Games and the 'Geek Stereotype'

ChinoH81 writes "Video games are never going to be as popular as films or music unless the people who make them concentrate on making them fun, says a leading game expert."

Comments

no offense..

[The Other White Boy]

but is it a slow news day or what? =)

to make this somewhat on topic, i'd actually say that i have to disagree with the article. i think if you concentrate and try to push it out to a demographic thats not familiar with gaming, they'll just resist it more than they normally would. i think to spread there just needs to be more 'killer apps,' for lack of a better term.

Re:no offense..

[Trolling4Dollars]

Great point. But what would the "killer app" be? Different games appeal to different people for different reasons. However, there are always going to be people who just don't "get" games. For example, I love mystery/puzzle games like Myst, but I also enjoy a FPS like Quake or Unreal. I can't stand strategy or sim type games though. To me those games lack any appeal because of the involvment and complexity but the interface is piss poor. Now, if we were at a point where a sim or strategy game could be a fully immersive experience with VR, I would be more intrigued. We're just not there yet. I mean think about it. Wouldn't life really suck if you have to click on people and type in order to interact with them all the time? I'm sure some of you have eventually tolkd the person you were IMing to give you a call on the phone because it's much easier to communicate verbally rather than textually. SO I would argue that what needs to change to make games more appealing is to essentially move them into the realm of being alternate reality with very well rendered spaces and avatars. Until then, the only really fun games are same-gnome, tetris the puzzle game and Chicken Invaders (which runs well under WINE BTW...) :)

Re:no offense..

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense either... but I just got a HUGE Microsoft "Do more with less" advertisement in /. !!

Oh the horror!

Re:no offense..

[r]

but is it a slow news day or what? =)

heh, yes, that has to be one of the worst bbc taglines i've seen. :) but what the article is trying to say is quite worthwhile: that people who make video games need to concentrate on making them fun for people who won't put up with the broken affordances of today's products. and in doing so, they'll have to fix them. :)

to make this somewhat on topic, i'd actually say that i have to disagree with the article. i think if you concentrate and try to push it out to a demographic thats not familiar with gaming, they'll just resist it more than they normally would.

if you push present products onto an unsuspecting populace, then yes, they will, as they should. but what about if you start fixing games, so they actually appeal to more than the standard asocial obsessive-compulsive type? :)

video games are often broken. for example, time investment. games often require sinking several continuous hours at a time, and not many people can afford that (students excluded :). developers that want to target working adults need to fit games into their lives, not the other way around.

another example are broken reward/punishment schedules: negative conditioning cycles are commonly hidden in mundane game elements, such as in having to reload a level until you get it right. pavlov would be proud. :)

and then there's juvenile storytelling, which is a huge turn-off. most people don't bother with pulp fantasy because it's puerile; why should they bother with even worse RPGs? :)

there are, of course, more problems than that, and they are complex, and without easy fixes. and maybe they will get addressed eventually, if hardcore gamers only stopped touting them as features... :)

Re:no offense..

[Fnkmaster]

Well, some of us are experimenting with the concept of games as art/entertainment and looking at ways to extend the appeal of 3D graphical entertainment apps outside of the classic "gamer market" (my company is one of those). There are opportunities for computer entertainment that doesn't involve semi-clad women writhing around or spewing blood and guts, though you wouldn't know it from going to SIGGRAPH, E3 or other such industry conferences.

I don't quite know if video-game-as-3D-avatar-chat is _the_ killer app to bring 3D to the masses, but I think one of the keys is simpler modes of interactivity. The controls and interactions of many games, as you rightly point out, are just too complex for Joe Average. A combination of new control mechanisms with a shift in thinking about games and use of realtime 3D graphics will certainly be required to make the real crossover to mainstream.

Re:no offense..

[dknight]

You prefer the phone over IM/Text?

I hate the phone. When people call me, I tell them to try IMing me if they actually want a conversation. I can say more, faster, over IMs than the phone, plus I am not so limited in how many people I can talk to at once.

I have a cell phone, but you know how often I actually talk on it? Almost never. You can be sure I more than use my monthly allotment of text messages though.

I am looking forward to the day when I wont have to pick up a phone ever again.

Re:no offense..

[parkanoid]

Your agrument may sound compelling, but consider what the article compares games to: movies, television and music. *None* of these industries, despite their superior popularity, demonstrate superior quality. Quite the opposite, in fact; it's been quite some time since a recent TV show or a song on the radio did not make me shudder and hastily turn it off.

Re:no offense..

[Dan D.]

Sort of along these lines, I think games that you could watch someone play and still be entertained by might be a good litmus test. When the Silent Hill games came out, I played them with a group of 5 or so people. We'd all take turns passing around the controller, every 30 minutes because nobody really wanted to handle the stress for longer. When you weren't holding the controller you were still involved in the storyline (and of course scared and jumping with everyone else when the cat came out of the locker).

My wife decided to watch while I played windwaker. Even back as far as the Sierra adventure games my family played King's Quest 2 all together. (Very strange now that I think back on that)

Multi-user movies is where I'm going. Its the same as watching a movie except when you yell at the character on screen for being stupid and going into the deep dark hole, you can instead turn to Dan and say "Dan, you idiot, you're going to get us killed going in there!"

Any game you can watch someone play and not get bored by them fighting yet another rat-demon, or doing exactly the same combo jump, or going into a room pretty much exactly the same as last, or finding yet another key to open a door. Any game that isn't reptitive level after level and is actually fun to watch when you're not controlling it, will be an even more intense experience when you are controlling it. Imagine movie theaters where everyone plays a role... I'm off track :)

Oh and 2-3 hour video-games would be nice, too (or at least 2-3 chapters so there's a good break point you can leave it for a week or more and not forget everything about it). As long as I don't have to pay $50 for just 2 hours of game time (although movies are getting close to that anyway :). Morrowind is fun, but my wife could give a crap about watching me play that.

Re:no offense..

[Anonymous Coward]

I fully agree, games are miles above the music and movie industries, why do we want to drag the game industry down into the pop culture gutter? Face it, the general public are a bunch of lazy bastards, 1st they don't want the stigma that they are 'playing' a kid's video game no matter how complex it is. 2nd they are too lazy to invest 15 minutes to familiarize themselves with the controls. The games industry, Sony in particular has really pushed games more into the mainstream, playstation has soo many mass appeal games or shovelware to be more precise that only require button mashing to advance. Frankly I don't think games will reach this fabled mass appeal until the tech advances into a VR type thing and then the movie studios will be producing these crappy new 'immersive games/movies' and at that point the games we love will be the niche it always was. Fuck mass acceptance, Give me Soul Calibur, Contra, Sonic, MGS, Silent Hill, PacMan anyday over Xtina's Whore simulator.

Re:no offense..

[YllabianBitPipe]

Well, first off I think the first-person-running-around-in-a-world kind of game is played out. All these games are basically just descendants of Doom and variations on the same themes ... run around, get lost, find stuff, jump. I'm tired of this genre. The last game of this kind I had even a fraction of interest in was Alice and that had more to do with seeing how they'd interpret the Alice & Wonderland story than the game itself.

I personally enjoy strategy and SIM games. I'd love to see a strategy game that could reproduce a battle like in Two Towers ... thousands of troops fighting. As for SIM games I'd love to see really great AI ... where it nearly seems like the NPCs are alive. Next I think a huge area that's got room for improvement / innovation is multiplayer gaming.

Re:no offense..

[promethean_spark]

>Different games appeal to different people for different reasons.

Exactly, different games are like different sports. Person A might be great at football, but be horrible at ice skating. Of course, grandpa might have to be content with bocce.

It seems to me that the author is suggesting that we need new types of games, or remixes of old ones (a la battle-chess). Games that could act as a gateway from the games/sports that are part of our culture, to games in the digital medium. After a week of playing battle-chess, grandpa will start thinking "I'd be nice if my knight could just block and parry..." Next he's playing Civ, then maybe warcraft...

Back in the early 90's there were a lot of pc games (like battlechess) that my parents would play, but it seems like there are fewer of these 'bridge' games available nowadays as everybody is trying to go for psychadelic graphics and first person perspective.

The article also overlooks places where you might find gamers of a different feather, yahoo games has a whole different spectrum of people playing bridge and other card games online. I guess since they don't pay, those gamers don't 'count' for the likes of sony. Maybe if Sony or microsoft makes a "1001 interactive card games" disc for PS2 or XBX, they'd get gramps to bite and kick junior off the console once and a while.

Re:no offense..

[Logicdisorder]

You are right. It seems to also miss out the fact that the Game Industry makes more money than the Movie Industry

Re:no offense..

[vsprintf]

I am looking forward to the day when I wont have to pick up a phone ever again.

So you prefer short-hand glyphs to actually talking to someone where you can hear the tonal inflections? I gotta say, I think that's strange. There are so many flame wars started just because people mistake the intent behind text messages.

Re:no offense..

[ShieldW0lf]

That article was utterly without redemption. PHB on games... oh, lets take notes!

The viewpoint that games are solely a product to be sold, and not an art form is the sort of attitude that will ruin gaming the way it has pretty much ruined movies and music.

If a game has integrity and vision, it will be good.

If it is produced by a well-oiled, hollywood-style machine, it will be uninspired, fun for a few moments in the exact same fashion the last game you played was fun.

If it is caught between those two worlds, it will be garbage, with left-over complexity from the smashed vision but no integrity.

A fine example of a great game that appeals across demographics is the Baldurs Gate series. It requires significant time investment... my GF and I have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours over several years playing them, and we're not quite done. It is challenging... you often need to repeat challenges to achieve victory, or to talk to everyone in the town for the third time before you find the one you're looking for. And it is, of course, fantasy, which is why we and so many others like it...

You want to know what key feature Baldurs Gate has that allows me to play it with my GF and loan it to my parents to play? It's one simple thing: You don't need fast reflexes to excel at it.

That's what I think differentiates a game for boys and young men from a game for everyone. If you need razor reflexes to play, most women and older ppl won't ever be good at it, so they won't like it. Hell, "The Sims" became successful using this key feature; I'd say that pretty much demonstrates it's effectiveness... the game didn't exactly have anything else going for it, did it? :)

Re:no offense..

[Jaysyn]

T.V., radio & movies are passive entertainment, video games are not. Eventually, I imagine the two will mix & we'll get something similar to Stephensons ractives in SnowCrash.

Jaysyn

Re:no offense..

[YllabianBitPipe]

I have a strong feeling the person who likes IM better than voice phone is much younger than you are. No big deal.

He / she will just be the one bitching to their kids ... "In my day we had to use the phone. We didn't have any of this IM stuff broadcasting to chips implanted in your eardrum!"

Re:no offense..

[bhtooefr]

Because the short-hand glyphs can be read over a bad connection (well...) Try that with a static-filled connection where you can barely hear the other person. (come to think about it, dial-up doesn't work well over my phone lines...)

Re:no offense..

[vsprintf]

I have a strong feeling the person who likes IM better than voice phone is much younger than you are. No big deal.

Yes, I think you're right on the first part, but my point is/was that a lot of information is really being lost by IM. Humans used speech long before writing or keyboards, and I think it is still easier for humans to *communicate* via the spoken word.

Re:no offense..

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a distinction can be made between games as pass-times and the hardcore games that most computer gamers prefer. Compare shooting pool and playing baseball. You can "play" at billiards for 20 minutes with no planning.

I think more computer games that you can "play" with would be a good thing. Maxis used the term "computer toy" or some such.

Re:no offense..

[Anonymous Coward]

War in Middle Earth

it was a game from virgin entertainment maybe back in the real late 80's/early 90's.. I think its an 89 game may be a 90 or 91 though. Its everything you want in a game pritty much. Unfortunatly if you can get it running it sucks becuase its soo old and crappy becuase its old. (I forget if even you can even use a mouse in it).

But if they made games like this re-made with an up-to-date interface etc etc, well that's what the article is about I think, and I agree 100% with it, games today have the staying power of a small chocolate bar. Makes people not wish to buy more games, as the last few they baught and spent hundreds of dollars on looked great but they were bored after an hours play.

Re:no offense..

[vsprintf]

Hmm, bad connections will do in any type of message, but as to your sig, jalapenos are for rookies. Try the *yellow peppers*. I can't remember the Spanish name, but they are very good and far more potent and memorable. Ouch!

Re:no offense..

[madcow_ucsb]

Except nowadays the only time you get a bad connection is when you're talking on a cell phone, and probably won't IM anyway. Maybe a quick text message and a single response is all you're going to do then (although I'm sure some people have whole conversations that way...)

Naturally calls to 3rd world nations and to satellite phones in the middle of nowhere are exceptions...

Re:no offense..

[Xoid629]

The article mentions that more money has been spent in games than movies recently, and puts it down to the fact that games cost way more. Which is probably true, but really misses the point... If it comes down to a competition between the movie and gaming industries, I can't imagine companies caring that much about the audience size if they are making more. Obviously if the audience can be expanded to make even more money than that can't be a problem, but it doesn't necessarily work that way with games since satisfying everyone can be very difficult.

Re:no offense..

[dknight]

Frankly, I find that a proper command of the language lets me communicate the same subtleties through text as I would speech. Word choice, punctuation, emoticons, and general sentence structure can all help you express yourself more thoroughly through text. At least, that's how it generally works for me.

Re:no offense..

[Anonymous Coward]

but what about if you start fixing games, so they actually appeal to more than the standard asocial obsessive-compulsive type? :)

video games are often broken. for example, time investment. games often require sinking several continuous hours at a time, and not many people can afford that (students excluded :). developers that want to target working adults need to fit games into their lives, not the other way around.

another example are broken reward/punishment schedules: negative conditioning cycles are commonly hidden in mundane game elements, such as in having to reload a level until you get it right. pavlov would be proud. :)

and then there's juvenile storytelling, which is a huge turn-off. most people don't bother with pulp fantasy because it's puerile; why should they bother with even worse RPGs? :)

I couldn't agree with you more, I had almost suceeded in getting my wife into gaming, I started her off on console RPGs (which I loved on the NES , Super NES, etc.) Moving her into the likes of Gran Turismo and even Quake II on the Playstation. Then the games of of Ueber-Anal-Retentiveness really started to make an appearence. Games like some of the new Final Fantasies. Where you have to have all your charaters leveled up to a quarter zillion, have the special sword of complete stupidity, 40 Arachnid Legs, 80 Chimera tails and more money than Bill Gates to complete some little pseudo quest where you have to keep using the same attacks by the same 3 characters in some predetermined sequence for 45 minutes a whack and you win about 1/3 of the time. Oh yay fun.

Quite frankly there are WAY too many games out there like that too. Its truely unfortunate. Alot of games have 1 difficulty level, some have 3, every game made should have at least 5. This would entitle the superzealots to get their ass beat however much they choose while enabling those who weren't born with a 2600 joystick in their hands to compete and have fun. Who cares if its a 60 hour game if you can see a whopping 45 minutes of it before the difficulty level ramps up into nothing but sheer frustration? The relative ease of playing Quake 2 on the PS gave way to mind numbing speed and complexity of Quake III and Unreal 2003 with the 50 different macros for invisibility, boost, etc, etc ,etc. Great! Now in addition to learning a mind numbingly fast FPS, they have to be a Tekken 3 whiz at the same time to enjoy a decent shooter and not become cannon fodder? Give me a break.

Gran Turismo III, great game, good graphics. Only those with a year of freetime will ever see 100%, not because they wouldnt normally do it, but because the effort required in learning the game from scratch so that you can actually play through it to see 100% has to be played at a single difficulty level. Some people might balk at this as being n00bish or a pussy, but if you really want to bring games to the masses, grandpa is going to have be able to play it too. Somehow I just don't see him sitting down to a 7 race series where all of the rounds are 10-15 laps long. Hell most grandpas I know can't hold it that long without a bathroom trip.

I think another problem is that time and time again people have seen that console systems by and large just dont live up to their expected potential. Look at the current crop of consoles (and I mention consoles because they are what *most* gamers game on), The PS2/XBOX CD-ROM/DVD nightmares (I had 2 PS2s die on me in the first 4 months). The PS2 hard drive that never was, The X-BOX USB ports that *aren't*. Wow, wouldn't HALO be great with a keyboard/mouse? Too bad! Sure you can mod your X-BOX to actually have the advertised USB ports if you want Gates and the DCMA thugs booting in your door and snagging your hardware.
The gaming gurus that be (both hardware and software) need to start getting in gear and realizing not everyone out there is a gaming geek will

Re:no offense..

[harks]

IM, with some practice, has become my favorite means of communication. You need to learn how to word things so they convey your meaning, i.e. lay off the sarcasm and word things nicely. With IM, I enjoy being able to read what people tell me until I fully comprehend it and never have to ask anyone to repeat things. I also like the ability to talk to several people at once.

Re:no offense..

[Gilmoure]

I just want a first person building game. Something where a 2x8 Lego block is about 6' tall and the nubs on top are 18" across. The blocks should mass about 20 lbs (6-8 kilos?). Give the first person character jumping abilities so that one can build really tall structures and then walk around in them. Or maybe just Bryce, from the inside. That'd be cool.

Re:no offense..

[Gilmoure]

I'm 35 and I prefer email to phone messages. Data retention is so much easier and I don't lose the little notes I write as I talk with someone on the phone. I don't IM at all. It's just a little too frenetic for my tastes.

One of the reasons I prefer email is that it keeps people at a distance. I work with computers because I like machines and don't really care for people in the flesh. They kinda' creep me out, with all their breathing and random movements and such. Not to mention their staring at me. Ugh! For what it's worth, several bosses have praised my people skills and have said that I am great at working with l'users and such. Good thing that the eyes are not the door to the soul or they'd all know how much disdain I feel for the skin bags.

Re:no offense..

[instantnoodles]

Killer aps include: Myst and GTA III.

Just because a game can appeal to a wide audience doesn't mean it has to be dumbed down.

Re:no offense..

[Anonymous Coward]

Setting aside for the sake of this post both consoles & portables of all types--and I realize this is a giant area I am ignoring--I've got to say that Dungeon Siege got close to being a "killer ap" game.

Personally, I found it a giant snore. My girlfriend, willing to get into computer games but busy and easily frustrated (and new to modern games), thought it was wonderful and is eagerly awaiting sequels & expansions. She acknowledges it had no particular story and could be played by a pet cat with application of tuna oil to the keyboard (as long as the cat wasn't running an archer). She doesn't care.

As frustrating as I find that, I do have to ask: is she wrong? Really?

There is also the issue of the traditional "adventure" game which, I suspect, have always skewed more female than most "genres" (in quotes because, well, dammit, they are NOT genres!). And female = casual (non-pejorative) or new gamer, mostly, at this time. It is a style of game which has largely died (Syberia was nice). I cheer this as it is connected to the semi-death of FMV games. Games ain't movies, people. The two have little in common, perhaps less than books and movies. FMV "games" nailed that coffin fifteen years ago.

Re:no offense..

[johndoejersey]

I also like the ability to talk to several people at once.

You have got to be kidding? I really cannot think of anything more irritating than having a conversation with more than one person, either on IM or in real life. No-one gets the attention they deserve! Its demeaning and pointless.

Re:no offense..

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's actually faster for you to say "4433555(wait)555666196667775553" then "Hello world"?

Re:no offense..

[Eisenstein]

I'd love to see a strategy game that could reproduce a battle like in Two Towers ... thousands of troops fighting.

You want Rome: Total War

Re:no offense..

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone wants Rome: Total War.

Re:no offense..

[Metal_Demon]

If you had a family like mine you would understand. Around holidays if you don't hold 10 conversations at once you won't be able to be involved in any. I personally prefer doing things over a computer when I don't know the person that well. Strangers make me nervous but on the computer I am relaxed and more myself. I also like that I can type faster than most people I talk to, little ego booster LoL. The only thing I don't like about chatting (the computer kind) is when I get into an argument. Even as fast as I type I can still flame faster in person (note in person not on the phone, I hate the phone).

Re:no offense..

[PainKilleR-CE]

Many people just don't like the phone in general. It tends to be very blind (ie it doesn't care whether you want to use it or not, it just makes noise until you answer it or the machine gets it), and many people don't communicate as well without seeing one another. It's 1-on-1 communication without the subtleties of communicating face-to-face.

At the same time, I don't use text messaging because it's as much an interruption in most cases as the phone is, not to mention that using it on my cell phone costs more money (actually only ~$5/month for unlimited use) and is harder to use (though the text interface on my phone is not bad, and it seems to be pretty common on different manufacturer's phones).

I've met quite a few people that can't seem to handle text as well for one reason or another. I prefer it because it gives me some time to string my thoughts together (though not much in a conversation). With people that don't like it so much, voice chat programs work perfectly well on the PC, or I can make a call on my phone to just about anywhere for free, I just prefer not to talk to people without being able to see them (and no, video over IP is not fast enough to get around this yet).

Re:no offense..

[johndoejersey]

Im geniunely fascinated by this, I am also a little nervous around strangers, but speaking to strangers on IM then meeting them "face-to-face" essentially the same principle applies - its still a stranger, you now have to interact with this person in a whole new and unfamiliar way you have eye contact, body language, tone of voice, this can be boring or exciting depending on circumstance.

I genuinely dont see what is gained by talking on IM, whenever I finish a conversation on IM i think "why did i bother."

Re:no offense..

[v_1matst]

"There are so many flame wars started just because people mistake the intent behind text messages."

Not only that, but don't you think that at least some human interaction is important even if it's over the phone(you know, actually speaking to someone)? Geeks always complain about how they don't have a lot of friends at school/college/work and the lack of girlfriends, but how in the hell do you expect to get anywhere/ when your main/prefered method of communication is with a keyboard/cellphone/whatever typing out messages that need to be interpreted(if they are of any length) and not practicing actually talking to real people in real time. Let's not forget the importance of the human element.

Re:no offense..

[Metal_Demon]

Well these strangers I meet online and hold IM conversations with I would probably never meet. Another reason I prefer IM is because normally I'm already on the computer using both my hands and trying to talk on my little bitty cell (the only phone I have) without my hands is too much of a pain, and I don't use it enough to justify buying a headset. I am also generally having multiple conversations at once which would otherwise not be possible. Also when I am talking to people who know each other as well as me we can all chat with each other at the same time and still pop up an IM for something private. Best of all, almost everybody I know online is a long distance away and even with free long distance on my cell it still consumes minutes and they can't call me as many of them don't even have long distance (specifically most of my family). So for people like me in situations like mine IM is ideal.

Re:no offense..

[Anonymous Coward]

i have the feeling you've read snow crash :) we aren't too far away from the reality depicted in the book.

Huh?

[feyhunde]

Games are suppose to be fun? Since when?

Re:Huh?

[Smallpond]

Games are suppose to be fun? Since when?

Note who is saying this. "Laura Fryer, director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group". It means the XBox folks have just figured this out.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, normally I don't laugh at Microsoft jokes (maybe that's because the average Microsoft joke is "LOL BSOD"), but I'll give you a virtual +1 Funny.

It's just as good as the regular Slashdot kind.

What the?!

[CGP314]

Video games are never going to be as popular as films or music unless the people who make them concentrate on making them fun.

All right, show of hands. Who is a geek and exclusively plays non-fun video games?

Re:What the?!

[Purosesuchi-Zu]

::raises hand:: Ever heard of Counterstrike?

Re:What the?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I play the slashdot game, does that count?

Re:What the?!

[El]

Take note of this, Id Software: Doom will never be as popular as the movie Gigli unless you make it more fun!

Re:What the?!

[jellomizer]

Actually a lot of people. When asked why they like game X they explain all the technical details like the graphics, sound, detail. A lot of them never say it is a fun game. These people play games so they can get to the next cinematic scene. It it wasn't for the cinematic reward after hours of boring game-play the games would never be played. The many of the old games of the 80s did not have any cool graphics and many of them did not have any defined ending, if they did it was some small text with The End or You Win. The reward for playing the game for hours was playing the game itself not winning or the grand diversions in the middle.

Re:What the?!

[Tackhead]

> All right, show of hands. Who is a geek and exclusively plays non-fun video games?

I hear SWG's up to 275,000 players :)

Re:What the?!

[miu]

I hear SWG's up to 275,000 players :)

I'd reply to your implication that SWG is a "non-fun" game, but I have to get back to work killing the swarms of butterflies and prairie dogs that seem to infest every planet in the known universe.

15 more hours and I'll grind enough experience to qualify for the elite puppy stomper profession.... and some storm trooper armor.

Re:What the?!

[wheany]

But do they not enjoy the game?

Re:What the?!

