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The Best Of GDC
Gamasutra's Question of the Week has been asked and answered, and from around the game industry there were brought forth opinions on The Highlights of GDC 2005. Overwhelmingly, people saw the "Burning Down the House" and "Spore" presentations as the most interestng, with a few other folks digging other parts of the conference more. From the article: "I think Nintendo's keynote speech was the most interesting moment for me. Coming a day after Microsoft's keynote, it highlighted the clear divergence between these company's platform strategies moving forward. If you're a gamer at heart (and have the heart of a gamer) root for Nintendo, as they seem to be more interested in gameplay innovation than making an uber-media-micropayment device. (HD-gaming be damned!) - Anonymous" The Puzzle Pirates and Game Atoms talks were probably my most amused moments during the conference. After all, Raph's talk had little monsters and the pirates brought rum.
I've been a Nintendo fanboy all of my life, but lately I've branched out to all consoles, but I agree you do have to like how Nintendo seems soley focused on games. Only problem is that innovation doesn't always sell, ala GBA & GCN Connectivity and Virtual Boy, and Nintendo seems to be designing the "Revolution" based on innovation. It's a pretty risky manuever on Nintendo's part and hopefully it'll pay off.
This article just highlights some of the cliches and falsehoods about Nintendo that have become common currency recently, particularly on slashdot.
Fact is, Nintendo haven't been worth rooting for since the SNES generation. However, they're adept at "talking the talk" on innovation and gameplay, which gets them plaudits from the slash-horde. It's often said (usually as a strawman argument by Nintendo fanboys) that Nintendo games are only for kids. This isn't true. Anybody who's worked in a school at any point in the last five years will know that Nintendo games don't even register in the average kid's consciousness. Nintendo makes games for the people who were kids in the 80s. Most of these people still have nostalgic memories, rose-tinted by age, of what gaming used to be like and have, over time, acquired this arrogant view that only they are "real gamers". Read the line in the article about the "heart of a gamer" to see what I mean here. The average Nintendo gamer these days doesn't actually play all that many games... he just keeps the Gamecube and a few of the old franchises around for sentimental reasons.
Nintendo are, in some respects, masters of PR. They spin their biggest limitation (lack of R&D budget, relative to Sony and MS) into their greatest virtue by shamelessly plugging the "gameplay not graphics" line. This would be fine... if their games actually had gameplay which appealed to people beyond the narrow spectrum outlined above. I own Zelda Wind Walker, Mario Sunshine and Mario Kart 64 and believe me, I consider them all a waste of money. Their gameplay was old-hat by 1995, in 2005 it seems ridiculously shallow. Nintendo's performance at GDC was typical form for them - promises of focuses on "innovation" and "gameplay" over the next year and, as usual, large segments of the gaming press and the slash-horde seem to have swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
So, what will we actually see from Nintendo over the next year? We may or may not see a reissuing of one of their old franchises with updated graphics. The new "darker" Zelda looks nice in a visual sense (mind you, so did Wind Walker, once you got used to the whole cell-shaded thing), but if the gameplay isn't basically the same tired, old-hat stuff as we saw in Wind Walker, I'll eat my hat. We'll probably see a new "gimmick" game designed to sell more expensive, one-off controllers, like the recent bongos and the whole "must have multiple GBA (and no, DSes don't count) to do multiplayer" thing. This will no doubt be trumpeted as innovation.
It's not all been bad news on the Gamecube recently... Resident Evil 4 did a pretty good job of re-imagining the whole Survival Horror genre and in that respect, yes, it was genuinely innovative. It was also a third party title, making it something of a rarity on the Cube.
However, before the slash-horde rushes to moderate this troll or flamebait, I'd ask them to stop and consider whether the company they feel so passionately about really is worth their support. Nintendo are, like MS and Sony, a "big bad company". They get away, in the eyes of the slash-horde, with practices that other companies would be instantly damned for. They've not always been nice to competitors and have exploited their monopoly mercilessly in the handheld Department, where until the PSP appeared on the horizon, they had refused more than a bare minimum both technological and gameplay innovations for many years. MS and Sony aren't perfect either, but it seems that their games departments are more in touch with what gamers genuinely want.
"If you're a gamer at heart (and have the heart of a gamer) root for Nintendo, as they seem to be more interested in gameplay innovation than making an uber-media-micropayment device. (HD-gaming be damned!) - Anonymous"
Gosh. Rooting for the underdog, there's an original idea. Why would I ever want to root for Sony and Microsoft when all they ever did for me was bring over more original Japanese titles than I can shake a stick at. Damn you Phantom Dust, Katamari, Dai Senryaku VII (Yes, I know, only original to us), ICO, Magical Pengel and Digital Devil Saga and the upcoming Wanda and the Collosus! I want another Mario, Zelda, Pikmin, (a crippled) Advance Wars and Metroid in my stocking this Christmas!
No.
schild
editor, f13.net
"...root for Nintendo, as they seem to be more interested in gameplay innovation..."
You're talking about a company who has more Mario titles and "collect the 'coin'" game-types than I care to count. Innovation is not a word that comes to mind when I think of Nintendo.
