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Spore Dev Down On the Wii
An anonymous reader writes "As reported by IGN, Spore developer Chris Hecker made a very quotable statement at a traditionally contentious GDC panel. At the 'Game Publishers Rant' event Wednesday morning, Hecker stated that he thought the Wii is a piece of sh*t. He went on to refer to it as 'two GameCubes stuck together with duct tape.' He also took Nintendo to task for not taking games seriously enough. 'It's not clear to me that Nintendo gives a s*** about games as an art form.'"
how much did sony have to pay him to say THAT?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
It must have been hard to build an industry changing motion sensing controller with spare GameCube parts and duct tape. Nintendo must have hired MacGyver!
It sounds like some game developers take themselves way to seriously.
Chris Hecker & his coworkers look like he's putting out a great game, but he needs to take himself and what he does a little less seriously. As a games consumer I care less about what neato tricks a developer can contort the console CPU into doing and more about how much fun it is. Which is why I'm getting a Wii, as soon as, well, I can find one locally!
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Hecker said the console isn't powerful enough to provide the next-gen experience he has been waiting for ... Although he stated the system is "severely underpowered," Hecker noted that he wasn't simply referring to the Wii's graphical capabilities. He wants to spend a console's CPU making games more intelligent, and he has found the Wii doesn't have the power to process things like complicated AI.
I guess it depends what makes a good game. Tetris was great, and didn't require complicated AI.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
"It's not clear to me that Nintendo gives a s*** about games as an art form."
Listen - I love insult comics. But look at you - stringing together accusations and a couple expletives and acting like you gave Nintendo a thrashing? Hmph - it's clear to me, you don't give a s*** about insulting as an art form.
Go listen to some Lisa Lampanelli, and THEN try it again, you miserable excuse for console troll.
Ryan Fenton
P.S. As you may have noticed, though I do like my insult comics, I personally suck quite badly at the game myself. You should see me in traffic - a dejected 'dude, you suck' is about at far as I can manage. Just saw the insult, and thought I'd give Lisa Lampanelli a plug.
we're still waiting for Spore... of course, once you do ship, all is forgiven.. at least until I get bored with the game and wonder why there's no multiplayer (and don't give me that "asynchronous multiplayer" crap).
How we know is more important than what we know.
Obviously he's never seen the envelope art in Nintendo Power.
This is the same guy who blasted the PS3 and 360 for being graphical powerhouses.
I've got one word for this guy: HYPOCRITE!
Death Jr. Limited Edition (2005), Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc.
Serious Sam II (2005), 2K Games
Serious Sam: The First Encounter (2001), Gathering
Icewind Dale (2000), Interplay Entertainment Corp.
Descent 3 (1999), Interplay Entertainment Corp.
Hot Wheels: Turbo Racing (1999), Electronic Arts, Inc.
Quake (1996), id Software, Inc.
Strange, I read about this a few hours ago and checked this guy's wikipedia entry, which for some reason got deleted a couple of hours ago.
According to the deleted article Spore will be this guy's first game to be released. Apparently he is known in the dev circles, but he has never released any game he has worked on, and he is probably part of a large team developing Spore.
And I would not be nitpicking here if his arguments made a lot of sense. No fanboy of any kind here, just someone who does not really like lazy or incompetent devs bashing things for the wrong reasons.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
not like everybody else a..licking & brown nosing not to harm any publishing rights on any future games... wii is a piece of sh.t . that thing has been out for more than half a year.... where are the fun games? how long are we supposed to play wii sports or zelda... don't get me started on the other crappy launch titles... not even worth mentioning. the wii is on par with the DC/xbox1 at best... and those things are 5 and more years old. 720p support with some decent hardware to bring the wii on par with sub 500$ PC would not have pushed production costs. the wii is about moneymaking. not about fun games. jeez one friggin controller is 40 bucks and its only half a controller. the people playing the fun games in the next few months will see what the other consoles are capable of and hoq much support they get wishing they had gone for them. even without hd screens
Make a system that doesn't suck? This guy has got to be high or something. How could something so successful suck? Not to mention the fact that the moron has completely disregarded the DS for all it's artistic content (A little game about a little hotel comes to mind). Finally the system has been out for what, 5 months now? You want art? Art takes time, and for the record, dogs playing poker is not art, spore, although cool, not art, Killer 7.... a pain in the ass, but probably art. Send this arse back to highschool where he belongs
but that's just my opinion -Mr. Miller
Developers aren't paid to be Nintendo fanboys. If you ever had to deal with Nintendo compared to Sony or Microsoft to develop a console title you'd bitch as well. Just look at how they flood their console with crappy movie licenses and treat 3rd parties like they're compeition. Nintendo will jerk you around in meetings for months, and then tell you "hey, will you make an XXX title" we don't care for you to make titles that are of YYY genre it's for kids! Only a very few titles like Capcom's RE4 are able to break the Mario ceiling. =(
Most developers I know hate Nintendo, but these are the same developers that make the longer playtime and story driven games -- odd huh? It's not about the gimped console as much as the asshats you have to deal with on top of it. Also the Wii is better for DS style games than PC style games, which are taking consoles by storm now on 360 and PS3. eg Networking = extended content + multiplayer and tons and tons of content. I don't actually dislike Nintendo, but I would never have to worry about cranking out a crap movie game. I just see them as dragging the overall quality of games down. Just look at Wii game scores on metacritic.
I am amazed how good news for Sony is ridiculed in post after post and bad news for Nintendo is dismissed with complete one sidedness.
While Sony Home may not be the greatest thing, it is definitely a big announcement and a good step forward. Similarly, the rant against Nintendo probably arises from a disgruntled company but it is something to think about.
There is an utter lack of objectivity in gaming related discussions on Slashdot. With what I would expect the demographics here to be, it definitely surprises me. For someone like me, who is trying to decide which console to buy, these discussions are extremely frustrating for their lack of objective analysis.
It is truly sad that a good post about PS3 is tagged "fanboy" just because it is about PS3
There is SOME truth. I own a Wii and hardware wise it isn't a graphical and processing monster. The core enjoyment comes from the controller. As a long time PC gamer (although I own all 3 last gen consoles) I have never felt comfortable with FPS controls on a gamepad. The Wii controller on the other hand is very intuitive for me to use.
I've purchased 6 games for the Wii (not including Wii Sports) and all have offered something interesting but a couple have shown limitations in the hardware. I really enjoyed Elebits but the last levels have some severe frame rate issues when you start flinging around vehicles and buildings. I also enjoyed (after turning the sensitivity WAY down from default) Call of Duty 3 but the graphics were inferior to Call of Duty 2 when played on a PC. COD 3 perhaps suffers more because the game needs to look more realistic than Elebits. Despite the issues I still feel that the control scheme for FPS style games is better than a gamepad and will get better as developers get used to the Wii remote. Here's hoping the next Metroid shines.
I am also disappointed that games like Rayman and Super Monkey Ball don't have well fleshed out multiplayer modes. The Wii really shines when you have a couple friends over and some sort of overall multiplayer mode structure around the mini-games would make this even more fun. I look forward to Mario Party but I would love to see something with a less inane board game component. Even something like the old Epyx Summer Games/Winter Games titles would be great.
I don't honestly think the Wii competes directly with Xbox 360 or PS3. It isn't trying to beat those consoles in the areas they have carved out. Much like the DS versus the PSP I think we will start to exclusives on the Wii that just wouldn't be much fun on a system without a Wii style controller. We are already seeing updates of DS games like Trauma Center and Cooking Mama. We have heard vocal support from companies like EA and Activision for Wii games. If the Wii continues to sell well I think we will see a lot of games developed to cater to this different, more casual market.
The Wii isn't the end all be all of game consoles, it's an interesting tangent that hopefully will continue to bring us new ways to play.
I currently don't own a HDTV and I do most of my "hardcore" gaming on a PC. I have a couple kids and Nintendo family friendly games are a good thing. I certainly don't rule out purchasing a PS3 or Xbox 360 a couple years down the road but right now for how I game and how my family games there isn't a point. But that's just my situation - I know there are a bunch of players who want Resistance or Halo 3 and couldn't care less about Mario.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
I know pro sports people do infact play what is essentially a game - but I thought that didn't apply to video games and that games were still supposed to be fun.
So are game developers not even trying to make games fun these days then?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
"It pains me to say this but I recently just took a job at EA. However, I worked for Will on the game you just saw, so.. [laughter] I'm going to rant about How Sony And Microsoft Are About To Screw Your Game Design. Look, how are we going to get where gameplay, graphics and physics are all evenly well balanced? At the moment we're the 120lb weakling, except nowadays his right arm here, graphics, is enormous."
--Chris Hecker, GDC, 2005
To paraphrase his annual edgy developer commentary:
"Game consoles aren't designed exclusively around my own personal favorite part of game design at this point in time."
This is notable? This is news? 95% of game developers probably feel this way. User interface people adore the Wii for exactly the same reasons next-gen artists and AI/physics programmers are frustrated by it. Parents adore the Wii's price for the same reason that high-end next-gen developers abhor it (because big honkin processors, it turns out, are not particularly cheap).
