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Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie?
Thanks to Globe News for their interview discussing game design pitfalls with Ernest Adams, columnist at industry site Gamasutra, in relation to a recent Toronto game design lecture. Adams' talk, called 'Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie', has the premise that "whenever game designers add an annoying, sloppy, illogical or cliché game design element, they are denied the junkfood they love so much", and in the interview, Adams also laments the inherent difficulties in making games: "If you imagine what it would be like if you had to invent a new projector for every movie, that's what it is for game development", as well as gaming award shows, which he says "...tend to confuse the difference between technological achievement and aesthetic achievement."
this seems dumb.... it seems kinda just stupid "OMg!!!!!1 programmers are teh fat!!! they eat junk fod! LOLOLOLOLO!"
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
Well, atleast they makes the good games look better.
There are lots of good games that were not terribly commercially successful. However, there are no bad games that are commercially successful.
What the hell? Is this guy actually claiming that Enter the Matrix (which was very successful commercially) was not a bad game? What about Black and White?
There has been a long, long list of games that were steaming turds and yet sold very well at retail.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
In the .hack games the book that gives info on monsters is inaccessable when you get to said monsters. You have to exit the game environment to access the virtual e-mail, which isn't necessary in the show, you can't access your party's inventory or ask them what their stocks are, so you can restock them, and they often have equipment for sale that is better than the equipment they have on. Not to mention, the towns in the game are a faint shadow of the ones in the show.
Part of the problem is standardization.
Hollywood makes movies on film. The same technology, the same cameras, the same editing equipment (and probably the same actors) are going to be used on every production. So it's basically easy and (relatively) cheap to make a movie, unless you need tons of extras or some new tech.
I think gaming should go in the same direction,
and we're starting to see it happen. Many games use the same engine (Lithtech, ut2003,etc.) and that's going to lower the bar for making a game.
When you don't need to reinvent the wheel every time you want to make a game, but instead can focus on the story, the backdrop and the characters, I think gaming will be ubiquitous. Sure, you'll always have the large corporate politically-correct games, but when it becomes easier for 'indie' designers to make large-scale games, we'll see the dawning of a new era.
for great justice
As a student working on a graphic adventure game, I agree completely with the statement on lack of standards.
Right now I am faced with the issue of game engines. Since I'm doing the 'slideshow of images and video' approach, the only commercial tool out there is Director [Flash doesn't handle long videos]. The school has Director, but only educational versions which are branded as educational and legally not allowed to be seen outside of the classroom. I have been trying to find an engine that will allow me to create a game [technologically] like Riven, that's portable to MAC and PC. It's either that or make a brand new engine, which I don't have time to do with-in the scope of the project.
So far there are not any OSS/Low cost solutions that I have found. Any pointers are appreciated and welcomed!
AnamanFan - Trying to find the Truth, one post at a time.
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- Doug McKenzie
I posted this earlier this week during the Gaming Canon's discussion, but it is more relevant here; basically there should be a game designers canon more so than a gamers canon. If game developers do not see good gameplay for themselves, by what reference are they supposed to create it. Like painting, sculpture, one looks to the masters for inspiration. Through understanding these works, one can better understand their own work and thus be a better creator.
Such an example I would make is Morrowind; now regardless of whether or not you like Morrowind, no one can deny that it is epic in scope and succeeds in doing what RPGs have failed to do in general: a true non-linear questing system, as well as open-ended magic and open-ended character development, where the character develops naturally based on what you do, and the skills you use. Those above mentioned attributes make the gameplay in Morrowind something that should be both examined and re-implimented else where. In this example, I chose morrowind to prove my point, but you can apply this to many genre-breaking/creating games. There SHOULD be a list of games that every developer should play so that they can not only know what the 'masters' have done, but so they can improve upon it as well.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
His collected wisdom...
"whenever game designers add an annoying, sloppy, illogical or cliche game design element, they are denied the junkfood they love so much"
Does that hold true for console port-ers as well? If so, there would be a lot of starving programmers due to the "save points", "save gems" (or just no in-level saves in general). I still don't understand why the console attributes are shoehorned in to a PC port, tainting what could be an otherwise good game. (Oh wait. I forgot about "Marketing" and "movie release dates")
Of course I'm cynical. I bought the new Tomb Raider.
