Slashdot Mirror
The Path to AAA Games
Gamasutra has up a feature discussing an E3 discussion session haunted by some illustrious names in game design. The topic of the panel was The Path to Creating AAA Games. Hosted by Carly Staehlin, the panel featured Matt Firor, Todd Howard, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Tim Willits, and Will Wright. From the article: "'My biggest failure was Quake 3,' Willits said. 'The game offered perfect multiplayer for hardcore players. In fact, they're still playing it. But the more casual gamers, and other people who actually have money, found playing next to impossible.'"
The first step on that path is to admit you have a problem. Oh, sorry thought you ment "AA Games"...
Is this like Crazy Taxi, except instead of driving a cab you drive a tow truck?
When the latest console wars began, the term AAA games appeared as a tool of fanboys. What the heck is a AAA game? What makes it better than a AA game? or an A game? Sorry just a short rant about a term I hate.
WTF is AAA you SOB?
Long signatures suck.
I don't find most videogames appealing, but rather just frustrating.
:)
It's like an arbitrarily endless supply of frustration. I don't find overcoming problems fun, because I do that at *work*, and when I get home, I just want to play, stress free. Forget AAA games appealing to a broad audience including casual female gamers, I'm an active gaming 30 year old male, but not a lot of game designs appeal to me.
I do really like multiplayer first person shooters:
- A multiplayer FPS is something I can just pick up and put down easily.
- If I screw up in an FPS, I may not get as good a kill ratio, but it's still fun, not like, ie, Mario Bro's, where I spend 2 hours trying to clear some section, never make it, get frustrated and just never play the game again.
- In a single player shooter (ala HL2), your opponents skill level is totally arbitrary, it's a constant in some header file... they could all have perfect aim if they wanted, and I find overcoming this type of obstacle pointless - there is no satisfaction. Killing live opponents is not arbitrary, and much more satisfying.
- Plus with games like Battlefield, it's like an arcade quality flight sim built in too!
Quake 3 still stands out in my mind as the ultimate example of why it's a bad idea to develop any game (except possibly a MMORPG) with the hard-core in mind. I remember the consultation phase ID went through while developing it, where they talked to a lot of the "top" hardcore players from Quake and Quake 2 to get their input into game mechanics and map design. I also remember how most of these people then turned around and savaged the game after its release.
There's simply no gain to be had in pitching your product at this market.
First, Compared to the "casual" market (which includes a lot of people who definitely count as gamers, but don't focus on one title or genre exclusively), the number of potential buyers is tiny. They're also extremely vocal, on forums, message boards, IRC and at industry events. This can give the impression that they're a larger group than they are.
Second, this group knows no gratitude. I've never seen a developer go as far as ID did during the Quake 3 development process and I've never seen a developer take such (unwarrented) flak after release for dumbing-down, selling-out, or whatever the term of the day at the time was. Everything about the game was slated; the physics, the maps, even the fact that it had pretty graphics.
Third, this group is insanely conservative in terms of its gaming habits. I was part of the "hardcore" fps gaming scene for a while and one of the most disgusting thing about it was the palpable fear with which the people at the top of the game would approach anything that proposed even mild changes to the game as they knew it. This was extremely noticable every time Counter-Strike approached a new version release. With new iterations of the Quake and Unreal Tournament series, it was even worse. The top players were petrified that any changes to the game might diminish the little tricks they were using to stay on top and force them to adapt or even, god forbid, lose their place and the reputation that went with it. When Quake 3 came out, I remember how terrified a lot of the top Quake/Quake 2 players were of the prospect that they might have to fight to regain their prestige. The result was a lot of trash-talk about the game and a very slow adoption rate.
Finally, this group of players is the most insular and cliquey around. I've lost count of the number of times that I've seen newbies in hardcore games (both MMORPGs and fpses) subjected to a barrage of obscenities within moments of connecting. With a primarily online game, a developer is investing a lot of their reputation in the behaviour of their players. What I saw in Quake 3 was a long way from being impressive.
And most people feel Quake 3 was heavily dumbed from Quake 2. No grapple, faster rockets with more damage, only a 3x damage quad (eh?)...
I hear there are 12 steps.