The real problem with his claim is the idea that serious and/or artistic games need massively powerful AI or physics routines in order to affect players. I do not agree that powerful technology is the only key to making an artistic game, or a game that has an emotionally powerful effect on people, or a fascinating narrative. Art direction and writing and getting rid of the publisher committee-approval ideology is a lot more important than neural networks. I am sure that there are certain types of artistic games that will become more prevalent as computing power increases, but to pigeonhole artistic games as games that have really good AI...isn't that just a little self-centered?
You don't know the back story. Nintendo has the arrogance thing too, and earlier. Remember Nintendo circa SNES/NES. Tyranical ball busters. The Wii's a hit and soon they will go back to that. Don't forget they are a business. They aren't cut elittle mario. They will play hardball. Who knows maybe Chris had three meetings. Sony is shitting themselves because they're falling behind so they kissed his ass and asked politely for spore to use there cell chip like a $2 whore. MS needs help keeping up as well so they kissed his ass and asked spore be multiplayer with rockets. Nintendo thought their back in the SNES/NES days and told him they'd licence him if they would just let them sleep with Chris's wife. Who knows.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
What was disturbing to me about his rant was not what he said, but how ill-defined his terms were. He professed that Nintendo does not take gaming seriously as an art form. What is this "art" he speaks of? As someone who studies philosophy, it's very important to me that such an objective argument as "Nintendo hurts art" is defined properly.
... dare I say "in the box" developers... improve AI so that the same old game is harder to the same old player. While this may be nice when playing a genre game, I fail to see the argument that it has been applied artfully from system to system. Granted, it can be. It just has not thus far and I do not see a majority of developers as taking full advantage of it any time soon.
When one speaks of art, they speak of aesthetics. What he argues is that function possesses the highest form of aesthetics. This is an extremely shaky ground for argument. One could easily weigh other factors of a game in with beauty... graphics, challenge, and enjoyment seem to be the pervasive accounts of beauty in gaming. Let's focus on these three and see if we can try to understand why Nintendo chose to focus on enjoyable rather than pretty and smarter games.
Graphics: Since the PS1, graphics seems to be the focus of most games. Higher texture density, more polygons, faster processing. These were what made a game "good" for a very very very long time. And while game sales were still increasing, more and more gamers were complaining that games seemed too much like their predecesors. Racing games were prettier, but they were still racing games. Fighting games had more characters with greater detail, but they were still fighting games. Sandbox games like GTA were getting sharper graphics and interfaces, but they were still GTA. Gamers were catching on that the industry is merely eating glitter to make the same old crap sparkle more.
Smarter: With the same old games comes the same old play. The only way to improve this is through design changes, which serves for temporary "newness" but quickly becomes associative in a near one-to-one nature from previous games in the genre. Final Fantasy games, for example, had a completely different play style from game to game, but functioned on the same basic prinicples as the last game (until 12). Fighting games may have different dynamics of button mashing and combo systems, but they were still button mashers. And racing games? Pfft. So in lieu of breaking the mold and trying to make games that challenge the mind in new ways, developers
Enjoyability: Remember the first time you played a side fighter? Remember the first time you played a virtual fighter? Remember the first time you played an RPG? Remember the first time you played GTA? Wow, wasn't that fun? And so much so, it's had many gamers chasing the carrot on the stick for the companies that put out those games ever since. Remember the first time you played a 3D game with an analog stick? Do you remember all the other games you played using the same analog stick? That was enjoyment you got out of EVERY SINGLE GAME from a simple interface change. Nintendo has been the pioneer in that market since the Super Nintendo (and arguably sooner). Sure, they made a lot of sacrifices to graphics and processing power. But let's face it, the Wii is enjoyable. They chose a different definition of "art". To Nintendo, making games a social experience, making them widely available, and making them "fun" was what "art" is. To Nintendo, their system is THE system to progress video games as an "art form".
To say that Nintendo does not do for gaming as an art form as much as the other two major systems does is rather blind, I think. No other company has been as influential on the other two systems as Nintendo. Top buttons on the d-pad? Sony used it. Trigger buttons? XBox. Analog sticks? Sony and XBox. Force feedback through controller rumble? Sony took it again.. this time illegally. And now, full motion sensing capabilities... SONY TRIED TO COPY IT. So my question to this man would be,
Finder of the any key.
According to him, the XBox 360 and Playstation 3 suck because they push graphics over gameplay and Nintendo sucks for pushing gameplay over "art".
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
First off, I have to question Chris Heckers developer quality, since he's one of the I need more power because I can't get my stuff run fast enough people. Quite often the issue is that the resources at hand aren't used optimal, either because the tools at hand lack the quality or the developers lack the quality. For example, I'm really impressed with Final Fantasy XII: the developers managed to squeeze quite nice graphics out of the total of just 36MB RAM they have at hand, especially the level of detail implementation is really good. Overall, the PlayStation 2 is a very good example at how developers had to learn to use the resources they have available: the first generation PS2 titles looked awful compared to the games that hit the market in the last few months. And I also remember playing around with graphics programming on my 80386. I never managed to have it do smooth animations, let alone smooth scrolling. Yet others proved that the hardware was not the problem (e.g. Doom), so the problem wasn't that the machine wasn't fast enough, the problem was that I didn't understand to use the resources adequately.
Also, the guy completely ignores Nintendo's situation: unlike MicroSoft and Sony, they don't have money to burn. They have to make a profit off their consoles from day one since that's all they do. They don't have other businesses with which they can make money (apart from licensing, of course). So they can't subsidize their consoles like MicroSoft and Sony do (they sell their consoles for less than their production costs).
This and other issues led Nintendo to conclude that they can't compete with this generation of consoles from MicroSoft and Sony. So if you can't play in the same market as the other guys you have to find another market, and that's just what Nintendo did, and successfully so. They managed to attract people to the Wii who wouldn't play console games otherwise. I know two couples who never had a console but found the Wii to be fun and bought it. They are both in their mid-/end-twenties and only now entered console gaming through the Wii and simply don't care about the PS3 or XBox360 since they don't appeal to them. Chris Hecker simply doesn't recognize that Nintendo is targeting a completely different audience than both MicroSoft and Sony.
Honestly, I don't think he cares what you think. This was directed at other developers -- and Nintendo itself. Remember the name is 'Game *Developer Conference'. He wants Nintendo to change before it's too late for them to get out of the trap of DS and GameCube rehashes. Do you seriously want to play the same games you played since the SNES over and over -- never getting something really different and new? That's what he's arguing with just a little bit of venom turned up to be sure it gets across.
He's just putting his foot down now before all the Wii is first party games and movie licenses. Toss in a DS and PS2 port ever so often. I think he's already too late for that personally. All Wii users seem to want is more Wii sports and mini games, and he's actually standing up and saying that's not good enough for Spore.
You have to define what a game being art means. Videogames are an art form of their own, you can't judge them by the same standards as films or music. Personally, I think there is art in, for example, Mario64's level design and its perfect blend of challenge, reward and novelty.
The weird thing is;
Microsoft and Sony talk about "games as art" on their websites.
Nintendo doesn't, but makes the most "art" type games of the three.
Apparently Hecker equates "art" to "high budget productions". Is a movie like "Pi" any less art then "American Pie" because it didn't have "next gen" recording equipment?
Besides; ever since slamdance(?) pulled the Columbine game, it seems the public isn't ready to accept games as an artform yet.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I doubt the guy even believed it himself. The conference needed a little controversy to spice things up, the online gaming rags promoted it to get more page hits, and now Slashdot does the same.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
> Do you seriously want to play the same games you played since the SNES over and over -- never getting
> something really different and new?
Yes. And so does everyone else. The sales of Mario rehashes, Virtual Console style stuff on Wii and XBox is through the roof - much higher than any expectation. Nintendo release old SNES and NES games for the DS. They released the old Mario games on a single cart for the SNES and even bundled the console with it (I miss Mario Allstars more than you can imagine)
Sony do the same thing with myriad rehashes of Crash, Spyro, Gran Turismo (same game, same cars, SHINIER SPECULAR HIGHLIGHTS, same lawnmower engines, MORE LEAVES ON THE TREES).
Modern games are only an artform if you think accurately modelling the wind on the leaves individually makes your car go any faster round the track.
As an owner of pretty much all of Nintendo's consoles, I'm not sure what the hell you're talking about. Are you telling me that Twilight Princess is the same game as A Link to the Past? Or that Super Mario Sunshine is the same game as Super Mario World?
Or are you implying that there are no artistic, fresh games on the DS? Kind of... absurd. The Wii will go the path of the DS: Some movie licenses, sure, but also a ton of innovative games you simply can't get on any other console.
Seriously, if anyone can be accused of constantly rehashing old ideas, it's certainly not Nintendo. Ever looked at the games available for Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2 or PS3? Frankly, I feel like I'm living in some kind of bizarro alternate universe.
How does 3 and a half months constitute half a year?