I find this stuff incredibly interesting. The presentation there tries to reverse-engineer the concept of fun. In one of Terry Pratchett's recent books, the Auditors reverse-engineer everything to atomic level to attempt to gauge appeal, and it gets lost. Although Raph's talk is trying to break things down into atoms, there is also an insight from realising there's certainly more there than just atoms and associated verbs - the atoms in themselves are pointless. You can press a button, you can move a mouse, you can get the timing right. But it only begins to matter when you make atom-agglomerates - molecules - that it begins. His timing sequence for a quake gib is a molecule. It's a sequence of events where each atom is connected in a particular order and in a particular way. These molecules can all add up in his parallel - multiple occurences of sequences, some work, some don't; the target there is to get as many viable molecules as possible, and from that 'win'. Or they can go in series - a polymer molecule, where the win comes from how long you can make your molecule; the argument there is then whether a beautiful molecule is a pure chain, or a branched chain, or sheet, or however. We're going a little deep into this analogy, but it still makes sense. He says in the presentation that he hasn't got a clue what to do with it. I wonder if I could get hired by the first crew who do, because I bet it'd be an incredibly interesting way to make a game.
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
Just for clarity, I think Phantom Dust is being released in the US at a budget price ($20-ish) now.
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
Most of the "gamers" you speak of are not true gamers, really.
What a bunch of elitist bullshit. What exactly constitues a 'true gamer'? Is a 'true gamer' someone who spends 40+ hours a week gaming, blows through games in a (long) day (missing most of the content on the way - but hey, they 'won'), and then complains that games are 'too short', 'too easy', or 'too cliche'? Sounds a lot like my first roommate in college (1994) - he flunked out.
What those of us who grew up in the Nintendo generation who have families, jobs, and (dare I say) disposable income? It took me one month to complete Fable (took my friend two), my (only) WoW character is a measly lvl 44 (been playing since launch), and I have absolutely no interest in Halo2. Games play a very important role in my life and those of my friends - it gives us a chance to unwind, socalize, and have fun. The games don't define us - we use them as a tool.
What the 'true gamers' don't understand is that they are the minority. Why should the gaming companies cater to you? They're going to end up buying the game anyway. For the rest of us, 'wonderous game play' means simplicity, playing without excel spreadsheets, and the ability to walk away after an hour or two.
If you're a gamer at heart (and have the heart of a gamer) root for Nintendo, as they seem to be more interested in gameplay innovation than making an uber-media-micropayment device.
Yeah, I'll root for Nintendo once they start supporting these "innovative" devices with more games. My DS has been collecting dust for quite a while. Each new game now doesn't bring anything new to the table. The touch screen concept has been driven to the ground already with just, what...12 games out for it? If the Revolution's "innovation" is going to be the same situation, then they can forget it. I love my Gamecube and everything, but the DS has really soured me.
Theres a key difference between the keynotes, sony took the slide show aproach (which is quite useful, but boring) MS talked about the benefits of their new dashboard for _DEVELOPERS_ which is a lot, because the new xbox handles a bit like windows (so is complex but at least you get a lot of work done for you) and the "HD era" (whatever they think that means) they actually dropped some interesting marketting data that DEVELOPERS can use. And gave away their XNA beta (which is not a bad tool) and some HDTVs which is good because they want you to DEVELOP your games for it. (and yes they were trying to bribe us quite a bit.)
Nintendo keynote was emotional and all but as a DEVELOPER I can tell you this, it was completely USELESS 2 hours show, out of of their new games.(?) "look my game has voice recognition" yeah it says so right here in the SDK you sold me "Look you can make music and a dog hear you!" thanks N I wouldnt have figured out how to use a mic for that "Look we can play mario kart wirelessly!" Yeah N is called wireless networking my laptop has it too. "CHECK OUT OUR NEW ZELDA GAME!" gee, thanks I would never find that one at www.gametrailers.com, then we get the "good games come from good gameplay not good graphics" speech, in case you are new to this, we get that speech each generation for the last 15 years if you have a copy of Nintendo Power magazine, you probably will find the speech right there.
"Our new graphics chip is called HORYWOOD! and we have one called BROADWAY too! our new console is going to be VERY GOOD" thats the best piece of technical information Ive ever got! my game is going to be 200% better thanks to that!
Seriously guys the reason why everybody liked N keynote better is because it was meant for E3 not GDC it was an ad show not a developers keynote.
We needed specs on the new system, whats the situation with networking (probably the only valuable piece of info was that they support wi-fi now) and what benefits we get for working with them (they have already stated their console is not going to be pretty compatible so most games are going to be exclusive, what benefit do _I_ as a developer get with that?) also whats the deal with the DS and their new GBA? when is going to be released? how are they going to handle 2 handhelds, etc. etc. they didnt even care to mention it.
Anyway for me the best of the show, was the "amy heckerling" design contest. not only you got to see some of the best game designers at work you actually discovered the obvious route is not always the best, and that fun ideas are always a good aproach, (at least good for a laugh and some impulse buys) that was pretty educational And the engine Mollineux showed off was just _sweet_
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
Read up on what a strawman article means. If you have a 30 year gaming history, I'd expect you to know this by now.
