is an arcade game with a semi-realistic physics engine and a grossly simplified vehicle dynamics system.

A realistic driving sim models:
a) tire temperatures/wear curve/slip curve
b) aerodynamic drag and downforce (very important for simulating slipstreaming effect)
c) weight distribution (shifting fuel load, engine placement and ballasts)
d) suspension geometry (camber and toe changes, caster angles, and the effect of anti-roll bars)
e) suspension dynamics (damper rates and spring rates)
f) powertrain
g) drivelines (differentials, gear ratio, clutch)

The parameters listed above are not reserved for some pie-in-the-sky simulation program written in the academia. Every *realistic* driving simulation games have had those parameters modelled, and in some case user-modifiable, since 1998.

Here is a list of realistic driving game:
1) Grand Prix Legends
2) Nascar 2003
3) F1 2002
4) M3 mod & GTR2002 mod for F1-2002 (free)
5) Viper Racing
6) NetKar (free and add-ons)
7) Live for speed (free during beta testing)
8) Racer (free)

My personal favorite these days? M3 mod for F1-2002.

Re: Pushing the envelope and innovation...

[op51n]

But maybe there's nothing wrong with taking something and making it a thousand times better.
Something that can be done within games fairly well, since the technology updates. Films, well yea special effects get better, but I think the way in which films are made now means remakes tend to trash the original. But back to my point...
Looking at Doom3, the engine is innovative; the graphics, the sound- all of it is doing something new, and that's one of the things the games industry needs, is people to push the envelope so we get better end products. Plus I feel Doom3 might be more innovative in gameplay than most. More cinematic gameplay is a good thing in my eyes. It's one of the reasons I rate Mafia highly, it took things that maybe weren't new, but polished them and put them together to make a superb end product, that was one of the most cinematic, and engrossing games I've ever played. And I think Doom3 will do that, engross you in the gameplay and make it to some extent, an interactive movie.

You have to admit....

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone can get away with making one of the absolute worst games in gaming history, and then be put in charge of making one of the bigger consoles in gaming history only to drive it under, make zero profits, and convince Microsoft if they dump even MORE money (We're in the BILLIONS now) that they'll eventually make their money back, AND THEN LEAVE. Microsoft is STILL losing massive amounts of cash from his arrogant plans in the gaming industry. I mean, at least Romero only got to screw up ONE game, and not an entire industry!

And somehow gaming mags and people are still wanting to actually TALK to him. Go figure.

Could it be...?

[bidaum]

I'm not really involved in game developement so I have no authority backing this but..... Is it possible that the work environment is a big issue. Lots of programmers working in very specified areas having no say in the games creaticity; because with the complicated level of todays games they need a lot more programmers working on one title?

I have to agree

[Gorphrim]

Blackly said:
Though design documents can be useful tools that help organize a team's efforts, Blackley feels that often times they're a hindrance to creativity. Design docs help publishers set milestones for the developers, which shifts the focus from making a novel game to reaching a milestone to ensure payment. He also noted that the documents themselves have become bloated pieces of work that inhibit innovation. "A 300 page design document is not a very good way to be creative. Design documents actually discourage quality," says Blackley.

What a load of crap. I would think just about _every_ project has milestones...it's the damn _schedule_ that forces early shipping, kills innovation, etc.

As for discouraging quality...if the document includes QA design, then it is quite the opposite.

What a moron this guy is.

Re:First DEEPSIDE post!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is good, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it great. It just seems, for lack of a better word, too obvious. Keep trolling, Deepside Niggaz.

Please, marry me.

[Viewsonic]

I couldn't have said it better myself. You are spot on. Miyamto works directly with everyone. Nintendo of late have been farming out games and game ideas to 3rd party dvelopers and working directly with them. When all is said and done, the games are FANTASTIC. It's one of the main reasons Nintendo is still regarded as the last lone true console available. Sony and Microsoft are becoming the bane of everything I DISLIKE about console gaming, every day it becomes more and more like crappy PC games. I hate it. I want that simplicity and fun to stay. That is why I am scared for what will happen to SEGA. While they have lost the console battle, I dont want to see them absorbed by anyone other than a die hard console game company so that their gameplay and franchises dont go down the drain. If Nintendo had any compassion they'd invest into SEGA heavily. I dont want to see these go, otherwise they've got my $$$ .. The future of console gaming is NOT online, its NOT hard drives and ethernet connectors, or large $200 joysticks, or DVD players with 5.1, and all this other uselss crap. It's all about FUN games, and that's it.

Dont forget the XBox disaster

[Viewsonic]

Same deal, years of planning, plenty of money, and full backing of Microsoft. Not only are they losing BILLIONS every year, he convinced them to just invest even MORE money into the system and they FELL FOR IT. A month later, get this, HE LEFT THE COMPANY. Unbelievable!

Re:Dont forget the XBox disaster

[Animats]

When you can lose a billion a year on a product, it's easy to make failure look like success. This doesn't work for long. Ask any ex-dot-commer.

Yu Suzuki is what's wrong with game development.

[ChaosDiscord]

Look at Suzuki's work. How many of those games do you have really fond memories of? How many are truly innovative versus how many sequels and clones of existing games? He's a typical, non-inspired game designer. He shouldn't be allowed in the same room as a true genius like Miyamoto. But Suzuki's publisher needed a "star" to draw attraction like Miyamoto and Suzuki got the job. What was his big game, this masterpiece? Shenmue, an embarrasment to the industry. Sure, it had neat graphics, changing weather, and the ability to wander around randomly. But the plot was innane, plot holes abounded (apparently skipping school for a month isn't a big deal for Shenmue), and the actual gameplay was extremely linear. The action sequeces were extremely linear, in many cases as simple as "hit the button when the game tells you to." Miss the button? Redo the scene until you succeed. Being able to buy stupid trinkets from a vending machine and play an emulated version of Hang On does not compelling game play make. (And if Shenmue is really so interested tracking down his father's killer, why is he wasting time raising kittens?)

When Suziki comes out with something truly innovative again, maybe I'll be interested in listening to him. (And to be fair, Virtual Fighter was pretty innovative, as were several of his 1980s games.) In the mean time he deserves the anonymity most game designers have.

Too many cooks at times?

[A_Non_Moose]

The two games that illustrate the differences the best (IMO, that is) are Descent and Carmageddon.

In the case of Descent, you had an original game good graphics and exciting game play and well balanced weapons, tactics, and phenominal AI.

Descent II came out and was heavy on the "WOW" factor, despite growing pains with places to get stuck and problems on 1 or two boss levels, but the result was a much Improved game, despite dated graphics (why they never put out a 3dfx version I'll never know).

Descent III: Modern graphics, excellent game play, better AI, more interesting enemies and levels that were just plain awesome.

The formula stayed the same, and the gameplay as well with improved graphics/AI.
Not much changed, but it is the reason I'd probably buy Descent 4 when/if it comes out.