And just because something is expensive doesn't mean that it isn't fun. Speaking of expensive, buying 4 wiimotes plus console is still only about $400 (way cheaper than a PS3, and about the same price as an xbox 360 core system). If you decide to buy 4 nunchucks (I haven't played a game yet that needed more than two), the cost would be around $475, which is about as much as an xbox 360 pro.
And I'm arguing for the xbox 360 rather than the PS3 because it not only costs less, but at the moment has games that I believe are more fun (xbox360 had a pretty crappy launch as I recall, but they have had over a year now). Ultimately, I believe they are still competing for the same space, traditional video gamers who can devote a lot of uninterrupted time to a single game.
High-Def still isn't common. It might be in a few years, but since you're arguing about the next few months, I don't see why I have to consider any longer period of time. Besides, if you are concerned over expense, high def probably isn't for you.
Fun is not proportional to specs (I have more fun playing tetris than Call of Duty 3). And specs are only a rough measure of performance anyway, especially if you consider complex variables like distributed computing.
"the people playing the fun games in the next few months will see what the other consoles are capable of and hoq much support they get wishing they had gone for them." - yikes, if I have fun games, then my console has done it's job. If a console is better than the Wii in the future, then I'll get it in the future, and if I have something fun to occupy me (which I'm sure Nintendo will produce), then I can wait until prices plummet.
I just bought an xbox last year, and buying used/cheap games for it will keep me entertained for some time to come. Remember that not everyone cares about being on the bleeding edge (I wanted to make a Gentoo shot here).
I appreciate he thinks games are an art form, but they are the Yoko Ono of the games world.
This guy needs to go out and get himself a new gold-plated mobile phone, $4500 laptop or something, and calm down a little.
Gamers who want the MOST STUFF are really the worst kind. They'll play (and design!) any old shit as long as it gets a review score for prettiest, shiniest graphics or most surround-soundy audio. Gameplay? What's that anymore? We need a huge, epic storyline, that's what we need. Something that confuses the piss out of gamers and leaves them disappointed with a cliffhanger, when you spent the last 6 hours wandering through the ice level, lava/radioactive level, jungle terrain and arrid desert - token level designer staples - oh and the "totally fucked up and not necessary alien world full of pixel-accurate jumping puzzles" at the end.. but wow the STORY was great and you want MORE okay!?! And the enemies must be able to speak 3 languages including French with an convincing accent. Because better AI means a lot more fun.
I can only be impressed a couple of times when an enemy ducks behind a barrel on a level, and I have to walk out into the open and get shot in the face to even get an aim in. He should concentrate on level design and game mechanics, and stop whining about whether the CPU will let him add layers of sparkle.
You get what you sow. Sony used to be great, but they have constantly fucked with their customers for a few years now. Nintendo used to censor their games and be generally jackasses, but in recent years, they've put out great, fresh hardware and fun, innovative software, and they've shown that they've changed for the better.
People are annoyed at Sony, and they are happy with Nintendo.
So we have a so-so new product announcement from Sony, basically copying Miis, Achievements, Second Life, and adding an unhealthy dose of Micropayments. Big suprise, people don't fall for it.
Then, we have some developer basically explaining that the Wii is shit. Big surprise, people don't agree.
Both companies get what they deserve right now. So, what's your point?
Hey Mr "Im developing spore that is Procedural Rendering so im important but i really never shipped one game" do you really know the definition of a game? Seriously if he is thinking that games are art when he is coding Spore then i predict:
-->The game will be graphic expensive with no playability at all.
-->The game will have the best orchestra but it will play the wrong type of music for a specific event in the game.
-->Also this game is coming for PC right? Its Procedural Rendering so it will generate textures and landscapes on the fly and i do not believe it will be written on the disk due to access time.
Will this be the Windows Vista of games aka eyecandy 99%?
How could something so successful suck?
:-P)
Two words for you: Britney Spears (Paris Hilton was an acceptable answer too
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
I would actually disagree with you there. Nintendo makes some fun games to be sure, but I wouldn't call them art by any stretch. As much as I enjoy a round of Mario Party with my friends, or a few rounds of Smash Bros with my brother, or beating Twilight Princess a month or so ago (hint: quite a lot, for all of them), it doesn't make them "artistic."
Like it or not, artistic and fun are too different (but not mutually exclusive) things. And they aren't, generally speaking, the things that Nintendo is trying to do with first party titles or the Wii. An artistic game is the kind of game that I'd want to play just to play the game. Do something like see the interesting/beautiful scenery, follow a well-written plot, or something like that (same reasons you might want to read a book or look at a painting). Nintendo games are more of a "good clean fun" type of feeling, where I want to play them to get to accomplish some arbitrary objective (get the star, beat the boss, collect the power-ups).
I'd say if any console can claim to be the home of artistic games in the previous generation, it'd be the PS2. Games like Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, and Katamari are the first to come to mind when I think of games that I enjoyed for their interesting takes on the environment and story-telling.
Of course, that's probably because the PS2 had by far the largest install base in the last cycle. I'd be willing to bet that if you look at any given console generation, the most "artistic" system would also be the one that had the largest install base. Just because it's safest to make a game like that (one where you know it won't reach as high a percentage of the install base). If the Wii can grab that spot, it very well might be the next "artistic platform" (although I'd like to see what a game like Shadow of the Colossus could do with the PS3 or 360's hardware, personally).
(side note: I haven't seen Pi, but it doesn't take much to be more artistic then American Pie)
Why do you think AI problems grow exponentially? There are many problems for which the best known complexity is much better than exponential. Even for NP-Hard problems, polynomial-runtime approximation algorithms are often good enough.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
F*ck you. Who is responsible for state of gaming PC market??? Serious games??? Give me a break, moron.
Games must be ... games, not some twisted brain fuck. And you can go to hell with all the elitist' "seriousness" crap for "hard core gamers" of yours.
I want to have something just to forget about all the "dog food" I have to eat every day 8 to 5. No, I do not need your "serious" sh*t - I need games I can take half hour for a ride just forget the office' stench.
Banana Blitz - is cool. Nintendo's WiiPlay & WiiSports - best what happened in gaming in last five years.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
But it's still the first video game console I've ever seen with such widespread participation from people other than boys or young men... it's amazing to go to a friend's parents' house and see them playing right along with us, or at a party seeing just as many girls get involved with bowling or something as the guys...
You got some amazing posts today, including some kid who thinks The Sims was Maxis first big hit. HA!
This guy is a pro and works for a company that has been making fun games when SERIOUS power was 8mhz.
However since that day two things have happened. We have got more and mhz on our cpu's which at times seems to be only used to update the graphics. It is of no doubt that the Wii in this department cannot compete, pure polygon/texture/fps count it is going to loose to the 360/PS3 and ALL consoles will SUCK donkyballs increasingly so compared to the PC.
BUT that is not what this guy is talking about. He is complaining about lack of power to power NOT the graphics but the game itself. The AI.
AI is often ignored by gamers, we note it when it is bad but in most reviews a decent AI will take second place in importance to the graphics. I have no idea way I mean sure the human race has developed above such supervisial OOOH SHINY!
Eh where was I?
However in the background the AI code has been getting a share of the increased processing power and it shows. Today's AI in games is still nothing to worry any real human but if you ever make the mistake of playing a game from the dark ages you can see just how moronic the old ai's were that had to run on ancient hardware.
This guys complaint is that the Wii with it's simpler hardware just doesn't deliver enough oomph to power the AI in games.
First off, this guy works for Maxis, a game company that has NEVER produced a single OOOOH SHINY game. In fact all their games heavily depend on AI. This has been a problem for them before, their games never looked as spiffy as say your average FPS but offcourse the AI in them was still making your computer sweat. If you ever designed your own FPS level with AI monsters you know how fucking difficult it is to get them to walk straight down a corridor EVEN with massive pre-proccessing. In the sims you got easily a dozen AI all finding their way around a constanstly changing enviroment. While you maybe only seeing the effect of all your girls queing up for the same toilet and peeing themselves (Mmm, there might be a reality show in that) the fact that they even can do that requires a lot of code to be run.
There is a reason the full sims never appeared on the consoles, they just can't do it. (Try them if you don't believe them, the console versions are extremely reduced in capability compard to the PC versions)
Spore, if it delivers what it promises, is going to be much the same. For it to work there must be some serious number crunching going on in the background, yet ALL people see is the graphics.
Maxis can't produce a game that don't look the part. The graphics must pass a certain level or people just won't buy it. I am sure there is a market for a game with amazing ai and 8bit graphics BUT sadly maxis is to much into making a profit to explore that segment. Shame on them.
His claim is then that if a game is going to have passable graphics the Wii doesn't have enough horsepower left to power the AI. It is something PC owners have ALWAYS known. In some games you can alter your settings INCLUDING the ai difficulty level, lower it and performance improves. It is even simpler in the modding scene, lots of user made content mentions that you need a higher specced rig for their content then the original game simply because they upped the number of AI's in the game.