[isomeme]

I think it's a fairer comment than you're giving her credit for. Geeks tend to like games that involve a huge commitment in learning and practice before you begin to succeed. And they like lots of fine control. My wife calls my favorite computer game (Space Empires IV) "Spreadsheets in Spaaaaace!" because it's mostly about economic and logistical management rather than intense combat or stunning visuals. I can play it for hours at a time, but I'm well aware that I'm far from normal in this regard. For most people, it would be like doing tax returns as recreation.

Re:What the?!

[transient]

it would be like doing tax returns as recreation

You say this jokingly, but one of my staffmembers actually enjoys doing his taxes. He enjoys it so much that he does it several times each year.

I'm dead serious.

Re:What the?!

[isomeme]

The world constantly proves itself to be far, far stranger than I imagine. And my imagination keeps stretching, too.

Re:What the?!

[tundog]

I guess I have to raise my hand. I did played Sims Online the last two days becuase I got a free 2 week trial from PCGamer magazine. Man, is that the LAMEST game ever. By the end of the first hour I had resigned myself to going from house to house asking people what I have to do to win.

It also appeares that others agree with me because there never really seem to be very many people online at any one time.

One things for sure tho, I WOULD BE PISSED, if I had paid retail for that game.

Re:What the?!

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

All right, show of hands. Who is a geek and exclusively plays non-fun video games?

Sorry, all the Everquest geeks are lost in Norrath right now.

The Star Wars Galaxy geeks are also busy. :D

Re:What the?!

[vsprintf]

All right, show of hands. Who is a geek and exclusively plays non-fun video games?

Well, it's not exclusive, but I did play all the Tomb Raider games. Does that count, or is it just a fixation on big guns?

Re:What the?!

[ReciprocityProject]

I'm one of these people. Starcraft is a great example of what you just described. It's a fun game, but I played through it largely for story value. It subtly but entirely imagined a cataclysmic, strategic war. I grilled my roommate on the platpoints for broodwar until they finally bought me my own copy.

The writers weren't brilliant, but they were extremely competant. I don't think the story would have the same value if you didn't have to experiance the gameplay.

Three years after my roommate introduced me I still play like a newb. Oh well.

And yes, the cinematic sequences were great.

And no, I havn't read the starcraft novels. Then I would really feel like a loser.

Re:What the?!

[kubrick]

The various iterations of the Championship Manager games (football / soccer) regularly top the charts in the UK. They've just recently graduated to a 2D, top-down highlights match view, where you don't actually control the action -- and most of the rest of the game is a set of pretty-looking spreadsheets. :)

Re:What the?!

[Pooua]

My wife calls my favorite computer game (Space Empires IV) "Spreadsheets in Spaaaaace!" because it's mostly about economic and logistical management rather than intense combat or stunning visuals. I can play it for hours at a time, but I'm well aware that I'm far from normal in this regard.

My favorite games are "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri" and Ultima's "Martian Dreams." All my gaming friends like games like Quake, Unreal Tournament and Everquest. Some of them have tried SMAC, but they try to play it like a shooter game (which you can do, at the expense of so many nifty game features). I like to let my inner Napolean run free, exploring strange, new worlds and building world-spanning empires, rather than running around try to kill everyone as fast as possible.

Re:What the?!

[Gilmoure]

SMAC and SMAC-X rule. Am playing the same player (Spartins) at home and on my laptop, using the same map. Lots of fun, taking different choices in each game. Will have to check out Martian Dreams.

Re:What the?!

[johndoejersey]

is it just a fixation on big guns?

uh, depends what you mean by big guns. nudge nudge.

Re:What the?!

[Tomji]

I think that it is fun is implied.

Re:What the?!

[rhuntley12]

This is true if the story is well done with good cinematics. No matter how good the cut scenes are, the game has to be very good. But then the games I play the most don't even have cutscenes. (Unreal Tournament, Tactical ops, and Wolfenstein on Xbox Live - although single player has cutscenes) Alot of the really good games with nice twists, make your jaw drop with very well done cut scenes. Did you play Knights of the Old Republic on Xbox? Perhaps my favorite game ever, Great game, on one cutscene when you find out about the old dark lord, my jaw literally dropped. Trying not to let spoilers out, but after that I couldn't set the game down for what was left. So I guess I really have no point.

Re:What the?!

[tabby]

I started playing the discworld mud after watching hearing stories from workmates about their exploits. It's just a text mud but its so hilarious and so fun but takes a bit of effort to get into if you don't know someone who can show you stuff.

I would love this game to be rebuilt with a graphics engine with the cartoony look of World of Warcraft just cause I would love to see it, but but without the text descriptions it wouldn't be as funny. You can simply put more expression and detail in a text description than with graphics, you just need a good writer. Text can describe look, sounds, smell, taste and touch and feeling. The last time I checked the best non-text games out there could do was look and sound.

Duped?

[Malicious]

What this gentleman didn't consider is that most of us would prefer to spend $20-$40 on a videogame we would play for weeks, than $20-$40 to go to a movie for 2 hours and have a bag of popcorn.

Re:Duped?

[simetra]

What this gentleman didn't consider is that most of us would prefer to spend $20-$40 on a videogame we would play for weeks, than $20-$40 to go to a movie for 2 hours and have a bag of popcorn.

Most of us is not most of everyone. Most of everyone goes to the movies a lot more than they buy games.

Re:Duped?

[festers]

Someone didn't bother to read the article. (Surprise, surprise)It wasn't a man who gave this speech and the article acknowledges that games cost more than TV/movies.

Re:Duped?

[Xerithane]

What this gentleman didn't consider is that most of us would prefer to spend $20-$40 on a videogame we would play for weeks, than $20-$40 to go to a movie for 2 hours and have a bag of popcorn.

Most new games are $50. Most movies are $7.50 - $9.00 a ticket. I can see 4 movies by myself, and still have money left over for food. Or, I can not be a loser and take the misses with me and see 2 movies with food.

That amounts to 4-5 hours of entertainment (if you pick the movie right), shared with a close person.

Or I spent $50 on a game, which may or may not suck. May or may not play well on my computer. Or if it's a console, may just not play well, period. While having my SO nag me for spending too much time gaming.

Yeah... guess which one gets my time? I have an XBox with Apex racing. When I finish Apex racing, I'll buy another game. I watch more movies, because that's a "Social" event. Make the games as fun as you want, I'll still see 5-6 more movies in the span that I buy a game. I reckon I'm not alone in this either.

Re:Duped?

[FurryFeet]

Ah, but have you ever made out while playing a video game?

Re:Duped?

[MrMegster]

Yes I agree, games last for 100's of hours of playtime while a movie is just something u do for 2 hours maybe. You could go to the movies twice for the same price of a video game.

Re:Duped?

[Ciderx]

$20-$40 for a movie and some popcorn? That must be one big box of popcorn.

Re:Duped?

[The_K4]

Actually, yes I have. It's kinda like making out while driving....adds a little more complexity. :)

Re:Duped?

[Savatte]

I know a guy who got a BJ while playing quake. he said he would have stopped playing, but he had the flag and had to safely return it to his base. talk about a man who knows his priorities!

Re:Duped?

[Ciderx]

Yeah. Not quite a video game but...

There I was, a former mutant with daggers in my knuckles, hacking a 128-bit encryption system, and then this lady started giving me a BJ whilst another guy had a gun to my head. I just about managed it in time, despite distractions.

Oh, hang on....

Re:Duped?

[ReTay]

Yea but some insensitive cold shot me....
Of course I had to hunt him down....

Re:Duped?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called a date, you socially-inept fool! $9.50 per movie ticket, $5 per bag of popcorn and drink combo (at my local theater anyway). You're up to just barely under $30 for a movie, and you know that she wants to have dinner too, not just popcorn and soda. If you're expecting any kind of return on this investment you can't expect the dollar menu to get you by either, it's gotta be a nice place where you'll easily drop another $40-50. That's $80 a night for a chance to get some action, not counting any additional parking/transportation expenses. I don't know about you, but $80 is at least a half day's work before taxes, that's crazy! Dating is expensive...I could drop $80 on a brand new game and 3 porn DVDs (oh yeah, multiple angles!!), or better yet, download the game and the porn, pay the bill to the ISP at the end of the month and go to sleep at least semi-satisfied...

Re:Duped?

[YllabianBitPipe]

I'm a pretty avid movie fan and I still think video games are far cheaper and a better bargain. I probably buy two or three videogames per year but I play them pretty regularly. Movies are only fun for the two hours running time and maybe an hour after that of conversation. that's three hours of enjoyment for 20 bucks (two people seeing a movie + parking, snacks etc). I dare say I get a lot more value for my 40 - 50 bucks worth of video game with which I probably get an uncalculable amoutn of play time out of. Defintely more than 100 hours worth per game. That's an excellent deal. And I've seen plenty of movies in this past year that were borderline terrible and I have yet to say the same about any game I buy. Maybe I should just see less movies.

Re:Duped?

[juaja]

Chicks dig Leisure Suit Larry!

Re:Duped?

[Art Tatum]

Well she obviously kept going with what she was doing. So why stop playing? :-)

Re:Duped?

[Anonymous Coward]

You really, really wanted a negative answer, didn't you?

Re:Duped?

[daniel_yokomiso]

Ah, but have you ever played Cobra Mission?
Or were you talking about those Real Girls (tm) that I've been hearding so much about?

Re:Duped?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, must be something about those FPS games that gets the girls hot. I got one while playing CS once. I stopped playing, but then she stopped and told me to keep playing. So, we both started again!

Re:Duped?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tried it once, but got my tongue caught in the floppy drive. And my wife wasn't real happy about it either.

Hmmmm

[mao che minh]

A lot of games (Metroid Prime, any Pokemon game, Grand Theft Auto 3/Vice City, Zelda: The Wind Waker, etc) sell more copies than major motion pictures sell tickets.

But, whatever.

Re:Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Count the number of major blockbuster games (the Zelda's and Vice Cities -- which are not nearly common enough to warrant calling 'a lot') released a year.

Count the number of major motion pictures released a year.

Re:Hmmmm

[selderrr]

err.. if you start counting, go all the way, and count the budgets spent in hollywood vs. the budgets spent in gamestudios. Hollywood HAS to pump out a dozen hits every season to keep the machinery running. It's a dinosaur that has to stay alive because it feeds the homes of a few 10.000 people.

That, plus the fact that most folks go see a movie just once, whereas some games... well... you're the counting freak...

Re:Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

That was teh best comback ever.

Re:Hmmmm

[danheretic]

Sold? Try copied.

Re:Hmmmm

[John_Booty]

A lot of games (Metroid Prime, any Pokemon game, Grand Theft Auto 3/Vice City, Zelda: The Wind Waker, etc) sell more copies than major motion pictures sell tickets.

I don't think that's quite true. A year or so ago, I remember hearing that the domestic videogame market had surpassed the domestic movie market in terms of gross profit. Considering that games are several times more expensive than movies, I think there are still a lot more tickets sold than games bought, even if games gross more total money.

Re:Hmmmm

[John_Booty]

Like the article says:

"Last year, Britons spent more money on games than on renting a video or going to the cinema.

But this is largely due to the high price of a game, around 40. compared to the cost of video rentals or a cinema ticket"

It's splitting hairs to argue the "more people" versus "more money" think, but I think it's an important distinction since the reality (more money) shows you that games still have a smaller, albiet more dedicated, following.

Re:Hmmmm

[sheetsda]

That, plus the fact that most folks go see a movie just once, whereas some games... well... you're the counting freak...

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. In the analogy movie tickets are copies of a game sold. Are you meaning to say that some people buy multiple copies of a single game? If thats the case this is a new phenomenon to me, what are the motives of these people? Also, movies are released in stages; they go from theatres to rental to DVD to premium channels to TV; all the while at least a few people involved are making money. When a game is released, it hits stores and people can take it home immediately and after a while it stops making money.

Re:Hmmmm

[Fjord]

Not necessarily more dedicated. I'm willign to spend more on a game because I get more hours of entertainment from it.

Re:Hmmmm

[Minna Kirai]

An additional factor is that 1 movie ticket equals 1 viewer, but a single game sale may be played by several people. Children recieving game discs are expected to share with siblings.

This moves games back up and more towards balance with film in total audience size.

Re:Hmmmm

[AoT]

More importantly count the money that the video game industry is puling in. IIRC the are already ahead of the movie industry.

Re:Hmmmm

[Little Brother]

Your first statement challenges the assertion made by the article. Thereafter, instead of supporting YOUR assertion, you give points to the article. You carfully explain that games are, indeed, made for a specific, and presumably small, demographic. The fact that you paint the people outside of the demographicly (rightly or not) as inferior is irrelavant as the article never said that the average joe isn't a brainless retard who still thinks digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

Re:Hmmmm

[Sj0]

Yeah, I was in a hurry this morning and didn't get to finish it.

Anyway, her assertion was that we should somehow simplify games to the point where any channel surfer can pick them up and somehow, despite not having the attention span to grasp "forwards, backwards, mouse to aim, left click shoots"(or in the case of strategy games, click this guy, then click there to move him), become engrossed in the game and will start buying games.

She's wrong because she's misunderstanding the very nature of the medium. Beyond simple arcade games, which exist already but don't bring in monster revenue, video games take time to complete, and if they are to be rewarding, they need to be difficult or players won't invest the time nessessary to win or enjoy a large scale game.

My depiction of non-game players in that light was important, not because they were inferior to game players, but because they just weren't suited to the medium. Just as a person who wants the immense depth of a Final Fantasy or an epic novel won't enjoy an action flick, the people who don't play video games just won't be swayed without a fundamental shift(towards the worse, in my opinion) in the way video games are presented and meant to be played.

Games and Dorks

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I think that to a certain extent Games create dorks. Those dorks go on to create more games which create even more dorks who create even more games that create still more dorks that create still more games...... and slashdot.

Re:Games and Dorks

[Anonymous Coward]

I *knew* there was a way to reproduce asexually!

Re:Games and Dorks

[Gherald]

No, you don't get it. Its the 1st generation having sex with the 2nd generation to produce the 3rd generation. Then the 2nd with the 3rd to produce the 4th, etc...

Re:Games and Dorks

[Kaa]

Are you saying that dorks is just a game's way of making another game?

Re:Games and Dorks

[solarium_rider]

Then it all comes down to the eternal question: Which came first, the games or the dorks?

Re:Games and Dorks

[wo1verin3]

>>Its the 1st generation having sex with the 2nd
>>generation to produce the 3rd generation. Then
>>the 2nd with the 3rd to produce the 4th,

I think you just described the royal family.

Re:Games and Dorks

[Not_Wiggins]

Oooo... I think you've stumbled upon a great idea for a SIMS expansion pack!

Just click on the Blue-Blood you want to mate with and count the toes of the procreated children!

Re:Games and Dorks

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Yes they are in fact viri that infect a normal human male teenager and cause him to create more sophisticated versions of itself. Fortunetly, Not all of the infected hosts are capable of carrying out the viri's demands.

Re:Games and Dorks

[BigDork1001]

Games create dorks

So that's who my parents are. All these years of searching. Thank you so much.

Re:Games and Dorks

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes they are in fact men that infect a normal human male teenager and cause him to create more sophisticated versions of itself. Fortunetly, Not all of the infected hosts are capable of carrying out the men's demands?

WTF?

Re:Games and Dorks

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask Carmack, for he is God.

Games of today

[bigjnsa500]

I don't care for any of the games today. Their "FUN" factor just isn't there. I remember the days of endless quarters playing games like 1942, Galaga and Moon Patrol. Now those were games.

Re:Games of today

[bwh265]

I remember those days... I had to walk 5 miles, through 10 feet of snow, with newspapers wrapped around my feet, uphill both ways just to get to an arcade...

dang whippersnappers, don't know what fun is.

;)

bwh

Re:Games of today

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, back in my days we used to get tortured for fun. Kids these days just have it too easy, don't know that real fun hurts

Re:Games of today

[LMCBoy]

I remember those games fondly also...however, I think we have different expectations today. Would you really buy "Moon Patrol" if it was available at Best Buy today? Would you play it for more than 5 minutes? I don't think I would.

I recently had the chance to play "Roadblasters" at an airport arcade, which was one of my favorite games as a wee lad. Here's the thing: It was Lame. Just totally unredeemable.

Re:Games of today

[BrynM]

playing games like 1942

As a long time 1942 fan (I can spend about an hour with 1 credit, longer on Galaga), I'd have to say that Battlefield 1942 is my new fix. Yes, it's more complicated than 1942 was, but it's addictive and fun especially once you get the hang of flying. I can run around bombing tanks, dogfighting, sinking ships and even landing without having to deal with all of the controls of a flight sim. The best part is that I can get out and just shoot at stuff too.

I don't know if 1942 and Battlefield 1942 are actually related branding wise, but BF1942 has definately carried on the 1942 tradition of simple, fast paced games for me. It's simple enough that my roommate was able to start playing right away and still have lots to explore play wise (he's learning to dive bomb and strafe now).

Re:Games of today

[Brahmastra]

I completely agree. I used to be a hardcore gamer about 10-15 years ago, playing moon patrol, alleycat, round 42, Wolf3D, etc. They were FUN! The games these days have fancy graphics, require ridiculous 3D hardware to get a reasonable FPS and are no fun at all. Sometimes, I want to spend just 20 minutes playing a fun game. Instead, the games take 20 minutes (a slight exxageration) to load and have complicated gameplay that just turns you off

Re:Games of today

[rbrunner]

I agree with the article. I've had a PS2 for about a year now (my last console was a 2600). The game that my friends and I play most is Crash Team Racing, an old ps1 game. I wish there were more multi-player games like this with simple-enough controls so that a new player can compete after just a few games. I also want games that can be played in a few minutes time, not games that you have to progress through over days or weeks. Striving for a higher score provides entertainment for months, not just days. I don't see a lot of new games out there like this.

Re:Games of today

[sahala]

but BF1942 has definately carried on the 1942 tradition of simple, fast paced games for me

Simple, fast paced? BF1942 has a ton of weapons and vehicles and HUGE maps. The system requirements are higher, network lag is profound, and I have yet to see actual proper teamplay, especially on a public server. Yes, the game is SO simple that most of the time players run around on their own, oblivious to map objectives. BF1942 is meant to be played for the simulation aspect (hence historical maps) NOT playability and simplicity.

For a better WW2 themed team FPS, play Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. Objectives are easily understandable, maps are smaller with less places to wander, and the weapon configurations are less confusing. Teamwork is more essential, and the different classes actually mean something (especially with the introduction of experience-earned skills). In short, it's closer to a sport, not a simulation.

And this is coming from someone who was a die-hard BF1942 fan.

Re:Games of today

[BrynM]

Let's get a game! (Single invite only! Not all of slashdot!) I use Roger Wilco and usually only play with 2-6 people (about 40 bots for fodder though) so the team coordination actually does happen. Send an e-mail to games@networkoftheapes.net and I'll let you know when the server is up and what the password/port is.

Re:Games of today

[wheany]

BF1942 is a walking game where the only objectives seem to be (at least on public servers) plane and spawn camping.

Wolfenstein ET is an FPS. I used to play a lot of BF1942 before Wolfenstein ET was released. Now I rarely play it.

Re:Games of today

[jazman_777]

I remember those days... I had to walk 5 miles, through 10 feet of snow, with newspapers wrapped around my feet, uphill both ways just to get to an arcade...

Obligatory "You were lucky!"

Re:Games of today

[DynamiteNeon]

I think you're choosing a bad example. I still occasionally pull out my old laptop and play XCom: Ufo Defense.

It was ahead of it's time, but it doesn't look anywhere as nice as today's games. I still think it's more fun than most of what comes out today though.

Re:Games of today

[danila]

May I suggest you Silent Storm. It's a turn based strategy, just like UFO/X-Com, but about WW2. It has really kick-ass graphics, realistic physics (almost HL2-grade) and completely destructible levels (have to be seen to be believed). Although I loved X-Com games until very recently, I don't think I would be playing them anymore. :) Now it's time for Silent Storm and may be UFO: Aftermath.

Re:Games of today

[sahala]

Obviously I'd love to play...but BF1942 has been in un-install land for a few months now.

OTOH if anyone's up for Wolf ET action you can catch me on the Austin ET server (www.austinserver.com). I usually go by "spacepussy".

Re:Games of today

[tabby]

Battlefield is very fun (engineers rock) and is very popular at the internet/gaming cafe that I work at. However virtually no-one there wants to play bf1942 anymore but instead a mod called DesertCombat. It has modern weapons and vehicles (helicopters etc) and is much easier to play cause everything is more accurate, faster and does more damage. After you get the hang of flying helicopters it's really quite easy. But I became bored with it quickly. Dogfighting requires a lot more skill in the original planes cause they are slower, but most customers (many migrating from CounterStrike) don't want to play a game that requires skill - they want to blow shit up and blow it up NOW!!!!! Its great for a laugh every now and then. BF1942 is relatively easy to pick up and actually has a bit of depth.

Re:Games of today

[Zeriel]

You oughta do a search for "Crimsonland", it's a very nice 20-min timewaster--it has a free trial download, and it's only about US$20 last I looked.

Re:Games of today

[n1m1tz]

Yeah, but is it FUN?! Like an earlier poster mentioned, you've just listed the features, but you never said it was more fun to play...

Re:Games of today

[sahala]

Yeah, but is it FUN?!

Yes it is. I was implying that because WolfET is a simpler game, doesn't try to achieve historical accuracy, and focuses more on teamplay, it is in the end more fun than the hyped production known as BF1942.

To give anecdotal evidence, when a team wins a map there's usually about 2 minutes of non-stop cheering.

videogames wont be popular..

[gl4ss]

unless they're made so that people enjoy playing them? it might shock you but that's what most videogames companies have been trying to do.

like, no shit sherlock?

-
ehm.. but .. aren't videogames popular? seriously.. they ARE!.

Re:videogames wont be popular..

[Chazmyrr]

No. Most videogame companies try to make games so that people will buy them. An hour or two of actual gameplay, a couple cool screenshots on the net, twelve hours of incomprehensible cutscenes and you too can have a best selling game like Metal Gear Solid II. Not that anyone will think it's fun, but it will sell as long as you convince the teenage boys that it's cool.

Better yet, look at the online games. They are specifically designed to be as addicting as possible. Fun doesn't even enter into the equation as long as you can keep people paying you $15/mo.

I think the big hold back is the media.

[pecosdave]

How is a game going to become a long lasting classic if the hardware meant to run it stopped being manufactured 20+ years ago and the publishers were pricks about their property and wouldn't release it into the public domain or allow it to be ported? Emulators may take up some of the slack but don't count on those doing the job.

As Reported in the Journal

[Anemomenous Cowherd]

DUH!

buying tampons for your girlfriend unpopular

[bugnuts]

There are plenty of things that are not as popular as films or TV or music. Some of them are even entertaining such as skiing or going to hockey games.

This comparison isn't especially enlightening, since it doesn't actually describe the relationship between film and games, other than "entertainment". To compare, you must have quantifyable things to measure. The only thing quantifyable they provided was cash outlay... which seemed to contradict the point of the article.

Re:buying tampons for your girlfriend unpopular

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot? Girlfriend? Are you sure?!

Games just need good advertising.

[pheared]

Santa: So tell your folks, "Buy me Bonestorm or go to Hell!"

Re:Games just need good advertising.

[Anonymous Coward]

Homer: Son, in this house we use a little word called, "please."

Troll of the year.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this a joke ?!

'Leading experts agree, fun should be pleasurable.'

I nominate this article troll of the year.

Re:Troll of the year.

[edunbar93]

'Leading experts agree, fun should be pleasurable.'

Heh. I belong to a club where this does not hold true. :)

Movie Cost

[CGP314]

But this is largely due to the high price of a game, around 40. compared to the cost of video rentals or a cinema ticket

I went to see Tomb Raider this week with my girlfriend, including soda and popcorn that came out to be about 35 pounds. The price is about the same, but the movie only lasted 2 hours. A good game can last for months.

Re:Movie Cost

[Anonymous Coward]

popcorn that came out to be about 35 pounds
Boy, those buckets of popcorn really are getting bigger!

Re:Movie Cost

[MarcoAtWork]

that's not a 'movie cost' that's a 'girlfriend cost', a good game can last for months, but if you spend your money on videogames instead of on taking your g/f out, you know what you're gonna get (or, actually, what you are POSITIVELY NOT gonna get ;)

Re:Movie Cost

[Anonymous Coward]

Headaches?

Re:Movie Cost

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but a porno movie only costs GBP 19.95.

