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The Rise and Fall of Franchises
Next Generation has a piece up discussing how game franchises evolve, what makes them succeed, and (in the end) what can make a game franchise fail. From the article: "We regard the evolution of video games largely as the realization of a singular idea: realism. By 'realism' we mean capturing the external world in which we live. Like many art forms - such as photography and cinema - video games have largely been driven by developers' desire and consumers' appetite for greater realism. It is possible to argue that the popularity of cinema derives from the medium's flexibility and power to induce a sense of realism in the spectator, as movies - much like our lives - use language through dialogue, manipulate cinematography and visual effects, and sounds to represent the world or capture our imagination."
I bet if they ressurrected a bunch of old animators and had them produce a new Bugs Bunny cartoon, using old-fashioned 2D art, it would be just as big a hit as some modern/fancier show like "Ice Age". The story can be far more important.
If I wanted realism... I'd just go outside. Instead of sprouting all this 'better graphics = great games' crap did they ever stop to consider that gameplay matters?
I hate this person already.
Other than that, there was a little bit of interesting commentary in there. He touched on a couple big things I have to agree with, though. Human opponents or teammates (or both) will almost always trump AI. Single player games can be great, but their strength as a franchise will usually fade...eventually you are just doing the same thing with prettier polygons.
Though for some reason, doing the same thing with prettier polygons is more desireable when you are doing it with or against other human beings.
This piece reads like a sociology student had a field-day with the thesaur...
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Better watch that line of argument. The "film franchise" has manifested itself with multitudinous (and qualitatively regressing) sequels.
Anybody ever see "Jaws 3"?
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Of all the MMORPGs out right now, the one doing best (WoW) is the one which specifically went for a less "realistic" look and feel to it's design.
EQ2 for instance went for the "make things look more real" approach, and look where they are.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Man, I read all that and have about a dozen points to complain about. Playing Quake 3 via my dreamcast broadband adapter, the difference between realism and "more computing power to allow different art styles, including realism as one option"... it goes on, but I can't be bothered. But I hope the author reads this:
GET SOMEONE WHO KNOWS ABOUT THE HISTORY AND CURRENT STATE OF GAMING TO WRITE YOUR ARTICLES WITH!
You are NOT sufficiently well informed.
Yeah, games are more realistic now than ever before. Yeah, they get more realistic every day. No, they're not better than ever before. Actually, in my opinion, they get worse and worse with every season. Or, rather, they stop getting better and thus already feel stale when you hardly got them.
EA was complaining about dropping sales last year. Well, COULD it be that their customers didn't want to buy the 10th hockey sim? Or the 5000th shooter?
You can add explosions, as many as you want. You can add visual and audio effects to blow the player off his chair. If the game doesn't offer more in terms of gameplay than he already got, essentially, in Quake II, the game simply and plainly sucks.
You CAN actually offer more than stupid "killemall" in a shooter. Hitman and IGI are classic examples of shooters that don't rely only on your trigger finger. And I loved both of them, despite (or maybe even because) the quite obvious fact that neither was a graphic orgy.
Realism is, plain and simple, overrated. What matters is a cool gameplay that keeps me busy for more than the usual 8-10 hours.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I find this article almost impossible to read. Everytime there is a word with "fi" in it, there is a space after fi.
infi nitely
fi ring
fi nd
What the hell is wrong with this guy's spell checker?
Or was the title of the 'report' about franchises, not ONLINE GAMES, as he appears to be talking about for an entire two pages?
Interesting but for the most part, entirely irrelevant. If he was publishing a report that was 20 pages long this might have been appropriate.
I've got the spirit, lose the feeling.
Successful games, at least from my perspective, present the player with an immersive, believable world. The environment needs to provide a consistent, but not necessarily high level of realism.
There is nothing that kills the feeling of immersion for me more than inconsistency - photorealistic models with crappy animations, detaled characters but barren environments (a la Everquest 2), etc.
Creating a consistent and believable environment is an art form. Some games get it right, most don't.
Seems to be the lack of perspective this story that's most disturbing:
.wait a minute. . .shouldn't that have been their point?
1. Complete failure to understand their comparators. Are consumers really demanding more "realism" out of photography? What? Was there a lack of realistic photographs, or do cameras only take abstracts? In movies, the authors might be forgiven for thinking that the demand for more realistic special effects is a demand for realism, but isn't "photorealism" the ultimate standard for graphics?