Now, Carmageddon OTOH is a slightly different story.
Carmageddon I was *truely* original as well as *shocking* when it first came out. Running ppl over? Smashing into other cars is ?allowed?, nay, **ENCOURAGED**?
Know what? That game fscking ROCKED!
Hours and hours of mindless fun, mayhem and high speed.

Carmageddon II (carpocylapse now):
Better (much better) graphics, same gameplay, and a little bit better AI. But, the introduction of special missions annoyed me to no end.
If it were not for a skip level code, I'd probably never played the rest of the game.
Not much changed except for every four levels was and annoyance/inconvenience/challenge.

Carmageddon TDR 2000 (CIII, essentially):
OMFG!! What did you *DO*!?! It's ruined, totally ruined. Yeah, you can run ppl over (no points/time awarded), yeah the same powerups are present with some slight differences, some better {coff*NOT*coff} graphics.
You wan't to know what made me uninstall it after 40 minutes?
Suddenly Carmageddon was about *racing*.
(insert choking sound here)
What bright bulb thought *that* was a good Idea?

I doubt I'd ever buy another game of the Carmageddon series unless the only improvement was graphics/gameplay/weapons/enemy AI.
What I honestly thought the next step would be, was, the ability do disallow/remove some powerups (the annoying ones) or more level variety.

I suppose it is sort of like coming into a position of responsibility/power;
Rule one: Don't change too much.
Rule two: Don't change too little.

Speaking of game development, how's Duke Nukem Forever coming?
(I'm gonna burn for that one)

Re:Too many cooks at times?

[British]

You're right, Carmageddon 3 was a major disappointment. As a die-hard fan since the first one, I was disappointed that I wasn't able to do 5x combos like I did in the first one(hint: drive along the railings).

And the missions, wtf is with the missions? They were frustratingly hard, and nowhere near as fun as the regular races. They insisted on putting 2 of them in each map. I instead just downloaded a maxxed out savegame and played each race by myself.

Carmageddon 2 was beautiful. 3 was the shark jumper.

Re:Too many cooks at times?

[AHumbleOpinion]

Carmageddon I was *truely* original as well as *shocking* when it first came out. Running ppl over? ...

Not really. I recall a Comodore Vic-20 game named something like "Pedestrian Polo".

Lemons

[No Such Agency]

If you think the ability to read a good reviewer's "dissection" of a game before buying it is not a godsend, you've obviously never plopped down $65 for a new game only to find that it's a) a steaming pile of super-unfun crap, b) terminally buggy or sold with misleading system requirements, or c) okay but completely not what you were expecting based on the adverts and not really interesting to you. _Love_ the serious, detail-minded reviewers, they are your Yoda of game-purchasing. After all, that initial outlay is now about the cost of 250 "games of Ms. Pac-Man at the local arcade"!

Re:Lemons

[SetarconeX]

Alright, I'll give you that one. Been eyeing Simcity 4, but all the reviews have been saying give it a miss until some more bug patches come out. Sometimes, I do trust them.

But then, I've yet to read a bad review of Tekken 4. I HATE Tekken 4. The fact that I passionately hate this game and havn't seen any reviews knocking it makes me wonder if I'm on anywhere near the same wavelength as most of the people whose reviews I read, and therefore makes me doubt even the reviews I chose to trust.

But then, I guess part of being an individual is disagreeing with the critics every once and a while.

That, and part of me is still jealous of people who get to play video games for a living......

Re: Pushing the envelope and innovation...

[Anonymous Coward]

> I've ever played. And I think Doom3 will do that, engross you in the
>gameplay and make it to some extent, an interactive movie.
>
Too late. Silent Hill 3 for the PS2 has already beaten Doom3 to the punch. Doom3 is just another lame FPS shooter. Silent Hill 3 is basically redefines horror gaming . Which do you think will have the more lasting impact? It's not going to be Doom3 that's for sure.

well then

[heff]

this must be why team fortress 2 is taking so long!

I tell ya what the problem is.

[Anonymous Coward]

I make games I know. The problem is you building the next generation game to work with 4 year old hardware at least. You got to realize if you build it state of the art almost nobodys computer will be able to handle it (well according to marketing) so they have really strict rules usually on what can be done and how big this game your building can be. That really cuts down what can be done in a game. This is the thing that pisses me off the most. I want to build for the future not the past. If they can't play it to bad buy a real computer but marketing don't like that point. From there it's down hill all the way. The mods are better because those people don't care if you can play it or not but cause lots of the limits are hard coded by that time unless you write your own engine your out of luck. Quake III cost at least 4 million to develop probibly a hell of a lot more. Who's got that kinda spare cash hanging around? Even if you do that it boils down to, do you want to sell your game to 2% of the market or 50% of the market? It's a no brainer if you want to recover the investment you have to spoon feed the older computers. We already make each game several times already, pick your poison.
All games have a least two settings crappy computer and real computer. That's usually even seperate files. Then you got Direct ZZZZZZ and Open gl. Top of that it take about 2 years to get it out the door. Time it's out it's old.

So do us a favor and don't complain and keep your computer state of the art if you want to play state of the art. It will never happen though so you can probibly save your cash.

Even then every 2nd week a new os comes out. Ya can't win. It's hell and the titles show it.

Things like zbox are none games IMHO, there dead in the water. If you can't get in there and set them up the way you want there dead. I call them AB games. Don't matter what you do the game starts point A and you play till you get to point B. That's it. Boring. You can't fix that it's burned into a chip. I don't build those games. I refuse.
You get what you pay for.

Computers are game machines, settop boxes are garbage. Talk about limits. Now what can be done on those redefines limits. If you buy them your nuts. A good computer game will blow them all away in a second.

Sure the computers are finaly getting powerfull enough to run these complex games but the OS is sucking the life out of these new faster machines.

Again where is your market? It sucks but that's life. Be nice if peope only used linux to play but that's not the reality right now.

A sick industry

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem with the game industry is that it harbors many phonies, who in turn hire other phonies. By "phonies", I mean people who are unqualified for their job titles. Because game's sucesses and failures are essentially unpredictable, when a game becomes successful through a combination of luck and hard work, the politically aggressive people are the first to take credit and get promoted into positions of higher power by executives who are not quite sure why the product was successful and are too lazy to dig into the details. Once you get into the "senior executive" title, it seems like no amount of your own incompetence can dislodge you.

A case in point is Sega's former executive, Peter Moore. Moore was a former professional soccer player from the UK who got an MBA and worked at the athletic shoe company Reebok. When Bernie Stolar was CEO at Sega, he hired Moore as the vp of marketing. In a political fight just before the Dreamcast launch, Stolar got thrown out for insisting on the inclusion of a 56K modem with the console. With Bernie fired, Sega filled in his position with a "temporary" executive from headquarters in Japan. All eyes were on the advertising campaign Moore had put together up for the launch date called "Inside the Box". Dreamcast sold very well in its first few months after the initial launch -- thanks to the groundwork that Stolar had laid down before. Flush with the huge sales, Sega promoted Moore to President.

