The Future of Game Design

IGN has the beginnings of an interesting series up entitled The Future of Game Design. The first part of this series covers game design elements that we've seen in the past that the author would like to see show up more often in future games. From the article: "We need better art direction in our games. Not just more polygons or slicker textures, but games with a better sense of visual style. Off the top of my head, one of the first games that really showed a distinct sense of art direction and style in this generation of games was Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. That game oozed with style, and even though it was simple and quick, it became one of my favorites because the main character, Sly, had real character." As we start to get into Uncanny Valley territory I hope more artists take the approach that Sly and WoW have.

Comments

Atmosphere

[Dachannien]

Art direction is good and all, but is anybody writing games to convey *atmosphere* these days? Take the first two Thief and System Shock games. These games had atmosphere. You felt the panic and dread in SS2 as a former human rounded the corner, lead pipe in hand, swinging at you while moaning, "Kiiilllll mmmeee!" Your heart pounded as you crept up behind that guard and clocked him over the head, picking up his corpse just in time to duck into the shadows before his friend saw you.

These were games you could play at night, with the lights off, and actually scare the crap out of yourself. And it wasn't because of toonish graphics or special effects - it was because of atmosphere.

Re:Atmosphere

[UWC]

Try to find a cheap copy of ICO for PS2 somewhere. Its atmosphere is one of the best I've experienced on a current console. It's fundamentally a puzzle/exploratory/adventure game. Combat is very simple but spaced out so as not to ever get particularly repetitive. The main draw of the game, thuough, is the interaction with and exploration of the environment. The complete integration of the puzzles into the environment is a very, very large part of the effectiveness of the atmosphere, I think. The art style is similarly effective in the immersion, though. While none of the graphics are particularly detailed, the entire environment is cohesive and nothing at all sticks out as just there for the gameplay. Portions of the game remind me of the atmosphere established in the original Myst. It was apparently initially intended for the PS1, though judging from the final game, I think it was probably moved to PS2 reasonably early in development. It unquestionably benefits from the PS2's more powerful hardware. Nevertheless, it's the only PS2 game I've seen on a CD instead of DVD.

Also, Half-Life 2 does a great job at establishing immersion and atmosphere despite complaints about the story and lack of gameplay innovation.

Re:Atmosphere

[joeljkp]

For me, MOHAA had atmosphere. Especially the snowy-woods mission, where you, sniper rifle in hand, crept through a winter forest trying not to get shot by the German turrets scattered here and there. There was no background music, just the crunch of the snow under your feet. I would jump clean out of my chair when I got a bullet to the head out of nowhere.

What about classic games?

[jgclark123]

I don't think that the graphics are as important as the gameplay. That's why we download emulators! Why else would perfectly intelligent computer geeks knowingly navigate spyware-ridden web sites searching for games? They must be good games.

Of course I'm glad that graphics are becoming more realistic, but that's not good for every game. Who really wants to play a game starring an overweight plumber or an actual hedgehog.

Mmmm...criticism...

[flabbergast]

I can agree with the author on just about every criticism he makes, but some of the things he wishes were better are huge hurdles. For instance its trivial to say "We should have better AI in games!" but, in reality its damn hard to try to make AI better. Most current AI (the AI the author was talking about) is scripted and is therefore limited by the programmer's ability to think outside the box. Yeah, when you're in a game and the enemy does something weird we automatically think "Duh! Its obvious that this is stupid!" But when you're designing and writing the game, its not always obvious. The designer has to think ahead "Well, what would happen in this situation?" and then program that particular situation in.

Or take voice recognition AI. It would be great in KOTOR if I could simply tell a companion to go attack the guy on the left and then I attack the guy on the right. Again, this is not a trivial hack or by any means some hidden conspiracy to prevent ease of use. The AI would have to understand the idea of left, right, and attack along with actually understanding when I state into a microphone "Attack the guy on the left." Yeah, we could script this, but see previous problem.

I realize the author is critiquing games to make them better, which is good, but failing to understand how some problems are very difficult can sometimes aggravate more than motivate. Nothing aggravates me more than a fanboy who simply states "How hard could it be to do X?"

Re:Mmmm...criticism...

[bluGill]

Its worse than you say. Even if the designer considers something, how do you go from seeing it to code, and still be done in reasonable time.

I have some obvious ideas to improve the AI on some open source games. I looked into the AI and quickly realized that humans can instantly process something that computers take a long time to figure out. You look at the map and think "Oh, there was someone in place X, but he isn't there, he must have the invisible suit on, but I know he only moves so fast, so there is only one logical place for him to be. Computers can do that, but even on todays computers it requires a lot of RAM and CPU time.

Thats just one example where a human can quickly see the solution, but can't write it into a good program.

Alien Hominid

[JimTheta]

How about Alien Hominid? That game oozes style, though it's rather short. I've beaten it on Hard and I'm still playing it. Armies of ridiculous FBI and KGB agent enemies, crazy guns, hilarious huge bosses, cartoony gore and a smiling alien that my girlfriend thinks is cute.

It's hand-drawn graphics, but not cell-shaded. It doesn't push any technical limits. It doesn't need to.

You can't go wrong.

Re:Rose-colored glasses

[jgclark123]

You make an excellent point. Perhaps it was more of the innovation that impressed us years ago. Today's video games, while constantly (arguably) increasing in quality, are not very different. Maybe it was because video games were uncharted territory that we liked them so much back in the "Good Old Days".

I suppose the way to revolutionize gaming would be to make games more innovative (like the Nintendo DS, the Sony EyeToy, or DDR). If only the companies tried more stupid stuff, then they might hit something worthwhile.

Don't RTFA.

[stonecypher]

This article is actually worse than most of IGN's bilge.