Re:Movie Cost

[darkvizier]

Hehe, what's better is to have a GF that plays videogames. ;) Much more fun...

Re:Movie Cost

[glesga_kiss]

Yeah but a porno movie only costs GBP 19.95.

People buy porno? Paying money for filth? Wow.

nostalga

[doublebackslash]

I might just be getting old, but I get no thrill out of any game more than the old super mario brother 3 game. It wasn't fancy, it was har after a while, and it kept on doing different things the whole way IMHO. Ne games stale out on me to fast, and lack something that I have difficuly quantifying. Example: compare the variety of weapons in Perfect Dark with those in HALO. I like the multiplayer games in PD better, there is just more to do. Game makers need to break out the ol' nintendos and do a little brushing up on game style, and make a game that relives those glorious 8, 16, and ocasional 64 bit goold ol' days.

Damn! That's what we've been doing wrong!

[Brad Cossette]

Can you believe it? For the last 20+ years we've only really had BORING and FRUSTRATING games! That's why! D'oh!

To quote: "One of the main obstacles was the complicated controls of many of today's games, as well as tough levels which left many players frustrated. "You want a game that is challenging but never frustrating," said Ms Fryer.

Didn't they make the "Deer Hunter" games for those people?

Re:Damn! That's what we've been doing wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't that her point? The Deer Hunter series of games have sold more than pretty much any other game series not made by Blizzard.

Re:Damn! That's what we've been doing wrong!

[selderrr]

Didn't they make the "Deer Hunter" games for those people?

no, iraq attack is for those people :-)

For the uninformed, it's a side-scrolling chopper game where you ..uh... fly over iraq and bomb... uh.. everything.

in fact all you do is sidescroll and drop bombs nonstop since ammo is unlimited.

I still remember that game from 15 years go when I was playing it and my dad stood besides me shaking his head 'but what's the fun in that' ?

me looking at him 'duh ? fun ? now that you mention it...'

It was one of those games where you just couldn't stop yourself from continuing, even if you could do it with your eyes closed.

Re:Damn! That's what we've been doing wrong!

[Cyno]

Didn't they make the "Deer Hunter" games for those people?

Yep, and Carmageddon and Grand Theft Auto for the rest of us.

Re:Damn! That's what we've been doing wrong!

[LoudMusic]

You have to keep in mind that people are REALLY REALLY DUMB. Deer Hunter was too difficult for many people. I'm sure some poor Tech Support fella can tell you all about it. Shit man, AOL is too difficult for most people.

We need more games like Ico. You run around, beat stuff with a stick, and jump. That's about it. And I had just as much ... no, more fun with Ico than I did with Halo's single player missions.

I think another large part of it is that game installers are total BS. Computer games should be more like console games. The installation should consist of nothing more than putting in the CD - maybe the installer would copy the whole damn thing to the hard drive. And patching should be auto-magic without any notification to the user. Just update and go on.

I think this can all be done. I also think it can all be done in Linux. I think someone could make a lot of money with a Linux Game distribution. If it took about a 4GB partition off of a hard drive and setup a highly customized Linux install and a dual bootloader screen they could even keep their Windows install. Then the games could load straight from the disk and keep user info and updates on the machine. Set LGD (Linux Gamer Distribution) standards posted on the game boxes and you would know if your machine can handle it or not. Then sell them for half the cost of XBox, GameCube and PS2 games and include a copy of LGD Lite in every box and you've got one hell of a setup.

Re:Damn! That's what we've been doing wrong!

[antiMStroll]

Deer Hunter? They never got past Duck Hunt.

Why is it necessary to point this out?

[El]

Games developers are trying to sell games. Games will not sell unless they are "fun". Obviously "geeks" are the type currently spending the most money on games, therefore it would be economic suicide to not target these types. Let's face it, if you've got a modeling career, an active social life, and volunteer for greenpeace in your spare time, you're not going to have a lot of time and money to spend on games, are you? From Chess to Monopoly, are there really any games that aren't targeted at geeks? Last time I went to a rave, I didn't see anybody playing "twister"...

They've got it backwards

[Jason1729]

Companies are concentrating on mass-appeal over fun. In the early 90's, a game was a huge hit if it sold 100,000 copies. Today, with numbers like that it would be considered a flop. Because of that, the newer games are dumbed-down to appeal more to the masses. Eye-Candy is considered more important than playability.

It's the same situation in the board game industry. Everyone's played monopoly (which is a lousy game), but who here has even heard of Puerto Rico or Settlers of Catan which are two of the best games on the market now.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:They've got it backwards

[neglige]

monopoly (which is a lousy game)
No, sir, if you win, the game really rocks! ;)

Settlers of Catan
A nice game, really. And there are several (!) expansions available to make the game more fun.

Re:They've got it backwards

[DaveJay]

You make an excellent point here, and it really drives home the idea that Video Games are the new Movies.

After all, who hasn't complained that good movies can't be profitable any more, and so the big blockbuster hits are really, really dumbed down? Video games might be headed in the same direction.

How depressing.

Oh, and mad props for mentioning Settlers of Catan, which is indeed one of the best games out there right now.

Re:They've got it backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

Go Settlers!!

One of the best games I have ever played. That, and some weird ones from Cheapass games.

Re:They've got it backwards

[NotJeff]

It's the same situation in the board game industry. Everyone's played monopoly (which is a lousy game), but who here has even heard of Puerto Rico or Settlers of Catan which are two of the best games on the market now.

I have. But it's a mistake to think that these games are the best for everyone. Playing Puerto Rico to win requires quite a bit of thought, sometimes. That, like some of the more thoughtful video games on the market now, is not necessarily what Joe Public WANTS in a leisure activity. Remember - the MOST popular game in America right now is the Slot Machine, aka "Push the Button"...

Re:They've got it backwards

[wfberg]

Actually, Settlers of Catan is way to dependent on chance for me. It offers little if no reward for strategy, people get hissy-fitty over underhanded tactics (come on, that's what strategy should be about!) like non-fair trading and forming alliances, the black raider thingy comes along way too often (what? 7 is the most probable combination of two dice? who wudda thunk!)

It's almost as bad as RISK (which is essentially totally lame if not predetermined)..

How much fun would the settlers of catan or Risk (or monopoly, or..) be if rolling the dice would result in the same number over and over again (i.e. without the element of chance)? Ever noticed how a game like Chess or Go does without dice altogether?

Re:They've got it backwards

[El]

In every industry, companies target the people they know will buy the product. Nobody wants to do the missionary sell to a new audience, because those who do frequently lose money. Why do the car manufacturers keep making and advertising the heck out of SUVs? Not because everybody wants one, but because thats what they make the most profit on! You expect the game industry to be any different? You expect them to blow several million dollars to develop a game on the off chance that it _might_ appeal to a new demographic? Not a chance! Companies that engage in wild speculation go the way of 3DO. Companies that keep doing what works go the way of Sony, Nintendo, Sega, and Microsoft...

Re:They've got it backwards

[Prior Restraint]

monopoly (which is a lousy game)
No, sir, if you win, the game really rocks! ;)

Just out of curiosity: Does anyone play Monopoly to completion anymore? That's what I don't get about some board games. Monopoly, Risk, Trivial Pursuit... After you get out of college, who can find four adults who are willing to dedicate six uninterrupted hours to playing these? One time (in college) a bunch of us decided to play Risk one night. When dawn came and there was no clear victory at hand, I swore never to play it again.

Re:They've got it backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're all missing something important here. With a few exceptions, video games are inherently solo activities. I know that online games exist, but that uses a form of interaction that nongeeks aren't particularly comfortable with.

Even with board games, I've noticed that nongeeks tend to be drawn to games that require less thought. I think that's because it leaves more brain power for socializing. Or another way of looking at would be to say that people who are highly adept at socializing tend to have underdeveloped the strategic part of their brains.

There's a wonderful line from the movie Dirty Pretty Things that applies heree. "Good at chess usually means you suck at life."

Re:They've got it backwards

[geekoid]

play monopoly with all the rules, and no house rules. The bidding is what makes it interesting.

Re:They've got it backwards

[rbrunner]

I find that chance is a pretty small element in the basic Settlers. When you add the expansions, it does become more significant. However, given people of different skill levels, the better players usually win. Occasionally they don't, which is good, because it keeps poorer players from giving up because they would have no chance to win.

Re:They've got it backwards

[Now15]

>it really drives home the idea that Video Games are the new Movies.

That's funny. I was just thinking how movies these days are like video games.

Re:They've got it backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the other advantage of games like Settlers of Catan and Puerto Rico. The games don't last more than 2 or 3 hours.

On the subject of Monopoly, the reason people don't play the game to completion is because almost nobody plays "by the book". All of the house rules (like putting money on free parking and not holding an auction on properties) add to the length of the game.

For other fun games for 3-5 players, try:

Ra
Princes of Florence
Wyatt Earp

Puerto Rico is my favorite, though.

Re:They've got it backwards

[neglige]

Does anyone play Monopoly to completion anymore?

As a teenager, we used to start a heavy inflation by creating our own money (and dismissing the rules regarding the maximum number of hotels and houses). We kept playing for days and generated billions (debt & fortune). Today we play it by the rules and complete the game after about 2 hours (YMMV, of course).

Oh, and I'm not too fond of risk. Could be because I lost my first couple of games... It was at a time when the goal was still to "conquer", not to "liberate". Talk about PC here!

Re:They've got it backwards

[Ondo]

Eye-Candy is considered more important than playability.

It's the same situation in the board game industry. Everyone's played monopoly (which is a lousy game), but who here has even heard of Puerto Rico or Settlers of Catan which are two of the best games on the market now.

The problem with this analogy is that Settlers of Catan has more eye-candy than Monopoly. Indeed, high physical quality of the components is pretty much the board game equivalent of eye-candy, and is generally found hand-in-hand with playability because both are common in German board games.

Re:They've got it backwards

[Cyno]

I like SolarQuest.

Monopoly in Spaaace..

Re:They've got it backwards

[bigdavex]

Everyone's played monopoly (which is a lousy game), but who here has even heard of Puerto Rico or Settlers of Catan which are two of the best games on the market now.

I actually like Monopoly, except for the very beginning and the very end can be tedious. I think Settlers of Catan has a lot of the same elements of game play. What don't you like about Monopoly?

Re:They've got it backwards

[messerman]

I pretty sure that this guy has heard of Settlers. He's doing his doctoral thesis on the AI involved to play it. My girlfriend and her friends are positively addicted to it.

Re:They've got it backwards

[Jason1729]

Monopoly leaves very little room for strategy. The strategy simple; buy anything you can. Sure different properties have different payout percentages, but you're not going to turn down a red property because orange has a better payout.

The dice have too much influence in the game, you have no control at all over where you land, but where you land is all-important. As if that wasn't random enough, they throw in cards just to increase the random element.

Ultimately, whoever has the best luck completing monopolies right at the beginning will win even though it can take hours for them to finally win. I guess this is where you're saying the beginning is tedious because all you do is buy everything in sight; there's no thinking, and the end is tedious because all you do is throw the dice over and over until pure random chance picks the winner; once everyone has their properies and hotels there are no decisions to be made.

The other killer is it's an elimination type game. What are the first people eliminated supposed to do for the next couple of hours while the game continues?

I think the main reason Americans don't like board games is Monopoly is the main introduction to the genre. It would be much better to start people off with something like Acquire. It's at about the same level of difficulty and strategic complexity as Monopoly, but it doesn't have a lot of the problems I've just mentioned.

The random elements in Settlers are the starting locations of the tiles which is essential because you don't want to play the same game every time and the production rolls. The production rolls follow a probability distribtion; you know how often in the long run each region will produce and you can hold a hand of resources, so it's not much of a random element. If you want it to be less random, a lot of people play it with a deck of dice instead.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:They've got it backwards

[snap2grid]

the newer games are dumbed-down to appeal more to the masses

Oh boy, tell me about it. I was designing gameplay and in in particular story, background, characters for a game which was firmly targetted for an age of around mid 20s. Many months in and my writing was getting heavily rewritten and simplified and it was only then that I found out they'd decided to aim the thing squarely at 16 year olds.

Not that it occured to anyone to actually tell me or anything...

Re:They've got it backwards

[LeBlueBoy]

Most non hardcore gamers want the eye candy...they also want simpler controls and more options and territory for exploration when they're not competing or solving puzzles. The appeal of the Sims was in playing your characters the way you wanted to play them...Family Man, Adulturess, Playboy, or as the Lewd Dirty Old Dude. As long as you met certain objectives and goals, you could shape the social lives and leisure time activities pretty much in any manner you wanted. Fighting someone in SoulCalibur, and then inviting them out for a drink and some general tomfoolery after you complete your mission would be a blast.

Re:They've got it backwards

[bigdavex]

Ultimately, whoever has the best luck completing monopolies right at the beginning will win even though it can take hours for them to finally win. I guess this is where you're saying the beginning is tedious because all you do is buy everything in sight; there's no thinking, and the end is tedious because all you do is throw the dice over and over until pure random chance picks the winner; once everyone has their properies and hotels there are no decisions to be made.

I consider the first part of the game a longish way to deal the properties. It's the trading phase that's interesting.

At the point where the outcome becomes obvious, it's much more fun if the losing players concede. I've played Axis & Allies out to an Allied victory maybe once or twice, because we always concede at the point when it stops being fun. I wouldn't consider that a fatal flaw.

Risk is the game that drives me nuts now. It doesn't tend toward a conclusion when played well.

You've made good points. Now if only Settlers expansions didn't end up costing $200.

Re:They've got it backwards

[glesga_kiss]

Also, some people in these games are too nice. Monopoly and Risk may be some of the worst offenders. Generally, people don't finish other players off when they can.

If the game was played in a more cut-throat way, it'd be a lot shorter.

Re:They've got it backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

In my opinion, none of the Settlers expansions improve the game in any. They provide variety, but the gameplay suffers. They also make the games last longer.

I think you're better off playing a completely different game if you're looking for variety.

Re:They've got it backwards

[bigdavex]

Thanks for the tip. I was considering the expansions until I saw your message.

Re:They've got it backwards

[Snowmit]

Actually, I think that the fact that big budget companies think that 100,000 copies (or whatever the number is) is a flop is encouraging. It means that the medium as a whole has become more mass market which means that there is a lot more room for niche developers - much like there is a whole lot of room in the movies now for art films, independent films and so on.

Does everyone involved in making these lower budget, lower market films/games become crazy rich? No, of course not. But a big budget studio's flop is a small potatoes designer's monthly rent and food.

There are a lot of developers that you've never heard of making games you don't know about. But it doesn't matter because *enough* people are buying their games that they are making a living.

Re:They've got it backwards

[Jason1729]

Exactly my point. If you can write a game that appeals to the masses and sell a million copies, why do extra work to make it have more substance and only sell 100k copies?

Jason
ProfQuotes

And in other news....

[Tebriel]

So games won't be fun unless they're designed to be fun? What will they realize next? Software won't be easy to use unless they put some thought into the interface.

This is why older games are still popular, with less graphics and sound to work with, the hook had to be the game itself. You had to play it because you wanted to play it, not because it looked pretty.

Re:And in other news....

[joebok]

Don't forget that time is a filter: we've forgotten the crappy games of yore.

Game play

[ScrewMaster]

And this is a surprise? Cripes. In 1986 I worked for some of the (then) major PC and arcade game companies. Even then, the focus was always on making the game as visually impressive as possible. That's fine, but somehow another important aspect of any game, playability, was lost in the shuffle. The programmers (I was one) and designers would complain about this regularly, but the response was usually something to the effect, "You can work on that while the game is in QC" or "Don't worry, you'll have a whole week before we ship to add playability." Utter cluelessness. And I see it in the current crop of video products: games using OpenGL and DirectX can be visually stunning, it's true, but most are simply not interesting to play after the first hour or two. Not a good return on your fifty dollar investment. Some of the older DOS-based texture-mapped products, such as Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood and others written using Ken Silverman's BUILD engine had more emphasis on game play. While those games didn't have the graphic quality of modern products rendered using 3D chipsets, they were just phenomenally fun to play. So I agree ... game makes have pretty much exhausted the sex appeal of the fancy graphical environment, now they better start focusing on why people play games: for FUN!

Re:Game play

[CGP314]

I completely agree.

I had a professor who made me an 'old game' convert. I played quake 3 all the time, but he wouldn't join in. "It's boring," he'd complain. So one day I decided to play his game of choice on a LAN. Duke Nukem 3d. The graphics sucked ass by comparison, but WOW, there was so much to do.

I could open and close doors when I wanted to.

I could use item when I wanted to, not just when I picked them up. And I could partially used them and save them for later.

There were interesting, distinct weapons. Shrink ray freeze gun.

In Q3 I have 8 guns that are basically the same and I can't interact with the world. I've never looked back.

Re:Game play

[Anonymous Coward]

"I ain't afraid of no quake!"

Re:Game play

[ScrewMaster]

I can't tell you how many hours (days, weeks) I spent playing networked Duke. Way too many, that's how many.

And one of the most important aspects to Build engine games is that you can BREAK THINGS. Right in the middle of a gunfight you can kick out a window and cut loose with a stream of bullets from your chain gun. Do that in Quake or Half Life! And dozens of different objects can be broken or busted into tiny little pieces. I always found Quake, Half Life, Unreal and all these modern rendered games annoying because you can't do that. I mean ... come on, how can all the windows in a building be bulletproof? Rocketproof? There's just a sense of pure satisfaction in being able to walk into a bar and blast all the bottles off the shelf.

Re:Game play

[ScrewMaster]

Actually, if you play Duke (or Blood, Shadow Warror, etc.) in 800x600 or 1024x768 they really look pretty damn good. Takes a fast machine though. AND, as you probably already know, there are a couple of dozen good emulators out there that take the data files from the original game and run them on your Open GL board under Windows with full network support. Really awesome. One of them I tried would even add the ability to jump to the original Doom!

Re:Game play

[monique]

I still pull out Masters of Magic every now and then and get completely re-addicted for a few weeks or a month. It's like reading a favorite book -- I can always come back and rediscover it, and it's just as much fun as it was the first time. More, maybe, because I understand more than I did then (same as the book).

I can guarantee that I don't play MoM for the outstanding graphics. My fiance is still convinced that dragonturtles are actually sheep, and gryffins are ... flying sheep.

Re:Game play

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried the age of wonders games, then? They're a lot like Master of Magic, but they also have a story and some quests, too! Plus, the thing I always wanted in Master of Magic: multiplayer!

http://www.triumphstudios.com/

Re:Game play

[ScrewMaster]

Uh ... they aren't??!

Re:Game play

[snap2grid]

I agree with you wholeheartedly. I was part of the games industry for many years and in all that time I have seen so many articles, hints, tips, guidelines for creating games, written by both industry people and independent creators. Yet very very rarely have I seen guidelines for gameplay.

Our publisher was concerned only with visuals, but we were lucky to have the kind of programmers that would spend ages tweaking control routines so that - for example - moving the players ship or whatever would feel right.

Re:Game play

[Chacham]

Just have to agree with you. Duke Numem 3D was a fantastic game, and concentrated of fun.

Personally, I like the jetpack. The jetpack and the RPG in Stadium deathmatch. :) Or the hiding places in the abyss (behind the waterfall). And, by default, splash damage was significant, so killing someone was less being quick at the mouse, and more about where the player was going to be.

Ah, the memories....

Re:Game play

[ScrewMaster]

Heck with the memories ... get that network jacked in with a few 1.5 Ghz Athlons and get cracking. We still play it here now and then when we get tired of Half Life or whatever. Some of the hundreds of 3rd party Dukematch levels are just fantastic. When Duke first came out, there just wasn't enough processor power out there to play it in the higher resolution modes. Now I can play it in 1024x768 with great frame rates.

Re:Game play

[Chacham]

Heh.

It is tempting. :)

If you say so.

[mrseigen]

Obviously the mainstream market believes that video games are not fun enough. Therefore we must add more non-interactive FMV, stupid movie licenses, and other crap to make it fit their ideal of "fun". Excuse me while I go back to playing xevil...

Myst With Action

[N8F8]

Just gimme a game with the backstory of Myst and the graphics and interactivity of Quake/Doom/Unreal. I want to explore, not pile up bodies.

Re:Myst With Action

[Kaa]

Morrowind.

Re:Myst With Action

[necrognome]

Try Morrowind.

Re:Myst With Action

[capt.Hij]

I want to explore, not pile up bodies.

Certainly this sounds like loads of fun, but you will have an easier time finding what you want at a pr0n site rather than with a game...

Re:Myst With Action

[rowanxmas]

Is it better on PC or XBOX?

Re:Myst With Action

[Pope]

Dunno if it counts, but the Thief and Deus Ex series might be interesting to you (though there is killing involved, if you want to play that way)

Re:Myst With Action

[Rob Simpson]

Yeah, it's a great game. The only disappointment for me is that the huge, beautiful 3D world is too static. People just stand around, indoors or out, day and night. Nothing happens unless you act. Ultima 7 had NPCs waking up, eating, walking around, baking bread, drinking in pubs, making potions, spinning thread, training in archery or with swords, and going to sleep - and that was over a decade ago.

Re:Myst With Action

[Bullet-Dodger]

Just gimme a game with the backstory of Myst and the graphics and interactivity of Quake/Doom/Unreal. I want to explore, not pile up bodies.

Give Real Myst a look (ok, that site kinda sucks). It's the original Myst redone in an actual 3D engine. Sound just like what you're talking about.

That's just a load of...

[chia_monkey]

A load of crap I tell ya. Are you telling me punk music was always popular? Or swing? Or certain genres of movies? Hell no. Define "popular". Is it by revenue? I believe the gaming industry already makes more than the other two mentioned industries (don't quote me on that, plus I don't have my resources in front of me to point to). That seems pretty popular. I say it's only a matter of time. Soon every household will have at least one game system. That's not popular? The gaming industry will evolve, just as all other industries. Just give it time.

Increase market, decrease price

[jonjohnson]

But this is largely due to the high price of a game, around 40. compared to the cost of video rentals or a cinema ticket.

I think that games are where they need to be. However, we need companies to experiment by lowering prices, offering crazy deals on top games. I'm guessing *then* the market would grow, and prices could stay lower.

Mass appeal

[neglige]

Games are still too difficult for a mass audience

Hm... but please have a few games that are a bit more complex than "Deer Hunter". "Sims". Great game. Arguably rather complex. Played by many women and men.

Oh, and how difficult is it to align a crosshair? Most FPS are not really all that difficult (easy to understand - not easy to master!)... not sure if they appeal to the masses, although the sales figures from HL or UT hint at that.

But of course the article seems to focus on the XBox. I guess other rules apply to consoles.

Obviously

[DarkKnightRadick]

These people have never played Frozen Bubble or Nethack.

I currently have a level 8 male gnomish wizard on Level 5 and 6 (I go back and forth, the last (and currently only) merchant is on 5). I'm kinda stuck on 6 because there are no secret doors to be found (searched the walls of every room four times over already) and now way further down.

BTW, Nethack 3.4.2 is out!

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, that sounds like the way to appeal to non-geeks.

wow, what a discovery

[jimius]

this man just declared all games not being fun. Perhaps he should try Bullshit Tycoon?

Gaming isn't geeky anymore, it hasn't been for a long time. My parents played mario and Donkey Kong on the SNES and my father has become a Battlefield addict. And they are certainly not geeky.

If you look at Counter-Strike, do you really think that the players going "sTFU n00b" are considered geeks?

the game industry is fairly young, most of us grew up with games and will continue to play them for the rest of our lives. The poeple who didn't grow up in the gaming age will simply have less interrest. And besides, not everybody is a gamer.

Re:wow, what a discovery

[Anonymous Coward]

this man just declared all games not being fun

It was a woman, actually.

In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Film and music will never be as popular as sex unless... well they'll never be as popular as sex.

Penny Arcade Fodder

[zodar]

Penny Arcade strip showing new, painful, non-fun video game titles ("Rolling Naked In Broken Glass 2K3", "Return To Hamsters Biting Your Genitals Island") in 3, 2, 1...

35 pounds?!

[Tibor the Hun]

Damn, that's a lot of popcorn! I too would need more than only 2 hours to finish that.

No Joke, No Troll

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Thats just it! If I were to post what the article says as a comment it would be modded down as a Troll. But its not, and if you see it as one, well then, you are not me.

Perhaps fun == easy and non-threatening?

[DaveJay]

Perhaps Ms Fryer meant 'easy and non-threatening' when she said "fun". Presumably, every developer is trying to make enjoyable games, but if the barrier to entry is too high (complex controls, steep learning curve) -- or appears to be high -- fewer people will take the time to play them, and so fewer will find out how much fun they (hopefully) are.

