Where Have All The Game Gods Gone?

GameDailyBiz's media coverage article examines the absence of newly-minted 'game gods' from modern design. The article stems from PC Gamer's look back on the occasion of their 150th issue. One of the covers they show off is one proclaiming 'the game gods', well-known designers such as Will Wright or John Carmack. Modern game design, often with large teams, would seem to preclude elevating many new designers to such lofty heights. From the article: "Aside from a smattering of recognizable names like Naughty Dog's Jason Rubin and David Jaffe of God of War, renowned developers don't spring to mind like they once did. Even worse, Media Coverage would have trouble recognizing these two 'game celebs' if they showed up wearing matching shirts that said 'I'm with Jason Rubin' and 'I'm with David Jaffe'."

Comments

Game-god athiesm

[FooAtWFU]

The problem with game gods? Well, one "game god" at least... they can get to have too much of an ego. Consider Chris Sawyer, of Roller Coaster Tycoon fame. (And just consider Roller Coaster Tycoon and its expansion packs and such, since I haven't spent $$$ to buy RCT2 or anything :P).

So someone developed some cheats and patches and "trainers" and the like for RCT. Several people, actually, a variety of things you could do... But Chris Sawyer didn't like people cheating, apparently (never mind that this is a single-player game of a fairly open-ended nature)... so what does he do? There was some code, either in the original game or an expansion pack, that would sit and watch for some obvious signs of cheating (I think the main one was that if you had researched ALL the rides and stalls and such in the game). If it caught you cheating, the game would crash. Intentionally. And not just that! The game would create a secret little data file so that it would crash again, next time you started, whether or not you were trying to cheat this time around. Eventually some people provided a patch, but with the next expansion pack and such things were changed so you would need a DIFFERENT patch, and this time it would check if there, like, weren't enough trees (did you clear the land so you could have your own little sandbox world? HORRORS! You're not allowed to do that!)

Roller Coaster Tycoon was great. Transport Tycoon was a gem as well. But I don't like getting bossed around by the God of my Game. If these multi-programmer teams can realize things like this better, and let people cheat at their single-player games (at least) if they want to cheat, please, why stop them? (Heck, you can cheat until the cows come home in a game like Morrowind/Oblivion or Half-Life (2 or otherwise) by using the console, and the Sims 2 takes codes as well...)