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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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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