Case in point: when I bought my GameCube, I bought some games that I thought my wife would like, and Tony Hawk 3 for me. I convinced her to play Tony Hawk (and it took a lot of convincing at first) and got her through the initial tricks, and now it's her favorite game, hands-down. She kicks my ass in it more days then not, too.

If I hadn't been around to urge her to play, and if I hadn't helped her through the initial stages, she wouldn't be enjoying it now. That doesn't mean that she couldn't have figured it out on her own; it's just that she WOULDN'T have.

Re:Perhaps fun == easy and non-threatening?

[nanojath]

Yes... There's a real fine line in that statement she makes that "you want a game that is challenging but never frustrating."

Any challenge becomes a frustration if you can't overcome it. And whether you do so depends on your basic proficiency, how immersed you are in the game world, whether you have a stick-to-it personality, etc. etc. For the hard core gamer, a game wouldn't be a game without some beat-your-head-against-the-wall apparent cul-de-sacs and that elation you feel when you finally bust through that.

Re:Perhaps fun == easy and non-threatening?

[RatBastard]

I hear you. My wife got really good at Soul Calibur very fast. She never got better than I was, but she didn't put the time into it like I did.

But my wife, like many other people I know, doesn't really like games that require speed. Freecell and other games of that type are more her speed.

Re:Perhaps fun == easy and non-threatening?

[nothings]

Yeah, the quote is entirely bogus for its use of fun. Clearly what she is advocating is to bring games more in line with syndicated newspaper comic strips.

Yay.

Like many online cartoonists, many game developers (or at least many of the best) approach game development as a passion, not as a money-maximizing endeavor. Yes, money must be made to stay in business, but there's no need to target the utter most common denominator just to make enough money to be happen.

Publishers, on the other hand, just care about the bottom line. Especially the publisher this "leading game expert" works for.

My Obligatory MacFoxes Ref

[chia_monkey]

MacFoxes...

Now THAT was a fun game...

Wow! 'Fun'...So that's been my problem...

[ErnstKompressor]

I guess I have to scrap my 'Europe-during-the-black-plague-simulator."

In other news today...

[sleezly]

A leading game expert was flogged for making stupid remarks. Fired.

I challenge the notion...

[Anonymous Coward]

that games are beautiful at the expense of fun. most games by Electronic Arts or Acclaim for example, don't look very good either.

Games like Vice City may be immersively large, but the character models looked like shit compared to any of the final fantasy games on the PS1. Most US games have nasty graphics compared to Japanese ones. I think this is because game companies in Japan try to create a game so good it sells lots of copies, and American companies try to establish the highest return on the lowest investment, which usually means establishing a franchise. thats not exactly the epitome of creativity.

Re:I challenge the notion...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you stupid or something?

FF7 was a good game, but to say that it's graphics were better than Vice City is just dumb. FF8 was just a bunch of ugly walking sprites with crazy clothing. FF9, well. FF9 did have some nice models, but nothing near the complexity needed for something like Vice City.

Obviously, pre-rendered scenes do not count.

It's not just the "fun factor

[indulgenc]

What about games that don't require bleeding edge technology to run?

I to play video games, but I don't love having to upgrade my system every 2 months in order to play a new game. It seems like everytime a great new game is annouced, the recommended system specs seem to coincide with the latest processor and video cards released that week.

-i

Re:It's not just the "fun factor

[Xerithane]

I think she takes care of that: She's the director of the XBox Advanced Technology Group.

You don't have to worry about hardware, just part with $179.99 and buy an XBox.

Re:It's not just the "fun factor

[Nintendork]

I to play video games, but I don't love having to upgrade my system every 2 months in order to play a new game.

That's exactly why PC games will never be as popular as console games. The requirements for any Xbox game: Xbox.

-Lucas

Re:It's not just the "fun factor

[aastanna]

I dunno about that...I've never run into a game my 650 MHz Athlon with a GeForce can't run. I thought I might have problems with Vice City, since I dropped down to the minimum spec, but it runs perfectly fine even with the resolution and view distance turned up a bit.

Recommended usually just means what would make the game run the best, and obviously they are going to put the newest hardware there, but it doesn't mean you can't run the game perfectly well with an older computer.

Re:It's not just the "fun factor

[KanshuShintai]

Or even, for example, Morrowind, which was made to run on systems that STILL aren't available, no matter what the minimum requirements may say.

"What? You don't have a video card with a gig of memory? Oh, sorry about that. We misprinted on the box."

Re:It's not just the "fun factor

[SuperFrink]

I just don't bother buying the newer games. My time is usually spent on other things. Though a few weekends back I discovered transgaming's winex. I spend a few hours straight playing Grim Fandango. At the time (1998) it ran slow on the bare requirements and even had choppy sound. On my current machine it runs fine (even with the DriectX being interpreted/mapped/whatever in software). In fact it runs so fast I'm stuck in the eleveator in year 2. :(

The point is Grim Fandango was a great (ie *fun*) game to play. The characters were funny and the story carried the player forward. That's what makes it a good game. On the other had in Warcraft 3 I skipped the animated shorts between levels because I just wasn't interested in the tired two-races-at-war-story.

Each game is different and often good (or popular) games are good (or popular) for thier own reasons.

"You can't run from the grim reaper max, especially when he has a gun!" - Manny Calavera, Grim Fandango

Re:It's not just the "fun factor

[DeadScreenSky]

The videogame consoles are your friend. Especially seeing as they are now starting to get a lot more games with a 'PC complexity level'.

morrowind

[Tibor the Hun]

morrowind looked cool, until they decided not to have nudity in it. daggerfall had some nice surprises waiting in certain "motels".

yeah, i know i shouldn't judge a good game on the basis whether it has boobies, but i'm cheap like that...

It's only a game

[Hewcard Packlet]

- Oh! God My God Persephonie! How could you do this, you big trainee! Nom de Dieu de bordel de putain de saloperie de couille de merde! - Cause and effect my love... - Cause? There is no... cause for this, what cause? - What cause? How about the lipstick you're still wearing? - Lipstick? Lipstick? What craziness are you talking about there's no lipstick! - She wasn't kissing your face my love - Ah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah oui mais this is nothing c'est rien, c'est rien du tout, it is a game, it is only a game! - So is this...

fun games

[oskillator]

This sort of perspective is annoying to me. It's especially annoying to me when the writer says that games used to be fun, but now they're just hours of drudgework between cinematic cut scenes. You just know that this guy's only recent gaming experience has been on the X-Box.

I may be biased here, but as I see it, the really fun games are still coming from the same guy they have been for the last 20 years: Shigeru Miyamoto.

If you want fun games, games that aren't trying to be movies, pick up a Gamecube. Grab copies of Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker, and Metroid Prime. Then you have the right to complain to me that are trying to be beautiful and dramatic instead of fun.

Where do I apply for this guy's job?

[jamonterrell]

Seriously, did it take you 18 months of scientific research to figure this out? Or did the fact that you were sick of playing boring games remind you that you should probably do something while at work so you spat out this excellent article in 5 minutes?

A call to developers

[ChozCunningham]

I've often wondered why a 90 minute film or a 60 minute album could move me in ways a 3 day game-fest couldn't. I've longed for games that actually were stimulating and educational. Edu-tainment is a poisonous word to put on a piece of interactive software, but the exact same concepts sell other enetertainment mediums. David Byrne's Latin Jazz Compilations and Akira Kirasawa's Films both educate me on new visions and draw from events and styles existing already to entertain. Perhaps the coders could code, the graphic designers could do graphics and the developers need to develop the game, rather than oversee the technical..There are few "Directors" in the developer/designer position. The rest are juggling some premise with the needs of marketing and limits of hardware....

Hell, even retarded Ahnold movies, like Terminator and The 6th Day, bring up relevent settings and illuminate moral questions? Only a handful of the finest games, like Romance of the 3 Kingdoms and Civ explore the awy the world works (worked) outside my limitied experience. Well, I guess Black and White was worth something; a failed game, but it brought that morality and consequences to the table, showing the strengths and weaknesses of each...

Maybe if Warcraft had actually let me choose if the Palladin went bad, and made me struggle with the choice.

The only place in gaming I've seen this sort of development is in the small brand traditional (pen& paper) RPG companies. But they have their own geek-factor by nature of the format.

computers used to have this image too!!!

[laydros]

does anyone else remember when everyone had a NES but almost nobody had a computer?? i know this reflects console and pc gaming, but its kinda intersting to think how home computers went from a very geeky relm to everybodies living room, and it seems that consoles have backed off. or else im just getting older....

You have a narrow viewpoint...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Obviously 'geeks' are the type currently spending the most money on games"

This is like saying, "Obviously the only people interested in cars are sports car fans because that is all we sell (and make)." Funny thing is, if they made games that appealed to a wider audience they might not find "geeks" to be the only ones spending money on games, right? It is a self-fulfilling prophecy the way they sell and market them right now.

Right now my favorite game is Steel Panthers-WW2. It has historical interest (not just kill the aliens), is turn based so I think about what I am doing instead of just twitch-and-fire, and I can choose my difficulty without having to deal with some crux in the game stopping me cold. Plus it has unlimited possibility vs some game with a set end point. I can dedicate about half an hour a day to it usually and I don't have a terribly tight schedule (my modeling career must be off).

Re:You have a narrow viewpoint...

[El]

This is like saying, "Obviously the only people interested in cars are sports car fans because that is all we sell (and make)."
On the other hand, try making a sports car targeted at radical environmentalists instead of sports car fans, and see how well it sells...

Gaming Demo Shifts

[WwWonka]

I just read a recent article online, not sure where I saw it, that there is a dramatic increase in the number of female gamers between the ages of 18 and 30 somthing. This wasn't a small number either but one that could drastically change the way games and systems are made and marketed.

I would have never believed it unless it was for my current girlfriend* who loves Halo and the Xbox.But then again she does insist on using the vibrating control pad!

*girlfriend-opposite sex of the male slashdot reader who actually likes the male Slashdot reader. Rare. See also Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, Yeti.

Eau Contraire

[luekj]

As is being evidenced by the current industry shift to IP (e.g. licenced gaming) fun has nothing to do with it.

Case in point, EA. As long as it has enough general cultural media tie ins (Matrix cam, check. Corny movie lines, check.) and licensed music it's "cool". Wheras before the focus was on fun over the IP and how they can exploit it.

Methinks it may be going the other way.

In other news...

[Boing]

...Water still wet, experts claim.

Never as popular?

[Cytotoxic]

From a recent slashdot posting about how crappy the video game industry is, at $8 billion annually the video game industry already surpasses the movie industry. Nice to start your article out on a false premise....

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/12/19/eveningn ews/main533790.shtml

Re:Never as popular?

[Meridun]

I was about to look up that link. Funny that you found it before I did :).

Incidentally, as a rather pointed casestudy, you really need to grab a copy of Tron 2.0. Spent a good portion of the weekend playing it and it's easily the best single-player FPS since Half-Life. It's easily better than TRON the movie was, and would probaly make a rather good movie by itself.

actually

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, i would say its a geek only thing, when you have to buy them. more ppl would play, if the prices were cheaper, or better yet, you could download, and just burn then to a CD. hell, mp3's are so popular, even my grandma downloads them...

come on now....

[dnaSpyDir]

"When people talk about 'it's only a game', they're cheapening the value of games. It trivialises the time people spend playing a game and time is the most precious thing people have."

but it IS only a game, so why waste what precious little time we have on this mortal coil staring at some screen having our "adventures".

"People need drama in their lives. Games fulfil emotional and mental needs that cannot be fulfilled any other way,"

sure they do... like oh, i dunno... killing, raping, torture, and vehicular hommicide to name a few....

got humerus? - me

Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

...As a self-confessed avid gamer herself, Ms Fryer sees real value in video games, arguing they have a key role to play in people's lives. "People need drama in their lives. Games fulfil emotional and mental needs that cannot be fulfilled any other way," she explained...

Oh, please. Get this woman to a psychiatrist...

what am I missing

[NetMagi]

Gee and I thought they WERE fun. . I play 3 hours a night religiously. . .

now I feel like I should watch sucky tv because I'm not playing something "fun"

frag ya lata

Its about a generation...

[Kushy]

Its about the things that seems normal and everyday.

Right now video games are in almost every home. So 50 years from now the kids that are sitting playing video games will be the ones running this place. Thus it will be more pop to sit in front of your gamming rig and just as acceptiable as watching TV and playing music.

That's wierd

[Anonymous Coward]

If Microsoft's X-box division recognizes people just need to concentrate on making games fun, why haven't they been doing anything toward the end of making x-box games fun?

Their M.O. so far seems mostly to be to concentrate on making them green, and quietly hope that occationally something beautiful will fall into their lap by chance..

So Basically...

[TheLoneDanger]

What Ms. Fryer is suggesting is that developers make games that are easy to control, challenging but not frustrating and appeal to "a hardcore 15 year-old gamer as well as someone older who just wants to have fun." Isn't that what Nintendo has been trying to do all along (and I would say succeeded in with Super Mario 64 and the Zelda series)? Remember that "Xbox not for pansies" flash ad making fun of Mario?

Re:Blow Holes

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand the reference to "black". The other adjectives seem to describe characteristics related to size which for some is proportional to pleasure (to a point). The black reference seems to be more of a personal preference or a perception from a past experience that may have been enjoyable, but not directly the result of being black. Either way, you all all fucked up.

Ultima 4

[Anonymous Coward]

"Maybe if Warcraft had actually let me choose if the Palladin went bad, and made me struggle with the choice"

Didn't Ultima 4, Quest of The Avatar, put this issue in the center of the game? Your behavior was a critical issue in the game.

Re:Ultima 4

[neglige]

Didn't Ultima 4, Quest of The Avatar, put this issue in the center of the game? Your behavior was a critical issue in the game.

Yes, you had to meet the necessary requirements in several (7?) virtues. But you had to be good to finish the game. With Black&White, you can play the entire game as a bad god.

Re:Ultima 4

[ChozCunningham]

Unfortunately, I haven't played or studied Ultima 4, so I can't really discuss it. On of the interesting things about it was that you could take good or bad to a far flung conclusion. one wasn't a failure interfering with the game's progress.

My girlfriend and I flipped coins to see who was to play "good" and who was "evil". She got good. A week into it, we realized that being bad was incerdibly difficult, because people just hate it (like monkey torture)

Of course around that time, we also learned that that my evil baboon would probably never learn to eat his own poo, no matter how much I rewarded him for it. Molyneaux forgot that when your evil, negative conditioning should alter people to accept "non-meanness" asn almost praise. Oh yeah, after a week, we realized the game wasn't fun. Just tedious. But it spawned several weeks of discussion and speculation...

I imagine there are more than even 2 games where moralaty is a) integral to the story and gameplay b) fun to muse over.

You can't graph fun!

[WickedClean]

How do you measure fun? You can't plug fun numbers in Excel and make pretty pie charts for executives to see! You can't track trends in fun! You can't follow the fun market! What in the hell are you talking about?

All you need to do is find a popular movie, then make a video game based on a character or characters from the movie. So what if the game is not fun, it will still sell enough copies, based on its name alone, to make a profit! And that is what business is all about!

Bill, MBA Student

In other news...

[ColdForged]

a man with his anus on fire will most likely run faster than an azalea. Story at 11.

Hell, if that's what it takes to become a speaker at the Game Developer's Conference, I'm totally in. Blaringly obvious inanities?! Check!

"Gamers prefer playing games with attractive visuals, high-fidelity textures, and richly composed sonic landscapes to being struck in the scrotum with a mallet."

"When it comes to plot, focus on the classic storytelling elements like theme, character development, conflict/resolution, and female characters with enormous, cunningly detailed, high-polygon-count breast renderings."

Yeah, I'm going to book my hotel room for the San Jose GDC right-the-hell now.

Ummmm

[yoshi1013]

"A wide variety of emotions in a safe environment?" What the hell is that supposed to mean? Are movie theaters not a safe place to have emotional reactions?

Imagine you're sitting in a movie theater and you start to sob and you friend goes "What are you doing? Stop it! It's not safe!!"

Bzzzt..Wrong

[retro128]

Whether a game is no fun or not depends entirely on who you are. They want games to appeal to a mass market? Then they are going to have to dumb them down to the lowest common denomonator. God forbid games become as popular as music and movies...To do so they would have to be just as mundane.

Computer games are about the only form of thinking man's entertainment left, unless one ventures out to the Big Blue Room. I like games that have good stories to them, puzzles, and a touch of wanton destruction...Deus Ex comes to mind. It's one of my favorite games ever. It was also entertaining because various conspiracy theories (Area 51, Illuminati, etc) were tied into it and it got downright philosophical at times. If I picture my mom, dad, or sister playing this game all I hear is a big whooshing sound as it flies over their heads. My dad hates games, my mom likes to play casino games, and the most challenging thing my sister has ever played is Windows Solitaire. So then, if Miss Laura Fryer of Xbox Advanced Technology Group wishes to have her utopia, then perhaps she should command all the Xbox developers to churn out endless versions of Freecell and Minesweeper clones for the hungry masses.

I guess she'd be doing me a favor now that I think about how much money I'd be saving. I'd have to add games to my blacklist along with music, movies, and TV.

Popularity

[EverDense]

ChinoH81 writes "Video games are never going to be as popular as films or music unless the
people who make them concentrate on making them fun, says a leading game expert."

Never going to be as popular?
Funny that the Games Industry makes WAY more money than the Hollywood.

Re:Popularity

[JFMulder]

A game costs 60$. Going to the movies costs between 5$ to 15$. It's not because you make more money that you are more popular. Movies make more money each year but have less and less customers. You could say that videogames will be as popular as movies when they make at least 3 or 4 times the amount of money Hollywood makes each year.

Re:Popularity

[scot4875]

This is just wrong. Lots of articles have mentioned how games make more money than Hollywood, but usually they're talking about a) the worldwide video game industry vs b) US box office sales. So we've got the entire video game industry vs one part of one market of the entire movie industry.

Yeah, the video game industry has grown, but it's still nowhere near the size of the motion picture industry.

--Jeremy

Re:Popularity

[EverDense]

A game costs 60$. Going to the movies costs between 5$ to 15$. It's not
because you make more money that you are more popular.

Typical American attitude, change the rules of Capitalism, right after the rest of the world
starts kicking your arse. ;-)

Re:Popularity

[JFMulder]

You're both right and wrong. I'm a canadian, not an american, but I agree with you, americans change their minds after the rest of the world, eh? ;)

But will that be a victory?

[awing0]

Games will always appeal to an exclusive audience, and that audience will enjoy their game much much more than any TV series or blockbuster movie.

Games usually require thinking and decision making. Maybe the majority doesn't find this fun. I always have and always will spend more time with video games than TV or movies. A one size fits all mindset just alienates everyone. Comparing the success of video games next to movies, TV, and music is just wrong. It's not the same medium.

What a fucking insight!

[merlin_jim]

Goddamn! That's why my gaming company is failing! We need to focus on making the games fun! Holy Fucking Shit man, this is fresh! This is information I could've never fucking figured out ever!

Here I am spending all this time making new levels and texture maps and special abilities with pixel shaders and shit. My goal when I was making these was to make the game less fun! I mean I'm totally dropping the fucking ball here, man! I just screwed the pooch and jumped the shark at once here. I mean seriously. Mary Mother of God help me, I've got to turn this whole outfit around and make sure everyone is focused on making a fun fucking game from now on, cause if we don't... well according to this guy, we're going to fail!

No shit.

You did it wrong!

[jared_hanson]

You can't immediately reveal you're funny comments as a troll post. You have to steal the funny points from moderators and then unveil them. Then watch as they get modded down. It makes the point that these posts are not funny that much clearer. See my journal entry on the subject.

Don't Worry, Be Crappy

[Kaz Riprock]

From the article:
The blunt message was delivered by Laura Fryer, director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, to a meeting of game developers in London.

It's a Microsoft employee who said this stupid quote?! Finish her!

All too easy...

Re:Don't Worry, Be Crappy

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa... hehehhe.. you said... hehehe.... blunt

Gameplay and money...

[Genjurosan]

I think one of the most interesting aspects of gaming today is the fact that we are dealing with a large number of game producers that are following the Hollywood business model. That being, game play is determined by what is proven to work moderately well and that appearances are everything. Everything that is, except money.

Keep in mind that good game play usually requires code that allows for new and exciting physics, game play angles, modes, etc... What really makes a great game is diversity or elements and the ability to interface with these elements in such a manner that it doesn't clip the camera, crash the game, make it confusing for the player, etc... All these game play bonus items take R&D. These R&D items are then 'software' patented which in turn makes it more difficult for someone else to 'license' these for use in their game.

So this leads me back to money. That fact is, 3D and texture artists are cheaper in the short term than a really kick ass programmer that can write code to make the cheesy models come alive in the game engine. Also, it costs SOOOO much more money to write your own game engine, which in turn leaves the game developers with little money at the mercy of what they could afford to license.

The stereotype that games are for geeks is wrong if you ask me. I know many 'jocks' that play video games like they are going out of style. The thing is, they don't admit it or speak of it freely.

So what's the problem with the game industry? I think it's the fact that female population of the earth doesn't play games nearly as much as the male population.

Thoughts?

Games are aimed at hard core gamers for a reason..

[MadAnthony02]

there's more money in them. If you have a casual gamer, they may buy one or two games a year- hardly enought to make up for the loss many companies take on the hardware. Your hardcore gamer will buy a ton of games, plus spend money on extra controllers, memory cards, online services like XBox live, ect. So it makes sense to concentrate on the hardcore gamers.

Hmm...

[scxw65d]

>Although games are growing in popularity,
>they are still lagging behind TV...

Isn't that to be expected, since most video games (read: consoles) first require a TV?

there is some truth to this...

[spir0]

buried deep somewhere... but what I think is the problem is that games need to be written for a WIDER audience. the people that play the currently available games do think they're fun, otherwise they wouldn't play them. there are so many different type of games out there, that choosing something fun is the onus of the purchaser.

Sony helped the market considerably, by openeing up the market of games to non-geeks. a lot of games out there are starting to appeal to those geeks girlfriends now. we've still got a way to go, but companies like nintendo are holding on for dear life to their old ways, to the old types of games.

as good as they were in their day, the world has moved on. Microsoft (sadly) have given the world more proof that Sony was right. They are helpingto extend the market.

But Ms Xbox here is right. The developers need to develop the games. But maybe they're too afraid of taking too big a risk. If they make a game about creating your own garden, how many sales will they make?

Money makes the world go round. and unfortunately for some potential gamers, their perceptions of fun may not be financially viable.

Re:Blow Holes

[Anonymous Coward]

Black, as a color, requires more atoms to be present than white, as a color. Hence, it is thicker.

director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group...

[www.microsoft.com]

The blunt message was delivered by Laura Fryer, director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, to a meeting of game developers in London.
Games are boring so.... buy a Xbox.
It isn't an article is an Ad.

"Bugger! Damn you, Lara, go DOWN the stairs!"

[crazyphilman]

Perhaps this woman just got done playing Tomb Raider?

Article is wrong about sales figures

[tomhudson]

Video games are already MORE popular than movies, and neck-and-neck w. music. For the last couple of years, video-game sales has beaten movie box-office totals and are competing dollar-for-dollar with music sales

figures for 2002 (US)

• US games revenue: $10.3 billion video game hardware & software
• Movie boxoffice: $9.135 billion
• Music sales - all forms: $12.6 billion,

Re:Article is wrong about sales figures

[JFMulder]

As in another post, revenue is not a sign of popularity. A game costs 60$. Going to the movies costs between 5$ to 15$. It's not because you make more money that you are more popular. Movies make more money each year but have less and less customers. You could say that videogames will be as popular as movies when they make at least 3 or 4 times the amount of money Hollywood makes each year. Right now, they are nowhere as popular as movies.

Re:Article is wrong about sales figures

[sqlrob]

Gee, I guess that $12.99 I spent on a game (Legend of the Dragoons, PS1, new, not used) the other day doesn't exist. There aren't just $60 games.

Costs twice as much as a movie, 20-30 times the length, and my wife likes watching me play it, so it's not much different from a movie from her point of view.

Re:Article is wrong about sales figures

[tomhudson]

Agreed. The article stated that games would never be AS POPULAR. At any given moment, more people are in front of game consoles than in movie theatres, so, even disregarding box-office receipts, games win out.

Besides, in most of the western world, it's the golden rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules", so I would expect the political and social influence of games to increase and movies to decrease as time goes on.

