The Importance of New Ideas

Next Generation has up the first in a two-part article talking in-depth with members of the gaming industry about the importance of fresh ideas. Also discussed are the challenges of next-gen development costs and the impact of Hollywood/Intellectual Property on future titles. From the article: "Q: What role will original game concepts play in next generation development? A: (Todd Hollenshead) Technology is a gating factor to the experience of playing games. Whether it's visual quality or character interactions, you have to have the processing power to make more sophisticated and interesting entertainment. Certainly the next generation of consoles in the Xbox 360 and PS3 are far more powerful than their predecessors and that gives game developers broad options to do things we haven't been able to do before and provide experiences for players they haven't had before. For example, for our next generation Wolfenstein game, which uses the Xbox 360 as it's primary development platform, we are developing technology that will change the way people play First Person games by doing away with the whole concept of 'levels', which has been the primary progression mechanic every first person game has used."

Comments

Hollywood & Gaming

[devilsadvoc8]

Game Developers' willingness to suck at the teat of Hollywood for easy money, marketing and ideas will weigh the industry down until they can successfully wean themselves from it. Hollywood has already fully embraced mediocrity as a method of risk reduction. Who needs to take a chance with a novel script when we can remake King Kong, War of the Worlds, or make Rocky XX. Game Development NEEDS to take risks. Otherwise all the consoles will die on the vine.

Not exactly a huge change

[AuMatar]

So you want to get rid of levels. Well, we can make one big world, and only load the part immediately around you. When you get close to the edge, we load the next part in the background. To stop you from going where we don't want you to go, we can put giant walls/buildings to keep you in one area until you finish it. We can call these areas "levels".

No reason they couldn't do this on current hardware- just noone has chosen to. Not a big change.

New Ideas

[SquisherX]

I was planning on saying something interesting, but Im fresh out of new Ideas :p Seriously though, to me, the elimination of levels isnt revolutionary. Getting rid of load times, changes of scenes, and getting rid of mission objectives. Thats all there is to levels. Several games get rid of a few of these three elements. All wolfenstein is planning to do is get rid of all three? It doesnt seem all that revolutionary to me.

Seen this before?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure Valve did this with Half Life about 8 years ago... but that's just me.

Re:Huh?

[Mr. Sketch]

we are developing technology that will change the way people play First Person games by doing away with the whole concept of 'levels'

Guess they have never played Metroid Prime or Metroid Prime: Echos. This is not a new idea and has been around for many years.

which has been the primary progression mechanic every first person game has used.

Maybe this is true for every first person that they have played, but certainly not every first person game in existance (see example above).

What really matters

[Yoyoson]

To provide more context for the Todd Hollenshead quote in the /. post:

For example, for our next generation Wolfenstein game, which uses the Xbox 360 as it's primary development platform, we are developing technology that will change the way people play First Person games by doing away with the whole concept of "levels", which has been the primary progression mechanic every first person game has used. The Wolfenstein game world will be one large environment that you can move freely about and explore without ever having to "load" the next area or map. In that way, you're never pulled out of the game environment because of a level change, and the game is presented to you as one seamless experience.

Sure, technically, this has never been done before. The transitions between Half-Life's "levels" froze the action for a few moments at the conclusion of a level and presented the player with the overlay text "L O A D I N G . . ." which was quickly followed by a similarly non-intrusive introduction of the name of the level they just walked into.

Sure, this will increase immersion at the cost of robbing the player of the sense of accomplishment and reward he/she feels at the completion of a level.

But there is something Hollenshead doesn't mention in the admittedly small space he is given to talk about the admittedly sensitive topic of forthcoming features in his company's future product.

Is it going to be one long linear roller-coaster ride to the end of the game, or is the Wolfenstein world going to feature multiple paths to victory, increase replay value, show signs of innovative thought, and possibly broaden this well-worn genre?

Return to Castle Wolfenstein was great, but Quake 3, Doom 3, Quake 4? Hollenshead may be right: he's going to change the way I play First Person games. At the current rate.. I'm not going to play them anymore.