An old example is transport tycoon. A train game from I think the 386 days. If in those days you had more then a 50 or so trains in the game it would start to grind to a halt as the CPU simply couldn't cope. Nowadays a hacked version of the game happily runs with hundreds of trains of any length using the increased horsepower NOT just for graphics (increased resolution) but to run the AI for all those extra objects.
If you take the same game and try to port it fairly to all the gaming machines out there then the Wii is going to have to be the one with the smaller levels (less memory) fewe
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
his homepage is both highly graphical and innovative.. slashdot effect, plz. ;)
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
Look at the DS compared to PSP. Comparably "underpowered" yet while I own both, only one sits in a box, unplayed for months (hint: the PSP). Graphics are not the be-all for most people. Only lame undersexed gamers think they need a billion polygons/sec to make a "game fun."
As to his comment about the CPU not being fast enough for AI I guess we'll have to wait and see. Maybe he's used to bloatware or being inefficient. I'm sure Wii developers will figure it out.
Besides, I think the Wii has already proven it's not in the same track as the 360 and PS3. The games for the Wii will be much different in that they actually promote you to get into the game and not be all sloth-like on your couch with a remote...
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Seriously, I wonder whether people even bother to read things before leaping to the defence of their console of choice. "Oh no! He said bad things about Nintendo! Quick - to the ad hominem arguments and Chairman Miyamoto's Big Book of Wii Talking Points!"
For those who take a slightly more settled approach to life, it's easy enough to look at the title of the session. It's the Game Publishers Rant. This isn't supposed to be about rational discussion - it's throwing out exaggerated bile-fuelled versions of reality for the sake of engendering discussion. Look at the previous rants from the Game Developers Rants sessions in the last couple of years. The games industry is dead. Too many people whine about games not being innovative enough. Sony and Microsoft are going to screw your game design. Gaming has degenerated into a procession of Hot Babes - Sexy babes! Lesbian babes! Killer babes!
Do you think all of those things were intended as true statements? Of course not. Taking these rants as a genuine representation of the opinions of these developers/publishers is like assuming [url=http://maddox.xmission.com/]Maddox[/url] is an in-depth social commentator putting forward a model for how we can change life for the better. Take a chill pill, remove that radish from its current uncomfortable location, ignore the agenda-laden reporting from certain sites and enjoy the rant for what it is.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Um rehashes? Like Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3? Like the 7 versions of Ghost Recon? What about GTA? ...
:-), I think I'd go for it. "faster" doesn't mean 3GHz PPC, currently [iirc] it has a 66 and 33 MHz ARM processors. Bump those to 133 and 66, give it 16MB of ram instead of 4MB and it will have plenty of room to grow.
Nintendo is hardly the only developer with rehashes.
And besides, sales of the DS are um, a bit higher than that of the PSP.
If Nintendo decided the DS2 [or whatever] would basically be the DS + faster cpu + more ram and say motion sensors
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Here are some games which I would consider "art". I haven't played all of them.
Rez (PS1/DC)
Lumines (PSP/mobile phones etc)
Every Extend (freeware PC version/commercial PSP version)
Elebits (Wii)
Katamari Damacy (sp?) (PS2)
LOOM (DOS, Mac OS, Amiga, Atari ST, FM Towns, TG16)
I don't see any Nintendo games. Nintendo games are "good clean fun" as another poster said, but they aren't art.
You're right, I shouldn't just play the same damn games over and over. I should get a console that has Ridge Racer 7, Virtua Fighter 5, Metal Gear Solid 4, Gran Turismo 5, and other TOTALLY NEW game experiences.
I dunno, but I don't see any evidence at all that "the same games we played on the SNES" or even on the Gamecube are at all on the table.
Nintendo has provided a controller that pretty much guarantees a rethink of the game. Sony has provided the same thing as last time, only faster.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Electroplankton for DS. Art.
Just becausae you don't find WoW fun doesn't mean its not.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
If the rehashes are fun, then sure. That's why I play games, after all.
I don't play games to experience art. I go to the museum for that.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
I believe there is some confusion over the term developer here. A lot of people use it to mean a company that creates games. In this context Hecker is working for the developer of Spore.
I don't think Hecker is even a Jr. Developer or anything of the sort of the actual game though. He's just another indie hack who wants to think games are some art form (as if we need that particular elitist disease in video gaming).
He's got a bit of a reputation as a ranter about this sort of thing. It's no surprise he'd take this sort of position because Nintendo's mantra of "just make it fun!" is pretty much directly opposed to the idea of games as an art. It's kind of amusing he works for Will Wright though considering Will is probably the most likely dev in the industry to throw art out the window and worry about fun factor first.
He's just mad because they're selling like hotcakes and he can't make a game work on it.
And keep in mind where this guy Heckler works -- Spore is being developed at EA, which is pretty much the ultimate master of uninspired rehashes and artless greed-centered game development these days. Whatever you think of the Wii, Nintendo pretty much wipes EA all over the floor when it comes to gaming as an "art form."
We live, as we dream -- alone....
I think you are using a very narrow definition of art ...
...
... Games like Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Mario Kart, Mario Party, Brain Training, Nintendogs, and Wario Ware have all changed how the industry sees games or how a genre is seen.
You're saying that for an author to produce art it has to be a novel or epic-poem, for a painter to produce art it has to be a grand mural, or for a composer to produce art he has to produce an opera.
A haiku can be art, graffiti can be art, and a pop-song can be art
Sometimes the most important way to define art is that it changes the medium after it has been produced
Whether some people would like to admit it or not, Wii Sports could be seen as art because it was produced by the artists frustration with complicated control mechanics and massive budgets; and the industry will never be the same for having experienced it.
and he must adapt his code to this limitations, obviously with more horsepower many problems can be solved (an AI is very cpu consuming) but you gotta do what you can with the machine you're given, and you gotta make it fun. I've read recently a quote from Mizuguchi in the Art Futura of Barcelona last year, "If a game isn't fun, you've lost the path"
DON'T PANIC
I'd say any game has to have the gameplay and interactivity, otherwise it's just a book/painting/movie made in the wrong medium. Art also means to choose the right medium and use it. I'd argue that a game with a great story but gameplay that becomes a nuisance isn't deserving to be called (good) art because it failed to consider the medium it uses. For a game to be proper art it has to use the fact that it's a game to further its purpose (usually the expression of something although a lot fo art expresses nothing and just has interpretations tacked on to make critics feel more important). A good example for a bad art game is Killer 7, that would have worked better as a movie or something because its gameplay is pretty much just filler.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
You misspelled 'Riiiiiiiiiiiiidge racer!'.
All Sony really has to do is use the real time weapon swap to flip the DS and the Wii and hit the weak point for massive damage. I think maybe Sony's brother spilled coke on the controller so it's L and R buttons aren't working.
It's been a long time.
Uhhhh --- didn't you just point out Elebits? Isn't the Wii from Nintendo? One of us is missing something, here...
Music isn't art because of how the sleeve looks.
Movies aren't art because of the type of special effects it has.
Literature isn't art because of the font and page layout.
So why should games' artistic value be judged by their visuals? If anything can make a game art, it's the gameplay.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
### Yes. And so does everyone else. The sales of Mario rehashes, Virtual Console style stuff on Wii and XBox is through the roof - much higher than any expectation.
Do you have any numbers on this? Sure, the VC and XBoxLive do sell stuff, but I think a large part of that is because it is cheap, not because the games are old rehashes. A bit nostalgia is always a nice thing, but Zelda:TP already had for to much of it and felt like a rehash, not like a good game and my interest in rebuying all the old NES and SNES is also rather limited.
### Gran Turismo (same game, same cars, SHINIER SPECULAR HIGHLIGHTS, same lawnmower engines, MORE LEAVES ON THE TREES).
GT is a simulation which tries to be realistic, so its natural that with each release it gets a little closer to its goal, they can't just be innovative and add turtle shells, since that would totally break what the game is about. That said, its really time for a damage model in GT, kind of miss that since GT3.
### Modern games are only an artform
Have a look at LittleBigPlanet for the PS3, that game looks amazing on a lot of levels and its exactly the game that I would hope Nintendo would do, but they simply don't do innovative stuff any more, instead we get a tennis game in which you can't even control the player, good for capturing the casual gamers, boring for everybody else.
A motion controller is a nice thing, but if all Nintendo does with it is a bunch of casual gamer games and yet another Mario, Zelda, Metroid, than I seriously couldn't care less.
Really, read the subject.
They are game console systems, to play games. Yeah! you play games to have FUN, you go to the museum to be entertained and to get insight. I love museums, all of the types. I love art (hint: when you go to UK the museums are almost always Free [as in beer... but no, no free beer]!) and I love also street art (Have any of you heard about Gaudí?).
But when I am at home and turn on my game console is because I want to have FUN, to have fun with my friends, to have fun with my family and to have fun myself. It doesnt matter if I have to shoot ducks, balloons, or move like an idiot (just record yourself while playing the Wii =o)) or slap some bitches (GTA), I am just having FUN.
