The Games Industry's 2007 Resolutions

Gamasutra has a piece up from earlier this week, with some late New Year's resolutions for the games industry. Their frequently-done 'Question of the Week' series pulled in comments from game developers and designers working right now, with their hopes for the best in 2007. From the article: "Now that 2006 is over can we finally stop worrying about who's going to win the console war and start focusing on the games? Arguing about which next-gen system is the best is as silly as arguing about which five-star restaurant has the finest china and silverware. It's the food on the plate that matters to the customers after all. With any luck we'll see delicious games with plenty of innovation on all of the platforms this year! - Patrick Curry, Midway Games"

Comments

The Gaming Industry's only true resolution:

[ringbarer]

More in-game Advertising. Ker-ching!

Creativity

[Chris Burke]

FTA:
Stop using wooden crates in games!

-Anonymous

Uh... How about metal crates?

-Game Industry

the annoyance .... the problems

[vaksion]

The console wars really do get on my nerves. Sure, the Wii's graphics aren't quite as good as the Xbox 360s or the PS3s, but Nintendo makes products based on a philosophy to make game systems that are affordable and fun. Family-ish type. there are SOME violent games for the Wii and Gamecube, but its mainly Mario Party type stuff. PS3 and Xbox 360 are very similar. I say whatever you get, fine. I'm jsut ready for the console arguements to end. I can understand if you want to defend your platform, but sometimes it goes a little far.

Re:the annoyance .... the problems

[anotherone]

SNES released, Nintendo touts its graphical superiority
Nintendo 64 released, Nintendo touts its graphical superiority
Gamecube released, Nintendo touts its graphical superiority

This is true, but if you plot the sales figures of each of those systems you'll notice that each sells less than the previous generation. This suggests that "better graphics" is not enough to sell a system. Nintendo is hoping (and despite my initial skepticism, I'm totally sold) that changing the whole formula is the shot in the arm the console market needs.

Time will tell, obviously, but if the Wii sales vs. PS3 sales in the last few months is anything to go by it seems like they might be on to something.

Wii is great, but don't forget about adults!

[smartyknickers]

I love my Wii - I think its a fantastic addition to the world of gaming as a whole; my grandparents now understand why its fun to play!

but lets not forget that more 'serious' gamers need more serious games; with mature themes. Why is everyone's first thought at the mention of Doom, Quake, Gears of War, etc just "oooh but the children..." - sod the children that's what the ratings and parental controls are for!

Just strikes me as weird that there can be this dualism to it all - and a total inability for people to draw parallels between films with their ratings systems and games (even though it was video nasties everyone was complaining about 20 years ago...)

</rant>

Re:Wii is great, but don't forget about adults!

[grammar fascist]

but lets not forget that more 'serious' gamers need more serious games; with mature themes.

Why does "serious games" == "mature themes"? Can someone explain this to me? How does violence and sex make something more mature?

I'm 30. Is it mostly teenagers that think this way?

Re:Wii is great, but don't forget about adults!

[westlake]

Can someone explain this to me? How does violence and sex make something more mature?

It's a question worth asking. You look at a game like Fallout or Planescape: Torment. Rich in ideas. Fascinating setting. Not without humor or a sense of tragedy. To me, that is mature.

Even though there are times I want to shut down all higher brain functions for a quick game of Bikini Beach Deathmatch Nude Teenage Volleyball: The Game of the Year Edition.

The Gamers' 2007 Resolution:

[cibyr]

Stop bitching when better graphics come out. Yes, gameplay makes the game - but good graphics can enable new gameplay and at the same time improve immersion. Even if someone produces a content-devoid shiny-graphics game to show off their new engine (Doom 3 anyone?), having a better engine is still a good thing and there's nothing stopping someone making a good game with it (Quake 4 anyone?).

In short: stop bitching. Vote with your wallet, and realize that game companies that don't want to develop their own engines will also vote with theirs.

Graphics vs Gameplay Myth

[adam31]

The industry needs to stop emphasizing graphics over gameplay.

It's amazing how often this myth is repeated. There is no such thing as a tradeoff between graphics and gameplay. They are two different things, written by two different groups of people, and the group of gameplay programmers is typically much larger than graphics programmers. If a game has good graphics and terrible gameplay, it's because of the attention to detail of the people who made it.

Re:Graphics vs Gameplay Myth

[buffer-overflowed]

It's not a myth. There are very few designers in this world who can crank out a fun, deep and somewhat novel gameplay design almost every single time. There are, comparatively, thousands of programmers who can make something look nice with the right middleware and thousands of artists who can model nice 3D stuff. I hear you can get trained at tech schools for either these days. There aren't a whole lot of really really good AI guys(basically next to none) or multithreaded DSP guys, but there don't have to be, just enough for the middleware.

Those designers are worth a LOT, and you can probably name them by name, not by company. EA has one, Nintendo has one, etc. They're all proven guys too, so they actually have clout in their respective organizations. They're roped into franchises in at least an advisory capacity, sure, but all of those are pretty golden.

So, most of the industry rips off it's predecessors for the gameplay, maybe adds a very slight twist or two in a "wouldn't it be cool if" brainstorming session and passes it off to the grunts. You have to have *something* to differentiate your game, so you pump everything into graphics and if we're lucky style. The cost of doing this is so high that you can't take many if any risks on or with unproven designers, so they never get to prove themselves. In return, while your gameplay may very well be solid, it's either something a competitor did, or something that's straight lifted from the pre-2000.

Insomniac made a name for themselves continiously tweaking Mario 64 with guns, and now combining two FPS cliches into one. Blizzard gets by by being high polish. Jaffe's a goto guy for genre kings. None of this is bad, but it's not what I consider excellent gameplay any more so than I consider a typical summer blockbuster excellent film. Or rather, it's not new gameplay, it's good gameplay I've played before with a new coat of paint. The differentation is the graphics, level design, and presentation.

You also have the fact that if the gameplay is golden, you don't need the graphics. Just enough to represent what you need to represent and whatever else you want to pump into it. It only matters for the first 15 minutes anyway.