Basically, what I was saying in my original post is that there's nothing that Nintendo fans like more, when they feel threatened, than to cry "Oh noes! Everybody says Nintendo is for kids! But it isn't! I'm not a kid and I play them!" They can offer demonstrable proof of this (in so far as is ever possible in this kind of argument) and they hope that by doing so they can deflect the people making them feel threatened (normally anybody who makes a post about games which does not acknowledge Nintendo as the supreme gaming overlords) away from more grounded criticisms.
You're right that the Gamebody has a significant presence in schools (at least, until the PSP takes hold, I suspect)... I don't think I was sufficiently clear about this in my original post. The GAMECUBE has no presence in schools. Nintendo, in their infinite wisdom, have chosen not to port their biggest name game among the early-and-pre-teen demographic to their main "set top" console. I'm sure they had a good reason for this, like the quality of the crack they were taking at the time. Besides, Pokemon is... like... soooooo last year (or even the year before) now.
In a way, your post confirms everything I've said about the Nintendo demographic. You're arrogantly elitist, in terms of which games you consider it worth playing, you constantly tell me how long you've been playing games for, as though I should be impressed and you pick up on a typo I made (yes, Wind Waker was a typo... so sue me) and try to turn it into a major argument, because you just HAVE to defend this company you LOVE so much. I mean, you even refer to yourself as a _serious_ gamer. I love that bit.
I've been seeing the term "camera" in games since years before Mario 64. Half my old flight-sims used the term. I suspect it's got no more significance than early games developers using a term that people were already familar with from cinema.
As for different definitions of innovation... well... that's a tough one. There's nothing innovative about any of the franchise games these day; I think this should be beyond doubt. Wind Wallllllllllllllker, Mario Sunshine and Mario Kart DD all felt like pretty much straight remakes. I'd say Square have been much better at balancing innovation and tradition in the Final Fantasy series, where battle systems, characters, worlds and plots all change dramatically from one installment to the next, while a few of the most core elements remain the same. Nintendo's franchise games feel more like "well... it's the same game as last time, but LOOK, you can get a pretty BLUE hat as well this time".
I'm not quite sure where all the arguments about the control schemes came from. I don't remember bringing that up much in my original post, other than pointing to Nintendo's fondness for selling expensive control systems that you'll only ever use with one or two games. You clearly feel strongly about this though, so... well... feel free to continue. But those drums you bought? I'm glad you like the game or two you can use them with. Don't expect to see many others. I just bought a racing wheel for my PS2, for GT4. At least I can use this with a few dozen other games.
Arguing about international markets is, quite frankly, a crock of shit. I've done the whole import thing before and it doesn't work for me. I don't like playing games in Japanese, I don't like getting stung by customs for import duty when I buy an (already overpriced) japanese game. I don't like supporting companies that can't be bothered to release the majority of their titles in my home region. I'm in Europe, so I'm doubly crapped upon here. I mean, Europe gets crapped upon by all platforms; PC, PS2, X-Box as well. But at least PS2 and X-Box games tend to make it over here in the end. The X-Box has been noticably weak on RPGs and, to a lesser extent, platformers so far. If it can correct this during the next console cycle, I think they'll
As the GDC yellowshirt volunteer who did the data entry for the paper evaluations they hand out for Burning Down the House and the Spore presentation, I can verify that this Best of List is quite likely correct.
For Burning Down the House, numerous people wrote in 6's and circled those, writing in comments that their only complaint was that it didn't go on long enough. A handful of people dinged certain speakers point-wise. But for each person who saw fit to ding Laurel or Zimmerman, many more sang their praises. In talking to people I heard that Laurel had a certain wry humor that was lost on some people who might have taken her too literally, and a handful of people thought Zimmerman interrupted too much. But the mean was 4.67 out of 5 or higher for all speakers. It would have been much higher if our data entry system accepted numbers higher than 5, as significant amounts of people wrote in 6's. The mean overall score for the session was, if I remember right, 4.90 out of 5.
Here's a transcript of Burning Down the House if you want to read for yourself what was said. It can't quite capture the energy of the discussion though.
http://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/2005/03
As for Will Wright's talk on Spore, well, it was overwhelmingly positive. His score was a mean of 4.98 out of 5 with 212 received feedback forms. Numerous write-ins of 6s and 10s which just get counted as 5 by us yellow-shirts. Overwhelming positive comments also, including many people making liberal use of f* bombs in comments such as "f***ing great!!!11" or "f*** me!!!". ; -) Only negative comments were, of course, that no room is large enough to hold the audience Will attracts and we all want him to talk for hours at a time instead of just one hour.
I'll have to recommend a google search for "Spore screenshots" if you want to know more about that, as EA immediately went into info control mode and even shut down the movie theater re-broadcast immediately after. This was received with groans, grumbling and one person shouting "Challenge Everything!"
But the consensus that these two talks were among the highlight of the GDC is supported numerically. I didn't do the numbers for it, but I'd also suggest that the Experimental Gameplay demonstration was extremely excellent as well.