This was the moment where higher executives demonstrated that they had no idea why the initial Dreamcast sales were successful, and promoted the wrong guy.

As the year went on, the Dreamcast sales flagged. Despite Moore's best marketing attempts, which were ill aimed and ineffectual, the numbers grew bleaker and bleaker. Moore spent money like water, creating elaborate sets at E3 where professional roller skaters did tricks on ramps to promote "Jet Set Radio", renting out the entire Great America amusement park for one day for the Game Developers Converence attendees, and getting Sega to sponsor the MTV Music Video Awards to promote "Space Channel 5".

All for naught. Within a year, sales were so bad that Dreamcast was discontinued. Despite all of the failures, Sega allowed Moore (clearly out of his element) to stay on as CEO, as Sega branched out to support other platforms.

But look what happened: Last Christmas, Moore thought that Sega's football game could beat EA's football game if Sega continued to throw money into advertising. It was once again Moore's theory of spending money like water.

How much money? Almost all of the entire allocated budget for the year 2003! Moore's plan failed badly, which punched a huge hole in Sega, a hole so large that the company began looking for a buyer. Eventually Sega wound up with Sammy, the Korean pachinko manufacturer, which was posted on Slashdot a few weeks ago. Moore announced his departure from Sega, and three days later, he resurfaced again...

...as a VICE PRESIDENT for XBox marketing at Microsoft!

If this story doesn't illustrate the illness of the game industry, I don't know what does.

Re:A sick industry

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Nitpitcking. But, Sammy's a Japanese Pachinko/Pachislot manufacturer.

But you're mostly right. The Dreamcast did sink like a brick in water because of that man's insane spending policies.

Re:A sick industry

[crusher-1]

If what your saying has any truth to it (and I'm not saying it doesn't) then XBox is doomed to failure and M$ is destined to incur further financial lossed in their entertainment division. If Moore does for XBox what you suggest he did for the Game Cube then the entertainment branch is M$ will be a big fiscal black hole.

It baffles me that for being such an apparently shrewd and aggressive company that M$ has the reputation for being that they wouldn't clue into his track record! I mean hiring the CEO of a failed business campaign to run a struggling start up in the console market seems foolish at best. Perhaps it's a case of a "good ol' boys" network - when they work they work well and when they don't they flopped hard on the ground and often times with a fair amount of collateral damage (in cases such as these refer to sig :) ).

Re:A sick industry

[Anonymous Coward]

this is why I left the game industry. that and few cool games to work on. now my area is heating up (MMORPG), but I'm bitter. Hollywood sucks.

SMB

[roesti]

Shigeru Miyamoto: For me, the most interesting thing about video games is taking the controller and using it to move something around on the screen. Hmmm, indeed. Is everybody sure this is the actual genius behind the classics like SMB?

Actually, Super Monkey Ball was a Sega game, and you actually move the screen around your character. (Insert joke about Soviet Russia here.)

Yes, I know that's not what you were talking about, but here's to another game that proves Miyamoto's point: good controls are fundamental to making a good game.

It's alarming how few game designers are well-known, even within video game circles. Miyamoto-san is probably the best-known because he's been there from the (new) beginning in the early 1980s. How many others are known by name? Nagoshi? Suzuki? Kojima? Spector? Garriott?

Re:SMB

[JonK]

How many others are known by name? Nagoshi? Suzuki? Kojima? Spector? Garriott?

Well, from a generation earlier, you forgot Eugene Jarvis (Defender, Joust), Roberta Williams (early Sierra adventures), Dave Theurer (Missile Attack, Tempest), David Braben & Ian Bell (Elite). More recently, Sid Meier (Civilisation), Will Wright (Sim City & The Sims) and Peter Molineaux (all the other god games). And with almost fifty years in the industry between them, Jeff Minter and Mark Cerny. And that's just off the top of my head ;-)

But yeah, there's a long and inglorious history of the video game industry ignoring its auteurs. Dates all the way back to Atari, who refused to allow game creators to be named.

Re:What's wrong with game development?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL! that was the funniest thing i have heard all day, and its been a long fucking day!!
thanks

ôô

Total Annihilation

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone remember a game from 1997 called Total Annihilation? Now that was a damn good game. great graphics, lots of options, decent stroy and online gaming. It was a truly revolutionary game. and the problem is we haven't seen innovations like that since. And for all you fucks who dont think this was an incredible game, go do a search for total annihilation units and maps, you will be amazed on how much shit is out there for that game and its 6 fucking years old. so fuck all the creative wasteland games that are coming out now, such as C&C generals, god damn when are they going to come up with somehting else? i personally dont give a fuck about eyecandy, i want story. GIVE ME BACK MY MUD!!!!

Sorryuabout the rant

a failure to communicate

[presearch]

Yeah, well he can gripe about the lack of communication between developers
and publishers but I don't see him solving the problem. Try and make any
contact with his company CEG. All you'll find is an email address that nobody
responds to and voice mail that never give a call back.

We've got a game with a large following and great reviews and would like to find a publisher
to help us reach critical mass and get the game into stores on and to console platforms.
CEG might as well be a P.O. box in Fairbanks for all of the response you get from them.
Very unimpressed. I mean, even if he thinks we suck, I would be nice to at least get some
response from CEG.

All head and no bread.

Seamus, if you're reading this, drop me a line at tranquility@mac.com.
(Not that I expect to hear anything).

I used to edit a UK videogame mag...

[payndz]

...and at the time I took over, I thought, "How cool is this? I get to play videogames - *for a living*!"

Three years later, frankly I wanted to kill myself - or never play another videogame as long as I lived, whichever was easier. Luckily I got the chance to move out of games and into movies (but that's another story).

I'd been playing arcade games since the Seventies, had most of the computers that were around in the Eighties and the consoles in the Nineties. And as I got older, I realised that the more advanced the technology became... the less fun the games were.

Don't get me wrong, there have been games I've enjoyed playing in the past few years - Halo, the original Tomb Raider, Goldeneye, Crazy Taxi, MGS, Unreal Tourney (once all the Futurama mods are put in). But these days, the 'big' games just require too much of an investment of time for too little reward to be worth it. I was talking to a guy I used to work with who's now on an Xbox mag, and he told me that a senior designer at one of the majors had admitted that his company doesn't bother spending too much time on game ending sequences "because hardly anyone can be bothered to play that long". Chicken or egg?

Certainly, the only big game I've played through to the end in the last few years has been Halo, and even that had some infuriating bits where I was very close to putting it down forever. FFVII I gave up on when I got stuck fighting Barrett's ex-mate and had to keep sitting through five minutes of exposition before getting killed again. MGS - getting blown up by Metal Gear Rex for the fiftieth time was just too much. Even something like Jet Set Radio Future's skyscraper stage... life is just too short!