If I want to see art at my home I will go to my computer and browse for some art. And If you try to sell me the idea that some games are also art. Oh fucking well, there are games that are a form of art. But those are games that are transcendental, not any of those hundreds PS2 games that you played once and now you dont even remember you played.
Games like Pong, Arkanoid, Tetris, Lemmings (beautiful), Mario (1 and 3), Super Mario World, Duck hunt, Thousand Arms, Final Fantasy (from 1 to 5... maybe 7 which I never played but not from 8 to 20 or what is the last one?). And so long, some games that *really* marked a new trend on games... The Sims is another of them, but I would be *more* inclined to think Sim City IS the one to be considered art.
But if we visit the main definition of art:
"Something is not considered 'art' when it stimulates only the senses, or only the mind, or when it has a different primary purpose than doing so." From the so used wikiedia
So yeah, all of those games whole purpose is to suck cash of we the innocent buyers, so you might state they are not really art.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I don't know. Ask Tom.
Announcer: And now, here is a magnificent recording made in the Wide Valley, of an ordinary travel agents office. Note the huge-breasted typist in the background. Smoketoomuch: Good morning. Secretary: Oh, good morning. (sexily) Uhm, do you want to come upstairs? Smoketoomuch: Beg your pardon? Secretary: (sexily) Do you want to come upstairs? (brightly) Oh, or have you come to arrange a holiday? Smoketoomuch: Uuh..to...to arrange a holiday. Secretary: Oh, sorry. Smoketoomuch: What's all this about coming upstairs? Secretary: Oh, nothing, nothing. Now, where were you thinking of going? Smoketoomuch: India. Secretary: Ah, one of our adventure holidays. Smoketoomuch: Yes. Secretary: Well, you'd better see Mr. Bounder about that. Uh, Mr. Bounder, this gentleman is interested in the "India Overland". Bounder: Morning, I'm Bounder of Adventure. Smoketoomuch: Hello, I'm Smoketoomuch. Bounder: Well, you'd better cut down a little then. Smoketoomuch: I'm sorry? Bounder: You'd better cut down a little then. Smoketoomuch: Oh, I see! Smoke too much so I'd better cut down a little then! Bounder: Yes, ha ha... I expect you get people making jokes about your name all the time, eh? Smoketoomuch: No, I never noticed it before. Bounder: So, you are interested in one of our adventure holidays, are you? Smoketoomuch: Yes, I saw your advert in the bolour supplement. Bounder: The what? Smoketoomuch: The bolour supplement. Bounder: The colour supplement. Smoketoomuch: Yes, I'm sorry, I can't say the letter 'B'. Bounder: C? Smoketoomuch: Yes, that's right. It's all due to a trauma I suffered when I was a sboolboy. I was attacked by a bat. Bounder: A cat? Smoketoomuch: No, a bat. Bounder: Oh...can you say the letter 'K'? Smoketoomuch: Oh, yes. Khaki, kind, kettle, Kipling, kipper, Kuwait, Keble Bollege Oxford. Bounder: Yes, yes but why don't you use the letter 'K' instead of the letter 'C'? Smoketoomuch: What, spell bolour with a 'K'? Bounder: Yes! Smoketoomuch: Kolour! Oh, thank you! I never thought of that. What a silly bunt. Bounder: Anyway, about the holiday... Smoketoomuch: Well, yes, I've been on package tours many times, so your advert really bought my eye. Bounder: Ah good. Smoketoomuch: Yes, you're quite right, I'm fed up with being treated like a sheep, I mean what's the point of going abroad if you're just another tourist carted round in buses, surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Boventry... Bounder: Absolutel.. Smoketoomuch: ...in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their 'Sunday Mirrors', complaining about the tea, 'Oh they don't make it properly here do they not like at home' stopping at Majorcan bodegas, selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamares and two veg...
Bounder: Yes.
Smoketoomuch: ...and sitting in their cotton sun frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh...
Bounder: Yes.
Smoketoomuch: ...cos they 'overdid it on the first day'! And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellevueses and Bontinentals...
Bounder: Yes, yes...
Smoketoomuch: ...with their modern international luxury roomettes and draft Red Barrel and swimmingpools...
Bounder: Yes.
Smoketoomuch: ...full of fat German businessmen pretending they're acrobats, forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging in the queues and if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss the bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup,...
Bounder: Shut up.
Smoketoomuch: ...the first item on the menu of International Cuisine,...
Bounder: Shut up, please!
Smoketoomuch: ...and every Thursday night the hotel is a bloody cabaret in the bar featuring a tiny emaciated dago...
Bounder: Please, will you shut up.
Smoketoomuch: ...with nine-inch hips and some bloated fat tart with her hair Brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners.
Bounder: Shut
The thing is, more power makes a platform easier to program for. I personally haven't used the Wii devkits before, but from what I hear this guy's discription is pretty accurate "two GC's stuck together" indeed. And there's nothing wrong with that given their focus isn't graphics. The thing is, why is Nintendo automatically labeled "enabler of innovation"? If anything MS and Sony are at least trying to open up their platforms to non-industry developers (more so on MS's part with XNA). By making their platforms more accessable to indy developers, and making it easier for the non-Carmacks of the world to put out something professional looking, MS and Sony are tapping into a source of talent and creativity that frankly it seems Nintendo could care less about.
Nintendo made the "bit generations" series for GBA, which is just as arty as Okami or Rez. Orbital in particular is great. I'd agree with you that that Nintendo's big games tend not to be so arty - except Wind Waker which got heavily criticised and sold badly simply because it was arty...
And if the museum should happen to be the Tate Modern, you can ride on a giant slide while you're there. Now THAT is art.
"not clear to me that Nintendo gives a s*** about games as an art form"
Well Spore had better really kick some ass... lest this guy earn the title 'John Romero Jr.'
No one can seriously argue that Nintendo doesn't consistently churn out some of the best, most innovative and entertaining titles on any system. And has done for decades. It doesn't even matter what hardware they are designing for it seems. GBA, NDS, and the Wii are technically inferior to current Microsoft and Sony products, sure... but are they really less fun to play game on? Oddly enough, no.
Look at any top-## games of all time, and Nintendo usually 30-50% of the top 10.
I know this guy is taking Nintendo on for its hardware design, but I think he choose his words very poorly.
At the Academy Awards, you don't see a cartoon going up against a documentary or a full-length motion picture (typically, of course). Why even bother stating that a system is underpowered?
This guy complaining about the lack of processing power in the Wii is like someone complaining that an apple isn't an orange. It never was supposed to be.
Vocal minorities are often confused with silent majorities.
"How could something so successful suck?"
Welcome to your new job at EA. I think you'll fit in perfectly here.
Waiting for Warhammer Online.
Probably not, but Super Mario Sunshine is pretty similar to Super Mario 64, for example.
>Also, the guy completely ignores Nintendo's situation: unlike MicroSoft and Sony, they don't have money to burn.
Nintendo has over 4 billion dollars in cash in the bank, and carries no debt. Meanwhile, sony is in heavy debt. Nintendo has this buffer to weather another "virtual boy" level failure. Not only do they have money to burn, but they purposefully keep it accessable.
Do you have any numbers on this? Sure, the VC and XBoxLive do sell stuff, but I think a large part of that is because it is cheap, not because the games are old rehashes.
Microsoft's latest numbers show 25 million downloads from XBox Live Arcade. Nintendo's last released numbers were 1.5 million downloads from the Virtual Console channel, and that was back in January - only a couple months after launch and before most of the top tier titles (Mario Kart 64, LoZ: Ocarina of Time, Super Mario World, etc).
Similar only in the most basic sense. That's like saying Quake is similar to Counterstrike. They're games of the same genre, of course they're going to be similar on some level.
The actual gameplay and goals for Sunshine were very different from 64. Sure Mario jumped around, collected shiny objects, and saved the princess (yet again) but that's where the similarities end and the new begins.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
Dunno, the difference between Sunsine and and 64 is a lot bigger than between a typical N64 platformer and a typical Cube-era platformer. It's also a lot bigger than the difference between most FPS games, or between versions of most sports franchises. In fact, other than Mario jumping around in a 3D world, Mario 64 and Sunshine aren't all that similar... The Water thing in Sunshine kinda changes the game mechanics quite a bit.
I'll bet you $573 that Elebits is not made by Nintendo.
(Since about 1 out of 100 people will get that reference... it's by Konami)
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
"the wii is about moneymaking"
I'll bet the guys who developed the PS3 wish they could make the same statement...
First, you mean "couldn't care less." Oh, and they have announced that they intend to support indy developers with their Virtual Console, but not many details are out yet. Opening up your platform to more developers may be a good idea, but it's not innovative, unless you're using some dictionary that nobody else is familiar with.
The reason they're labeled as an "enabler of innovation" is because they innovate. Practically every single change in the modern controller since the days of the Atari was created by Nintendo. Everybody else has been copying their ideas since then. They're also the only company that is focusing on making a gaming platform rather than some crazy multimedia hub.
"we are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
More importantly, give the frigging thing a file system instead of pinging random points in memory. We've gone beyond that these days, I would think.