Re:Article is wrong about sales figures

[Anonymous Coward]

BRITON. The article is about BRITONS.

Re:Article is wrong about sales figures

[Anonymous Coward]

These days, movies aren't seen only at movie theaters. They're seen on video, DVD, pay-per-view, cable, and broadcast television. Add in the revenue the movie industry makes from those sources too. Now who's ahead?

Re:Article is wrong about sales figures

[JFMulder]

Sure, there are 12$ games, but if you look at new titles, they all cost 40$ to 70$ (In Canadian money anyway). And those are the games that help the industry make 10 billions. 7 million copies of GTA3 at 40.99US$ is what drives the industry to higher profits.

And the length has nothing to do with being more popular or not. The only thing it has to do with is the hours of fun/$$$ ratio.

Re:Article is wrong about sales figures

[panaceaa]

How can you include game hardware in your numbers?! The box office numbers don't include popcorn and projectors, and the music sales don't include stereo systems. And you can't gauge popularity on dollar amounts, you should at least gauge it on units sold (or time used, but that's harder).

Re:Article is wrong about sales figures

[sqlrob]

You are almost, but not quite right.

What is the proper unit to measure popularity in? $ spent, units, or time spent entertained?

By time and $, games beat box office movies. Is units really relevant? Remember to take into account more than one person can also use a given unit for games. That's not true in the theater, although that is true for rentals.

Re:Article is wrong about sales figures

[tomhudson]

So then add in all the money people spend on hardware upgrades for their computers (new video cards, better sound systems, more ram, etc) and look who's ahead :-)

My point was that one of the metrics we can use for popularity is money spent.

So, to reconsider, people:

1. spend more money on games than movies
2. spend more time playing games than going to movies
3. tv viewership is down because of the rise of the internet, online gaming, etc.

If you're going to consider reruns on TV, then you also have to consider people playing games they paid for the previous year, but still play. For example, I bought SimCity 3000 a few years ago, but still prefer SimCity 2000.

Re:Article is wrong about sales figures

[tomhudson]

If we're going on the basis of time used, movies lose big time vs. games. Evercrack, anyone?

Re:Article is wrong about sales figures

[JFMulder]

You do have an interresting point. But DVDs and tapes can also be borrowed. I lend my DVDs all the time to friends and family. And movies are often watched as a group, like video games are often played together, or with someone looking at y ou playing.

The revenue of each industry cannot be taken into account, since the cost of a unit are so different. You cannot compare them by length of the unit either, because the "amount of fun" you have with a product is not equal to it's popularity. I had more fun watching the 80 minute movie "Phone Booth" then watching the 2 hours + "SW : Episode 2". But I also had more fun to play the 29 hours Final Fantasy 6 compared to the 15 hours Final Fantasy 1.

So, how could we measure the popularity? I think you can compare movies between themselves, or games between themselves, but you can't really compare two genre together. It's like saying that food is more popular that video games because they sell so much more. Most people eat as an after though or hate it, like my mom.

In related news...

[jcsehak]

Food sells better if you make it taste good, movies would be better if people just wrote good scripts, you can play the piano simply by banging on keys in the right order, and your nose'll stop bleeding if you just keep your finger out of there!

To be successful......

[gavri]

.....Video games need to be fun?

How obvious does an idea need to be before we stop calling it a strategy? -Dilbert

Evolution of the Game

[thatguywhoiam]

I figure game development is in a stage of creativity right now somewhat akin to that of film in the 1940s. It needs time to evolve beyond that first blush of commercial success and acceptance.

Some basic structures, or 'language' of the medium has been worked out now, and has proven to be popular with the masses as an accepted entertainment medium, especially ever since someone noticed that games revenue had outpaced that of the film industry. So naturally there is some rabid capitalism going on insofar as people know a few formulas that work... i.e.

- the first person shooter
- the role-playing game (which is generally not really roleplaying, but whatever)
- the racer
- the fight game
- the simulators (and all derivations thereof)

.. and so on. We can name them just like that. And yeah it gets pretty boring. (For instance I've pretty much given up on all FPS shooters until they do something different. They're all Quake to me.)

I want a game like Memento. Or Jacob's Ladder. Or imagine some game that used one of those realtime 3D shaders like grayscale pencil-sketch throughout, in some kind of Poe-inspired adaptation... We will see these kinds of things someday but it'll take 'Directors' (do we still call them that?) to do daring things with the medium and push the boundaries of the game's narratives.

Interactive storytelling is a real bitch to get your head around in any appreciable way. Currently I lean towards really open-ended titles like GTA as leading the way in that sort of gameplay, that tries new mixtures of nonlinear play with prescripted events. Or Molyneux's stuff - damn him for going all Xboxy on me - those guys are really thinking about new kinds of games.

Re:Evolution of the Game

[dracvl]

Or imagine some game that used one of those realtime 3D shaders like grayscale pencil-sketch throughout, in some kind of Poe-inspired adaptation...

Not quite the same, but there is a sketch rendering engine for Quake. Quite interesting, and I would love a game based on this that was not a shooter - a comic book adaptation, for example.

Re:Evolution of the Game

[KanshuShintai]

- the role-playing game (which is generally not really roleplaying, but whatever)

There are two kinds of RPGs: non-linear and linear. One's open ended and the other is a interactive movie.

Re:Evolution of the Game

[actor_au]

Half-Quake: Amen(A Half-life mod) is very different.
Its artistic and evil. You have to have patience and skill to beat it.

Re:Evolution of the Game

[Anonymous Coward]

Open-ended is good (Pick up a copy of Ultima VII and the Exult engine to see an early example of this being done well) but the opposite end of that spectrum is also powerful...

If you haven't tried it, and you have a couple of spare evenings borrow or rent ICO. It's very linear (hence no point buying it) but it's really well made. The visuals are beautiful, and the creators figured out how to make you (or at least me and plenty of reviewers) really _care_ about the characters, just like a great movie director would. Unlike a movie though, Ico gives you the chance to _do_ something about it.

Terrifying truth?

[semiazas]

"When you make choices, it reveals something about yourself. People reveal who they really are when they can try things in a safe environment."

If this is true, what do MMPRGs say about humanity? What scares me is remembering the days of logging into UO only to get gang banged by a series of roving PK bands, or even better, having my pockets picked clean of even the most trivial of items while waiting in line at the shop (bear in mind I haven't played UO since the first few months it went live but that doesn't change the point). Not to mention the rampant cheating that goes on in other multiplayer games such as Tribes 2, Counterstrike and etc. Is this a sign of the way humanity really is on the inside? If people reveal their true selves when the restrictions of society are removed, and those selves are, more often than not, thieves, cheats and liars, then I'm glad we don't currently live in anarchy. Has anyone else noticed this tendency or have I all to often been in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Saturation?

[Iron Monkey543]

I believe the missing "fun factor" in today's game is a result of a human symptom on saturation and choices. We have so many things to play these days we just take things for granted.

Heck, I used to have basic TV with just 5 channels, I was doing fine. Now that I have over 100 channels, I can't find anything good to watch!! How weird is that.

Re:Saturation?

[RatBastard]

Agreed! I remember when I was 14 and I had a grand total of six cassette tapes. I had CHOICES. I could decide what I wanted to listen to and it kicked ass! Then one day I was 35 and had a music library of over 400 CDs and I couldn't find a damned thing to listen to.

Intended Audiences

[Damn_Canuck]

...it makes sense to concentrate on the hardcore gamers

The gaming companies should really look at all of their intended audiences, not just the "hardcore gamers". I know this poster did not say that was the only audience, but really that appears to be what a lot of the companies are doing these days. Gone are the days of the Pac-Man style, where you start over at the beginning each time. Gone are the days when the goal of the game was self-evident to even an absolute beginner. Gone are the days when you did not need a 150-page manual to understand the purpose and controls of the game. Many people may disagree with me, and that is their opinion to do so. But how many games are there for the console systems now geared towards older individuals (i.e. not a grade/middle school crowd) that does NOT require you to save the game consistently? With the PC market there are options, because anyone can create small games that are available for wide use by the public. (One of my personal addictions is kbounce.) I think the gaming companies need to remember: there are those of us who are not considered hardcore gamers still out there. We are the ones that made you profitable back in the 80s and 90s, and gave you the foundation for what you can do today. We like our games of old, or at least the general ideas behind them. Sometimes the simplicity itself is what is required for the games to be considered "fun". I know many a person around my age (and I am nearly 30) who, whenever we are at a restaurant that has Ms Pac-Man, plops in a quarter because, hey! We all played Ms Pac-Man! There is no right way to win, there is no wrong way to lose... it is fun, pure and simple.

Mwa ha ha

[VAXGeek]

You don't KNOW fun until you've done the same flipping kick move in Enter the Matrix 4,000 times or kicked the crap out of an agent for 20 minutes, only to have him get up and kill you.

Holy shiznitz...

[raehl]

...and I thought my girlfriend was skinny. I hope you at least made sure there was butter on that popcorn, your woman apparently needs it.

Hard to meet

[grasshoppah]

"You want a game that is challenging but never frustrating," said Ms Fryer.

Being a long time, hard core gamer the games I find easy are challenging or even frustrating to the majority of other game players. I feel as though I have wasted time and money if a game fails to challange me and forces me to make a concentrated effort to improve my play. Obviously this isn't what the masses are looking for. But in the long run I, and gamers like me, will buy more games. It seems that game developers know this and many new games are very difficult, and demand that the player accept a certain amounts of initial frustration in order to improve to the point of being able to beat the game. The old practice of starting a game off easy and ramping up the difficulty as it progressed often merely resulted in a bland experience. Much of the time spent playing was far too easy and eventually the player would hit a wall they couldn't pass because the game never had forced them to adapt and learn the game in order to pass difficult challanges.

I guess in short, everyone has different ability, and unique levels of patience when it comes to games. It's nearly impossible to make a game that can present challenged to gamers over the entire spectrum of tolerance. This is compounded by the spectrum being polarized between the hardcore gamers with a large skill base and drive to beat each game, and the intro level gamers trying to break into a market mostly aimed at the hardcore. As time goes on, more people will have grown up with video games and begin to flesh out the middle of that spectrum.

Not necessarily

[Ethelred Unraed]

I too remember fondly games like Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Tetris, Battlezone, even good ole Space Invaders as being horrendously addicting. (Though I always had problems with Missile Command because I kept getting my fingers pinched by the rollerball...)

An arcade that I went to in those days, back in the early 80s, offered free quarters for good grades. And in those days I got straight As. Then we moved to a new area with no such arcade, and my grades plummeted. Coincidence? ;-)

But there are good games today as well. Madden 200x, the Myst series, the Civilization series, Tekken, Myth, and so on are all great games for me (though Myth and Civ are admittedly a little complicated for the average person and not really mainstream). True, these are a lot more complex than, say, Pac-Man, but still very playable and fun.

There are plenty of really sucky games as well -- further evidence that quantity does not mean quality. I've never understood the hoopla about Final Fantasy -- I got FF X and was thoroughly bored by it. Onimusha Warlords was gorgeous, but lousy gameplay. Metal Gear Solid 2 was just atrocious IMO. Most fight games like Mortal Kombat also got to be *way* too complex (who the hell remembers all the special moves?) -- Tekken isn't as bad as MK in this regard IMO, but getting there.

At the same time, there were plenty 1980s-era arcade games that stunk, as well as plenty of console games as well -- Haunted House for the Atari 2600, anyone?

So I think the overall proportion of good to bad is more or less the same, just that the sheer number of games these days makes the mind boggle with all the crap that comes out. But once in a while a real gem comes out -- Oni, Myst, Civ, etc. -- that more than outweighs the stinkers -- Darkseed, ST:TNG "A Final Unity", Daikatana, etc.

(Though I still like to play little whippersnappers on the PS2 in stores or at the CeBIT and clobber them...they see this 30ish guy and think "I'm gonna kick his ass", then I open up a can o' whoopass on them. Ah, those days in the arcades paid off after all... :-) )

As to the article: I'd say the byline should be "from the no-shit dept."...

Cheers,

Ethelred

Re:Not necessarily

[Anonymous Coward]

hey, i LIKED Daikatana. so what if there were artifacts and the textures got screwy on once in a while. it was FUN. shooting robot frogs? how awesome is that?

Re:Not necessarily

[bitrott]

Oni is no gem. More like a chunk of coal. Or a still-born fetus. Horrible level design, terrible controls, boring boring boring.

huh, I thought they already were?

[wjeff]

It was last year that USNews reported that Video Games had surpassed movies in popularity.

Silly, pointless article

[ChaosDiscord]

Video games are never going to be as popular as films or music unless...

Unless it's already happened?

The article also claims we need to fix perceptions the games are only for guys. Perhaps things could be improved, but we're doing pretty well, thanks. (The linked article scatters the good numbers all over, so here you go:)

12% Female Under 18
26% Female 18 and up
21% Male.. Under 18
38% Male.. 18 and up

Given the that the majority of game players are adults, claims like "She urged game makers to come up with titles that would appeal to a hardcore 15-year-old gamer as well as someone older who just wants to have fun," are just silly.

The quoted developer says "People don't focus on gameplay. Instead they make a beautiful game that is no fun." True to an extent, but the die-hard players are usually the most ruthless in demanding fun. A bad but beautiful game will get blacklisted by the dedicated gamers while truly innovative games can build up a cult following even without marketting.

The industry has problems, but it's improving all by itself. This is a silly article worrying over nothing.

Re:Silly, pointless article

[Chazmyrr]

True to an extent, but the die-hard players are usually the most ruthless in demanding fun. A bad but beautiful game will get blacklisted by the dedicated gamers while truly innovative games can build up a cult following even without marketting.

I disagree. The dedicated die-hard gamers are the ones demanding for games to be less fun. Unless your definition of fun is much more masochistic than mine. A wonderful place to observe this in action is the SWG forums. A large number of players who post on the forums want the game to be less accessible to the general public. They want grouping to be required. They want uber loot that requires camping for days at a time. They want more downtime. They want death to be devastating. They want everyone to be dependent on everyone else.

Why? Not because it's fun. Because they belong to a large guild/clan/association and by making the game impossible to play without a wide range of characters they feel special. Because they can spend three days straight camping uber loot while the rest of us have to work, they feel special. Because all the casual gamers give up in disgust, they feel special.

Given the that the majority of game players are adults, claims like "She urged game makers to come up with titles that would appeal to a hardcore 15-year-old gamer as well as someone older who just wants to have fun," are just silly.

The developer is dead on the money. The target demographic for most developers is still teenage boys. Adults tend to have much more discriminating standards and less time to play games. You want my money, you have to develop a good game. You want my sons money, all you have to do is convince him it's "cool".

They are too hard!

[ChicagoBiker]

As a 35 year old semi-geek male, I agree they are too hard and wind up being frustrating. And this couldn't have been proven to me more recently.

I have a PS2 and an XBox (I bought the PS2, based on how cool a game looked at a friends house, the XBox I got free from Speakeasy), and have very few titles for either. So, this weekend, I decided to change that. Not wanting to spend a lot of money I opted to get two used games from GameStop.

I purchased Grand Theft Auto: Vice city for PS2 and Hitman 2 for Xbox.

The Xbox game Hitman: 2 after playing it for nearly an hour had me hung up after mission 1 and it took me almost all of that hour or more just to get through level 1 correctly. Level 2 I can't even figure out, so, I gave up.

The PS 2 game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is somewhat easier to have fun with, however, after diligently spending the better part of two days, I'm stuck once again in this game by two of the early missions that must be completed to move on. It's maddening to have to "do over" these missions/scenes only to fail time and time again and this is in the beginning levels of the game (the radio controlled helicopter mission and the "Guardian Angels" mission, stuck on both, can't go any further until they're completed).

Not to say that any of this is without hope. I've done Google searches on both games and have found and downloaded information on how to get by these levels and in GTA:VC's case I found tons of fun and entertaining "cheats" which have provided much more entertainmet than the standard gameplay which I'm now stuck on.

The point though is, what if I didn't have access to these resources? Should I be required to? Why are these games "so" difficult after paying nearly $50 each to be entertained only to be left frustrated at the beginning levels?

There really should be a mode on some of these where just the simple "adventure" is all that's offered and creating in-depth and extremely complicated skills is left out. I'd be much happier to casually work my way though many easy scenarios and have fun playing in the made up worlds/maps, than figuring out the correct way to "jump a car over three bridges while doing a wheelie" or "standing at the exact spot on a rooftop and firing a weapon in a specific order taking out targets in the right sequence" all with a little paddle controller and my thumbs!

And then for those who want a serious challenge of their skillz they can be allowed to turn on the harder scenarios for competition level gameplay.

Re:Wow! 'Fun'...So that's been my problem...

[JWhitlock]

I guess I have to scrap my 'Europe-during-the-black-plague-simulator."

Does it have realistic plague-spreading algorithms? Please post website with screenshots, design documents.

He has a very accurate viewpoint...

[raehl]

Video games will never sell to a non-geek audience. If you get a non-geek to play video games, all you've done is created one more geek in the geek audience.

A very, very bad thing.

[salesgeek]

I think we can all agree that movies about video games are what is worst about hollywood. Come to think of it, most games based on movies...

Re:A very, very bad thing.

[neglige]

Come to think of it, most games based on movies...

And there are movies based on games:

• Super Mario Bros
• Wing Commander
• Tomb Raider
• Resident Evil

Not sure if I got all... And I leave it up the viewer to decide which movies were good and which were bad :)

Re:A very, very bad thing.

[salesgeek]

Resident Evil

This describes the quality of most movies about games.

I agree on Frozen Bubble

[default luser]

Came installed on Mandrake 9.1, and I think I wasted an entire afternoon playing it through. Not bad for a relatively simple concept.

Of course, the replay value is pretty low, but that's usually the case for puzzle games with static puzzles.

Re:I agree on Frozen Bubble

[DarkKnightRadick]

Ah, but you can create your own puzzles!

I haven't wasted quite that much time on Frozen Bubble as nethack takes up most of my gaming time (and some of my school work time too!). (;

Cinematic reward gaming

[Subcarrier]

Most current games have evolved from Strip Poker.

Gosh

[pilotofficerprune]

Speaking as a industry veteran, a games designer of some years, I now understand what I've been doing wrong all these years. Fun. Damnit! Why didn't I think of that before?
This observation is, of course, like unto a thing made entirely of poo. I find it particularly offensive coming from the Redmond crowd, whom I've had some dealings with. I am no longer inclined to take advice from a bunch of middle-aged cardigan-wearing preppy types who know everything about project management and zip about gameplay, other than what's been fed them by their Usability department focus-testers.
MS Usability have a lot of influence over people who are commissioning. They have their act honed and appear to be doing their best to reduce gameplay to a science - to quantify fun. I've been through some of their reports and it's not easy reading. It sums up their attitude to games: clinical, rationalized, objectified, sanitized, blah. They think too hard about it.
What a difference it is talking to Nintendo. Right from the off they tell you gameplay is king. Everything comes back to the control system. They pound this into you again and again, but it's good. Because they have not made this a science; they treat games design as an artform and know how subjective a thing it is. They understand fun. They know their stuff.

Re:Gosh

[jazman_777]

Speaking as a industry veteran, a games designer of some years, I now understand what I've been doing wrong all these years. Fun. Damnit! Why didn't I think of that before?

Well, I sure am looking forward to some fun games, for a change! Hope you guys don't drop the ball.

Re:Gosh

[Anonymous Coward]

Woohoo, I think you hit the nail on the head. I'm currently playing Zelda The Wind Waker on the Nintendo Gamecube, along with a few of their other flagship products and their focus on FUN! is apparent. After years of playing X-box, PS2, and PC games that have almost unanimously been dark (visually and thematically) I finally buckled down and bought the Gamecube. I feel refreshed. Playing The Wind Waker is like popping The Princess Bride into your VCR after months of formulaic Hollywood blockbusters. The game not only plays like a dream, it has an original style, is well executed, and in my opinion borders on true art. Maybe in the end that's what gaming will boil down to... Redmond/Hollywood Formula vs Independent/Creative game developers.

Re:Gosh

[Anonymous Coward]

I mostly agree, especially about "M$ usability" trends.
The lady's statement, sounded to me like: "Xbox didn't sell as well as expected, so you guys have to try harder so that we make more money!"

But the most disgusting part is when talking about "geek stereotypes"...
Not anything new, though. If we are going through a game crisis, that's because of such beliefs.
"Everything should be idiotic simple, even a moron should be able to play that."
Who would talk about a game crisis 10 years ago?
If today's adventures are made single click, what kind of challenge did she expect?
Frustration, Anger? Maybe not the best emotions, but that's life. In every game, (not only computer game) some win, some lose. That's the point, the staff that keeps you on.

In my experience, a moderate complication is an ingredient of good gameplay, while I would be discouraged by a very complicated game. (btw, I consider CIV pretty simple)
Extreme simplicity is usually connected with games that have an (invisible) upper age limit of 5.
What kind of adult would have the patience to play extensively a jump 'n' run game? Definitely not me.

However, I wouldn't blame a specific company and honour another.
I see no difference in nintendo. In late 80's, we would see a bunch of games looking all alike, just like the 3D shooters today. Companies always try to make more money. Anyway, what kind of art would be fighting against emulators, as if anyone was going to buy NES titles today?
IMHO, Their difference in games consists mostly in difference of philosophy, just like manga differs from normal cartoons.
Oh, yes! they ,too, discovered 3D engines and made Zelda 3-dimensional. That's progress.

As for M$, I wish their software development was limited to games. I have seen their name to some of the most remarkable of our days, but I'm not in position to know their role in the development of those games.

Re:Gosh

[Anonymous Coward]

Dja, know, I wouldn't exactly call Nintendo made games as 'Independent'.

Re:Gosh

[Anonymous Coward]

I am no longer inclined to take advice from a bunch of middle-aged cardigan-wearing preppy types who know everything about project management

Actually, as I'm in the middle of working on a game with them as the publisher, I can tell you that currently they know shit about project management as well. Horrible practices. They do everything all out of order.

Re:Gosh

[Moraelin]

No offense, but why do you find that simple observation offensive? Is it really the first time you hear that people want fun in a game? Do you _really_ need an usability study to tell you that the vast majority of the population would very much prefer a clean intuitive interface, and clean intuitive controls?

Yes, I know the "I'm a super-star and an artist, I don't care what people want, and I won't let demographics tarnish my vision" snydrome that plagues some designers and graphics artists. Honestly, I wish those would just crawl somewhere and die. Painfully. Slowly. Or just die.

Maybe in your imaginary world, all that matters is making art for art's sake. Well, then I don't want to buy your games. It's that simple. And _that_ is what Microsoft has been trying to tell you. That making art is good and fine, but if you keep going in that direction, there won't be enough buyers to pay your bills. Most of us, if given half a choice, will instead buy games with a clean intuitive interface, good controlls, a smooth learning curve, and a more reasonable difficulty curve. I.e., games made by people who actually cared about usability and focus groups.

The reality _is_ that for the average Joe today most games are too complicated. Lots of them have learning curves that make learning C++ seem easy by comparison. Lots of them rely on the player already _knowing_ that he/she/it is _not_ supposed to do what the quest tells them to do, but first spend a week doing random battles to buy potions. (Neither the quest text, nor the manual, actually said that. If you don't already know that from other games, you'll just die in the first 15 minutes of the game.) A lot of them still think that memorizing obscure key combination is the way to go... especially when nothing in the game hints at them, and you have to find them in a hidden appendix of the manual. A lot of them think that an unlabelled button with no tooltip is good interface design. (Literally: some people, and even a reviewer, never knew that you can end the turn in Arcanum.) Etc.

Basically they're made by terminal geeks for terminal geeks. And they leave Joe Average anywhere between disappointed and scared.

So why is it offensive if Microsoft is actually interested in what Joe Average actually wants to play? No, really.

And yes, mod this as flamebait if you want to, but some things just needed to be said. Some people need to get out of their ivory towers, and get over the stupid concept that "all the world is made of 16 year olds without a life, and with nothing better to do than memorize 100 key combinations, and repeat each level 100 times to get through." No, in reality, the vast majority of the population is made of people with much better stuff to do.

And if it takes someone Microsoft's size to get that message across, I'll do the horribly non-slashdot thing and say: kudos to Microsoft.

Re:Gosh

[rhuntley12]

I played Zelda for nearly an hour and just couldn't play any longer. Haven't been able to pick it up again. I don't know if it was just too easy, or made for the younger crowd but I just couldn't play it. Perhaps it was the graphics that reminded me of pokemon. Blowing things up and shooting things interests me more.