Re:Technology vs. Gameplay

[Anonymous Coward]

Role Playing First Person Shooter
and
AI that reacts depending on the situation
and
We may get to decide how the story goes (like a choose-your-path book), and the game can go in different directions according to our choices.

You mean like Deus Ex?

Re:Processing power

[NanoGator]

"That they really didn't offer any advances useable in more sophisticated AI or such? Bigger and better graphics are nice, don't get me wrong, but are we really going to actually see anything fresh and new until the hardware is capable of doing more than eye candy?"

Though I agree that the 360 is pretty mediochre, I think your statement is a little misleading. Yes, it has more doodads for throwing polygons and texels on the screen, but it also has a lot more number crunching power needed to have more sophisticated AI. One of the buzzwords being thrown around a lot with the next generation of games is use of the Havoc physics system so stuff falls realistically. I've also read developer statements saying they have more complex AI governing NPCs and such. In simpler terms, I would expect the next-gen GTA game to be considerably more diverse in terms of what the character can do. There's even some hints of that in the games coming up down the road.

All that said, those idiots at Sony and Microsoft seriously dropped the ball by making their controllers virtually identical to their previous generation systems. Thanks a lump, guys. San Andreas was fun so long as I didn't actually have to aim my gun. Now you want me to play WWII games with the same hinderance. But at least it's prettier! Maybe the added AI will make my team-mates fight the battles for me.

Just copy FEAR. That is all the innovation I want

[SmallFurryCreature]

Just for once I would like to see game companies not so much innovate as just take the best bits out of games that game before and not constantly de-evolve.

So from now on every single player FPS game will have the following:

• Quicksave, at any point unrestricted. If you feel they ruin the challenge, don't use them.
• Grenades are not a selecteable weapon instead can be thrown with main weapon equipped like Halo/Fear.
• NO close combat fast moving enemy takes more then 1 clip of ammo to kill. Especially melee. (Am I the only one who hates having to reload/switch with some ankle biter gnawing you?
• No ankle biters. I want my enemies human sized. Head crabs are out.
• No random spawns behind me when I walk into the pool of light to get an ammo resupply EVERY GODDAMN FUCKING TIME (Doom3 I am talking to you.)
• No Ammo grab. You know it you hate it, the moment you cleared a difficult room of baddies you have to visit their twisting corpses to grab half a clip of ammo from each so you can kill the next batch. Is every video game secret army short on funds or something? Brothers in Arms and Vietcong showed how it can be done differently.
• Give me some backup. Yeah yeah, I am the lone soldier hero who saves the day but just at 1 or 2 points in the game make it less bloody obvious that today's game all focus on graphics and not on AI. Brothers in Arms, Vietcong and Call of Duty showed the way.
• No more trash talking bosses, co-workers without the option to beat them up. I am for one sick and tired of being the rooky who has to prove himself. Can a real writer please come up with a more original setting then your are the newbie but somehow have to do all the critical missions without any help?

FEAR was short and the story not exactly original BUT it was beautifully executed. It simply incoorperated a lot of good design decission. The only baddie I found was that you still were alone and badly equipped. I would at least to have liked to see a couple of mission starts and ends with some real backup and not just story plot cannon-fodder. I could also have done with a better supply of ammo so I would not have to loot every damn corpse. Oh and the "hidden" health/slow-mo boosts were lame as well. Can you make it any more obvious I am playing a game then having power-ups lying around in sewers?

I find it amazing to see wolfenstein and the word innovation linked however. Sure they were the first but the last wolfenstein to me was an extreme case of mediocore FPS design. Oh well, the punters loved it so who am I to critize.

Wow, Way to NOT answer the question...

[geminidomino]

They ask about "original concepts" and in response, they get a page and a half of marketing blurb for a "Wolfenstien Meets GTA" game?!

Geez. They're not even trying to be subtle about it anymore.