I'd also like to see them go with a form of SD memory in the cartridges (if they stick to cartridges), as it's gotten cheap enough that you could easily get quite a bit more space than the traditional PROMs.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
I have to point out that the only two games that are REALLY breakaway sellers
ie. MUCH More than 16 million copies
are Super Mario Brothers (NES) and Tetris (GB) both of which were pack ins with their respective systems and not ACTUALLY sold.
Let's see how he feels two years from now when Spore is released on the PC and nobody buys it since PC gaming is effectively dead by then. So EA pressures Maxis to port it to the winner of this gen's console race the Wii(speculatively of course), due to it's low development costs. Let's see who's laughing then.
The Wii SDK costs about $2000, which is thousands of dollars cheaper than for the 360 or PS3. Who cares about indie developers, again?
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Uh... DS carts do have a filesystem. If you're asking about why the DS doesn't support off-cart storage of game data and media, well, that's one reason the DS is $70 less than the PSP, is two-thirds the size, and runs about three times as long on a charge.
Perhaps it could be stated more simply: a console (no matter what console) isn't a personal computer. It just ISN'T. It's a video-optimized, hard-coded processor with extremely limited inputs which usually uses the extraordinarily-shitty "standard TV" as display.
Duh?
And yes, products can be developed that will run on both, but the compromises required to make it a 'console-able' game are immediately obvious on any PC - look at Oblivion. The most popular (and one of the quickest-released) mods take advantage of the better resolution of a monitor to immediately make the bag/inventory system 100% more useable, with more data displayed, clearer/smaller text, etc.
So when he says "the WII is crap" what he's really saying is that "we're pissed that they optimized this for something other than controlling our game, because we're having to make ridiculous, possibly fatal compromises to try to sell into that market".
Is this a shock to anyone who's played a RTS on a PC and then on a console? No mouse = serious suckage. Spore = RTS strategy = (WII+no mouse) = suckage.* Brilliant insight, dude.
* yes, I know the WII has the point-click thing going, but watching people play at length, first their click targets are HUGE because it doesn't have nearly the precision of a mouse, the response-time of a mouse, nor (apparently) the sample rate of a mouse. WII controller is only a feeble mouse-emulation at best.
-Styopa
"Do you seriously want to play the same games you played since the SNES over and over -- never getting something really different and new?"
So let's see, countless first person shooters, racing games, and gangster hoodlum culture games... this is the answer? That's mostly what we see on the other 2 platforms. So he wants Nintendo to also keep churning out THOSE peices of shit?
Tetris has a flawed scoring system. Getting doubles and triples probably takes more talent (or at least, a larger talent-to-luck ratio) than keeping one deep gap open and waiting for I-pireces, but Tetrises are worth like four times as much as triples.
The game itself is ok, but it's no Tetris Attack / Pokemon Puzzle League (the two are pretty much the same)
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
Rez is PS2 / DC.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
The line you quoted from the article, "He then shared quotes from executives at Sony and Microsoft talking about games as a serious artistic medium, and then a quote from a Nintendo executive saying the company only wanted to make "fun" games." says it all.
I've heard Wii fans time and time again touting the fun they've experience when playing the Wii and pointing out that's a key difference between the Wii and other platforms. Awesome. Fun is great, and I'm glad you like it, but in and of itself, that's not art. In fact, if you restrict yourself to fun, you place real limits on the types of art you can express. If you do it with a visually restrictive medium, you place limits on the quality of art you can express.
Art is notoriously difficult to define, and a couple of it's components can certainly be minimalism and fun, but I like to think of this argument as more of a "what canvas do you use" kind of an argument. You can create art with a notebook page and a #2 pencil, but many artists choose to use large canvases and paints because they believe they have a greater range of color and beauty to work with . You can create art with an old 110 camera, but many artists choose to use large format cameras because they believe they have a greater visual quality for their artistic expression.
They Wii expanded the potential for art in one direction, the controller, but they severely restricted it in another, the visuals. They went on to release a bunch of games that rate high on the fun scale, but quite low on the art scale, such as the copy of Wii Sports included in every box. Mario Galaxies is one of the first games I've seen on the Wii from Nintendo itself that I think has the potential to go in the art direction without needing more power to express that art. Zelda, on the other hand, had the potential to be much better had it had a state of the art graphics engine to work with. It was artificually limited by the hardware. It was, relatively speaking, working with pencil and paper when the artistic vision was crying out for canvas and paint.
When you say the Wii is fun and you want fun, then you're comparing oranges to the article's apples. He's right, the Wii is restricted in it's potential for art creation and Nintendo has more or less stated that they don't really care about that. Much like quite a lot of TV, the fans are saying that's ok with them, as art wasn't really what they're looking for. More power to you, but some of us want to have more emphasis on the equivilent of "Apocalypse Now" instead of the equivilent of "Teletubies". Though it's possible to get the former on the big screen, it's impossible to truly feel the power of the former without a theater (or an awesome home theater). The author wants this potential, and I'm pretty darn happy that he's demanding it.
Your argument is flawed. Consider this: who has more money, you or Mike Tyson? Tyson is millions of dollars in debt while you probably have a positive net worth. Now, which one of you could go out tomorrow and buy a new Lamborghini? The answer is Tyson and not you. It's like that.
Seriously (not trying to troll), it is usually a sign of a very average developer when they feel they need to rely on pure horsepower to achieve anything remarkable. There have been coders like this throughout game dev history, and the thing to note is most of them end up OUT of game dev, doing something more standard like database development. It takes a certain "special" kind of programmer to appreciate and meet the challenge of systems with restrictions (which includes ALL consoles--They all have restrictions in some form or another that are far from the "ideal").
These people don't belong in game dev. Go work for oracle Mr Hecker. Go work in an industry where you can just scale the server specs to meet your short-sightedness and level of programming incompetence.
In your rush to make analogies between gaming and the visual arts, you've forgotten that gaming isn't a visual art. You're missing the symphony, complaining that the violin isn't a Stradivarius. (Don't ask me to spell it right -- the point is that I don't care.)
Gaming is an aggregate art form so it's easy to make the mistake. Consider film -- while it may have music, the purpose of film isn't the music. While each frame is technically a photograph, the meaning of film isn't the same as photography.
Where it comes to games, the core of the form isn't story, or sound, or visuals, though all of these may be present. The purpose of gaming -- the reason we have a new art form in the first place -- is the "constructed experience". Who cares that the court in Wii Tennis doesn't look like real grass? The point is the sensation of playing tennis. Who cares if Twilight Princess isn't cinematic? The point is playing out what it feels like to be the legendary hero who ventures into the dungeon and rescues the princess.
Consider FFX -- cinematically impressive, but as a game I feel that it falls flat, because it doesn't capture any particular experience -- it isn't fun. You can trivialize the word "fun" all you want, but I think to seasoned gamers it can really have quite a deep meaning. If fun is so trivial, why is it so common for a game to fail to be fun?
The Wii allows for new experiences to be constructed in a new way. That's why it's an important advancement in the state of gaming art.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
This article mentions it, but it's easy to miss. Chris was talking in the annual "Developers Rant" forum, which is sort of an tongue-in-cheek, humor-laced exaggeration-fest. I'm sure he doesn't hate the Wii *that* much. His point was he wishes it was a faster, basically. You have to be able to see through the satire and wit, to understand what he's talking about.
Of course I wasnt there though - it's possible he could have taken it too far, it's always hard to judge where that line is and this guy seems to enjoy pushing that line.
FUNK!
But Tyson wouldn't OWN the Lamborghini, the bank would.
Pathfinding and physics are all well and good -- indeed, I would love MORE processing power for pathing on Supreme Commander (fex). However, just because the Wii can't do EVERYTHING doesn't mean it can't to SOMETHING -- and do it well. I'm enjoying the Wii immensely, and that's all that really matters to me.
"""
Do you seriously want to play the same games you played since the SNES over and over -- never getting something really different and new?
"""
You could actually insert SNES with ANY console (or really company) and it'd still be true. The GAMES INDUSTRY itself is nothing but rehashes. Why? Because companies don't like this thing called risk. So, they beat to death anything that works.
But, then again, Nintendo IS actually doing something. Spore may be one game, but the Wii itself has is an innovation which will bleed into ALL its games.
"""
All Wii users seem to want is more Wii sports and mini games, and he's actually standing up and saying that's not good enough for Spore.
"""
And where the hell are you getting that? Because that's exactly wrong (btw, I'M a Wii user).
If they make a DS2 they had better give it the ability to do linear texture filtering. That's just driving me crazy. The DS can currently do antialiasing but not linear filtering!
With all due respect, I picked up a DS < 2 weeks ago and I'm currently addicted to Final Fantasy III. My fiancee and I have logged more hours on the Wii playing Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda, Columns, Donkey Kong Country, and Zelda:Links Awakening than we have playing Wii Sports, Zelda:Twilight Princess, Red Steel, Dragon Ball Z, Rayman, and Marvel Alliance.