Not to mention toon-ish powerup graphics so hardcore players could spot them across the map. And a dumbed-down lighting model .. Q2 had realtime radiosity lighting, and people bitched about fuzzy shadows. Well look the hell around: if there's more than one light in the room, I guarantee your damn shadow is fuzzy. Running speed in Q2 was more realistic, though I'll grant that needed to be cranked up a bit for gaming effect.
Hell, the assault rifle in Q2 even had muzzle climb that you had to fight. Not that any of the other weapons were terribly realistic, but I thought that was still a nice touch.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
Quake 2 didn't have a grappling hook by default, it was built into many mods. Trust me, I've spent a LONG time playing Quake 2.
The sad truth is that any game that relies on multiplayer is going to have a limited audience.
Take you average RTS game. Don't even try to find a game with strangers - you'll end up dealing with rude, cheating juveniles that think it's fun to join your team to make you lose to their friends.
FPS games are worse. Near the top of some ranking? Expect kiddies on your team to frag you or throw flash grenades in your face... simply so that you'll lose your ranking.
The truth is that multiplayer games depend upon some semblance of good sportsmanship, but are typically diminished by mean-spirited assholes. There's a reason why Spore won't have actual multiplayer functionality - too much concern that someone would just come along and snuff you.
jh
I've actually had more fun recently with games that aren't AAA titles than I have with the Latest and Greatest. Sure, I loved HL2, but that's basically the only one. La Pucelle and Disgaea have been some of the best games I've played recently, and the three Ratchet & Clank games were excellent. Last year's Chris Sawyer's Locomotion was flawed, but fun. Depending on how you differentiate between the "top tier" and other games, the Silent Hill series might also count. I think these games succeed by worrying more about the game mechanics and storyline than the graphics and "innovations" like physics. Those are basically black holes for money and development time, and I think designers need to remember that more people play chess, go, and checkers/draughts than any video game...
To me, the most interesting tidbits in this article are about women in gaming, and the implication that their influence on design will bring about new styles of gameplay. There's some interesting literature out there about how women play games:
Killing Like a Girl (PDF)
The Norrathian Scrolls: A Study of Everquest (PDF)
I get the impression that this is one area where independent studios really have a chance to innovate. But given how conservative we can be, maybe the larger studios will figure it out first.
___________________________________________
Epidemic Groove - Our casual/action/real-time strategy hybrid about curing a worldwide epidemic by constructing nanomechanical defenses. You know, the usual stuff.
We're indie. We're working on our 14th game.
Considering there was no nail gun in vanilla Quake 3, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There is a nail gun in the expansion, but virtually no one plays it, and the nail gun isn't "gatling."
Life's weapons are imbalanced, slim. Deal with it. I've plowed through plenty of rocket launcher-wielding morons with the machine gun.
The hardcore gamer doesn't think of gaming as a relaxing activity, but as an outlet for their egomania; its often the one thing they're really good at.
For a game to be wildly successful, it helps to have the hype-machine that is the hardcore gamer croud, but the game has to be something you can escape into.
MMOs are the wave of the future as far as this goes, because there are many interesting activities incorporating other human beings (usually more fun to interact with) in cooperative ways rather than in pure back-stabbing competition.
My favorite right now is http://vendetta-online.com/ , not because it has every feature I could want, but because it is developer-owned and they just want to keep getting paid to make the game better. It has changed more since release last Nov. than most games change with an expansion pack they charge extra for.
Um, Quake 3 is just a little bit older than Halo 2. Saying "I don't play Quake 3 because it doesn't have these Halo 2 features" is like saying "Quake 3 sucks because it doesn't have planes and tanks like Battlefield 1942". It's irrelevant. Newer games benefit from new game innovations.
I stopped playing Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament when Battlefield 1942 came out because the new game had all sort of interesting new features.
Quake 3 is not perfect, and neither is Halo 2. Quake 3 was a pretty fun game that didn't quite live up to the legacy of Quake 2. You can say that Quake 3 is the point when Unreal over took Quake as the basic FPS of choice, especially with the mod community (ok, ok, so maybe the Half Life engine was number 1 - but for the life of me I'll never understand why people liked to mod it so much - it's my least favorite).
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Quake 3 in my opinion is the best FPS ever. I am one person whole likes thing simple. I still play Quake 3 and find that playing Q3 is a lot more fun now than at the height of it's popularity. Annoying people moved on to other games.