Re:Gosh

[Moraelin]

You, sir, seem to be missing a very important point:

Some 10 years ago, it cost a lot less to develop a game. And you needed to sell one helluva less copies to qualify as a success.

Basically 10 years ago it was still a viable strategy to catter to only the die-hard uber-geeks. The ones who have nothing better to do that spend a week just learning the controls, and think it's fun to reload 100 times to get past a boss.

But the point is that that kind of a geek gamer is a tiny minority. Everyone cattering to the same obsessive-compulsive minority is already a _much_ less viable option than 10 years ago, and quickly becoming even less so.

Now it's starting to be about damn time to start making games for casual sunday gamers too.

Re:Gosh

[DG]

I agree completely.

For obvious reasons, most of my gameplay tends to revolve around driving/racing sims, but sometimes I just want to play a game to have some fun.

I played the two Zelda games for the N64 through to completion, and I had a great time doing it. That was money (and time) well spent)

Well last night, I picked up a PS2 game mag with a bunch of demos on it, just for a lark.

SoulCaliber2 - a great game (I had the DC version too) tons of mindless fun and a real challenge.

But then there were demos of Perfect Dark 3, Sphynx, Hunter something or other, and a Warhammer 40000 FPS. Beautiful games crippled by absolutely horrid controls and game cameras. PD3 was particularly bad for this.

Over and over I see examples of games that should be tons of fun that wind up being unplayable because the controls and camera suck so very very badly. I don't care how pretty your graphics are, or how involving your storyline, or how much you paid your voice talent - if my on-screen dude doesn't do what I want him to do when I want him to do it, the game is just going to frustrate the hell out of me and I won't play it. I don't want FRUSTRATION in my goddman games!

Game studios, take note! CONTROL IS KING!

Games that I really liked and played through:

- both Zeldas on N64
- SoulCaliber on DC
- NFL 2K2 on DC
- Skies of Arcadia on DC
- Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance on PS2
- GTA 3 on PS2
- Neverwinter Nights & the expansion pack on Linux

All of which have great controls and intelligent cameras - oh, and no "jump" button!

DG

Why Should Games and Movies Compete?

[G4from128k]

I don't know why people think games need to work at becoming more mainstream. Games and movies offer very different styles of entertainment to match the different moods of different people. Sometimes some people want passive entertainment -- a vicarious thrill, an interesting plot, some nice characters, or just some pleasing scenery or special effects. Sometimes some people want active entertainment -- a tough mental puzzle, intense competition, a world you can put yourself into, or just a chance to open up a big can of whoopass on some monsters.

The notion that games should be more like moves or movies should be more like games is not necessarily going to increase marketshare. Trying to merge the two is just another example of going for the lowest common denominator.

1942

[Ethelred Unraed]

As a long time 1942 fan (I can spend about an hour with 1 credit, longer on Galaga)

Heh -- I remember playing 1942 and just going...and going...and going. I think my record was something like 90 minutes on one quarter. I finally gave up because I had to take a leak and my arm was cramping like hell. After that I didn't play as much -- no real challenge anymore (and the guy at the 7-11 where I played got PO'd because I was hogging the machine).

I often wondered how much 1942 actually made money-wise, because the game was so ridiculously easy -- I know a number of people who could practically go on forever, once they got used to the patterns. It really was more a matter of endurance rather than skill...Pac-Man probably made a lot more per machine, because most people got killed after level three or so. 1942, they'd be one there for a half an hour or more on one quarter.

As an aside: oddly the Pac-Macs with speed mods were better for me than the "slow" normal version. Never did understand quite why, but I'd do far better with the game sped up. Sadly, I rarely saw ones with the mod... *sigh*

Cheers,

Ethelred

On the contrary

[theefer]

Games are fun, but that's all they are (in general). Other medias (litterature, cinema, theatre, etc) can be fun, but they are also moving, deep, thematic, controversial (yeah ok there is GTA3). Should game be as powerful as other media to convey emotions, messages or ideas, they would be accepted more easily and broadly.

We're not even dealing with the eternal "But are video games art ?" question.

Games are seen as geek hobby because they make nothing to change that image, ie they tend to aim at being fun (which is good too, of course). Making deeper games with a real message behind, or with really moving scenes, is a really great challenge, because this is the only media where the focus is made on how the player can interract with the content; not the content itself.

The article brings up another point : accessibility. New input devices would greatly help here, but the market just doesn't want to take that risk, too bad.

Games are (already) fun. Period. If they want to break the geek stereotype, they have to be more than that.

wrong! games are all about points

[mrgreenfur]

this is so off. everyone knows games are all about getting points. or collecting obscure items.

I dont care how much fun it is, so long as I can spend hours upon hours getting points/levels/rare items.

after all, a good game is an obsession, not FUN.

How about a nice game of chess?

[raehl]

How about global thermal nuclear war?

Re:How about a nice game of chess?

[Anonymous Coward]

Chess is a great game, but we're talking about creating new games and what the market for that is like. You can buy a chess set for $3; the market is saturated.

wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Did it really take an expert to figure out that there needs to be more fun in games? I would love to be paid to be that expert...

Re:Wow! 'Fun'...So that's been my problem...

[ImpTech]

Thats loser talk! The black plague can be fun for all ages! Come on, Monty Python made it funny with all the "Bring out your dead!" and "I'm not quite dead yet!" and so forth. If thats possible, SURELY it can be made into an entertaining interactive simulation, or maybe a puzzle game, or RTS.

Nooo, wait! I've got it. MMORPG! You could be one of the cart pushers, or someone trying not to get infected, or you could search for a cure. There could be a PvP server where you can play as the rats that spread the plague. How could you NOT pay $9.95/mo for that?

Article's Only 1/2 Right.

[Alkaiser]

Game deigners in yet another huge display originality intolerance kepp making the same freaking puzzles, even though they are not fun, and completely annoying.

Take Tron 2.0, for example. I loved the game, but I nearly threw it out the window once I got to the blasted moving platform, timed jumping puzzle, and the extra annoying moving platform, flip switches that make platforms disappear and reappear jumping puzzle.

What the hell?! These puzzles make the game hard, but they don't make it fun. Sure you can brag about how you beat it later, like it's some feat of bravado, but actually, it's just bad game design. Games should be difficult...games should be challenging, but they shouldn't just be hard because the developers were feeling spiteful, and/or they are retarded.

You have to make some new puzzles. The only reason jumping puzzles still exist is so people can throw them in once they've run out of switch and fetch quests. Jumping puzzles in 2D sucked, in 3D they suck even more...especially when you have no camera control, and yet....every FPS game has them. Utter idiocy.

As long as fun != brain_dead.

[humungusfungus]

Ok, well, this quote worried me:

Games are still too difficult for a mass audience.

C'mon. There are hundreds of games geared for mindless twitch responses (fps, and even some rts these days); even those have Easy, Medium, Hard and Hurt Me Plenty settings. People have been lamenting the trend towards glitzy mass-appeal games with great graphics and little content/challenge/gameplay/longevity for years.

How much fucking easier (read: boring) do games have to get? And why? So my grandmother can play too?

Another choice quote:

"People reveal who they really are when they can try things in a safe environment."

Sorry, I think it's the opposite: people show who they are when they make choices that matter, not when there are no consequences.
What the hell is crap like this doing in this forum anyway?

Re:As long as fun != brain_dead.

[August_zero]

Could not agree with you more on all counts.

Gaming has already been marching towards Mcdonaldization, and now that eyes with bigger wallets are setting their gaze on the industry its only going to get worse.

Its going to turn into Hollywood part 2, most of the main releases will be utter crap, and the good games are going to be fighting like hell for exposure while the bigger companies fight to keep them out of the picture. Its even worse for games since stores like EB and Gamestop don't even stock titles that tehy don't get pre-orders for. Word of mouth just won't cut it any more. Go try and find a copy of Disgaea or Otogi to see what I mean.

translation

[kv9]

translation: games are never going to be as dumb [aka mainstream] as music or films because they are not made by braindead people. well most of them. and im not implying that music and movies are dumb. well not more than 99%.

oh, really?

[xmurf]

First of all, I am trying very hard not to laugh at the "leading game expert" in the article. "Laura Fryer, director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group", now we know how microsoft got into the games business. With people like that considered experts, heck, I'd make my own 50 kg console.

Do we really want games to become mainstream? Look at "Enter The Matrix". Do we really care if we're considered geeky because we play games a lot? Look at the N-gage: they think they're going to sell it just based on image. They're wrong.

I don't want games to get dumbed down, all pretty images and no soul. I have pr0n for that. I don't want every bozo down the street talking about games, ignoring the real classics and thinking they're just *cool* because they're now playing Final Fantasy XXX. If games become mainstream, then developers will have to put more and more games out every year, and we (the true gamers) will be left with yet another Tomb Raider clone. (which BTW, is a franchise that should be put to sleep: TR became too mainstream, and that's why it got all shitty-like)

Oh, and just as a closure: I don't think you can call yourself a "leading game expert" just because you "play games a lot".

New != Better

[Mmmrky]

especially in gaming. Oh sure, it might look nice, but I look for quality gameplay. And replayability. There are games that I still play, even though they came out years ago.

A great site for old games that you can't find anymore is The Underdogs. I found their site about two years ago, I think, and am amazed at how many good games there are that no one talks about anymore. Check it out.

What's really sad though is that many games are vanishing because companies refuse to give up the rights to their products, even though any chance of making money on them has long since passed. Hopefully they will not be lost to time.

Board games

[Ethelred Unraed]

Everyone's played monopoly (which is a lousy game), but who here has even heard of Puerto Rico or Settlers of Catan which are two of the best games on the market now.

Personally I always thought one of the best board games was King Maker from Avalon Hill. I still have a rather old copy. Unfortunately I tended to win a lot (strange how no one figures out that you just seize Henry VI and London right at the beginning and watch everyone else crumble) and couldn't find any playing partners anymore. *sigh*

For battlefield games, the original Gettysburg game from Avalon Hill was also awesome IMO -- there was in effect no grid at all, but you used a ruler to move the pieces a set number of inches and you measured their relative positions and angles to get the multipliers for defense and attack. Rather complicated by today's standards, but also more realistic in many ways. (Hexmaps were a later invention that made gameplay a lot easier, but at the same time a little more restricted.)

Another great game was Supremacy, sort of like Risk, but with nukes, markets, money, navies and whatnot added to the mix. That was *hugely* addicting, especially with the added card packs (for warlords, special weapons, etc.) -- and oddly it was the only game I have ever played where the players always got pissed at each other. For some reason people took it a lot more seriously -- the same group of guys who would merrily conquer each other in Risk and joke the whole time would hardly be on speaking terms after a round of Supremacy.

And, of course, there's always Trivial Pursuit. Unfortunately the wife insisted on getting the German version to even the odds a little, so I get boned on the sports questions (how the hell should *I* know who won the Bundesliga cup in 1972?! -- always makes me think of the World Forum sketch in Monty Python...). And Entertainment was never my strong suit to begin with... *sigh*

Cheers,

Ethelred

Re:Board games

[Catnapster]

This game Gettysburg sounds a lot like miniature games (like Warhammer) in terms of movement.

It actually sounds pretty fun - miniatures games have various features that turn off a good portion of the population. I once said that Warhammer was for people who thought Monopoly games ended too quick :) Also, you end up calculating weapon damage, range, line of sight... In short, it's like Starcraft, except you do all the work, not the computer. And don't even mention the minatures... they're awesome but they're pretty expensive.

But a strategy game with free movement and simpler rules sounds great.

Actually...

[drinkypoo]

I'd be perfectly happy if they would concentrate on making games stable. With Console games, they do this, but I have endless problems with PC games. Alpha Centauri, for example, with the latest patch, crashes toward the end of the game no matter what OS I run it on (well, I've tried Win98 and WinXP, so it's not like I have a wide basis for comparison, but that's both major technology platforms. ONE should work right.) And that's just a flat strategy game, there is NO excuse for that shit.

Games and expectations of technology

[PrImED73]

I think that the fix in the old days on games like Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pacman and so on was the fact that is was all so new at the time and was a complete mystery to quite a few on how these games worked, kids of that day wern't thinking of the programming that went into these machines like they do these days with PC's or emulation, so we got into the games more, and our imaginations added to the excitement.
Nowadays, people are more savvy to technology and because a lot of the mystisism has been taken away, the magic has gone away (not totally) probably more due to the fact that peoples expectations of technology has risen to a point where it would have to take something completely radically new that has staying power to rekindle our imagination.

black death

[r]

I guess I have to scrap my 'Europe-during-the-black-plague-simulator."

actually, there exists a board game called black death. it's a plague strategy game set in 15th-century europe.

each player takes on a role of a different pathogen, with the goal of wiping out as much of the population as possible. but you have to be careful, because you mortality rate will work against your ability to propagate, and you may burn yourself out too quickly.

morbid, but great fun. :)

Oni?

[Ethelred Unraed]

Just gimme a game with the backstory of Myst and the graphics and interactivity of Quake/Doom/Unreal. I want to explore, not pile up bodies.

Did you try Oni? I personally loved the game, and it sounds like it would meet your wishes.

Cheers,

Ethelred

leading game expert?

[tomstdenis]

... hmmm what the fuck is that?

And did the summary just conclude that fun games sell?

Talk about a bad case of the obvious.

Tom

Oooo

[Cyno]

How do you become a leading game expert?

Can I go to school for this?

Favourite Game

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the gameplay is everything.
My favourite game.....Bust-A-Move 2
Thats right, shoot the coloured ball at the others and 3 or more will burst.
Its just a different tetris.
I have a PS2 - I won it, the only game I have for it is this PSOne game - half of it is in Japanese!

Buy a console.

[RatBastard]

Upgrading your PC for games is a fact of life that isn't going to go away any time soon. Every game designer writes for what will be available when the game comes out. If they don't, they get buried by the games that do.

A game console, on the other hand, presents the developer with a fixed, unchanging platform. All games written for that platform will work (unless the hardware or the media dies). Period.

Games hurt by 'geek stereotype'? Pttthhhhbt!!

[FortissimoWily]

I disagree that games are "hurt" by the "geek stereotype" as the article implies. It seems more like the casual-trendy-gamers don't like us geeks hurting their image. Too be honest, some of us geeks don't like the casual-trendy-gamers hurting our image. ;P Games haven't been damaged by the whole geek association - they've been damaged far more by the dumbing-down and removal of fun and challenge for the sake of these "PlayStation-generation" gamers who want to tout their consoles as some sort of fashion accessories rather than play proper games like us old-schoolers always have. --Fortissimo W.

Pointless Pontification by "Expert"

[raytracer]

I'm always faintly amused when an "expert" takes the time out his/her busy schedule to tell us something so obvious and/or useless.

In the practical matters, video games are already on a par with television and Hollywood. Major game releases can expect to have revenues which approach those of major feature films. In their target demographic (teenage and older males) they are already occupying a greater portion of their conciousness than other media. To argue that they aren't going to be as popular as films is pointless: they already are.

But what really seems silly to me is the following quote:

She told her audience that games had the potential to change people's lives, offering them the chance to experience a wide range of emotions in a safe environment.

To this I would merely counter with a question: "What movie have you seen recently that changed your life?" C'mon, let's get real. Even if movies do have that power, most of them fall way short of that standard, and yet they remain popular and engaging. Frankly, I don't need movies to tell me how to feel, or to teach me about myself: I have a real life with real family and real experiences to teach me that.

But what I do not have is the ability to pilot a light-speed fighter against impossible odds!

It's not exactly earth-shattering to claim that games should be better. They should be. It doesn't take an expert to observe that video gaming still remains a male-dominated activity. But the simple fact is that video games and movies have made a pretty good living out of catering to their audience, and it seems strange to argue that some revolution needs to occur before it will really take off.

Re:Pointless Pontification by "Expert"

[Anonymous Coward]

"What movie have you seen recently that changed your life?"

How about Star Wars? Of course i'm referring to the first trilogy. More recent one...lemme see. The Matrix? My memory's a little hazy but what was that news story about some kid involved in a murder or suicide that said he was emulating matrix characters or thought he was in the matrix?
I'm pretty sure his life or his victim's life changed pretty drastically.

You are right though in the sense that she's stating the obvious. Everything has the potential to change your life. Your inspirational and encouraging English teacher, a television program about the disappearing rainforests, the bible. If it made you think or behave differently, there you have it, a change in your life. Of course while these provide you with the ideas or thought of change, ultimately it is you who chooses to change.

Re:Pointless Pontification by "Expert"

[Anonymous Coward]

You had the perfect platform (with the subject you chose to use) to point out that the "expert" that is being quoted is a fucking rep from Microsoft's xbox team.

Sure. I'd say being on the xbox team makes her a leading game expert the same way working at McDonald's makes one a leading culinary expert, considering how pathetic the xbox game lineup is.

maybe

[August_zero]

Oh, and just as a closure: I don't think you can call yourself a "leading game expert" just because you "play games a lot".

I disagree with you there, I don't have to be a master painter to be able to fully appretiate a painting, nor do I need to be a master chef to know if a meal tasted good or not. ROger Ebert is considered an expert on film by many, and even if you don't agree with everything the man says, despite not having ever made a film of his own he knows a lot about film. If i wanted an opinion on the movie industry I would certainly consider him a potential source before i would consider some hack like Bruckheimer. I am not saying that people with actual programing skills are not good experts, I am just saying that they are not the only experts.

But this so-called expert that jabbered her way through this talk is neither a player, nor an expert. As with any field the only requirement you need to satisfy to be considered "an expert" is for somebody to call you an expert. MS has been making console games for what, 2 years? and now they suddenly know what is wrong with the industry? Aren't these concerns she voiced almost verbatim of what Miyamoto of nintendo( MS' biggest 2nd place rival no less) has been saying for years? "Two many buttons" is coming out of the mouth of a spokesperson from a company that designed one of the crappiest console controlers of all time?

Oh, wait...

[vudufixit]

"Making games fun?" So I *wasn't* having fun playing games all of those years since I got an Atari 2600! I'll tell my parents to take back every yelling they gave me for not doing my homework and "having fun" instead.

Challenging? Bad idea.

[DdJ]

I don't actually agree that games should be challenging.

They should seem challenging, without actually having to be challenging.

A drooling moron with no motor skills should be able to beat a game. But whenever anybody beats it, it should feel to them like it took skill, like they accomplished something.

You need to create the illusion that the game is challenging, but without denying the rewarding experience of overcoming the challenge to any of your players.

If a game is too hard for me, I'll get frustrated with it and won't play it. If a game seems too easy for me, I'll get bored with it and won't play it. But if I beat every challenge and don't realize that there's almost no way to lose, I'll have fun.

This is my opinion regarding computer games, D&D, card games, pretty much any game. Everyone should be able to have fun playing. Everyone should have the illusion that they just barely had enough skill to win.

(I think Warcraft 3 probably nails this perfectly. It felt to me like I only overcame it through skill. But personally, I totally suck at RTS games -- I mostly just have fun pushing the buttons and watching the little blinkenlights. However, all sorts of people who are more skilled than me at RTS games also enjoyed it. I conclude that they must have gotten the illusion down right.)

Fun? It's Tuesday, and There's No Fun!

[Anonymous Coward]

The first workday after a holiday is no fun for a variety of reasons. First of all, all the insane crazy people at work really shine on a day like this. Secondly, the truly stupid have had a few days in their cave away from it all, and are more stupid than when they left on Friday.
Thirdly, the drunks are really "out of it" on a day like this, and although they are good at making excuses for their incompetence, this is almost too much even for them. Those of us who spent the entire weekend setting up firewalls are one our toes, baby!

Wow

[tgibbs]

With startling insights like that, it's no wonder that Microsoft is the games industry leader

have game designers run out of ideas?

[stardome]

i agree with it. i think most companies are focusing exclusively on better graphics and sound, and leaving fun/gameplay behind. come on, how many original games have you seen lately? 99% of the new released games are either RPG, FPS, RTS or sports. where are the new ideas? games like Pirates!, GTA and other unique games, which were (are?) good not because of fancy graphics, but because they are unique and fun to play.

nowadays designers only follow the "let's make a game like that one, but with improved graphics!" maxim. we want original games, not original graphics!

This is true.

[ab8ten]

Think of the sort of people you know who play games. There will be exceptions, but most conform to a rather narrow demographic. Mostly male. Mostly young.

Compared to a popular mass medium - let's say movies - there is no wide range of appeal. The infant will love Disney, the Child will love Spy Kids 3D, the adolescent will love Bad Boys II, the youth will love The Matrix, The young couples will love My Fat Greek Wedding, the parents will love The Pianist.

Only one half of one of these groups is catered for by video games.

The real stepping stone will be a product that you or I (typical slashdot readers) would not classify as a 'video game'. It will be for a totally different demographic, and we will not recognise it. It will be 'interactive' and 'rewarding' and 'fun', but will be as far away from today's video games as film is from cave paintings.

An Xbox person

[inerte]

I remember a few weeks ago someone from the Xbox team critized a japanese game developer (I forgot his name, the one who did Mario (what kind of geek am I?)), because he made games which are supposed to be fun, and weren't "pushing the (game) industry" to the next level, without gore or 3D graphics.

People, this is just PR. Xbox person X comes and say to you that games shouldn't be fun. Everyone goes BOOOO... few weeks later Xbox person X comes and say games should be fun.

Don't think that now the Xbox team will concentrate on fun games, high playability, and all this kind of cool stuff. Don't think that the graphics' driven industry will change.

NOT a bit. It's just PR.

a few 10.000 people?

[Trepidity]

A major blockbuster movie typically gets several million viewers on opening weekend alone. Typical blockbuster opening weekend grosses are in the range of $25-30m. If you figure even $10/ticket average (probably a bit high), that's 2.5-3m people in a single weekend.

Re:a few 10.000 people?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what he meant is that there are only 10,000 alive right now who have rich off the movie industry. That sounds about acurate.

Games of yesterday, and today.

[Paisley Phrog]

While I love those games as well, I think that something else is different - my tolerance for repetition is a *lot* lower than it used to be in the "good ole' days" of gaming. I still love those games you mentioned, but I wonder how much of it is due to growing up with them.

Back in the day, I was horribly addicted to Space Invaders. I would play it for hours at a time when I was 8. Now, I can't quite stomach that much of the same level over and over. I think that's what the article is getting at is that the games that appeal to the 15 year old hardcore gamer won't appeal to an adult gamer, partially because what they like is so different.

I laughed out loud at the line in the article that said all the developers had to do was create games that appealed to both the mainstream and to hardcore 15 year olds. After they figure that out, they can crack out a cure for cancer and a roadmap for world peace (-;

This article is dumb...

[YllabianBitPipe]

What does this mean, games are no fun? Gee, then I must be having a miserable time and not even knowing it. If a person can't find a game that's fun, I dare say there's something wrong with them and not the gaming industry. First of all, they're probably not looking very hard for a game they would like. Second, they have some stereotype about what games are, leading them to just write them all off as something they're not into.

Of course, there is a large demographic of people who are simply never going to get into a video game. But I would dare say these are the same technophobes that are frightened of computers in general. The people for whom checking email is a chore they can't deal with on a regular basis. And these people are by and large, older people who aren't going to be in the picture in thirty years. The younger generation is overwhelmingly into technology and computer games.

And I've even seen exceptions to these situations. My mother never got into Street Fighter or Doom but played quite a bit of Mario, Tetris and Final Fantasy. These games are not too complex. I would even say a strategy game like WarCraft is not any more complicated than learning how to crochet. My GF who totally hates most modern games loves playing older videogames like Frogger and Galaxian via MAME. And if someone's a total stick in the mud why not boot up a video game version of Scrabble or Chess on the computer? Does anybody here hate Chess?!? It's just a difference of what people choose to spend their time figuring something out. And nobody would be trying to learn how to play more complex games if it weren't fun. Maybe that's part of the fun!

The game that I think has had the most mainstream appeal in the past few years is definitely the Sims. There were women at work who played this game, and would talk about their Sims as if they were family members. It is true that the most mainstream games to cross all demographic boundaries have been the more simple, straightforward, maximum "fun" games. Like Myst, PacMan, Tetris, Mario, Sims. These games are harder to come by and probably only come about every few years or so. But their abscene right now at this moment in time does not mean all other games are no fun, nor does it mean there won't be another mainstream game right around the corner.

huh?

[RealRav]

You must be a gamer, not a geek. Any self-respecting geek is always looking for a reason to upgrade.

Rav

Dreams are better as dreams than reality.

All this Will Change ...