So, do we really want to play those games? Yes, yes we do. And I've been emulating games on my PC since 2000 (since I could play some of my arcade favorites that never translated to consoles very well or at all). I STILL buy VC games when I can get (or have) them on the PC for free. Playing these games on the PC just isn't as fun, or I'd rather be playing WoW than Mario on my PC. The Wii is for family, party, and retro gaming for me mostly and it's priced right for it.
Does that mean I don't want to see good new games? Of course not. I'm still looking to play Trauma Center, Excite Truck, and Elebites. I look forward to Mario Party 8 as it's a simple game I can play with my family. I look forward to Metroid as well. Other than that, I'm just biding my time for some real killer 3rd party titles that will probably start popping up in a year or 2, since the Wii is getting super market penetration and developers won't ignore that, despite being 'two gamecubes taped together'.
Of course, it seems that Chris Hecker's idea of 'art' is the latest photo-realistic graphics. Less he forget, that Nintendo had some very good 'artistic' attempts at games. Heck, they had a game called "Mario Paint" where you could be your own artist. *chuckle* but seriously, the Wind Walker was one of Nintendos attempts at focusing on artistic design into a game and it was criticized by so many who think along the same lines that 'art' = 'photo-realistic'. I guess not to many people visit the art museums. Lets just say, there's a lot of interpretive paintings hanging on the walls, not just photographs.
Allow me to point out your earlier comment...
First, why would Mr. Hecker care what other people are releasing on the system in relation to how it would effect the release of Spore? It's arguing that "Hey, someone made a crappy game on the Wii so my game is now incapable of being played on the Wii". Which, of course, isn't logical. And why would Mr. Hecker care what 'all Wii users want' when he's suppose to be addressing game *Developers and convincing them to design 'outside the box'?
Mr. Hecker is simply bitter. He's crying about customers buying habits and he's blaming it on Nintendo and developers. Why? Probably because he's mad that Nintendo decided to not go down the 'more power is better' route and that the consumers liked this and responded with their dollars. Probably because they cannot have Spore do what they want it to do on the Wii and the Wii is the hottest system at the moment. This means that Spore will either have to 'slimmed down' to fit on the Wii structure to tap that huge and increasing market or they don't release it on the Wii and lose all those potential sales.
Guess what? Developers make games for a system. Companies don't make a system for a developer. If your game idea won't fit on the most popular system then you're out of luck. If you're game is so good, make it as you want it, on the system that can support it, and it will sell that system (think GoldenEye). When all else fails... there's always the PC. =)
Cheers,
Fozzy
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
* Before you hit the flame button, lemme say I love the Wii, I think it's great. I don't think it's shit at all. In fact, the potential of all of the consoles impresses the hell out of me -- and for my money, the Wii takes the lead by a mile in that race.
... well it doesn't take a rocket scientist to notice that one of these things is not like the other. This is why I've repeated said (and have been repeatedly "corrected") that Nintendo made a big mistake not making the Wii more powerful. Nintendo has totally dropped out of the Next Gen race and are off doing their own thing. I think it's great, but it isolates the Wii from mainstream console development. And that unfortunately means that the Wii isn't going to see many triple-A titles, titles whose budgets are usually only justifiable to publishers when they can count on them being cheaply ported to multiple platforms. Wii doesn't make it so easy to stuff a PC, Xbox360, or PS3 experience into it's cute little innards. Multi-platform development takes a lowest common denominator approach in order to get a consistent experience on all platforms. The Wii is so backwards in terms of CPU and GPU power that such an approach seriously hampers what's possible on all other platforms. At the end of the day, you want your product to look as good as possible and if that means cutting the Wii out of your plans, so be it, it will happen. Sure, if the Wii continues to sell, you can count on plenty of Wii-only titles, just like there are plenty of GameBoy-only titles. But what you won't get is all the PC/360/PS3 titles. In terms of installed units (PC+360+PS3) > Wii and publishers know that.
However, from the perspective of a developer who is doing cross-platform development for PC, Xbox360, PS3, and Wii
That's why I think Nintendo made a mistake with the Wii, why I agree with Chris Hecker about the anemic Wii specs, and why I hope for a shorter-than-average life-cycle for the Wii with the imminent release of a Next Gen Wii that offers the best of BOTH worlds in terms of graphics zazz and gameplay spazz, hopefully sometime in the next three years.
+0 Meh
I think Nintendo made some shrewd choices; the Wii is clearly an interim step because (in my opinion), the time is not quite ripe for a "next generation" console. I say this because two features that would define the new generation, ubiquitous High Resolution TV and cheap high density optical storage (HDDVD and/or BluRay) are still too expensive to be included (or assumed) in a consumer device. It seems to me 2 years would have been ideal. But Sony and Microsoft are kind of stuck with their hand at this point. Nintendo, by evolving the game cube is in a position in the next generation to offer backward compatibility, better graphics, and better storage cheaper in 2-3 years. Those technologies will be common, and because they've charged "only" $250, consumers won't feel ripped off when the next shiny thing comes out.
That said, Nintendo has got to execute to pull this off. There's the engineering challenge of creating this next generation, and more importantly, they've got to get the developers on board. Their big strength now is that they have this great input device that people are expecting new games to actually use. Wii Sports hints at what's possible, but I really want to play a good Tennis Game, or a good Baseball Game, or whatever, not the demos they throw into the box.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Man, I'm sick and tired of every creative pursuit being labelled 'art'. Programming is art, drinking tea is art, playing soccer is art... Fine art is art. Applied art is craft. Once you create something for a specific purpose other than aesthetics (anything with utility, basically) it ceases to be art.
Hecker, as far as I know, is mostly interested in doing cutting edge system level stuff, physics in particular.
The Wii is not a bleeding edge console in terms of CPU power, and it lacks HD. Any developer who is primarily interested in those areas is going to hate working on the Wii.
END COMMUNICATION
What they're trying to design isn't smarter systems, or better systems -- hell, it's not difficult to beat a system that will beat a human player every time. The computer has faster reflexes then you, better aim then you, better environmental awareness than you, and can compute the most efficient methods of taking you down.
What is trying to be done is to make the computer more "Human" -- more unpredictable. Balance their strengths with artificial handicaps that the player is forced to endure: line of sight, reaction time, and compasson for teammates.
It isn't that the system isn't smart. It's that it's too smart.
Funny you should mention that. I agree completely. I'm still playing the original Gran Turismo. I own GT3, but I don't have a PS2 (long story), but I like GT3 better because the load times are faster. Not so concerned about how shiny the cars are or the leaves on the trees. I like being able to tune my cars the way I want. Not a chance in hell I'll be getting a PS3 for GT5 or whatever they have. Prohibitally expensive. What do I get? Like you said, leaves on trees, but also a physics engine that has been marginally tweaked since the last iteration, but it basically the same as the first. Not worth the 700 bucks (I wouldn't buy the 'base' system).
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Simply because they don't need to. They have created their own separate markets, and Sony and Microsoft are not a part of it. Maybe next generation when they come out with their own wands and touchpads, but this time they're all alone. There is no reason to play hardball. Either game companies want money or they don't. It's that simple.
If the guy wants to go off on a Dennis Miller rant, let him. Nintendo isn't (and hasn't been for a long time) the high end system. Nintendo has decided to go a different route - which I think is pretty cool, and give more choices. Nonetheless, I'm guessing him (and perhaps other devs) are finding the Wii to be a bit lower-end than they thought. And remember he's a developer not a game designer - so the "art" for him is pushing the envelope in the technical sense, which I could see that as something worth bitching about (this is slashdot, isn't everything? :).
Saying the Wii isn't going to see many triple-A titles is a bit ignorant. The Wii will see plenty of them, but they will be unique and exclusive to only the Wii. I think what you meant to say was that it more than likely wont be seeing many PC/360/PS3 Triple-A titles ported to it. Which isn't a problem, because gamers are not buying a Wii to play those games. They are buying a Wii to play Wii games. Why do you think the "Wii60" term is so prevalent? It's not because we buy both systems to play the same games! Think again!
He wants to spend a console's CPU making games more intelligent, and he has found the Wii doesn't have the power to process things like complicated AI.
With all due respect, this is bullshit. Don't blame the hardware if you aren't a good enough programmer to make it work. This is the problem with today's developers. They expect computers to get faster and faster and need more and more memory because they're too lazy or not resourceful or creative enough to write efficient code.
One of the reasons why most games suck nowadays and are so boring is because of this very issue. Developers rely too much on hardware, faster graphics and better texture mapping in lieu of actual creative game design. Stop blaming the hardware because you have no creativity and can't program your way out of a paper bag!
I haven't seen any games I would consider art, but I have seen a lot that would have been more useful stuck to a wall or sitting on my table as a coaster than in my CD ROM drive.
Have a look at LittleBigPlanet for the PS3, that game looks amazing on a lot of levels and its exactly the game that I would hope Nintendo would do, but they simply don't do innovative stuff any more, instead we get a tennis game in which you can't even control the player, good for capturing the casual gamers, boring for everybody else.