2. Complete failure to understand their heritage. Video games don't necessarily replace movies and photographs -- there were games before them, and still are; and most of those games were designed for human interaction. I remember sitting down in front of the NES with the family or friends, don't they?
3. Confusion over history. The NES didn't kill the Atari, that generation was already dead at the hands of endless revisitation of the same game. .
What absolute crap.
Larsal
Abso-fricken-lutely!
The first game I ever really loved was Ultima IV. The graphics were nothing to write home about, but the story and world was so immersive the quality of the graphics did not matter.
Baldur's Gate was a great game, and it was by no means photorealistic. Planescape:Torment was the best ever and it would not have been improved by adding more polygons to the characters.
The same is true for other genres. The graphical quality of the game does not make a significant difference whether an RTS sucks or not. It might look pretty, but if it's crap, it's still crap.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
The authors started off with a good idea, but I think a few of their subjective comparisons miss the mark.
I think that their are enough talented artists, skilled programmers, and people with great ideas out there, that any company that wants to sell a game has no excuses. I want to see games that have great graphics, great gameplay, and keep your interest for a long time after you buy them. Nothing worse than spending $30 - $50 for a game that doesn't live up to it's own marketing hype.
Also, you would think that with two authors, one of them might take the time to fi x the all of the spaces, throughout the article, that appear after "fi" .
"Put your message in a modem, and throw it into the cyber-sea." - Rush
Adding that extra bit of realism really adds to the cost of the games. By pushing the envelope concerning realism big game companies raise the barrier in games development for the smaller companies who don't have deep pockets to hire dozens and dozens of artists. Even a good game with less then average realism and detail just fails as realism and detail is the only thing that consumers are interested in at first sight.
...what matters is what you like, not what you are like...
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SUSQUEHANNA HAT COMPANY!!!
*tears off hat, stomps on it*
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
My kids recently dusted off a PS1 and an old Sega, and love the games. Sure they think the graphics stink, but they like how simple and fun many of the games are. Doctor Mario anyone?
meh
It appears as if the writers pulled this together via shallow internet research rather than any actual experience with or understanding of the subject. By shallow I mean, punching a few terms into google and extrapolating the 2 line summaries into multiple paragraphs.
For example...
"Virtua Fighter, in an ever-crowding Fighter genre, became RPG Shenmue in November 2000 for Dreamcast; Shenmue II in fall 2001 for Dreamcast and Xbox; Shenmue Online is expected as an MMO on PC some time."
VF did not become Shenmue. The finished games have nothing to do with each other. At best, Shenmue was believed by some to be a VF RPG during it's development and possibly shared some assets in early development.
While not as popular as it was in the VF2 (dozens of VF2 machines packed into japanese arcades)era the series still exists entirely seperate from Shenmue as VF3, VF3tb, VF4, VF4:Evo and VF5. Anyone who had a casual interest in the series would know this and anyone who doesn't can find out as the top google results for "shenmue" + "virtual fighter" will spell it out.
The observations on joysticks, Duck Hunt, the fighting game genre, game to movie adaptations and likely much more equally unresearched, unsubstantiated and completely off-base.
yeah, but the problem here is that the 3D street fighters weren't actually any GOOD. In fact, they were total ass. Put Street fighter 2 turbo up against a GREAT 3D fighter like Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution, Tekken 5, or Soul Calibur 2/3...and quite frankly I'd rather play those.
Personally I prefer the King of Fighters games to Street Fighter. I like Darkstalkers better, too. People forget that Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat aren't the only 2D fighters around.
Don't get me wrong...I don't hate 3D fighters in general...but the suggestion that Soul Calibur 2 is better than Garou: Mark of the Wolves just because it is 3D (which the author insinuated) seems silly to me.
Though yeah, Soul Calibur 2/3 do blow most 2D fighters out of the water. It is truly a great 3D fighter. But the author of TFA suggested that a "good" 3D fighting game is better than a "great" 2D fighting game...which I think is BS.
Got about a 3rd of the way before stopping reading. Complete rubbish. I wonder if the writers have ever played a game, or if they just browsed the adverts in the back of a games magazine.
