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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.'"
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.
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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.
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.