I actually get more fun out of a quick blast on MAME or Frodo or Spectacle, or Robotron on GBA, or 30 minutes of Crazy Taxi on DC, than any of the so-called megagames of the moment. I have no interest in committing 70 hours of my life to some game (which I know is going to frustrate me with the die/retry trial-and-error loop that designers still think is *soooooo* clever) when there are other things I could be doing.

Not even Miyamoto is infallible - I couldn't be arsed to play through to the end of Ocarina Of Time, simply because I got caught in a die/retry loop and decided I couldn't face playing through the same section yet *again* just to reach the next checkpoint.

The idea of the 'short, sharp shock' seems to have all but disappeared from modern designers. But right now, those are the only kind of games that I have the time (and patience) to play. I've seen everything already - there hasn't been a new gaming genre for years, and nobody seems to even be bothering with new twists on what's already been done. (After three years on an N64 mag, I'd rather eat my own toenails than play another 3D platformer with a cartoony hero. Oh look, the ice level! The volcano level! The minecarts! The jungle! The haunted house! FUCK RIGHT OFF AND DIE, YOU UNIMAGINATIVE SHITEHAWKS!)

The only problem is, nobody's developing games that are designed for a quick 10-15 minute blast, because the focus groups want FMV and level bosses. I couldn't care less about FMV if the game's playable, and I *hate* level bosses, so that's why the big, bland game companies that thankfully I don't have to deal with any more aren't getting any of my money...

Re:I used to edit a UK videogame mag...

[shepd]

>The only problem is, nobody's developing games that are designed for a quick 10-15 minute blast

BINGO! This is why my library of games is almost 100% racing games. I've not yet found one that dissapoints in the "Play a level during a commercial break" area.

PacMan World 2 wasn't too bad either, but suffered from too much die and retry.

Re:I used to edit a UK videogame mag...

[egomaniac]

Not even Miyamoto is infallible - I couldn't be arsed to play through to the end of Ocarina Of Time, simply because I got caught in a die/retry loop and decided I couldn't face playing through the same section yet *again* just to reach the next checkpoint.

The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time is widely considered to be the best videogame ever made. It remains ranked at #1 among all videogames at Gamerankings to this day.

Fine, you didn't want to finish it. However, suggesting that somehow it's the game's fault seems a bit childish. It's impossible to please everybody, and I hardly think the fact that Miyamoto's masterpiece failed to please one random Slashdot poster should count as a failure on his part.

Re:I used to edit a UK videogame mag...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cry me a fucking river, fanboy. Apparently everything's widely considered the best videogame ever to Nintendo groupies, if it's made by Nintendo. Every Metroid, Mario, and Zelda game are "widely considered to be the best videogame ever" whenever someone makes a single disparaging remark. The fact that most people consider Majora's Mask superior to Ocarina doesn't even slow you down in making your pronouncement.

Re:I used to edit a UK videogame mag...

[egomaniac]

That's why I cited an independent source for that pronouncement.

GameRanking's Top 10 Games

What's at #1? Go on, take a look. I dare you. You will also note that Majora's Mask doesn't even show up on the list, so I don't think you can support your argument that "most people consider Majora's Mask superior to Ocarina". Both journalists and users ranked Ocarina higher.

Dumbass.

A chance

[Tyreth]

Everyone seems to be saying, what we need is truly original games designed for the player. Instead we have redesigns of the same concept, over and over. There are very few games that I actually bother to play now, there is nothing new to excite me.

Open Source developers unite! We are not bound by the $$, so we are free to create any game we wish. Forget about cool programming techniques, think about a great game idea - the game you've always wanted to play - then check out sourceforge to see if anyon'e building it. If they are, join them. If not, start it yourself and finish it.

Then we can see if we can produce some unique, high quality games.

Re:A chance

[NBarnes]

Some of us really do want to be paid for our work. I'm doing small for-profit, closed source game development now because, frankly, life is too short to write business applications for the next thirty years.

Re:A chance

[Tyreth]

For sure, I see nothing wrong with that. I'd love to be paid as a game programmer, but I see value in open source gaming too :)

Re:A chance

[jstott]

Open Source developers unite! We are not bound by the $$, so we are free to create any game we wish.

We already did. The game is called nethack.

-JS

What's wrong with fucking game development?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only fucking thing that is wrong is that character development is so E$$$PENSIVE.

You have to shell out a grand for decent software. And then when you finally get your character skinned and boned, YOU HAVE TO WRITE A THOUSAND FUCKING LINES to get it rendered in your game. And you have to WRITE A THOUSAND FUCKING LINES to get your character to press a button, pick up an object, etc.

This just goes to show how stupid computers really are and how sorry the state our game API's are right now.

Seamus is an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically he wants to reduce the amount of sequels by making videogames more mainstream. Uhm...There was plenty of innovation and less sequel-whoring going on before the eminently mainstream PS, and it just got worse as gamers flocked to PS2 and XBox, and even Gamecube, though for sheer lack of games it has also less sequels.

The point is, mainstream public audiences feast on sequels. But then, this is the same guy that blamed all the industry in Shigeru Miyamoto, and how until we start making 'adult' games (read "2XTreme!" games) the industry is going to stagnate. Has he forgotten that Shigeru Miyamoto is the only person who still actively innovates within videogames *and* sells well?

One problem

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the largest problems with the video games industry is the fact that Seamus Blackley is involved at a high level.

WWWGD?

[Nexum]

WWWGD? The fact that certain companies (no names... but come on...) go around purchasing games developers (Bungie, Rare, and that recent one who's name escapes me now). Depriving people of the ability to run games on their chosen platform (unless they don't want to wait two extra years for the porting). This practise sucks - I thought we were getting away from proprietary game development that seemed all the rage in the early 90's with the SNES and Megadrive/Genesis. In those days it was *SO* rare to find a game on one platform that was also available on another. About 3-4 years ago until recently it was looking very favourable for the independent developers and cross platform games.. but now greedy guts comes along and becasue it discovers it can't just wade into this particular market as it had expected, is throwing a tantrum an gobbling up developers so that no-one else can play any more. 2 cents... 2 cents.

Re:No realistic driving sim?! Heard of Gran Turism

[irritating environme]

I'll agree GT isn't a pure realistic sim, but it definitely hit a sweet spot of balance between simulation and arcade that appeals to lots and lots of people. I still learned a lot about real driving from GT (how rear vs. front vs. all-wheel handle, how to drive through curves with pre-braking and acceleration through curves, etc). Some versions did have tire wear simulation (the endurance races), but hopefully flips and car damage will be added in later releases. I'll never forget the first time I successfully did the Laguna Seca corkscrew...

I think the industry is only different in a few

[rolfwind]

ways.

Barriers of Entry. These days you definitely a larger development team and more cash..... not so much the programmers but artists, musicians, what not. Sure, programming need increased, but artists are much more needed now as well. As well as the things you didn't need before, motion capture for good movement, etc.

As for the games themselves. I never play hard to get into games, something that needs manuals to read before you can have fun, and these complex games are getting more common, imo. Many games start off assuming you have read the manual when I think it's better to have beginning levels which you can just skip if your experience. To me, Metal Gear Solid's practice missions are a perfect example.