Graphical realism as the driving force behind the industry. On what basis? Because photography and cinema has been striving for greater realism? Really? Since when have photographs been unrealistic (well, actually kind of increasingly what with airbrushed celebs etc)? And cinema striving for greater realism? That's why films like The Matrix were so successful was it? That's why special effects are now so important for blockbusters? Even relatively artistic films aren't better because the visual representation is more real.
Complete rubbish.
I stopped when I read that console gamers had had to wait for the Xbox for online gaming. But then that's because I'm a Sega Dreamcast fanboy. PSO - Phantasy Star something. I can't remember what that O stood for.
Still, another great troll from next gen. Remind me to only ever read that site via submissions to slashdot. The last few articles linked have been rubbish too.
Dunno what this guy was using to put the text together, but "professional" writing apps sometimes apply ligatures to "fi" and my guess is that when it was "ported" to HTML, the ligatures were translated to an f and i with a space following.
But that's just a guess
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The environment needs to provide a consistent, but not necessarily high level of realism.
Ding! Give that man a cigar!
Realism isn't important per se, what is important is that the world is internally consistent. If I'm playing a D&D type game, I shouldn't find an uzi laying about. On the other hand, a person tossing a fireball at me would be expected.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Hello all:
I just like to make a comment about the realism as described in the article, without getting into whether I agree with the article or not. One thing that the author of this articles seem to miss is that realism is defined as "life-like". Though making a game looks and sounds real is a part of it, but it's not the only part. For instance, a game of "go" or "weichi" has been around for a long long time, and still enjoy a cult-like following in some parts of the world. One of the reasons for its appeal is that the game has very life-like philosophies behind it. In other words, the presentation is abstract, yet the lessons one can learn from playing may be applied to real life.
On another train of thoughts, one can push the article's main idea and arrive at the conclusion that the best game is not playing at all... I.e. the most realistic experience one can get is... real life.
Cheers.
B. Pascal
and realism, both the new Driver game and the new Tomb Raider game appear to have finally got it right after a few dismal failures each.
The Driver developers have realised that gameplay > graphics and that on foot animations actually are worth coding into the game. Fancy that. And the new police car/avatar seperate notoriety meters and awesome new garage options are really well done. Although I still think that anyone that purchased a copy of Driv3r at full price should be sent a free copy. And an option to make the radio station permanently play Suffragette City on endless loop would have been appreciated.
And hey, the Tomb Raider developers, after what, at least six games now, have finally realised that controlling a hot chick shouldn't emulate operating a forklift. Will wonders never cease.
First time commenter.... I had to create an account just so I could comment because some of the factual inaccuracies bug me in the article. No, its not the waffling about approaching "realism" whatever that means. (Paying bills is what comes to mind - I don't think that will make a fun game). It's the stuff about multiplayer. The history is wrong for the PC. The original single-player Duke Nukem side scrollers pre-date Doom and Doom 2, but in the context of the authors discussion on multiplayer they presumably are referring to Duke Nukem 3D, which was released, according to the Wikipedia, on the 29th of January 1996. Doom was December 1993, and Doom 2 (which was my first real taste of multiplayer gaming) on September 30, 1994. (again, go look at the Wikipedia). I lost entire nights to Doom 2 because we had an older friend who worked at a university and he had hidden the game on the network and you could play from the computer labs - but only at night so no one would know. Good times, good times. There is no discussion in the article, though, of the different successes of these franchises. Doom has been turned into a movie (!!??!) and is up to an official 3rd sequel (and several re-packagings of the first two), while Duke Nukem is ....well..... a successful money spinning franchise? Not quite.
The original Doom engine was used for other games too (Hexen etc), which is an interesting spin-off of franchising - ie licensing what was used to build the original game to create a new franchise. No mention of this in the article.
Unreal/Unreal Tournament is another example of this - licensing the technology from a successful franchise.
Theres an interesting article to be written about this (maybe I'll have a shot myself once I get off my high horse) but its not covered in this one.
And what about the Warcraft franchise, which has very successfully crossed genres from Real-Time-Strategy to a MMORPG game....
And the idea that on the console you had to wait until X-Box Live in 2002 for multiplayer to come to life is a bit misleading. Online console gaming, yes. Multi-player fun, no.
Sega Mega Drive (Australian name for all you overseas folks) had Micro Machines, which was insanely fun for four people.