[polyp2000]

I think its true, Very little has changed in the games industry over the past few years. Hardware, graphics and sound have improved, but the games dont follow suit, rarely innovate or captivate.

Compare the latest Tomb Raider Game (Angel Of Darkness) to the original Playstation game for example. Wow!! its got nifty particle effects going on and lara now has Breast Inertia. The game itself however is nothing new, it breaks no new boundaries (other than technical ones) and the gameplay is the same (except they screwed up the control system and missed out all the cool things lara could do like light flares and drive vehicles)

But all this aside I beleive this must change. There will come a time when our console hardware reaches such unprecidented levels of realism it can go no further. There is only one thing left to improve when this happens and that is to think harder about the actual game itself.

There are plenty of people out there with fantastic ideas for game's but maybe dont have the skills or manpower to make it happen. I myself am forever dreaming up cool ideas, as I am sure are many other /.ers. Its up to the games companies to root these people out, and do something new instead of churning out the same old FPS games and cutesy 3D plaformers time and time again.

Talking of which ... when's Elite 4 coming out !

keyboard/mouse

[Anonymous Coward]

i think more than a few, miss the point entirely. its not about fun in an enjoyment sense. its fun in a pick up and play sense. the complexity of the keyboard/mouse is holding back the pc game industry. this is all about a paradigm shift m$ is bringing to the world of gaming. look at what longhorn will do for pc gaming. standard controller support, no loading, centralized patching and updates, centralized online capabilities. the pc game industry is moving away from the desktop and into the living room. the keyboard/mouse just doesnt cut it from your couch. for the game industry to grow it has to look beyond the k/m fanboys, and make games that anyone can play.

Support group: geeks who don't play computer games

[SnappingTurtle]

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only geek in the world that doesn't play computer games. Sure, I played some of the classic arcade games back before most of you were born, but other than that, I don't give a hoot about Zelda or MooshiMan or Carbon Based Warrior or whatever games you kids play these days.

That's not to say I don't goof off, but I'm more likely to do so by fiddling with some unimportant program that I don't need to be writing.

Are there any other ./er's out there who are also bored with their fellow geeks' yacking about computer games?

Maybe..

[Axe]

But two of my favorite games, "Dungeon Siege" and "Age of Empires" did come from them. (At least through them).

And I HATE all this complicated crap that requires 15 year old time commitment and reflexes to master.

With all due respect - attitude like your is what making game developers write overly complicated bullcrap, taking all the fun out of the games.

Re:Maybe..

[Anonymous Coward]

AoE was made by a company that MS bought, wasn't it? I have no idea about DS, but my impression is that MS likes to get PC games by buying small companies after the game is mostly finished...

Re:Maybe..

[Anonymous Coward]

MS only makes one game in-house: Flight Simulator.

Everything else is from developers they've bought or have deals with.

Amen!

[Infonaut]

The first person shooter's premise is that the central character's mission in life is to shoot his way out of difficult situations. Yes, yes, there are puzzles and so on, but let's be serious. The name of the game is shooting. Imagine a game that incorporated heavy-duty dialogue, even open-ended dialogue, in such a way as to allow for a true FPS/RPG that would be as good or better than pencil and paper RPGs?

You may laugh and say that you can't make such a game, but when I first saw Pong I never thought it would lead to Halo, either.

The industry goes after formula-driven profits, but at some point this will have to change if we're ever to see the kind of games that will truly eclipse film.

Re:Wow! 'Fun'...So that's been my problem...

[sharkey]

Does it have realistic plague-spreading algorithms? Please post website with screenshots, design documents.

Is Geldyn done? I can't wait to fight him!

Re:Support group: geeks who don't play computer ga

[pommiekiwifruit]

I thought that group was called "linux users".

Drama ?

[gustgr]

"People need drama in their lives. Games fulfil emotional and mental needs that cannot be fulfilled any other way"

The experience of living and interacting (trying to) with other
humans are already drama. Well, I know what kind of drama
she reffers, but she ought to consult a dictionarie before
giving press interviews.

Since when en games are the ONLY way to fill emotional and mental needs ?

I am wondering if have already asked to Ms Fryer if she knows books, good music, or just a good and real game
(chess i.e.).

I there are some good games, that make you think and make
you a better person, indeed, but most of them are just crap.

And look who is talking about the "Human Natural" need for
gamming, a XBox seller. A drug dealer would say that coke
is good for your brain too.

I call shenanigans!

[soulsteal]

It's obviously a trick question.

Games don't orgasm and dorks don't get laid!

No such thing

[cubicledrone]

Repeat after me:

There is no such thing as the mass market.

All markets are niches. Pursuit of the mass market is pointless. It doesn't exist. The mass market is a fiction invented to substitute for knowledgeable constructive criticism and real work.

VIDEO GAMES ARE MORE POPULAR

[tjstork]

I don't know what the guy is saying. Video games are already more popular than movies and music combined. The entire video gaming industry is larger and healthier, and the biggest hits of the gaming industry draw in more bucks than do blockbuster movies.

The Sims game has sold nearly 11,000,000 copies. Take that at $40 a pop

'nough said.

So true

[JustAnotherReader]

I use to work for the company Software Sorcery. One of our early titles was "Sea Rogue" A simple little game that was a blast to play.

Then came Jutland, a WW1 navy simulation. It was much more intense and beautiful. It had streaming video cut scenes, awesome graphics (for the time) and complex game play. But was it fun? Well, unless you knew the cheat code to show the proper the angle of your guns it was a lesson in frustration. Great looking game that was almost impossible to win.

Next was Aegis: Guardian of the Fleet. This was a serious game. It simulated an entire Aegis class battle cruiser in modern day warfare. It tended to be long and boring. Again, lots of detail and great graphics, but terrible game play. Not fun.

Fast Attack was another beautiful looking game with tons of detail and gameplay that closely followed the targeting and tracking routines of a real Fast Attack submaringe. But was it fun? Well, maybe if you're a navy simulatin buff. But I got the game for free and could play test it while I worked tech support and I wouldn't even finish it. Boring and impossibly complex to play.

Then came Conqueror 1086 (which we use to refer to as Conqueror 1286, Conqueror 1386, Conqueror Pentium!) The graphics were still good, but they put much more work into the gameplay and story line. And guess what? It was fun to play. I wish we wrote better code to control the game speed. It's impossible to play on today's fast computers. The screens scroll by so fast that you can't controll it. Too bad, it's a great game.

Now we have games like Uplink that have almost no graphics to speak of and yet are really fun to play. Do you see a trend here? The 3D graphics and surround sound do not make a game fun. The STORY makes a game fun, the GAMEPLAY makes a game fun. You'd think this wouldn't be news by now, but people are still surprised to learn that lesson.

So many things wrong with this article

[Anonymous Coward]

There are so many things wrong with this article that its hard to know where to begin.

How about the title, "Games suffer from 'geek stereotype'"? Okay, good point. The gaming industry suffers from the fact that games are considered to be toys for geeks, hence non-geeks shy away from them. But wait! They only mention this point in one sentence of the entire article. Kinda strange to draw the title from a minor point made in one sentence.

The major point is that "games aren't fun". What Laura doesn't realize is that GAMES ARE FUN, but they are not FUN FOR HER. Big difference. So, the gaming industry is not making games for her and people like her. Unbeknownst to Laura, the gaming industry is pulling its hair out trying to get those casual gamers interested (I know because we have those conversations all the time).

She says that games can offer an emotional experience like movies. Well, it's really hard to make a game that allows the gamer to feel free, yet weaves an emotional plot around a free-willed person. Movies have the advantage that characters do exactly whats in the script 100% of the time. Secondly, you have to ask if people who buy games are looking for an emotional experience. Oftentimes, the answer is no. She lays the blame on the game developers (who, I might add, work their asses off, though Laura doesn't seem to notice. Making games is a lot harder than it looks.) But the market plays a big role, too. If emotional games were selling big, companies would be trying to turn them out like crazy. But, games and emotional experiences are often on opposite sides of the spectrum, so people looking for an emotional experience are not the same people who go buying games. This can change, but only by producing emotional games AND re-educating the public that games can offer an emotional experience. But, beware: many a game company has gotten severely punished with low sales by trying to make these emotional games that Laura says would be SO popular.

For people who want simple games to play, the problem is that they want a simple way to find games, too. If you put a game in a box and sell it in a store you've created a huge barrier for them. They don't know that they want it, and even if they did, they have to go and get it. The reason people use remote controls with their TV is because it is easier to change channels. But, what if the remote was always on the third floor of your house? Would you do the work of running up and down two flights of stairs for the ease of using the remote? Maybe not. Yet, when we create a mindless game we have to persuade the consumer (1) find out about it, (2) decide if it is something that they want to play, (3) to run to the store and buy it. That's more work than the casual mindless game player wants.

But, my favorite quote is this, "As a self-confessed avid gamer herself, Ms Fryer..." Now, compare this to her earlier statements: "People don't focus on gameplay. Instead they make a beautiful game that is no fun." She must live a pretty crappy life as an avid game player in a world of non-fun games.

@ vs. W

[mph]

When I was in college, I spent more time than I should admit playing Angband, a rogue-like game in which you maneuvered your character, an "@" symbol, through dungeons represented by various punctuation marks, battling powerful foes represented by letters of the alphabet. It was incredibly addictive and deep, and quite devoid of visual appeal.

What's amazing, though, is that when an epic battle would arise, my friends would gather around the monitor to watch my trusty "@" take on a powerful "W" or "D"! (Yeah, they were all geeks, too.)

Just Say No To Dumbed Down Games

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm tired of all these marketers, who are doing nothing other than trying to expand the market in order to line their pockets, babbling about how games aren't "fun", or are too "complicated".

I've been a gamer for 20 years. The games that have stuck with me over the years, that I still remember playing, and that affected me at some level were all complicated, deep, time consuming, hard games.

The current trend in dumming down games to the least common denominator has nothing to do with making games "better". It has to do with getting people to buy games, who don't appreciate the art of gaming to begin with.

The game I'm currently playing is F-Zero, for the Nintendo Gamecube. It's an incredibly difficult and completely unforgiving game. It takes a great deal of practice to master manuevering the racing ships in the game. It takes even more practice to master each track. The game plays at such an incredible rate of speed that you really have to muscle map the races by practicing over and over again.

This is not an "accessable" game. It's not at all for beginners, or for casual gamers, or for people who think investing time and practice in a game to get good at it is a waste of time.

You can have games targetted at "hardcore" gamers. You can have games targetted at "casual" gamers. But I don't know of many examples, if any, of games that successfully target both of these demographics.

Re: Angband...

[kyletinsley]

Bah! Sounds like a 'nethack' ripoff. Nethack is all the game you need. All games developed since then are just 'nethack with eye candy'!

Damn kids these days...

What?

[darkvizier]

*Cough* Bullshit. She's not a gamer, much less an avid one. She can't even say anything less general than, "Games should be fun." Oh really? Ya think? She claims that games currently aren't fun... I don't know where she gets the idea that there are no fun games in the world (pretty arrogant statement if you ask me), but again, she obviously hasn't *played* many games... I think its just funny that they get someone who looks like she knows nothing about games to tell us all what the industry's about... thanks guys, I'll take this info to heart. :P

Gettysburg and Warhammer

[Ethelred Unraed]

This game Gettysburg sounds a lot like miniature games (like Warhammer) in terms of movement.

It's been a while since I played Warhammer, but from what I remember of Warhammer the comparison to the original Gettysburg is fairly accurate.

The original Avalon Hill Gettysburg (ISTR that my parents' copy was from the early 1970s or late 1960s) basically had a flat map of the Gettysburg area, with roads and topographical features marked (e.g. Seminary Hill, Little and Big Round Top, etc.). The various units were cardboard tokens, with varying sizes depending on the type of unit (HQ, supply depot, outpost, infantry, cavalry, artillery) and numbers to indicate size and strength.

One minor drawback was that units could only be knocked backwards or eliminated entirely, rather than suffer casualties. Another drawback was that you kind of had to guesstimate the terrain, since units on ridges of course had an advantage, but there was often some room for debate as to whether a unit really was on a ridge or not.

Then there was the order of battle: turns were by hours, with units appearing at certain spots at certain times of the three days of the battle. So the Confederates started only with Heth's Division, while the Union started with two artillery divisions (or was it cavalry? my memory fails me). If I remember correctly, infantry could move two inches per turn, cavalry and HQs six, artillery three; each unit could also "spin" at a cost of an inch (since relative angles also affected combat -- flanking other units was the main point of the strategy).

All in all it was an interesting system; I can understand why later versions of the game went with the now-standard hexmap system, since the problems of movement, flanking and terrain were solved at a stroke. But the fluidity of the game suffered as a result IMO.

You might be able to find the game on eBay, if you're interested.

Cheers,

Ethelred

Gettysburg again

[Ethelred Unraed]

Sorry to respond twice, but for the hell of it I just did a search at eBay, and sure enough, someone is selling a copy:

Gettysburg 1964 edition for sale

The box is nearly identical to the one my parents have (a 1950s edition also available at eBay is in fact identical), so I guess it's older than I thought.

Cheers,

Ethelred

Re:That's not too far off (re: attitude)

[Anonymous Coward]

wow this stuff is made for personal blogs not slashdot be a good geek and go get urself a blog. kind of funny in a depressing way though.

The problem with Final Fantasy X...

[pr0ntab]

is that they didn't tell anyone there'd be a Final Fantasy-X2. So you spend the whole game sort of getting the introduction to a different game. No wonder it feels so empty (yet you can do all this seemingly pointless stuff near the end to power up). Square-Enix needs to (suprise!) think smaller. Their previous games were much more satisfying and entertaining (maybe not as pretty, but meh)

Why pay for games ...

[Anonymous Coward]

...when you can download and play (on several hundred FREE high speed servers), the awesome Americas Army:Operations!?

Seriously, this game is digital crack to the nth degree!

I've invested over 240 hours in this game thusfar and will enjoy many, many more hours!

Oh yeah, the kicker? This game is paid for by the U.S. taxpayers and has (IIRC) 7 more years of funding behind it!

Hooah!

www.americasarmy.com

EA: Games ARE more popular than film

[Anonymous Coward]

I just heard a guy from EA on the radio promoting some new games, and he said that the revenue from video game sales last year exceeded the movie industry.

Can anyone substantiate this?

Conqueror with a C?!

[idiot900]

Then came Conqueror 1086[...]

You know, it feels really strange to read the word "conqueror" when it isn't spelled inkorrectly.

Absolutely

[WotanKhan]

"So you prefer short-hand glyphs to actually talking to someone where you can hear the tonal inflections? I gotta say, I think that's strange.

Yes I also much prefer text communication to phone for a variety of reasons:

I've never been particularly sensitive to tonal inflections, so I am probably emoting a heck of a lot more than I perceiving emotion in a phone conversation. This leads to a very one sided exchange, both in information, and in the sense of having companionship. It doesn't feel that way to me.

I parse written text much more efficiently than spoken due to a lifetime of reading. I also type about as fast as I speak, and prefer the way I express myself in the written word.

The ettiquette of instant messages, at least among my friends is that communicate according to your own schedule. If I choose to get up and have a walk on the beach at sunset, I often do so in the middle of a conversation, and on returning pick up where we left off. No need to say hellos or goodbyes, you simply respond when convenient.

Scorched earth... Risk, etc

[1eyedhive]

Back in the day (read: 1995), the game I played was RISK, on my Windows 95 box (in a dos window in CGA mode no less), multiplayer (at the same console) action, fast paced (as the computer handled all the time consuming board management, cards, dice, etc), i actually still play it with a pal of mine occasionally. Now Scorched Earth, very simple gameplay: select weapon, set angle and power, fire, hit target, win. with the array of weapons that did varying amounts of destruction, it was fun gameplay. I'm also a HUGE fan of the SIM games, the Sims is playable, but they can get stupid at times, Sims 2 is gonna fix that (i'm awaiting Sims 2 as eagerly as i am awaiting Half-Life 2 :drool:). SIMcity was my favorite game of the early 90's (til i met Simcity 2000 and later C&C: Red Alert, also a gem in it's own right. BF1942: teamplay = essential, DC mod rules, classic rules. Done Before, sure, but it's easy to play, hard to win and fun as hell.

Input Translation -- Output Rotation

[lamz]

"Video games are never going to be as popular as films or music unless the people who make them concentrate on making them fun, says a leading game expert."

When I read this sentence, my brain translates it into:

"Video games are never going to suck as big as a lot of popular films and music unless the people responsible for "Look Who's Talking Too" start buying up video game companies."

Seriously. I like video games just the way they are. Don't F with them.

ok let me translate

[Edmund Blackadder]

the article basicly means : make games stupid so every one can start playing them.

I dont think that will work because: I differ from your average entertainment industry exec. i dont think that most people are that stupid after all. Also i am pretty damn sure that if all games are stupid i will stop playing them.

Of course we should all know that the nice Xbox people do not want to make games popular in order to improve peoples lives. They just want to make money. Which is perfectly ok, but they should try to make money by giving people what they want.

What entertainment company execs essentially want for video games is the television model. That means a couple of games that everyone plays, so development cost can be spread out and most of the $50 price can come in as profit.

And of course in order for that model to work you have to sink to the lowest common denominator. So essentially you have to make the game stupid.

Luckily the television model will never again work (cross fingers). It worked until recently, because people had very few other sources of easy brain stimulation (especially when they are tired from work and are too tired to read). So they settled TV no matter how stupid it was.

Of course the large entertainment companies can make video games liked by most people. But dumbing down games wont do it. All they have to do is make a system where creative people are able to think up new and exciting games that can potentially interest different people.

That is already happening to certain extent. Witness all the bass fishing and deerhunting games. God knows i have never wanted to play one, but i hear they are popular and with people that are not really computer nerds.

Unfortunately the entertainment companies are doing the opposite. The kep bying up developers and then gutting development budgets for all games other than a couple of already established "money maker" titles. Well they can never expect to get new clients this way.

Railroad tycoon 2

[Edmund Blackadder]

Try Railroad tycoon 2. You will learn a lot about stock markets, the history of the industrial age and even geography. Sometimes when people tell me "i am from this and this city" i have to imagine the city on a railroad tycoon map i have played in order to remember where it was.

You will learn also a lot about accounting and sound bussiness practices in general. I swear, this game helped me understand a balance sheet about as much as my accounting classes did.

And of course you will learn about trains...

Re:Railroad tycoon 2

[Edmund Blackadder]

Sorry to reply my own post, but i just wanted to add... this game is good that eventually you will start figuring out ways to manipulate your books / stockprice and when you hear the bussiness news you will see executives using the same tricks to manipulate their books / stock prices.

Of course as far as that goes capitalism 2 is another educational game ... but it is not as much fun ...

Re:Railroad tycoon 2

[ChozCunningham]

I adore that game! Althought I have to say the greatest thing it gave me was an appreciation for blugrass. I purchased it on the Dreamcast after I lost my pc copy, and then I purchased the platinum package for the added songs. It is quite interesting , all the things they packed in to one game. And one of those titles that instills faith in games as art.

I wish the game had been more popular, but I imagine it will take time to create a game-culture that will develop recognition. I've always been amused at the awards presented at E3. The remind me of the Mtv Music awards, i crave something like the Oscars, balancing critics and popularity...

Um. The expert is a loser shut-in?

[imidan]

From the article:

As a self-confessed avid gamer herself, Ms Fryer sees real value in video games, arguing they have a key role to play in people's lives.

"People need drama in their lives. Games fulfil emotional and mental needs that cannot be fulfilled any other way," she explained.

Hmm. Maybe she should try... I dunno, going outside and interacting with other human beings? Turning to a computer to fulfil emotional needs doesn't seem like the healthiest strategy, to me.

I mean, I would agree that games have an important role in our lives, but I don't think I'd extend that to games that involve just sitting in your parent's basement collecting frags. There's an important qualification to be made between games (even computer games) that involve actual social interaction and games (especially computer games) that substitute a chat interface for human social contact.

Re:Support group: geeks who don't play computer ga

[Spyro VII]

Linux users play nethack.

Re: Angband...

[Anonymous Coward]

actaully the roots of zangband 'moria', I don't know if they predate nethack or not, however they were both developed a LLLLLOOOONNNGGG time ago on different systems. I think its the one type of 'rpg' games that can't really be considered a nethack 'hack'.

Uplink

[dave1212]

By far the most addictive game I've picked up since Rogue, Uplink on OS X (Linux and Windows versions available here)has brought a few things to light for me.

First, the graphics aren't that great, but they are exactly what you require for visual feedback. Everything is where it (so it seems) should be for quick and easy access. The audio feedback on things like the trace tracker is a nice bonus as well.

Ambrosia Software's port to the Mac is very well done, although it would be nice (as I mentioned on the Ambrosia boards) to be able to switch the game to windowed mode for the ability to check what's going on with the rest of your system during the game.

The thing is, most of my regular (read: non-geek) friends wouldn't get much of a thrill out of it. The lack of eye-candy and blood/boobs/bombs would probably turn them off, regardless of the fact that the game is very exciting to me, very immersive, and a lot of fun. They just wouldn't be able to see the "fun" in learning more and better ways to hack and crack..

The point is that it doesn't have to appeal to the mass-market, the ones that love all the Clear Channel crap that's on the radio, buying Windows boxes because "they're cheap" and watching reality shows until their own perception of reality erodes completely.

It's made for you and I. The ones who find this (all this geek stuff) fun. I think games should be more tailor-made to fit a certain group.. even though I hate the idea of market groups and stereotypes. Please don't let the developers dumb down everything to appease the masses.

This game has me really hooked. It's all done in a very immersive style, and presents itself like no other game on the market. Two green thumbs up.

Versions are out for Mac OS 9 and OS X, Linux (not sure what distros) and Windows.

Required Mac specs listed here:

OS 9, or OS X 10.1 or later
300 MHz G3 or higher

OpenGL compliant 3D video card required, OpenGL 1.2 or newer
CarbonLib 1.6 or newer
DrawSprocket 1.7.5 or newer

Going back to play some more.

games need to quit being time/money hogs

[fishman_3]

games coming out nowadays, aka MMORPGs are just money hogs, companies not satisfied with charging you 40 bucks for an expansion, but they also got to get 10 to 15 bucks a month for so called server maintenance and online support (which decays proportionately with the time the game is live). Then the game developer makes the content long and drawn out so that the people playing need to play for a year or 2 just to get somewhat colser to the end of the game. Then when people get somewhat closer to the end, they release another expansion. and to make things worse, you can't just hop on and accomplish anything, you have to play for multiple hours because changiung zones, collecting components, killing a boss mob, traversing a dungeon, etc are multiple hour events. and then game markets wonder why the stereotype is only geeks playing games. Because people that don't have anything better to do than to just sit down in front of a computer for multiple hours to play a game that has no end and making friends that you might or might not see in real life are the ones they (game developers) can get away with tapping lives for absurd amounts of time and money. Now who wants to join up? I say make the content shorter, to the point with an end in site, and less money. Comparing games to say a movie, the movie is so much cheaper, takes 2 to 3 hours to finish, and you get a good feeling about it. and then even better yet, you can watch multiple different genres of movies, but games you stuck in the same rut.

Re:games need to quit being time/money hogs

[fishman_3]

oh and one more thing, you can watch a movie with your family or friends (if you have one or any) for the same low price.

Games Are MORE Popular Right Now

[Aka_Hook]

Computer and console game sales just recently surpassed the film industry in gross sales.

Wouldn't that mean that games are already more popular than films?

Re:Games Are MORE Popular Right Now

[Junks Jerzey]

Computer and console game sales just recently surpassed the film industry in gross sales.

A popular, but incorrect assumption. Video games have passed the gross sales of tickets at the BOX OFFICE. If you include DVD and VHS sales and rental then the movie industry is much larger than games.

Re:Games Are MORE Popular Right Now

[Aka_Hook]

Yeah that makes sense.
Especially when you have to buy the same movie 5 times on DVD to get all the hyper-turbo-ninja special features and collectable metallic case.

No.

[DeadScreenSky]

That simply isn't correct. We need some numbers...

Jeepers Creepers 2 opened on Friday. Over the weekend it was seen by roughly 1.5 million people. I am not sure I would even classify it as a major motion picture, either. Certainly not as big as a Terminator, Matrix (considered a disappointment at more than 20 million tickets), Lord of the Rings, Finding Nemo (more than 30 million tickets so far, it looks like), etc. But that weekend number still kills the sales of most console games.