Fun... I don't know how you can measure this... some games are and some aren't. I'd never thought I like a golfing game when I was in high school but now I'm addicted to playing rounds of Golden Tee Fore! golf at the local arcade. I used to like 3d shooters..... but I'll be damned if I had to sit through one of those ever again.

A sick industry

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem with the game industry is that it harbors many phonies, who in turn hire other phonies. By "phonies", I mean people who are unqualified for their job titles. Because game's sucesses and failures are essentially unpredictable, when a game becomes successful through a combination of luck and hard work, the politically aggressive people are the first to take credit and get promoted into positions of higher power by executives who are not quite sure why the product was successful and are too lazy to dig into the details. Once you get into the "senior executive" title, it seems like no amount of your own incompetence can dislodge you.

A case in point is Sega's former executive, Peter Moore. Moore was a former professional soccer player from the UK who got an MBA and worked at the athletic shoe company Reebok. When Bernie Stolar was CEO at Sega, he hired Moore as the vp of marketing. In a political fight just before the Dreamcast launch, Stolar got thrown out for insisting on the inclusion of a 56K modem with the console. With Bernie fired, Sega filled in his position with a "temporary" executive from headquarters in Japan. All eyes were on the advertising campaign Moore had put together up for the launch date called "Inside the Box". Dreamcast sold very well in its first few months after the initial launch -- thanks to the groundwork that Stolar had laid down before. Flush with the huge sales, Sega promoted Moore to President.

This was the moment where higher executives demonstrated that they had no idea why the initial Dreamcast sales were successful, and promoted the wrong guy.

As the year went on, the Dreamcast sales flagged. Despite Moore's best marketing attempts, which were ill aimed and ineffectual, the numbers grew bleaker and bleaker. Moore spent money like water, creating elaborate sets at E3 where professional roller skaters did tricks on ramps to promote "Jet Set Radio", renting out the entire Great America amusement park for one day for the Game Developers Converence attendees, and getting Sega to sponsor the MTV Music Video Awards to promote "Space Channel 5".

All for naught. Within a year, sales were so bad that Dreamcast was discontinued. Despite all of the failures, Sega allowed Moore (clearly out of his element) to stay on as CEO, as Sega branched out to support other platforms.

But look what happened: Last Christmas, Moore thought that Sega's football game could beat EA's football game if Sega continued to throw money into advertising. It was once again Moore's theory of spending money like water.

How much money? Almost all of the entire allocated budget for the year 2003! Moore's plan failed badly, which punched a huge hole in Sega, a hole so large that the company began looking for a buyer. Eventually Sega wound up with Sammy, the Korean pachinko manufacturer, which was posted on Slashdot a few weeks ago. Moore announced his departure from Sega, and three days later, he resurfaced again...

...as a VICE PRESIDENT for XBox marketing at Microsoft!

If this story doesn't illustrate the illness of the game industry, I don't know what does.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

Your skull is full of shit. Shenmue was one of the finest game series ever made.

Co-operative is a very big missing part.

[Inoshiro]

Unfortunately, it seems like scripting a single-player perspective to a two-player perspective is too hard for most people. Is anyone willing to experiment with a system where each person sees something different, and they have to both play through twice together to get the full effect? So for, no.

In Perfect Dark, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, and Time Splitters 2 (all co-operative capable games), the co-op modes are merely 2 people in story mode, instead of one.

Some games accept this, and only add it where possible (like Secret of Mana or FF6). But there's still a dearth of co-op games. This is why I want to buy Doom 2 for my GBA -- so I can co-op link play with my friends a good game again.

Article title not quite on target

[grimsweep]

The real title should be along the lines of what's wrong with Non-Sony game development.

I'm not talking about PC vs. Console flame wars, nor PS2 vs. XBox, but it is important to point out that the first article mentions NOTHING about Sony and it's relationship with developers. Or, for that matter, the sales of PS2 gaming consoles and games vs. those of X-Box and Nintendo.

It's not contested that Microsoft and Nintendo need to get their act together. PC makers have it the hardest, given the wide variety of hardware out there (and the combinations thereof).

But Sony isn't exactly hurting in this economy. In fact, they quadrupled their profits just last year.

Plus, Sony wants to eliminate any charge for development on the PS3, adding a freedom that PC developers have enjoyed for some time.

The Playstation 2 is technically inferior to the GameCube, XBox, and most modern PCs, yet it continues to net a more than substantial share of the market. This alone, if anything, is a sign that graphic/hardware superiority in games isn't "all that".

All rebuffs/criticism welcome.

Re:Article title not quite on target

[scot4875]

It's late and I need to get to bed, so I'm not going to look up links for you here, but it's fairly well-known that Nintendo pulls in the highest margins of any video game publisher. (take a look around Planet Gamecube)

I don't quite know what you mean my 'MS and Nintendo need to get their act together' -- MS is working to penetrate the market at all costs (it's working), Nintendo is making money hand over fist by catering to their core demographics (kids, and anyone who just likes fun games).

I liken the PS2's success to Britney Spears'. The first year it was out, there was *nothing* for it worth buying. Yet it sold millions because of clever marketing. In the last 16-18 months it's gotten a lot better, and a lot of good titles have been released, but really not any more than you'll find on the 'Cube. The public's perception is that the PS2 is somehow better than the alternatives, and that's all it takes to make it a winner.

So would you care to mention something about Sony's developer relationships? I don't really know how they're any different than those with developers of XBox and Gamecube software, so I'd like to be enlightened.

Also -- have you heard about the Q fund that Yamauchi created to fund upstart Gamecube developers?

And for your last point: Let me use another Britney analogy. "Britney Spears is musically inferior to (pick talented-but-unknown group/singer), yet continues to net a more than substantial share of the market. This alone, if anything, is a sign that people will buy whatever they are told to buy ." (note - not a knock to all PS2 owners -- it's got some great games -- but most PS2 owners just bought it because it was popular)

--Jeremy

Re: Pushing the envelope and innovation...

[op51n]

Well, I was speaking as a PC gamer only. I don't have the cash to fork out for consoles and the prices of games for consoles is somewhat scary frankly (GTA:VC still selling at it's original release price on PS2, the PC version coming out in May starting at £25 already).
And in terms of the game engine not only is the PC capable of so much more than any console, but John Carmack is by far the best coder in the industry.
I am unsurprised Silent Hill has continued to do so well in the horror genre, bu in terms of gameplay it never really got me involved, whereas an FPS (ok, I suspect Doom3 will not actually be termed an FPS, but it's first person so straight into the FPS genre it'll go, 'cause there's shooting too) is a far better way to get people further into the game, to feel the horror more.

Plus, well, play it before you judge it!

What he REALLY meant to say was...

