The State Of The Platform Game

simoniker writes "Gamasutra has a rather huge article up explaining the state of the platform gaming genre, with an interesting introduction: 'Platform games used to enjoy a 15% share of the market in 1998 - and considerably more in the 16-bit era - but [has now dropped significantly]. As a consequence, marketing circles are reportedly deliberating that platform games - as a genre - are not as attractive to consumers as they once were. We believe it's not an issue of genre, but an issue of effective design principles of past being forgotten.' There follows plenty of comparisons between Sonic, Mario, Rayman, Crash, Jak, and friends! Is it time for the platformer to make a bigger comeback?"

Comments

Gameboy advance

[Turn-X Alphonse]

I believe two Nintendo handhelds would like a word with you. Last time they checked 2D gaming was very much alive and quite popular.

Re:Gameboy advance

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Look at Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. Is it a Nintendo DS game? Naw- that would suck- its a 3D experience and with the right hardware it really rocks.

I suggest you look at the difference between a movie and a game. If it's about the graphics then you should question why you're playing the game instead of one which is fun even if it looks worse.

Remember the old days?

[starwed]

From what I remember, most of those platformers were licensed dreck. (Anyone ever played the Barbie game for NES? ^_^)

Wow

[Turn-X Alphonse]

I know we get some poorly displayed articles on Slashdot but this takes the cake.

(Page 1/31)

Why the hell do I have to go through 31 pages when each page doesn't even display a full browser windows worth of context? We have mouse wheels in 2006, lets use them for more than skipping banner adds and FPS weapon changes.

Look to the past...

[jamestheprogrammer]

Another truism however, is that if online reports are correct, not a single game - of any genre - has sold as much as Super Mario Bros 3. Being that we're in an industry which is largely built on forward thinking, it may be productive to look to the past for lessons in improving the present and future of games - and this includes looking in classic game designs and ideas.

Good idea! Now, let's take Super Mario, who sold well, and combine him with a gun, which also sold really well, and what do we get? MEGA SALES! MUAHAHAHAHAHA! ...I believe there is a Flash game somewhat like that somewhere.

Re:Look to the past...

[justchris]

I know you're trying to make a joke, but I'm willing to bet you that a game of Mario Paintball with all the Mario characters, would easily outsell Halo 3.

Stinkoman

[Dadoo]

As far as I'm concerned, Stinkoman has the market on platformers cornered. :-)

They Still Exist

[MBCook]

Platformers are still quite alive. 3 of the best platformers ever made were made in the last few years: the Sly Cooper series. On the GBA there was Drill Dozer by Game Freak last year, which was also quite fun. Nintendo is currently working on a sequel to Yoshi's Island (which same rate better than Super Mario World, both being amazing games). While Super Mario Sunshine was no Mario 64, it was still fun and had some moments of ingenious platforming (like the tighrope walks).

The difference is that platfomers aren't the "in" thing anymore. In the 16 bit era, if you made a game you made a platformer. That stayed true for a little while in the 32 bit era (Crash, Croc, Gex 3D, etc) but it faded as other kinds of games became the new "in" game. Right now, it seems to be a combination of FPSes and WW II games.

Re:The problem is 2D control.

[dosboot]

I agree. I've argued many times that there are things that 2D can do that 3D can't. It's much harder to make a fun 3d platformer because you can't expect the player to have things we take for granted in 2d games. What 2d games have that 3d don't is precision (i.e. moving, jumping and landing with near pixel perfect accuracy) and clear perspective (the enemy, and hence his attacks, are frequently not in view to the player in a 3d games). When you can't expect the player to have precision and situational awareness things end up being more boring.

I can't help but zero in on this part of the article:

"The real problem was the language barrier and a lack of understanding each other's creative goals. When I would pitch say, a 'platform shooter with racing bits inbetween levels, set in space', they told me it was unmarketable. There was no hook for them. For me, I was imagining the potential fun aspect, but for them, it was about trying to find something sexy or 'MTV" within the concept they could sell to a shop. Fair enough."

Any gamer or half decent developer thinks of video games in terms of their gameplay, and thus thinks in terms of controls. Marketers and publishers don't know anything about videogames. They think we play video games to literally play as the characters, not for the underlying gamey elements.

dead???

[Nossie]

I think you just need to see the review of 'new super mario bros' to see the 'state' of what platformers could be.... The sad truth of the matter is that 2D in general costs more due to animated frames and artists having to put their magical touch to the games.... but I dont believe they are dead, unpopular and crap as a whole.

http://uk.ds.ign.com/articles/705/705537p1.html

Admittedly NSMB is partly 3D, but I believe that this game still shares the same foundations and roots as a 'true' platformer. I think developers these days just havent got it into their head that it doesnt matter how many more polygons at an object you cant add gameplay with pretty graphics.

Re:The problem is 2D control.

