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

Nostalgia Trumps True Skill?

[eldavojohn]

First off, I'd like to say that I think the managing of games has come a long way from the beginning. In the beginning, it seemed like you needed one key inventor/genius player on a team to make a great game. It had to be someone's child. That's what would make great games. Nowadays, people know how to manage a team and have more experience. I think that this would lead the way to great games being made without the need of one star player. A solid team with mediocre people can make a great game.

Try this out, search the web for "creator of doom" and then search for "creator of world of warcraft" or "creator of oblivion." And I think you'll find that one person (John Carmack) is attributed with Doom while the topic isn't even addressed when talking about WoW or Oblivion.

I would also say that we, as consumers, are guilty of buying the same old crap over and over (Madden Football, anyone?). The producers know we'll do this and they cater to our needs with mediocre games. I would wager that today's games are a immensely more complex than games of yore, thus making it nearly impossible for a game to be entirely concieved in one person's head.

There are so many things working against a solo developer to get a game going. Aside from developing licenses for platforms skyrocketing, there are things like console wars that only compound the different platforms they made need to support it for. I know you probably know of a thousand good indie games for the computer, but any for a console? As far as computer games go, the customer base is often very demanding (we're nerds, what would you expect) and I think companies rely on people with specialized skills to put a product out at every step of the way. Is this bad? Not necessarily, there are still good games being produced--just not in the same fashion as before.

Along with the above contributing factors, great game developers today might not seem so great because innovation of years past is much more nostalgic to us. That's right, the same reason that we know Van Gogh & Picasso but can't name one contemporary artist says a lot about how nostalgia rules the art world. I look back on Kubrick's movies and say, "Christ, where have all the good directors gone?" when in reality I'll probably be worshipping Darren Aronofsky after he's dead just as much as Kubrick. Note, that was an example of my opinion--please do not hijack this thread with speculations of who's the better director. Unfortunately, the media won't cover someone until they're dead (Stanislaw Lem, anyone?) or at least that's how the American media seems to work.

Wait until these men age & die (or leave the business) then nostalgia kicks in and they are remembered as a "Game God."

Re:Nostalgia Trumps True Skill?

[Rob T Firefly]

In the beginning, it seemed like you needed one key inventor/genius player on a team to make a great game. It had to be someone's child. That's what would make great games. Nowadays, people know how to manage a team and have more experience. I think that this would lead the way to great games being made without the need of one star player. A solid team with mediocre people can make a great game.

That's a major result of the rising complexity of the technology. Back in the 1980s, one geek could stay up all night and crank out an Atari 2600 game in raw machine code. Later, David Crane and a few others could produce the 1980s "Ghostbusters" PC game, with still more people to port his game design to the other PCs and consoles. Nowadays in the world of commercial game design, even getting a concept off the drawing board and into production requires legions of artists, programmers, musicians, sound designers, directors, producers, voice actors, motion actors, and additional people whose job it is to help all these people communicate with each other. If you asked Carmack or anyone else to go home with a gameplay concept, and come back in a week with a fully-coded XBox game, you'd receive a blank stare in return.

These days we do have a few major players like Hideo Kojima or Shigeru Miyamoto, but they are no longer able to be the jack-of-all-trades their predecessors were. They are like film producers or directors, with the talent to see a creative vision through and help an entire team realize it.

Re:Nostalgia Trumps True Skill?

[Minwee]

"If you asked Carmack or anyone else to go home with a gameplay concept, and come back in a week with a fully-coded XBox game, you'd receive a blank stare in return."

Not necessarily. A good programmer who had the proper tools to develop on that platform could easily produce such a game, but what you received next week would have more in common with the simpler games of the 80s and 90s than with the overproduced "A-list" titles that line the shelves today.

There is nothing about modern platforms which actually require "legions of artists, programmers, musicians, sound designers, directors, producers, voice actors, motion actors, and craft services". It's just expected that the games will be that complex.

You could package up something like Nethack or M.U.L.E. for the 360 and it would play just fine, but don't expect EA to publish it for you.

Re:Nostalgia Trumps True Skill?

[ClosedSource]

"That's a major result of the rising complexity of the technology. Back in the 1980s, one geek could stay up all night and crank out an Atari 2600 game in raw machine code."

Actually, we used assembly language. If you think that current game systems are technically more complex than the 2600 or that a decent 2600 game could be programmed in one night, you obviously never tried it.

I know this will sound like your grandfather's story about walking to school in the snow but the 2600 had no interrupts, no BIOS or OS, 128 bytes of RAM, video registers that had to be reloaded every scan line (at least) by your code, time-based horizontal positioning, video blanking performed by your code, etc.

The days when video games were primarily a software writer's achievement ended with the first video game crash. That's a good thing because most of us weren't experts in game design, graphics, or sound.

Will Wright to Rule Them All

[WillAffleckUW]

So long as Will Wright is around, who needs other Game Gods?

Re:Will Wright to Rule Them All

[WillAffleckUW]

I try not to write Will Wright just because it's right, but because it's not wrong.