[Anonymous Coward]

"We want to monopolize the videogame industry and drag the quality down but increase th prices. Sony and NIntendo should be destroyed or absorbed. We want people to think that we create the best games there are, so we can maintain our evil powers. Its a good thing we are getting there, Rare, Sega, and soon the entire videogame industry."

Re:What's wrong with game development?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, when I said "mod this post -1 off-topic but +5 fucking insightful" I should have specified an order! Now it's below all the mod's thresholds... :)

I'm with you there

[Twister002]

I'm STILL playing through Baldurs Gate, let alone the 4 sequels/other games of the same engine that have come since it.

Heck, I still haven't finished Starcraft or Diablo, and Diablo II has come and gone.

True

[Twister002]

But with Quake 3 they were making a multiplayer only game, why not make it pretty as well.

With Doom 3 they are slowing down the action some and using the "cinema level" graphics to more fully immerse the player in the game by creating more of a mood to the level.

Re:True

[Wyatt Earp]

"Mood" does not require crippling slow graphics.

Hitchcock didn't need CGI to create "mood", if Id wanted to they could create all the "mood" they need without screwing people with current hardware.

Re:True

[Anonymous Coward]

>With Doom 3 they are slowing down the action some and using the
"cinema level" graphics to more fully immerse the player in the game
by creating more of a mood to the level.
>
>
Too bad it'll never hold a candle to Silent Hill 3 and similar horror games that come out of Japan. American game developers just can't compete with the anime/magna styled games Japanese developers create.

Some thoughts on Seamus...

[pixel_bc]

I have yet to forgive that man for Trespasser.

There's a WHOLE lot of attonemet to be done there, buddy.

too many dooms

[Anonymous Coward]

Some themes in games hae been done too many times. Look at shooter games. Metroid Prime is really just Doom with different enemies and nicer graphics.

Would it hurt somebody to make a new kind of game and not think of the risk it entails to develop it?

No

[Twister002]

But Hitchcock required a camera where Lovecraft only required a pen where greek and American indians only required their voice.

Do you think "Pyscho" would have been as good if it wasn't a talkie?

Re:No

[Wyatt Earp]

Yea.

Triumph Of The Will only needed images and Wagner.

The Birth of a Nation didn't need to be a talkie, Harold Lloyd was very funny and made funny movies without speech. So are silent movies by Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

Sausage is gooood...

[Fastball]

...bacon is gooood...ham is gooood...

Re: Realistic driving games

[xenocide2]

Maybe you didn't play enough of that GT3. My roommate and brother both have it so we've tinkered around with it. Looking at that list its like you didnt even play the goddamned game. Every single one of those things mentioned is a factor, but you're gonna have to spend some in game money for parts. You can adjust camber angle, toe angle, gear ratios, downforce angles (if the car has them), tire type, etc.

The game does start off very arcady in that you don't need to (I don't think you really can) modify the car to race. But once you get out of the amateur division, its gonna take some fine tuning (or maybe just an escudo). It starts displaying tire wear when you run into 5 lap races, complete with tire heat and grip curve modelling.

The real missing attribute here is damage. But a hardcore racer player like yourself should know that manufacturers are reluctant to let their shiny car models indicate a dent or scratch. Thats why most of your fancy sim games in the list are either custom car, fictional car or unliscenced.

And of course, its Gran Tourismo, not Grand.

Case in point!

[crusher-1]

Ever play Unreal? At the time it came out it was one of the most interesting and captivating games of it's time. I took the FPS and put vast and explorable maps and a sublime and unspoken plot behind it.

At it's heart it was nothing more than an FPS -but the eye candy of the time made it visually beautiful. The story, though simple emulated the characters situation more by what wasn't presented than by what was. It was simple, by happen stance your morooned on a alien world. Alone, clueless and surrounded by beauty, hostiles, and an unfolding story of a world of peaceful natives dominated by another alien race that have no compunction what so ever in fragging your ass - the mission stay alive, find out what the hell is going on, and get off the planet alive. In the playing of the game you learn the plight of the crew, the natives, and in turn how to help yourself by following the source of this places plight to the center and in doing so escape.

The player interaction with the environment was not so much scripted as free form. There were secrets to be sure, but also a moral factor, such as intervening when the alien Skaar would attack the benevolent Nali by drawing the attackers attention to yourself - and reaping the reward at time that the grateful Nali would afford you. Likewise, if too weak, on could use the Nali (if the circumstance arose) to deflect an attack away from yourself so the attacker would focus on the native and you could escape unharmed.

The Original game was full of these sorts of aspects and much more. So was it any surprise, given the large cult following the ensued, that the faithful waited quitely for the next version to be made and released. The same holds true for Unreal Tournament - an extremely popular multiplayer version of the Original Unreal series.

Well, Unreal Tournament 2003 was released with mixed reviews. It didn't have the same appeal because it seemed more like a console game ported to the PC, it vainly tried to be original but lost many of the aspects that the orginal had while trying to "innovate" the graphics and technology - the game however was essentially a bad imitation of the original in many peoples view - and sales and online populations are no where near what the original games had.

Now, Unreal 2 is slated for release. The faithful anxiously await the release and I was to be counted among them. I picked up Unreal 2 the day it was put on the store shelve. I went home to install and climb into a world of fantasy and intrigue. Well, first it ran like a beta - EAX crashes galore. Frame rates for a 1.5 gig Athlon XP with a GF3-ti200 were dismal. No settings would change this. Turn all the glitze and glamour off. No AA or AF. No trilinear filtering or any setting above mid, switched to low, and the same results.

Now, I get this beast working somewhat - despite it's many and blaring problems. 12 missions into it and it's over! I look around the game and various sites to get insight into what this game is all about. It's preported to be 23 missions. But wait! 11 of the missions are extensive cut scenes. Taking place on the mothership, the "the base of operations". The storyline is very linear and the player feels as if he/she is more along for the ride then actually interacting with the game - dissappointment abounds. The official infogrames forums are a plethora of flames. The moderator (many of which are the developers and project heads) have become onminously quiet and post no comments or answer any querries.

Many people are short of full out enragement about the short playing time of the game verses the cost. Between 6 to 12 hours of game play vs $49.99 price tag - many finish it in a weekend (bought late afternoon on Friday and finished midday Sunday). An unusual amount of posted along the lines of "Where's the line to get my money back" and "Release a patch you cheap bastards". Not what one would consider garnering further partonage or brand loyality.

Many did not expect the game to be a rehash of the original, but just as many expected it to consist of at least some of the aspects of the original. Vast expanses to explore, mysteries to solve and unravel, and many many hours of playing time in an immersive world. They were baffled by such things and the 5 or 6 hatchings in the mothership that opened to nowhere, or next to nowhere (leading to a ladder that went to a level under the decks with nothing there but a panel that opened to... nothing).