I agree with Adams that there should be a level of criticism when it comes to reporting video games, but I think having a 'deeper analysis' of video games would cause far too many problems.
First, games are ment to be fun. The moment you start questioning the symbolism of Mario magically absorbing a red mushroom into his body to grow bigger is the moment you've spent too much time watching rather than playing.
Secondly, I think would lead to political correctness seeping into games. Personally, I don't like the thought of having my games delayed because some organization/religion/race/nation/culture did not like the way they were depicted in the game.
Thirdly, games are all about gameplay simply put.
I think most of the original games were made in the 1990-1996 era when there were more restrictions on graphics. I think this forced some developers to deal with the content of the game instead of spending all the time in making it look good. To see my point, pit yourself on the tv show trading spaces. Ignoring the "reality" aspect, there is a lot of pressure to be creative when there is a budget ($1000). But if you set that budget higher ($100,000), you relieve a lot of the pressure of having to think or be "creative", or "innovative".
;) Now if only we can pump out some more games like that. I mean, I haven't laughed that hard since MST3K went off the air years ago (ignoring reruns). How many games can do that? If you played these games, just consider how long it took to create all that humor, the storyline, the scenes, etc.
My favorite game of all time was "The secret of Monkey Island." It was made with the SCUMM engine. Sure, the graphics weren't "Enter the Matrix"- or DeusEx-style, but the humor was awesome. The puzzles weren't totally convoluted and not too easy either, while Elaine Marley was pretty hot in 16-color!
Your average game developer these days can probably code up a storm, but can he write a good story? I think thats whats missing in many games: a good story. Sure, anyone can create short term objective (ie. pong!), but what about all the other elements that people like? Do people really want to play a repititive task over and over again? I don't think so, not unless its some cheapo game meant to kill some time while waiting for a kernel to compile. Granted, some people do not want to get stuck into a long game, either, which is why many have started to include a save-game option. Furthermore, a good game should not lose its appeal after it has been conquered/beaten. Sort of like reading your favorite book or watching your favorite movie a second time and finding more details you hadn't noticed before, the game should allow the gamer to "explore" other parts of the game they hadn't noticed before. For example, most side-scrolling games get boring after you beat it. Contra was popular because you could play god-mode (u-u-d-d-b-a-b-a-start), but this wasn't in the design, it was a cheat. How many people actually played this game without using the cheat after beating it? Now look at how many more DOOM worlds were created after the majority of gamers beat DOOM. In this case, both games had a crappy storyline, but it was the game engine that helped retain DOOM gamers. By allowing more freedoms to the gamer, the game would not become dull after beating it. However, a game company does not care about game retention, just about consumer retention. So they do not assume the popularity of a game, but rather try to shorten deadlines in order to release as many games before christmas as possible. There is a tradeoff between developers producing excellent quality games and the company producing an excellent quantity of games. The decisions made by upper management on how to handle this tradeoff will effect the developers ability to focus on a good story, good long-term objective game, a good game engine, and good graphics.
I think that anyone can be creative if they put their mind to it, but they need time. Which leads me to believe that the root of all these bad game design problems are a side effect of the phb's rush to produce more quantity. And this isn't limited to game software, just look at the problems from Win95 which came close to NOT making the 1995 deadline. Oh yeah, and then there's my favorite quote from Bill: "If you can't make it good, at least make it look good." Hmm...
There are other factors too, probably related to the limited gaming experiences of the developers and the availability of game engines. If we trained game developers by having them play e
...small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri...
Does Mr Adams want all the technology people to be given twinkies and be locked in a cave?
;) If it is good some people enhance and polish the game further. If you are into making games, or want to learn I highly recommend entering. You'll learn more about actually making a game quickly than spending years coding your great big idea. Mr. Adams, if you are reading this, it would be awesome if you entered this comp! A chance to play with some game design ideas :)
Using technology, be it a pencil, a brush, a new algorithm to make beutiful art work is well established. For example when the printing press came around, many more people were able to write things others could read. Resulting in many good books. Without computers masses of art work would not exist. The list is massive.
I think instead of seperating the 'art' people from the 'music' people and the 'game designers' from the 'programmers' games houses should be integrating them. Come together!
Allowing people to work on multiple aspects of the game gives them a much better overall view of the game.