I think that when the Wii comes out we may find other Gaming Gods on that platform, but for now we can stick with Will Wright right or wrong.

We still have them

[iced_773]

What about Sid Meier?

Re:We still have them

[Surt]

RTFS. Not even RTFA. Just the summary. ;-)

It's about the lack of new 'game gods' being created by new titles. Sid Meier is well established. Since ... 15+ years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_(compute r_game)

corporations are to blame

[abigsmurf]

When all the biggest selling games tend to be licences and/or sports games developed with the intention of making a quick buck rather than being memorable, of course you're not going to remember the people behind it. It's another parallel to hollywood. You may be able to remember who directed Saving private ryan but can you name the director of American Pie 2 without using IMDB? We remember names when a person has specifically crafted a good game and it bears his trademarks. We don't remember mass produced stuff that could've been made by any number of software houses around the globe

EA?

[madnuke]

Electronic Arts seems to own them now, about 70 % of my games have their logo on which is the scary thing. They bought Maxis, asimulated Westwood Studies which made the best title of the 20th century, Command and Conquer.

Easy Answer:

[th1ckasabr1ck]

Back when John Carmack and Will Wright gained fame, a single programmer/designer/whatever could almost singlehandedly be responsible for a game, or at least a huge part of it. Nowadays like 1,000 people work on every game.

Also they were around at an oppertune time when there were HUGE steps being make (Carmack made DEATHMATCH, took mods to the mainstream, put graphics in games that were cool/fast enough to make my mom say "wow" - so many things we take for granted).

Re:Easy Answer:

[cliffski]

"Nowadays like 1,000 people work on every game."

Bullshit.
The last 2 games I bought were 'Masters Of Defence' and 'Lux', both done by teams of under 6 people. They both have low system reqs, can be bought online, and are great fun. They both start in less time than battlefield 2 takes to show its first splash screen.

There ar loads of high quality games being done by lone develoeprs or small teams. Ive been doing it myself since 1998
(http://www.positech.co.uk)
The 'hype' only occurs for the 100+ team games, because the jourbalists get flown to miami and given free drinks when they are shown the 'hands-off' demos of the big budget stuff to ensure glowing reviews. The little companies cant afford to shower journos with presents, and the website owbers with banner-ad revenue, so largely they get ignored, but we DO exist, and we DO sell games.

CliffyB

[scrabbleguy]

Gears of War creator CliffyB seems to be making a name for himself. Other than that the field seems pretty dry.

Most franchises these days are associated with the developing company. The Price of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy, Jak and Daxter, and even Grand Theft Auto -- everyone knows the companies behind the games but people don't really know the individuals. In the end it's probably a better way for the company to operate.

Re:CliffyB

[scaryjohn]

If your CliffyB is Cliff Bleszinski, he was one of the three primary designers of Unreal back in 1997, and the driving force behind its sequels.

I don't know if that means he's not a new Game God, or whether it means it takes ten years for them to percolate to that status.

Re:CliffyB

[El_Muerte_TDS]

You forgot Jazz Jackrabbit (1994). That's also something made by Cliff.

We don't associate games with Devs

[rsilvergun]

we associate games with publishing houses, which is just as the pubs intended. That way, when the guy who writes Madden for a living gets uppity and wants a piece of the billions being made off his hard work, he gets replaced. Hell, before too long expect to see most of EA's line up being coded in Malaysian sweatshops (Indian sweatshops cost too much).

Real Simple

[scolby]

They either drowned in a sea of sequels that didn't quite live up to the original (Carmack) or choked on their own hype (Molyneux).

lack of credit

[Surt]

Most established game houses don't give credit to the people who really do the design and the work. Instead, credit goes to the owners, and this helps to make it harder for the really creative people to break away and do their own thing. As one of the more glaring examples, you might note that it's not called 'Soren Johnson's Civilization IV'.

And he gets more credit than most of the people I'm thinking of.

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...)

Because they're not all American

[Medgur]

Keita Takahashi - Katamari Damacy
Tetsuya Mizuguchi - Rez, Lumines
Shigeru Miyamoto - Donkey Kong, Mario, Legend of Zelda, Nintendogs...
Masahiro Sakurai - Super Smash Bros, Kirby, Meteos (Produced by Tetsuya Mizuguchi)

Or, rather, anyone in the Sonic Team or Nintendo's HAL, EAD, and Intelligent Systems...

Re:Because they're not all American

[Jeffool]

Fumito Ueda - Ico, Shadow of the Colossus

Tim Schafer - Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, Psychonauts
Yu Suzuki - Virtua Fighters 1, 2, 4, and the upcoming 5; Shenmue I & II
CliffyB - Unreal, ummm... Jazz Jackrabbit? The upcoming Gears of War

And they don't mention that we now know 'more' designers than we did previously. The spotlight shined on the 'Gods' has been diluted a bit by the shoving of more people into the spotlight, without said light growing relatively. At least it seems that way.

George Broussard

[nick_davison]

Hey, don't forget George Broussard, producer of Duke Nukem Forever. Now there's a way to make a name for yourself.