[donscarletti]

Play a new Prince of Persia game. The original PoP revolutionised 2d platformers, taking them from something blocky and cartoonish to something dynamic with weight. Sands of Time did the same thing. It's dynamic, it's fluid, it's exciting, challenging, intuitive and immeasurably fun. The added complexity of the 3d levels allows an element of thinking, calculation and perception that was never the genre's strong point. The controls are the best feature. Move around with your arrow keys or stick, look about with your mouse or other stick, jump or roll with space (it always knows what you want), run on walls, grab stuff, swing, interact, whatever with right mouse button and unsheath/swing your sword with your left button. Just 5 controls and you can do anything you want.

Unless someone has played SOT/WW/TT they have no right to talk about any platformer because they lack context, unless they have played Ico of course, but what's the chances of that?

It's all about the Ds

[Teach]

I can explain the problem in two characters: 3D.

When it was still okay for games to be 2D, then platformers were super common. Jumping about in a 2D platformer is pretty trivial, and such games are fun. The past decade (ever since Mario 64, really), most games are in 3D. Jumping about in a 3D platformer is not trivial, and even usually frustrating. So developers have to decide between making a 2D platformer: and risk looking technologically out-of-date, or making a 3D platformer that just isn't as fun to play.

Google for 'hell is full of jumping puzzles' for a related perspective.

Now, I'm not going to say that it's impossible to do 3D platformers right. Obviously there are a few out there that really pull it off. But the majority do not, in my opinion.

Re:It's all about the Ds

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Jumping about in a 3D platformer is not trivial, and even usually frustrating.

Amen. I will never forget my first real foray into a fully 3d platformer, analog stick and all. it was MediEvil for the playstation, bought with the then brand new dual shock controller.

I loved that game. I still think its one of the best that the playstation has to offer. But I completely sucked at any jumping whatsover. there was this one level, the forest, and you had to jump over three quite large toadstools to get to a certian area. Failure meant instant death. It took me about twenty attempt before I could make it.

Nowadays this is no real problem to me, but I've had years of expierience with 3D titles. Every time I see a young kid trying to play the industries latest ateempt to woo them, I see an excercise in complete futility. The child will not be able to adequately move the character around flat ground, let alone coordinate a jump in three dimensions. They quickly lose interest in the game, and it languishes on a shelf. These same children immensely enjoy any 2D platformers I put on the emulators for them.

3D platformers are not simply 2D platformers with an extra degree of freedom. They have on average about five more degrees of freedom when you include the all the new axes, including the camera. They're really hyperplatformers, and their difficulty, and subsequent collapse of marketshare reflects this.

The genre is too limited.

[Chaffar]

The problem with the platform genre is that it's just very easy to make a boring and repetitive game. Do you really want to go through n+1 levels of jumping on the heads of enemies that look like they escaped from the Teletubbies world?

What the genre needs is a new Kirby (the SNES version, I dunno any other one), a game that just comes and changes the way the whole "Pick up mushroom/coin/magic fruit/hash bag and touch the enemies in a particular fashion", and 2D/3D shouldn't be an issue. Some games will feel better in 2D, others much less.

Re:The problem is 2D control.

[aichpvee]

Why do you even need the second stick for aiming/turning? How often do most people side-step in their daily lives? I can't remember the last time I saw someone circling strafing around a corner at the super market, can you?

Re:mmm 2d

[Leiterfluid]

So... Super Mario Sunshine? Sly Cooper?

Those are all 3-D platformers that were loads of fun. The number of dimensions are irrelevant, it's how the game holds your interest. My complaint about the Xbox 360 is that there aren't enough platformers. With one or two exceptions, it's all about sports titles and first-person shooters.

Re:The problem is 2D control.

[grumbel]

Then the camera sucks. That's not a problem of 3D, it's a problem with a specific game.

The fundamental problem is that you can't represent a 3D image on a 2D screen without loss of information. If you have a gap infront of you and a block further away it is impossible in a 3D game to tell exactly how far away it is, the only way to get the distance is by guessing. Simple example, how far do you guess are those blocks away from each other. Aproximatly 2 block sizes you might guess? Close, but totally wrong, lets enable shadows and look from it from another perspective. Woops, its actually a smaller block on the left and in the air, not an equally sized infront of the player. Now, this is an artificial example, but such situations happen all the time in 3D games, restrictive level design (don't just change platform sizes without giving clear hints, limit jumping puzzles to a streight line whereever possible, etc.) and a player controlled camera can help a bit, but it can't make the problem go away. Same is true for enemies, if you have an enemy infront of you the camera might be able to give a clear view, but if you have one behind you, one infront, one on your left and one on your right, the camera has a problem. Often you will also have plenty of level geometry inbetween you and the camera. Again there are solutions which will lessen the problem, but you can't make it go away completly. In 2D on the other side its very simply, the most complicated thing you might ever need is to zoom out, but beside from that everything is always in crystal clear view, no obscuring, no perspectivic problems, nothing, every distance can be messured down to the exact pixel count, in 3D that is simply not possible with a camera that stays attached to the player.