I have talked about what Unreal 2 was not, but let's talk about what it is. It is visually stunning. The graphics engine is spectacular. Eye candy abounds. The facial expressions, the shadows, the textures, and many many more things. It is truely a step forward in 3D graphics. But, unfortunately that's all it is. The mapping is painfully linear, as is the storyline and game play. There is no divergence from the plot, no alternate paths in the storyline, maps or decisions a player might find interesting aren't there - it's flat. Furthermore, what plot it has is predictable and depressing. They spend half the game in character development only to kill of the crew, and this after one of the few successful atempts to involve the player and draw them in. This too made many of the gamers quite upset. And the end.... It ends with no point, no succuss, no conclusion, and the hero (you the player) is left to a mundane and unsatisifying feelling of defeat and futilism at the end.

This is not my opinion, but those of the vast majority of the few thousand posts in the Ureal 2 official forum.

As a business goes this is folly to say the least. Infogrames, Legend, and unfortunately "Epic" have done more to annoy their fans then to engender further patronage in there offerings and products. Sony is the parent company. Many feel that Sony is behind the direction that was ultimately pushed on the developers. Whether or not this is true the bottom line is this. A fair percentage of those that were averant fans of the Unreal and Unreal Tournament series are completely disenchanted with the latest and greatest offered up in the series.

There is a distinct negativity towards the developers and the companies. I strongly suspect that many will avoid purchasing any future release from Legend and Epic, as well as Infogrames and Sony.

What mystifies me is what led them to believe their present offerings were going to be successful. There's little innovation outside of the graphics work. They don't seem to place any emphasis on a story or plot. It seeem more about make stunning graphics as if one didn't need to have a point to the game - however simple.

I can't help but feel, especially with UT2k3 and more so with Unreal 2, that someone somewhere in these organizations believes that they need to market to those with a short attention span that are more interested in glitze than content. They have bombed. And if they continue to create products such as these last two they will soon be going belly up if the indication regarding their reception are used to gauge the clients desire for what they create.

Blackley hits the nail on the head: "The number one problem we have with design is that we don't know who we are designing for" when commenting on the design process. And I think his statement that the focus is in his question:

"Are we designing for ourselves? Are we designing for publishers? Are we designing for EB salespeople? Are we assigning for reviewers? Are we assigning for the audience? The problem right now is that we're designing for publishers and not the audience."

I have to agree with him on many of his points. And if these companies keep this up - then let the publishers buy these game because I'm not!

Just my humble opinion.

Answer: Ask an Advertiser

[jago25_98]

Ok, hope this isn't redundant because it's stating the obvious and needs to be said.

The percievd wisdom is that games are stale;

they're unoriginal with not much progress being made. Little imagination and creativity, especially compare to what it used to be like.

While it's true that it's harder to be creative because the bar is raised in terms of things like graphics it's lots of thing related to this:

It's hard to get into a creative mood when your paycheck is resting on it.

PRAGMATISM and CREATIVITY aren't known to mix.

Also:-

You have to work in a team because there's more code => harder to just let your imagination run wild.

The same situation happens/is happening with music, around the money orientated side of it because people think too much.

You can't be original though reason alone. Logic can't create without luck.

To appreciate the setup try imagining what its like to try and make a living from art such as music. If someone asked you paint the best picture in your life how would you fare?

So what's the answer?

I think the thing to do is look at how the top advertising people do it. The really successful agancies have got to be the best bet for finding out how to make money and art mix.

A funny side effect

[wulffi]

A few years back my ex-girlfriend and I went shopping for a game for her.

She liked computer gaming but had one small problem: She would get motion sickness from playing 3d games (FPS were the worst).

So we agreed that a platform game was probably the best option for her. Guess what, not a single store had a platform game for the PC, NOT ONE.

In the end I gave up and downloaded a slew Commodore 64 games and an emulator, worked like a charm.

On another note, if you want to write your own game and avoid a lot of the hassle go and check out Blitz Basic. Easy and allows you to focus on being creative. The downside is that it is windows only.

Tetris

[Afty0r]

So was Tetris a 10 hour game, a 30 hour game, or a 70-100 hour game?

You're taking about triumphing in the challenge, not *playing the game* which can go on as long as you like it to. Just start again.

Re:No realistic driving sim?! Heard of Gran Turism

[zero_offset]

GT3 isn't remotely realistic.

Before I get the Automatic Microsoft Flame response, I say this with some rather unusual supporting evidence: Microsoft's Project Gotham is the most realistic game I've played. On one of the beat-the-clock tracks at the Very Hard level, I was falling short of the lap time required to close out the final level with a gold medal. After failing to make that lap time by thousandths of a second for many weeks in a row, I went to the Panoz road racing school at Road Atlanta for four days. (No, I didn't go because of the game, heh heh.)

I learned a lot at the school, and really hadn't given any thought to games or anything other than real driving. (That much racing is very exhausting.) I still had a few days off when I got home, so one morning I said what the hell and fired up the XBOX, and immediately nailed the lap 0.021 seconds faster than the gold medal time. I used the car control techniques which I had just learned at the school. Braking, cornering, the whole "friction circle" concept, all of it "feels" as if it applies exactly as it would in a real car. In fact, once you understand those principles, you can easily "sense" the difference betwen cars in Gotham unlike any other game I've ever played. You can fix a loss of control doing exactly what you'd do in a real car. (I wish they'd use that same engine for a bunch of racing games. I'd kill for an IMSA GTP Group-C era racing game using the Gotham engine...)

I'm not claiming I'm the best driver who has ever lived (far from it), but since then I've been to two more racing schools and a bunch of events, and I have probably 200 hours of road racing time under my belt now. From that perspective, I'll say I played a lot of GT3 at a friend's house and it's fun, but it isn't even a little bit realistic, sorry.

On the other hand, I can at least say that your original point stands -- we DO have a realistic driving sim out there -- Project Gotham.

fine art

[muyuubyou]

I agree computer games are (sometimes) a form of art. It's an industry too, anyway...

I see a big problem in the capitalist approach for creating games: if you invest a lot, you can't risk yourself into doing something too new most people won't understand.

That's what killed innovation since the 16-bit era.

Ahh somebody bring the good ole' 8bit-early16bit days back...

Wrong business models

[andr0meda]

The thing is that even the small publishers think that EA and MS have 'the perfect buisiness model' set up and that they should at least try to immitate them, which means churning out sports titles every year and adding a bit more creative titles when somebody happened to stumble on a good idea once in a while. Unfortunately the smaller publishers only have the good idea, and not the sports franchises or the OS'es to lean back on. EA has done very well and has turned itself into a monster. You have to give them credit for all the crazy titles they put out in the 90ies.. but as said, their business model has killed origin and janes, and probably many others.

Coop

[Xner]

I have found that you can get some excellent co-op time with a handfull of friends with the "tom clancy" series of games, particularly Ghost Recon and its expansions and the Rogue Spear series.

Due to the nature of the game there are several operations that are better performed in pairs (opening en clearing doors etc) and the choice in role/equipment makes everybody useful.

We usually play with 3-4 players, but your mileage may vary. Make sure you allow respaws because at least one idiot is bound to get killed in the first 60 seconds of the mission :-)

pikmin

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah. uhm. pikmin.

actually, pokémon, too. don't laugh. it really *was* innovative and new.