Remember, Gods don't have to become Gods by doing happy, fluffy things for the good of humanity. Hades and Aries come to mind along with just about every other act carried out by Hera.

In thousands of years, mythology will cause Broussard to be remembered as the son of and (Chaos and Chronos), combining the powers of eternal time and the nothingness from which all else could have sprung but ultimately was delayed.

Carmack is a famous coder...

[9mm Censor]

Carmack is far more famous for his code (game engines) than his design work. Infact he is probably the only Engine Codin' (TM) Game God. Romero was the Design Game God at ID.

The lack of Game Gods has nothing to do with a lack of talent. Its an attitude. The difference between a great rock musician and a Rock Star, is attitude.

John Romero had great design talent, but it was his style and attitude that elevated him to a Game God status.

Well I can name two

[masklinn]

Chris Taylor of Total Annihilation fame (1998) soon coming back with Supreme Commander, and Will Wright (SimCity, The Sims) with Spore

It takes time.

[supabeast!]

The reason we don't have new superstars is that there just hasn't been time for them to become known. Wright, Carmack, Miyamoto, etc. did not become minor celebrities after releasing their first games, or even after releasing their first hit games. Given time and more titles, the new guys will get just as much attention as the old ones. A great example of this is Hideo Kojima, designer of the Metal Gear solid games. By the time MGS3 had come out (eight years ago), everyone who followed console gaming knew his name. If some of the other hot new devs out there stick with managing hot games, they'll make names for themselves, but it takes more than one or two hits for it to happen.

Game Play Important

[kmahan]

It used to be that to have a successful game you had to focus on gameplay -- not just pretty graphics and sound. There are some games these days that have good gameplay but years ago when the hardware could only pump out low-res bitmaps and every cycle mattered you truly had to think about how to make the game fun. And in the arcade business you had to make it fun on the first quarter otherwise no more got pumped in.

Eugene Jarvis, Larry DeMar, Ed Logg, Bob Flanagan, Owen Rubin just to name a few.

Advantages of the PC

[Spy der Mann]

ANYONE can make a game for the PC. Just look at the Barnett College guys and their Indy fan-game.

And here we find a forgotten element in game developers: DEMO VERSIONS. You can always download demo versions for PC games. But demo versions for console games can't be downloaded - you'd have to purchase a game magazine which includes whole CD or DVD with the demo of *ONE* videogame.

No demo versions, no public to impress. No public, no purchases. No purchases, no money.
That, and the fact that most (if not all) console games today depend on specialized 3D engines. Not only you have to make a good game, you have to make a good game with awesome 3D graphics. And guess what, this isn't always available for the "little guy".

In other words, there can't be new "game gods" until better development tools are available for EVEYRONE. And the industry is, again, in the hands of a few rich men.

what about 'directors' or 'producers'?

[schweini]

while i agree with the other people opinion that this lack of gods is mainly due to better team-managment and the fact that no single person plays that big a part in the development of a game as before, i am kind of surprised that the team-leaders responsible for the overall project don't get more credit - for movies, everybody markets the director or the producer of the movie, because that info gives you a rough idea what style or quality that movie will have - but i have rarely seen this in games (Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux, Will Wright and Ron Gilbert [what happened to him, anyhow?] come to my mind).
but which single person was the 'director' or driving force of e.g. Halo? Command & Conquer? Grim Fandango? Why do those people not get more credit?

One Name

[Colourspace]

Matthew Smith

sequels

[glsunder]

Let's see:
Lately, I've been playing: Civ4, Homm5, quake3 (yeah, I still do), and Elder scrolls IV. My wife plays sims 2 and is looking forward to Caesar 4.

How about "Where have all the New Games gone?"

Size & Effort...

[OneFix at Work]

It's really because of size and effort involved in doing a "good" game now...look at the origonal games by these developers...

John Carmack - Wolf3D
Will Wright - Sim City

Both "ground breaking" *IDEAS* in their time, and both have what would be considered lack-luster graphics now. The sad fact is that if Sim City or Wolf 3D were released today, they wouldn't be given the time of day. The big companies (Sony, EA, Atari, etc) have pushed us to the point that no one great person could come up with a new breakthough game...

Todays blockbuster games are developed by large teams of programmers, designers, sound artists, voice actors, 3D modelers, etc...

Of course, 2D graphics were much easier to hack together than 3D graphics...2-bit sound was easier to hack together than 16-bit CD quality surround sound...this is just the evolution of the gaming industry. Want to see where it's headed, look at film...we are about where film was back in the 60's...audiences are starting to demand more...story and gameplay have taken a back seat to better graphics and commercial crossovers (RIAA musicians, MPAA voice actors, etc)...

There will occasionaly be a few independent breakthroughs...but in general, these will be a thing of the past.

Where is video gaming's Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarantino? Open source is a good bet, but everyone knows open source are rarely the result of a single person's effort...Flash games show some promise...but just like independent film, fans are going to seek out these developers until they become a commercial success...