(I am rounding up ticket prices to $10, too, which is largely not true. So ticket sales are even higher, perhaps significantly so! This is also all US-centric - it is hard enough to compile numbers for just the USA. For reference, some Japanese console game sales can be found here, though of course more games are sold in America or Europe.)

I can't find very accurate sales for the Nintendo games (which aside from Pokemon, have not sold as well as anticipated - Metroid Prime in particular), but I know Vice City broke all sales records in America by selling a million copies in two days. I am estimating here, but by now Vice City has maybe sold close to 10 million copies (it was at 4.4 million back in January - I am being a little charatible). I am sure it will still sell pretty well for a while, especially the coming port to Xbox. But the number of copies sold is still dwarfed by ticket sales for something like Finding Nemo. And really we should include future video/DVD sales, as well, seeing as how popular games have a much longer 'sell life' than a film at the theaters.

The original Super Marios Brothers is one of the best selling games of all time: ~40 million copies. Very good numbers, but this is partially because it was bundled with the NES itself! Super Mario Brothers 3 (which was not bundled AFAIK) sold 'only' around 17 million copies.

Now, I won't disagree that games like Vice City make more money than films like Finding Nemo (they do), or that they have far better profit margins than most films (again, they do - though maybe not for much longer, unfortunately. Let's see how Half Life 2 does...). But the truth is that big films nearly always sell more tickets than even the biggest games do.

expert?

[H8X55]

Video games are never going to be as popular as films or music unless the people who make them concentrate on making them fun, says a leading game expert.

Quit whining about your x-box you little baby, go outside and play.

just because i sleep eight hours a day i don't consider myself a sleep expert.

Boring...

[chuckw]

Indeed. I stopped playing video games a long time ago. The scenery and weaponry changes, but the game is pretty much the same. Run, shoot, regenerate, run shoot... lather rinse repeat... The shining exception, IMHO, has been the Sims and Warcraft type games.

Re: Angband...

[Jonner]

I think you were trying to be funny, but NoeGNUd is the real Nethack (and SlashEM) with eye candy (floating eye corpses, that is). It's pretty cool and it doesn't get in the way of traditional Nethacking. There's also Falcon's Eye, but it deviates too much from plain Nethack for my taste. Angband, Zangband, Hack, Nethack, SlashEM, and Moria are properly called "Rogue-like games", since Rogue was their granddaddy.

Games aren't social, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a Gamecube. It has slews of multiplayer titles. My fiance loves the Cube I bought almost as much as I do. Sure, I want a few good sinlge-player games, but good multiplayer games are great social events. You're just multiplayer deprived.

Re:Support group: geeks who don't play computer ga

[Anonymous Coward]

Takes one to know one

Complicated Crap

[pilotofficerprune]

I've made PC games, I've made console games. Consoles is where the money is. The stakes are highest there. And when it comes to consoles we don't have the luxury to make 'complicated crap'. Keep It Simple, Stupid rules apply. In general, nobody wants to make crap. And everyone tries to keep games from being complicated. That's why we focus-test.

Gameplay is king. Any GD worth his salt knows this. Increasingly, producers are coming to realize this too. Marketing muppets know it intellectually, but are ruled by their hearts and are too easily impressed by cool-looking technology. There remains a massive premium on making a game look good at all costs. No-one puts out a crap-looking game. That puts an increasing strain on budgets.

Believe me, we games designers are your last, best hope for a fun game. We work hard at it. If we fail, it's because (a) we are human and make errors of judgement, or (b) because external factors (read: publisher fiat) compromised us. But it's certainly not for want of trying. All games designers want their games to be fun. We never take our eyes off that ball.

To make a game is like herding cats. You have a lot of conflicting requirements to juggle. It must look good, it must play good, it must have all the cute features the publisher wants and you must deliver it for submission in twelve months on a budget that's 60% of what you really need and with tools that are not fully mature. And you have to aim for an exacting audience who will probably only buy a handful of titles this year and so are hyper-critical of any failing. The pressure for a triple-A title is enormous. Sometimes that pressure can dislocate a project and send it spinning off into oblivion. I've seen this happen.

Strategies for reducing the risk are manifold. It usually starts with marketing and product research; building on a knowledge base about a game genre. The MS approach is to try and analyse everything through usability and come up with exhaustive list of guidelines and do's and don't. Nintendo's is to finance prototypes to prove gameplay.

Now here's where an interesting difference in approach lies: MS game prototyping tries to prove the technology and work pipeline, whereas Nintendo is purely to prove the control system and gameplay. MS require the developer to make a nice-looking demo. Nintendo say: "we don't care about appearance in the prototype - those objects can be untextured cubes for all we care. We want to see the game". I've never heard any other publisher say something as extraordinary as that. There, in a nutshell, is the reason why Nintendo make great games. Their focus is on the right place from day one.

In a well-managed project, somewhere in the risk management process, complexity tends to go by the wayside. Features are cut. There comes an increased focus on core gameplay. Good GDs know this is coming and rise to it. But it's a tough commercial environment out there. Sometimes you catch the lightning. Sometimes you don't. I've been in this industry for a decade. If I could predict trends accurately I'd be a rich man by now. I'm not rich, and that speaks volumes about my hit rate. So I do the best I can.

An aside: all the major consoles are currently in the middle of their product cycle. The publishers do not have the money to innovate. They want to make money - to amortize on their earlier investements in next-gen consoles - and so are concentrating on bread-and-butter titles. The familiar, successful genres. So don't expect innovation on consoles in the near future. Because, quite literally, no-one can afford it. This includes MS, which maybe why they are focussing on core 'value added' virtues such as gameplay.

No they haven't

[pilotofficerprune]

Companies are concentrating on mass-appeal over fun.

Sorry. Gotta disagree. Companies, quite reasonably, equate mass-appeal with fun. If it wasn't fun, why would so many people buy it?

The key point here is that publishers are not dumb. They know the market and have spent a lot of dough researching it. They know that 90% of revenue is generated by less than 10% of titles. This fact alone tells you that the public can spot a lemon. If games aren't fun - if they don't hit that spot - then the product dies. Publishers put us developers under a lot of pressure to make a game fun. Nobody got rich by making 'not-fun' games.

What's with this business about 'dumbing down'? This is games we are talking about, not high literature or art movies. Games are fun. A diversion. A distraction. In what way should we make them 'smart' as opposed to 'dumb'? Games are about gratification. That could be the gratification of fragging a bad guy into a pink cloud of flesh or solving a tricky mental puzzle. But 'dumbing down' doesn't come into it. It's a game. Nothing more and nothing less.

Can anyone pick up the irony?

[LeoDV]

This is hardly a troll, but the spokeswoman for X-Box claims games don't have a mass appeal because they're too complicated, but when Nintendo makes games like Mario and Zelda that you can pick up and figure out within seconds, the same woman is going to explain that the GameCube is a console aimed at kids, while the X-Box has games for adults, like Dead or Alive Xtreme Look at Bikinis.

Not that the X-Box doesn't have great games or isn't a very nifty toy (as soon as you've installed Linux on it ;-)), but I don't think any of the hits of that console were commended for their simplicity...

Game Idea

[Nurgled]

If movies do so much better than games, then we should make games based on popular movies.

Therefore I propose that someone make a game which ties in to the popular "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" film. It should be a big hit!

The Press and Catch 22

[pilotofficerprune]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned in this discussion is the role of the games press. This is quite important. We are, as developers, under pressure to create games that get high score ratings in the press. These scores are so improtant to the marketing, that considerable skulduggery (did I say bribes?) are deployed to get them. The difference between a score of 8 or 9 (or 80% and 90%) can make all the difference when pushing product. It can be the difference between a triple-A hit and a single-A bomb.

At the end of the day it means the game must, in part, be honed to appeal to the games journos, who are to a man hard-core gamers. Indeed their appeal to authority in the press relies on the "I'm hardcore so takle my word for it" assertion. With console games in particular you have to tread a fine line betwen accessibility and hardcore appeal. You need a 'crossover' hit, and that's a difficult target to reach.

I have a fairly low opinion of the journos. I see them as parasites, but necessary ones. They have power over your game so you are forced into a symbiotic relationship. However, their interests do not necessarily coincide with those of the buying public. They are the first to dis a game for under-par graphics or the lack of a particular fad feature. The latest fad is online support for console games. It doesn't matter if the install base for online PS2s is a tiny portion of the market, the journos will score you way down for not having the feature. They can kill your game if you do not please them.

So we have a dilemma: to sell the games we must have hardcore appeal. This means the default play must be sufficiently tough to satisfy the hardcore. Of course, this means that Joe Public must dilute the game experience by playing at simple level. And Joe Public doesn't necessarily like that. Or they don't have the presence of mind to change the difficulty settings. The result is that many console games are a shade tougher than they probably should be. But to fix it... ah, we are back to that Catch 22 situation again.

The CliffyB Summary-Make Games Less Like Toys

[Databass]

Cliff Bleszinksy (http://www.cliffyb.com/ , you know him from the likes of Unreal Tournament )explained this pretty well at the Game Developer's Conference (www.gdconf.com) two years ago. He says people who don't like games see it like this:

Non Gamer's Reasoning
1.Video games are toys. (Picture of colored blocks and squeaky balls.)

2. Only kids play with toys. (Picture of little three-year-olds having fun with blocks and balls.)

3. Adults who play with kid's toys are nerds. (Picture of taped glasses, pocket protector geek)

4. I don't want to be a nerd.

5. I don't play video games.

So that's like the core marketting trick to get around. And it can be done. Games like Solitaire do it by appearing to be Card Games instead of Video Games. And Card Games and casinos and the like have centuries of perceived legitimacy. EA markets NHL2K3 and NFL2K3 to a mass "non-gamer" audience because Hockey and Football are SPORTS, and you don't be MESSIN' with SPORTS. The Sims appeals to a large audience because it's like a crazy life simulator that tons of people can relate to, not a "Toy". Finally Warcraft3 and Age of Empires2 are STRATEGIC, you have to organize troops and cut lumber, and surely such simulated management effort trancends mere toy-ness.

As more people buy into these alternate paradigms, the numbers of people playing grow and pretty soon people find enough of their friends are doing it to justify them joining up too. I've seen the Sims spread across entire families and social circles this way.

Final Conclusion- Make Games Less Like Toys and You're Golden.

MS

[pilotofficerprune]

I found them to be pretty good on the management side. They were in many ways the best and most professional publisher I've ever worked with. They were reasonable and their expectations were well-managed. When we found the product was over-specced they were amenable to downscoping. However, they are clueless about gameplay.

Wrong kinds of games

[Kvan]

There are several games I can think of which have strong narratives that are moving and/or make you think: Planescape: Torment, The Longest Journey, Anachronox, Grim Fandango (in fact pretty much any Lucasarts adventure), Max Payne, Final Fantasy VII, Xenogears, Police Quest and other Sierra games... the list goes on.

Strategy games are mostly interesting for the historical insights they offer. Europa Universalis I & II are some of the best in this regard. There's also plenty of philosophical and moral meat in a game like Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, especially if you take the time to read about the various techs.

I think the experiences are there if you look for them, but they're usually well out of the mainstream, and few and far between.

Re:Wrong kinds of games

[Zeriel]

Of the games you listed that I've played, I think Torment is the only one that really gives the OP what he wants: i.e., a world in which your moral choices dramatically affect the storyline.

Re:Wrong kinds of games

[Kvan]

Well, he also mentioned Civ as giving pause to reflect on history, so I figured generic "food for thought" would also be of interest.

But yes, Torment really is in a class all its own. I would pay good money if the same team made another game with that quality of writing.

Re:Wrong kinds of games

[Zeriel]

Morrowind occasionally comes close. Moreso with the expansion packs, at least in my experience (see Zeriel. See Zeriel follow the wrong person and end up wrecking an entire city in a mad rage. Go, Zeriel, go.)

MS's Damascene Conversion

[pilotofficerprune]

No offense, but why do you find that simple observation offensive?

It ticks me off because it tells me nothing new that I didn't already know. More to the point, it tells me that MS are only just beginning to wake up and learn it themselves. Unfortunately, they are tied into a management structure that is oriented to building non-game apps. Though their games division is crewed by many games enthusiasts, the management is suffocating. I hear the bosses mouth the words "fun" but they don't appear to understand it. To them a game is another app to be pushed out the door. The enthusiasts seems to be losing the battle.

Is it really the first time you hear that people want fun in a game? Do you _really_ need an usability study to tell you that the vast majority of the population would very much prefer a clean intuitive interface, and clean intuitive controls?

None of us get up in the morning and say "I'm going to make a non-fun game". None of us go to the office and say to ourselves "I want an interface that is opaque to newbies and a control mechanism that you need the thumbs o' God to master". Those of us who have been around long enough to hone our craft aim for fun and for accessibility. We are painfully aware of it. Our livelihoods depend on it. If we don't bring home the bacon we are out of work. Period. And this goes triple for those of us working on consoles, where the games must be able to be mastered by Joe Public. It's why God invented focus-testing. To keep us honest.

Yes, I know the "I'm a super-star and an artist, I don't care what people want, and I won't let demographics tarnish my vision" snydrome that plagues some designers and graphics artists. Honestly, I wish those would just crawl somewhere and die. Painfully. Slowly. Or just die.

I don't know where you've met these people. But they tend not to survive for very long in the biz. Most of us GDs are realists in an industry where margins (at least at the developer's end) are tight and the stakes are high. We can't afford to screw up. I am making games in a commercial market. I make them for the end-user. I don't have the luxury to make them for myself.

Maybe in your imaginary world, all that matters is making art for art's sake. Well, then I don't want to buy your games. It's that simple. And _that_ is what Microsoft has been trying to tell you. That making art is good and fine, but if you keep going in that direction, there won't be enough buyers to pay your bills. Most of us, if given half a choice, will instead buy games with a clean intuitive interface, good controlls, a smooth learning curve, and a more reasonable difficulty curve. I.e., games made by people who actually cared about usability and focus groups.

Uh, you mean people who care like me? Here we come back to the difference between MS and Nintendo. Nintendo will want you to prototype a game. They don't care about graphics, they want to see gameplay demonstrated. They want to see if the concept is fun or not. They want to focus test at the earliest stages. Their approach is hands-on and practical. By contrast MS prototype to make pretty demos to their marketing division and their gameplay concerns are restricted to checking off boxes on a fat list supplied by usability. Now you tell me which company has the better track record of making triple-A games with intuitive interfaces and well-balanced learning and difficulty curves? Hmm?

So why is it offensive if Microsoft is actually interested in what Joe Average actually wants to play? No, really.

Because the inherent assumption in this facile piece of MS puffery is that (a) nobody else does this, and (b) only MS understand The True Path. Neither of which are true. If MS have had a Damascene conversion to the virtues of gameplay, great. But don't dis the rest of us hardworking Joes who've known this for years and are out there delivering the real thing.

And yes, mod this as flamebait if you want to, but some things jus

Re:MS's Damascene Conversion

[Moraelin]

Yes, a lot of people do want to make a game which is fun and great and everything, but in practice extremely few actually manage to make one. Yes, probably every game designer out there really goes to work in the morning thinking "I'm gonna make the greatest and most fun ever", but for the vast majority of potential buyers they fail. No, let me rephrase that: they fail _miserably_.

Just as one example of what they do wrong: Ever wondered why the first thing about 90% of your market asks about is "where are the cheat codes"? Why things like GameShark or ActionReplay sell like hot cakes? No, seriously. That's because the average game's difficulty curve royally sucks for Joe Average.

And the difficulty curve is just one of the many factors. Just one in a long list of how current games fail to catter to Joe Average.

Games designers have been living in a sheltered reality where they're forcing their own failueres upon the gamer. Where the average Joe Sunday Gamer at the end of the day thinks, "gee, I suck, I need cheat codes" instead of the correct assessment "whoever designed this game failed to entertain me. _He_ is the one who sucks."

Even better, a sheltered reality where people actually pay for such failed games. Next time you look at the number of copies sold, divide that by 10, and that's a rough ballpark approximation of how many of those actually found it entertaining as designed.

We've grown up with the wrong assumption is that the gamer is to blame if he fails to live up to the designer's standards, and not the other way around. And sorry, this is turning the vendor-customer relationship on its head. In no other industry would a designer have that kind of freedom. A car owner would say "this car sucks because it's too difficult to steer", and not "I suck because I don't have the mad skillz to steer this car." And maybe it's time we applied that kind of reality check to games too.

Today's games are made for a tiny fraction of the market, by people who belong to that tiny fraction in the first place. You may be full of good intentions, but if you're the only one deciding what's good and what's bad, it will end up a game just for you. Great fun, but only for you. And maybe the 0.1% of the population who thinks exactly like you.

That's where most of today's games really are.

To end up a game which is genuinely entertaining for Joe Average, you first need to know what Joe Average really wants. And maybe for that you do need a PHB doing usability studies and focus groups.

Hmmmm

[Sj0]

I have to admit, it looks more like a clueless management type is making stupid assumptions and letting the world know about them. Yeah. You think games are too hard. Maybe that's because you're a retarded exec. We're not making games for Cletus, who thinks Jerry Springer is considered quality entertainment, but couldn't solve a simple jumping puzzle to save his 20 kids. We're not making games for sleepwalker joe, who has to have all his opinions handed to him on a silver platter and couldnt think outside the box long enough to download a walkthrough for Quake I. Games are made for people who enjoy a challenge; people who are willing to play for longer than 30 seconds.

Get over it.

All I can say is..

[Agent R]

.. Homeworld 2.

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought games where all about how much FPS you could pack into a game and it's nice shiny graphics ... Games are ART! you fools!

and NOT about gameplay at all!

Coming soon to a home near you:

[Anonymous Coward]

"I have to trust this program to repartition my hard drive? What the hell does that mean?! LINUX? I USE WINDOWS! FOUR GIGABYTES?! This CD only takes up 650mb or so I've heard! I don't want to install anything at all! HELP! I HAVE TO DUAL BOOT JUST TO PLAY THIS STINKING GAME? I WANT A REFUND!"

I think another large part of it is that game installers are total BS.
If it took about a 4GB partition off of a hard drive and setup a highly customized Linux install and a dual bootloader screen they could even keep their Windows install.

Sounds like an installer!!!!
Then the games could load straight from the disk and keep user info and updates on the machine.
If you want to reboot into linux-games-runner-OS TM!

Re:Coming soon to a home near you:

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and it would also complicate things even more. People would need compatible drivers for their gamer linux, after they went through all the hassle of installing ones for Windows or having someone do it for them.
The installation should consist of nothing more than putting in the CD - maybe the installer would copy the whole damn thing to the hard drive.
Isn't that what happens already, for the most part? (Except they always say "INSERT YOUR CD OR THE GAME WON'T RUN, JUNKFACE". Not you, I'm calling myself junkface.)
Having to have an installer repartition your hard drive, or at the very least having to dual boot just to run your game, is silly and pointless.
Um, well, I guess linux users already have to do that if they don't have an not-emulator to run Windows games. I guess you secretly want people to develop more linux games. Why not just make a small linux emulator for Windows instead and have it run the games instead of this dual bootiness?

Then the games could load straight from the disk No point in having it copied to the hard drive, eh?

It seems a lot easier to me, to just install a game in any old directory and run it like anything else...

What are these "video games" ?

[gosand]

What are these "video games" that the author speaks of? I guess they do need to be more popular, so I can experience them.

WTF? I am not a gamer, I don't own a console system (OK, I do have a SNES). I do, however, own a Galaga machine, and used to own more full arcade cabinets. I own several PCs, and play a few games on there. I grew up in the arcade golden era. I may not be a hardcore gamer, but I think I have a grasp of the popularity and mainstream acceptance of video games. This guy is an idiot.

My rule of argument: what is the assumption being made? This article makes the assumption that TV, movies, and music is the pinnacle of social acceptance. Moreover, it assumes that reaching that pinnacle is somehow a goal of an industry. Anyone who suggests that the video game industry is struggling is clueless. Over the last 5 years, the video game industry has exploded, and this nutsack is somehow painting it as failing. It is like suggesting that Linux cannot possibly succeed unless it takes over the desktop from Microsoft. There is only one goal, all else is worthless.

What a pile of crap.

video games sales vs hollywood sales

[nikster]

Well.. some think video games are bigger than movies, amongst others U.S. News and bill gates [articles from end of 2002].

A particular quote from the U.S. News piece:
Last year, U.S. retail sales of video games exceeded Hollywood box office revenue for the first time, and this year sales are on track to pass $10 billion.

note that they _do_ compare US sales with US sales, although they conveniently forget video revenue / tv rights / merchandise for movies.

I think we need more data to determine who is right. $10Bn is impressive in any case though.

Yeah...That's exactly what games need...

[Anonymous Coward]

to be dumbed down. Seriously, WTF is wrong with marketing people? They have this obsessive compulsion to make everything appealing to the least common denominator, with a good example of the end result being the NASCAR-like pod racing scene and fart jokes in episode 1. ENOUGH ALREADY! Maybe, just maybe a game shouldn't have to appeal to 15 year-olds AND 35 year old rednecks, and 12 year old girls. Maybe there could be one game for rednecks, one game for 15 year old 'hardcore gamers', and yet another game for 12 year old girls. You know, kind of like how they have separate movies that appeal to all those diverse groups of people? EH...on second thought, who am i kidding? I hope the next version of Jedi Knight is called "Jedi Knight 4: Mary Kate and Ashley go to Jedi Academy: 90210" featuring a good deer or turkey hunting scene.

Or to use your '40's analogy of games...

[filmsmith]

A Citizen Kane of gameplay. ...we'll just ignore the fact that that movie was publicly denounced when it was released.

Now if we could just make our way beyond the Big Business 'Song and Dance' films and on to some good ole fashioned Film Noir...

Re: Angband...

[mph]

Sounds like a 'nethack' ripoff.

Well, it's a lot less "jokey" than Nethack. None of those phase-of-moon or time-of-day tricks, no jokes based on wordplay. It also goes back to 1985, the same year as Hack and two years earlier than Nethack.

Fun is not the issue...

[retrogramer]

Fun is not the thing that makes video games sell less than movies, etc. It is the fact that people see them as bad, or inproductive, or addictive, and all of that other crap that it really isn't. People love movies. And is paying to go to see a movie considered bad versus paying for less to go and play at an arcade? Sadly, yes. Even though, you are almost always more active when you play video games, than you are when you watch a movie especially at a theater where you eat popcorn and all sorts of fattening stuff and yet surveys target video games as a source of obesity. Sound like a very selective survey if you ask me. Video games are not bad.

I hear you.

[Axe]

And what I hear does not make me feel all warm and fuzzy.

I think I am a good example of the "missed audience" non hard core gamer. And for me the epitome of overly complicated game are those thirty-five button push sequences in "combat" games. Or split second timing of driving games, that require hours and hours and hours to master. Or fifty roaming units in a RTS hack fest. These are not "fun" to play. It is a frigging hard work. Tetris is fun to play.

And no, I am not a retard: just your typical thirty-something high-tech worker. Quite fit and alert and more then at ease with computers and technology in general, thank you.

"Dungeon Siege" was good, and nice looking. Do not underestimate eye-candy. I am your one customer who enjoys beautiful images thoroughly. "Black and White" was OK.

P.S. Of course what I need is a mouse with trackball for scrolling wheel, so I can get away from al this key sequences.

Carcassonne!

[Anonymous Coward]

all of the newer great board games are sold by hans-im-gluck, or resold in the states by rio grande games.

http://www.boardgames.com/riogranmayga.html
htt p://www.hans-im-glueck.de/

Clever marketing ploy?

[Antos700]

Please excuse me if I take this with a grain of salt. I got to see this particular Microsoft shrill during the games developers confrence in Melbourne, Australia (see: AGDC) where she was trying to convince me (and the rest of the audience) that we could absolutly trust the Xbox live security system because it was made Microsoft. But I digress, the point I'm trying to make is that it seems to be just a ploy to make it seem like MS really 'takes fun seriously'. I have no reason to believe that she has given the topic much thought at all.

Manham canner?

[Anonymous Coward]

...hmmm what the fuck is that?

And did the summary just conclude that Tom St Denis cans the manham?

Talk about a bad case of the obvious.

Well, its better than pokemon

[hcduvall]

man, I'm glad I don't see those little comments again about how long I've been playing next to the count.

that said, its never failed to convert those soccer friends of mine who've sat down to it. even after many hours of good times poking fun at the game (often self-inflicted).

At least its better than pokemon. Its upfront about being a management game.

Re:Well, its better than pokemon

[kubrick]

I love the game too... but I do recognise my addiction for what it is. Makes me feel like a bit of an anorak though :)