A more intelligent statement than you might think.

[Decimal]

Hmmm, indeed. Is everybody sure this is the actual genius behind the classics like SMB?

Absolutely. To make good games, you have to enjoy good games yourself. You have to never lose interest in the grandness of the (once unique) idea that pushing those buttons gives you control over what the character in that fantasy-world known as a video game. People who can't enjoy Atari games probably don't have this trait. For example, I design little mini-games for myself and my friends to play. I tried to design one that my girlfriend would like to play, and after talking to her about it for a while, brainstorming to find something she might like, I realized that she doesn't grasp this simple concept. She gets tired of games really fast (Not an Atari fan). The "coolness" of the game is what pulls her into it. She'd like to play as her favorite rock stars or cartoon characters, but no matter the game, no matter how fun the play or random the levels could be, she'd get tired of it soon. Not surprisingly, she's a big movie buff. She prefers to watch, not interact. And I'm not saying this in a negative way, but she does have a short attention span. Game designers would do best to see her as a target audience instead of a repeat customer.

Miyamoto relies upon the repeat-customer. There's nothing stupid about "For me, the most interesting thing about video games is taking the controller and using it to move something around on the screen." -- it shows that he truly understands what many people don't (and assume they do). Nothing at all.

Re:I'll tell you whats wrong with the game industr

[Anonymous Coward]

Zero Magazine, zero mag for the zero decade. [zeromag.com]

In A.D. 2101, magazine was beginning...

Re:A more intelligent statement than you might thi

[kingkade]

Well, I know, i just saw a quote that struck me as funny.

Sometimes I think that if a game at least feels like it's open-ended can also make it fun for longer than usual. Like i remember first playing police quest and having to be responsible to shower, get into uniform, and be on time for the morning briefing or i could get in early and read the paper while i waited.

The game was really linear, but it was so cool how it felt like you had a virtual life to manage and could interacte with 'real' ppl (don't think of any jokes, i've already thought of all of them and made fun of myself to save you the trouble.) on another note...

"She prefers to watch, not interact."


well, well, she prefers to watch, eh? perhaps me and you can -- oh, shit wait. forget it.

The evidence

[grimsweep]

For the record, PlanetGamecube may not be the best source for unbiased info.

Allow me to bring you up to speed:

Nintendo's future

The X-Box's woes, and the price of Microsoft's sacrifices.

Heck, a quick search on Google has yielded this, and that's just scratching the surface.

As for relationships, this is a good article to start.

I'm certain a bit more hunting around Google News will yield what you're looking for.

To sum up the article...

[retro128]

What's wrong with game development is the same thing that's wrong with Hollywood...They are trying to roll stuff out to appeal to the lowest common denominator to make up for the insane production costs. Every once and awhile, though, some gems come along, but they are few. The rest is just fluff designed to get people to buy in. The reasons for a breakdown are obvious; the publisher is putting up the money for armies of musicians, artists, programmers, mappers, etc, etc to work on a game for three years or so, and they're going to want to see that money come back, otherwise it's bye bye developer. Gone are the days where all you needed to make a great game was ten (or less) people who didn't write the entire game eyeing the bottom line because they had to sell their souls to the publisher. They just wanted to make a game that would be fun.

Tons of things wrong with the industry

[ShwAsasin]

I run a game company, and am writing a book about making games. I see numerous things wrong with the industry that really must be addressed. We've had several projects on the go for over a year. We *could* release them but as I review our work, I find there is a flaw and must be fixed. When making games, I take every little detail into account and everything must be perfect. My personal belief is that if I wouldn't spend the money on the game, why would someone else?

With this in mind, there are all sorts of issues with the game industry.

It gets irritating to listen to some people speak about game development yet have no experience. Making games in your basement is one thing, releasing them in stores is different. Just because you play a game, doesn't make you an authority, moreover, just because you make a game doesn't make you an authority.

It's rather funny to listen to some of these companies like Valve's Gabe Newell. Yes, Valve's Half-Life was good, but at this point in time their a one hit wonder. I remember being at E3 '98 and seeing Team Fortress, then E3 99, then E3 2000..The damn game is still not out. Development time should decrease when their not creating their own technology from scratch. Even if they are creating their technology from scratch, it shouldn't take this long. This whole rockstar like attitude that some developers get is rather ridiculous as well. Many of them leave their original companies because of "creative differences" and begin their new companies to "change the industry". Romero tried this, and 2/3 Ion Storm projects failed miserably. He went from working at one of the most influential companies (id Software) to writing inexpensive PDA games, how degrading...

Marketing and ignorance is another issue. Game developers, in many cases, are saturating the market with useless games honing from one hit title. Remember Roller Coaster Tycoon, how many tycoon style games came months after that? People always overlook possible exposure aswell. Rather than using DirectX, they could use somesort of middleware or SDL to get three platforms working rather than one (Win, Lin, Mac), without wasting huge time in development.

I put my faith in the indie game market. It seems that many fresh ideas are turning out from that area these days.

I for one don't follow the traditional rules and I hope the rest of the industry will see that. I write my engines to work on at minimum 2 platforms, including both on the CD. Provide bonus art of the characters on the CD and believe in cheap prices for games...If only the rest of the industry followed suite.

Videogames already have 'Directors'.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want an example, refer to Hironobu Sakaguchi at Squaresoft; he's the 'Director' of the Final Fantasy series. And he's becoming as pretentious an "artiste" as Roman Polanski.

"Ah, the good old days"

[Anonymous Coward]

I've noticed that looking over these posts is like listening to grandparents talk - everyone's moaning for the "good old days" where things were better - the gameplay was exciting, the game was fun, and every neighbor was there to help out when you were putting up your new house.

However, if you look at most of those old games - they were just as bad as the majority of the new games that people are complaining about! Hello, ET: The video game, one of the worst games of all time, and it came out for the 2600. There are thousands of examples of bad games you can come up with, no matter what decade/system you look at.

EA used to make good games

[sabaco]

Hey, EA used to make good games too back in the day. I remember on my Atari 1200 there was this game called "Worms?" that was really great. You can read a short discription of it at http://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/v9n7/260_Ou tpost_atari.php but lets face it, that was a long time ago. They also produced really great games for the Commodore 64, like "M.U.L.E." and "Seven Cities of Gold" (which was actually decent on the first release, though the updated VGA version for PC totally sucked). In fact, if you check out HotU and show EA titles by year you'll see that their early stuff was actually pretty good. You'll also notice there are only 16 games listed (ie good games) for 1995-2002, compared to 11 listed for 1986 alone. Granted, its a site for old games, but I don't think they've left much out in this case.

OT: Your sig

[WeedMonkey]

The Space Program: Fourteen deaths in 20 years? Imagine seeing those kinds of statistics in, say, the trucking industry.

Imagine seeing the same amount of people driving space shuttles as trucks.