Technology can and often does drive game play. Sometimes for the better. Mr Adams says in free reg required """It represents exactly the sort of thinking that the our medium needs more of, thinking that begins "What if..." rather than "How much money..." """.
Btw, check out the competitions on ludumdare. The general idea in the past is you make a game mostly from scratch, doing everything yourself. You have 48 hours, and as the competition goes on you compare ideas with about one hundred other game makers. Then you submit your game, and all the game makers vote and comment on each others games. Some very experiment, fun, different games result from it. Some people concentrate on technology, others game play, some music, sound. Some people manage to do well in all areas(bastards!). The idea is to get something finished in the short time period. You submit your executable(for as many platforms as you like) and your source code. Source code is there so other people can learn "how did he do that!", and so people can tell if they used some existing code. It is amazing how many games get made in so short a time. If your game sucks, you have only wasted a weekend(and a monday morning
I think a major problem with games these days is that games are too big, not polished enough, and are made by a mass of people. Ie they have no soul. Flashy graphics sell, so that is what is concertrated on. Also a lot of people getting into games think their first games need to be as good as some of the big titles. However even John Carmac wrote 2d platform games. People need to learn with small games first. Get all the new people making games and some which have been trying for years making some small games. They'll get an idea about different parts of game design, and what people find fun in games. Without spending two years working on one game which never really gets finished, and which doesn't turn out very good in the end anyway.
Small groups, less than ten people, still make some of the better games around. How many games from 'the industry' can claim to run on more than 50% of computers out there? There are people which strive to fill this niche. Using older technology, sometimes pusing it very far, to make thier games. Some of these games made by one or two people have sold hundreds of thousands, or millions of copies. Others have had their demos played by similar amounts.
Success means different things to different people. Some people are happy to have finished a game by themselves, as an expression of themselves. Even if lots of people do not like the game. For others success is about money. For others it is about making a game some people will enjoy. Or maybe it is seeking geeky fame. Then there are lots
What a complete and utter load of bollocks. There's about as much creativity in the game industry as there is in the movie industry. This year's first person Doom-esque game is much like last years, as is this year's RPG and RTS games.
I think his analagy, though flawed, is fairly accurate. I find that most of the time industry people talk about gaming is tends to be skewed toward the technical aspect of it rather than the general end user experience.
Another way to word his analogy that may make it clearer is that in movie production you basically have a story to tell, and a process of coming up with an recording the visualizations to tell it. Every time a studio makes a movie, they certainly don't recreate the camera they use to film it. Contraspectively, every time a game is developed, the engine (a la doom, ut, etc) is either tweaked, redesigned, or scrapped entirely in favor of the new. On rare occaissions, the movie industry has come up with Matrix-esque innovation ( a la the bullet scenes NOT the fight choreography) that can be viewed upon as fresh. The main point is, that is something the end user can be physically shown, as in this is how we were able to show you Neo dodging bullets. The very nature of gaming, which is to say, programming and computer engineering, does not lend itself to explaining to the user that we feel excited about this new gaming product because we coded it in such a new and fascinating way as to take advantage of the equipment it runs on thereby saving us tons of money and giving you a better gaming experience. You can't SHOW anybody that, so everyone complains about all games being the same thing over and over again. If we look at it honestly, there has been quite a bit of innovation going on in gaming that we can't even (as end users) really appreciate.
The english language is in beta. It's evolving but has not yet reached a level of usability.
Have you ever heard of his "10 rules for games" dogma shit?/ adams_0 1.htm1 0129/adams_0 2.htm
w s/screens/xb ox/steel_battalion/steel_battalion8b.jpg
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20010129
and
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/200
It is clear that he really tries hard to get up to ten rules. What is especially dumb is his rule number 3:
3. Only the following input devices are allowed: on a console machine, the controller which normally ships with it.
He thinks that a special controller is something like a joke, something on the surface on the game, like spectacular graphics, to catch customers.
I don't think playing a lightgunshooter or a Bemani Game with a standart gamepad is much fun.
Do you think this controller
http://www.game-revolution.com/previe
is just a nifty joke for a game that would be as enjoyable with the standart gamepad?
Ernest Adams, you suck so much it hurts even someone who isn't able to make urls click-able.