N64 had two awesomely fun 4 player games. Mario Kart (also on other Nintendo consoles - yes, a successful franchise) and Goldeneye. That's in 1997.
Now, admittedly you all have to be in the same room, but as I tended to play with my two flatmates that was pretty easy. And I knew who I was playing against, and could trash talk them constantly. And then again later at the bar. And then on the way home. And then through the re-match they demanded becuase I wouldn't shut up.
Now that I'm older I play online with a PC. Times change, you get responsibilities, get over it.
The authors don't know whether they're writing an article about franchises, or whether they want to discuss their own limited experience of multi-player video games, and how important multi-player mode is to gaming these days. Yes, and it has been for awhile. They go on a lot about console obsolesence too, which is a different discussion to franchises. Its not as if I could play Doom 3 on my old 486DX with its whopping 4mb of RAM either, regardless of whatever superior gameplay Doom 3 offers. RIP 486.
You could also mention Civilization, numerous RPG's (Ultima, Might and Magic, D&D, Final Fantasy), Mario and Sonic and other spin-offs, etc etc - all as successful franchises.
More seriously, why do franchises fail like some movie franchises (I'm looking at you Alien 3), can a franchise be resurrected, can franchises survive their original creators/moving to a different studio/company etc etc.
I've spouted off enough already, but as the guys in the article have revealed their limitations and bias, so I'm not worried about revealing mine. /climbs off his high horse.
First comment!!
Now, how many people play Starcraft II?
Many blame the game's non-existance, but I feel the problem is in the conversion to 3D graphics.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
The best games on the PS2 were the least realistic. I'm looking at you Rez and Katamari Damacy.
If the single aim for the games industry is realism...then theyve got it all wrong. The real potential of a game isnt its ability to be real, its the fact that its not real. And i dont believe gamers want realism. Realism has little connection to immersion or even believability. I am reading alot of articles on slashdot that just seem like someone random saying something without any proof.
I have a question... is the guy who wrote this article a drooling moron? (Warning, caustic sarcasm to follow...)
Gamepads doomed joysticks? Because of course one of the first things that happened in the move to 32 bits wasn't a huge revival in joysticks in the N64 controller, the Playstations dual shock and Sega analog joystick. Oh, wait a minute, it was.... Do I really need to comment on the above? Probably EA will screw up the LOTR license... but the biggest problem Lord of the Rings has is that most of the reckognizable stuff in it is non-copyrightable folklore monsters. Which is why everyone and his brother can come up with their own Lord of the Rings themed game without paying any royalties to the Tolkien estate. So, LotR Online has to compete with World of Warcraft, for example... but it is still a great backstory for a game. (No, of course, World of Warcraft owes nothing to Lord of the Rings much like Warcraft owes nothing to Warhammer Fantasy Battle... which itself owes nothing to Tolkien. Tolkien is a Titan, a God... he's shaped computer gaming, roleplaying gaming, and fantasy fictions as no one else has... but his books aren't a good "franchise" without movies coming out based on them, right?) What a comedian? I laughed and laughed at this comment..."MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
A fundamental flaw in this long-winded piece is the idea that realism equals naturalism. This basic lesson has been learned in all the old art forms. Painters perfected art tempura photo-realistic paintings centuries ago, then discovered that maybe more feeling might be conveyed not by copying what they saw but by finding some emotional expressiveness, leading to artists such as Van Gogh and countless others. Sculpture made the same discovery. Even theater got over it's naturalistic re-creations for the stage in the early-to-mid 20th century. Younger art forms, like film and games, have their mainstream fixated on this culture of naturalism. At some point, CGI and gaming will reach a threshold where the fetishizing of naturalism will lose its luster and people will enjoy games based on their quality of experience. Fortunately, there are a few great, non-naturalistic games out there (such as Darwinia) to keep me interested.
Believability isnt the same as realism...in fact realism in many cases damages believability for a number of reasons.
plus, realism is subjective. If i show 100 people two pics, one photo and one cg, 50% choose the photo as the real image and 50% choose the cg image...does that mean the cg is as real as real life. What if more people choose the cg image...does that mean the cg image is more real?
No I didn't RTFA, but quite frankly the games I enjoy the least are the most realistic. I want a game that is just fun. I don't need good graphics or huge content, just something is fun, what is with developers thinking I want to have a life away from the real world. One life is a enough.... I don't need two.