Here are things I DO NOT want:
1. Tranporting device - I can Translocate across a map but it doesn't make it fun.
2. Voice chat - I don't want to hear 13 year olds scream. Let them type their crap out. I rarely hear anything useful on team based FPS voice chat.
3. Stat Tracking Stuff - This seems to create a bunch of people playing to keep up their stats. These are the guys endlessly killing people at spawn points like its a RPG.
4. Stupid Mods - The developers spent 3 years balancing the settings. 12 year old spent 2 minutes messing the settings up.
5. Cheats/Hacks - I don't get why people want to cheat at a game? Doesn't seem like fun to only win because you installed some crap off the web.
Not to mention toon-ish powerup graphics so hardcore players could spot them across the map. And a dumbed-down lighting model .. Q2 had realtime radiosity lighting, and people bitched about fuzzy shadows. Well look the hell around: if there's more than one light in the room, I guarantee your damn shadow is fuzzy. Running speed in Q2 was more realistic, though I'll grant that needed to be cranked up a bit for gaming effect.
Hell, the assault rifle in Q2 even had muzzle climb that you had to fight. Not that any of the other weapons were terribly realistic, but I thought that was still a nice touch.
Hey mods, this is why downmodding people you disagree with doesn't work.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
1. Didn't Q3 come out before there was even a freaking xbox? And who online uses anything other than a Sword, Rocket Launcher, or sniper rifle?
2. I don't really remember ANY games at the time that had official rankings..
3. (and most of all) - I never fragged an idiot yelling obscenities into a microphone. Voice chat is not revolutionary. If you wanted to taunt back then - you damn well had better have had good typing skills. Cause if not, well..
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
My guess on Half-Life is the engine was so underpowered that it played well on the crappy systems that the mod-makers had.
Most mod-makers aren't new title gamers - they have a 5+ year old system, bitterly complain that new games that won't play properly, and modify old games that will play smoothly on their wheezing and creaking system.
#1 I wasn't comparing Quake3 to Halo2. I think they're both very far from perfect.
You claim ladder wasn't around in Quake3's days. Ladder play was in Starcraft, which was out about the same time. And so far, no game has done ladder play correctly. Theres always seems to be a flaw in matchmaking, or the rating system in general. Its funny too because you can chart a skill curve based on ladder ratings if done correctly. Most game manufacturers don't want the depth of skill in their game to be charted because there is very little depth. A well done game would have a properly done ladder system, and deep combat depth. So far no game has really got very far into combat depth, and I'd imagine its the next big thing.
Back in 95, I was touting vehicles as the next big thing in FPS, and it took them about 10 years. I suppose it will take more than 10-30 years before you get skillfully balanced FPS combat if no one realizes it. Before you get all huffy, think about it. If you want to get realistic, you start getting into situations where one shot kills someone. If you want to head more into fantasy, you can balance guns more, and even have counters for different guns. When you want balanced PK, you should focus on guns for different situations. And in addition to guns, you could have defensive devices of all sorts.
When someone calls a game 'perfect', it grates on my nerves because theres such a long way to go before someone puts together a perfect game. And here's another hint,"If your game is even close to perfect, then everyone is going to want to play it." I'm a hardcore gamer, and Quake3 to me is nothing more than a click and kill twtich fest that's far from perfect.
God spoke to me.
'The game offered perfect multiplayer for hardcore players. In fact, they're still playing it. But the more casual gamers, and other people who actually have money, found playing next to impossible.'
Quake 3 was a mistake? There goes your credibility. Your idea that games need only be good enough to enterain casual gamers has financial merit, though.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
I don't really get it. I hadn't played an FPS since the original duke nukem. I sat down to play Q3, and I quickly found myself laughing out loud it was so fun. I played for more than 2 years, and even hit quakecon in 2002 to meet up with people I'd met playing the game. I went from clueless to just shy of pro level, and found lots of friendly, helpful people along the way who helped me with settings, strategy, etc. Sure, there were some rivalries - mostly good-natured - but by far the common theme was friendly but fierce play. The only people *I* ever saw getting called newbs as they walked in the door are the ones who immediately started accusing people of cheating.