So you are saying that a tennis game where you cannot move the player isn't innovative. Every tennis game I remember playing allowed you to move the player.
You also ignore another game on that very disc. Wii Sports Bowling is the greatest bowling game ever made thanks to Nintendo innovation. Without question. It is not up for argument.
And this is on the disc you get with the damned system.
Sony shows one mildly interesting game, and everyone is ready to jump on their cock. I will go on the record right now, and say that Little Big Planet is nothing more than Mario Vs DK 2: March of the Minis with tarted up graphics. That game supports Wi-Fi and online sharing of user created levels too.
I have yet to see this Sony innovation you speak of.
All I have to say is.. Have you ever even heard of the BLUE RAY? Hi definition! A viewing experience like you've never seen!! (and I never will) "I like GO CARTS! VROOM VROOM!"
Give me a fish, I shall eat well for a day. Teach me to fish, and I will eat well until some idiot patents it.
It seems that this guy doesn't understand what "art" is. Besides being in the eye of the beholder it is also working with what you have. An good artist should be able to create something artful with nearly anything he or she has at hand. Saying that Nintendo doesn't care about games as an art form because their machine is not as powerful as someone else's is just admitting one's own weakness. As Frank Costello pointed out in The Departed "Lennon said, 'I'm an artist. You give me a f*cking tuba, I'll get you something out of it.'"
Further more what qualifies this joker to say nintendo and the wii are incapable of making artful games. Until he has had the same successes as someone like Shigeru Miyamoto or especially in this case Will Wright maybe he should keep his trap shut and do his bosses bidding.
lose != loose
### So you are saying that a tennis game where you cannot move the player isn't innovative. Every tennis game I remember playing allowed you to move the player.
Tennis games were the player moves around automatically isn't something new, Jimmy Conners Pro Tennis Tour on the SNES had an option for that and I think some tennis games that I played on the C64 had that as well. The thing is it was on option there, while its the only way to play Wii Sports Tennis. Wii Sport Tennis has some new controls, but is otherwise deliberately dumped down.
### Wii Sports Bowling is the greatest bowling game ever made thanks to Nintendo innovation.
Yes, Wii Sports bowling is one game that is a perfect fit for the Wiimote and wouldn't work much at all with a classic controller. However for how many games do bowling controls work? Not very many.
### I will go on the record right now, and say that Little Big Planet is nothing more than Mario Vs DK 2: March of the Minis with tarted up graphics.
From what I understand Little Big Planet is a multiplayer cooperative jump'n run, while MarioVsDK2 is more a Lemmings inspired puzzle game. Now jump'n runs alone are not new, but I never ever played a cooperative multiplayer one, let alone on the big consoles.
### I have yet to see this Sony innovation you speak of.
Well, that MMO-network thing that Sony will do look pretty interesting, you might call it a SecondLife ripoff, but they are at least trying something new. While Nintendos online offering isn't exactly doing much of anything at the moment. I am not claiming that Sony is a large innovator, but when I see on Nintendos release list with yet another Mario, yet another Metroid and yet another Zelda I just can't get excited, its the same stuff I already played for the last 20 years, LittleBigPlanet on the other side is exactly what Nintendo games these days should look like, innovative, fun and *not* dumped down.
I suppose you could think of turning a gaming platform into a multimedia hub as innovative. Even more so if it's a "crazy" multimedia hub.
Yeah, because Halo and Resistance are real ground-breakers having single-handedly created the shoot-at-aliens genre, while Pikmin is the same ol' raise-a-small-army-of-vegetable-creatures-and-hurl -them-at-giant-monsters rehash I've been playing since the SNES, and don't get me started on how many move-common-objects-with-gravity-beam-to-find-hidd en-creatures games I've played.
Yes, there are lots of mini-game collections for the Wii. Just like for the DS. And similarly to the DS, it's a new challenge for developers, so they go slowly at first. It isn't surprising that we see a lot of mini games as they try to figure out the controller and what works and what doesn't. When they try to jump off the deep end too quickly, we get Red Steel. Over time, you should see more creative and full-fledged games based on the early learning, just like we've seen for the DS. That doesn't help the current selection of Wii games, to be sure, but it does suggest that his fear that no creative, artistic games are going to come to the Wii is unfounded.
P.S. It isn't clear to me that you couldn't call Spore a mini game collection, but that doesn't lessen my interest in the game.
The enemies of Democracy are
> GT is a simulation which tries to be realistic
Which is why when you hit the wall at 180MPH, you bounce right off.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Not only will Tyson's name be on the title, Tyson will have complete control over the vehicle. The only control the bank would have would be if there is a lien then Tyson would have to pay off the loan prior to selling the car or if Tyson falls behind on the payments the bank can repossess. Here's a hint. It's called repossession for a reason. The bank is not currently an owner. And this assumes that there is a lien on the vehicle. If there is no lien, then the bank doesn't even have that much say. Someone with the financial clout of Mike Tyson can probably get an unsecured loan at a lower interest rate than you or I can get with a lien.
But none of this is really relevant to the dispute at hand. The original post was pretty ignorant. Nintendo blows through about a billion dollars a quarter and has cash reserves pushing eight billion dollars. Then there are other current assets and fixed assets. They could stay in operations for the next two years without seeing another penny in revenue and far longer than that if they decided to go into debt to finance their way through a dry spell.
Although I've never seen him, I can't help but wonder if he looks like a caveman?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
### Never played Contra, Ikari Warriors, etc then eh?
I don't call those things "jump'n runs", instead I call them "run and gun" games. While they share a lot of aspect with jump'n runs, they are also very different in there use of weapons. The only real coop jump'n run that I can remember was Chip & Dale on the NES, but even then, that was just two player at once, not five or more over network. So while there have been some coop jump'n runs in the past, its not exactly an overcrowded genre, especially not on the big console, which don't really get much decent 2D games to begin with (well, 2.5D or however one wants to call it here).
So Nintendo doesn't get credit for an artistic Wii game because it was made by Konami, but Sony gets credit for Lumines and Katamari Damacy??
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
A damage model would be nice, sure, but how about an AI for the other cars? I'm getting tired of constantly being rear-ended into the dirt because I happened to be on the other cars' track at the wrong time.
fun and art are not the same thing. they both can be the other, but are not mutually exclusive. to move along in the direction of equating games with movies. games should be held to the same standards as film. the difference is that you add in nonlinearity and interactivity.
/may/ be a degradation of control in certain genres.
/he/ so choose to use them.
i personally feel that games, like movies are an artform. whether a particular movie has significant artistic merit is up to the critic or in the case of games, the player.
when you critique a film, you examine its artistic direction, themes, plot, dialogue and emotional impact. due to the nonlinearity and interactivity of games, you must factor in cohesiveness in relation to the plot [are you wandering around aimlessly simply because the game does not set coherent goals?, do said goals make sense in relation to advancing the plot?], precision of the form of interaction [does your interaction with the game have a profound effect on the game environment?].
with nintendo you have a company that is focused only on one aspect of emotional impact: fun factor. emotional impact is something inherent in all video game consoles. they all have the capacity to be just as fun. changing the form of interaction does not automatically make something more fun; it makes for innovative interaction. thats it. [note the general low scores for non first-party wii titles.] they are not automatically more fun than the exact same game released using traditional controls. if nintendo released the wiimote back in the 80s instead of the control pad, we would all be clamoring about how the new control pads are so great: "wow, i can control the actions with just a press of a few buttons instead of moving my whole arm/hand. this is great and simplifies interaction to allow me to concentrate on the actual game!". the wiimote is still not a completely precise 1 to 1 input device, so interaction is still not perfect and
so as a developer for a nintendo platform you have this corporate philosophy that pushes for solely fun games. pushing for one single genre does not move the industry ahead. nintendo should have learned this from the rise of the playstation. limiting your emotional impact to general light-hearted romps around fantasy spaces loses its appeal as gamer tastes change and evolve. sony platform developers latched onto this and released a wide variety of games that covered every genre, theme and touched upon multiple emotional aspects: pure fun [crash], suspense [resident evil], mystery [metal gear solid], sadness [death of aeris in FFVII] et al. nintendo has always been limited in this respect.
given that limited scope of games that nintendo [and therefore their consumers] prefer, you also have the new limited focus on providing a solid environment to expand; due to processing and graphical constraints. great art can be made anywhere, but if you give the artist a bigger canvas, at least he has the 'ability' to paint a much more grand scene. by limiting the graphical output, you potentially hinder the artistic direction of the artist. by limiting the processing power you potentially hinder the level of interactivity in the environment itself [physics issues, AI]. limiting interactivity on one side of the fence undermines the strides that they claim motion control will usher in on the other side of the fence.
picasso could paint a masterpiece only using the color blue, but you always want to give him the freedom to choose additional colors should
I agree with your comments. In addition, your statement "Graphics: Since the PS1, graphics seems to be the focus of most games." made me think about something. One could, perhaps, break gaming consoles up into generations. (I'm sure I'm the first to do this, and in fact this repeats some of what you said).
Generation one: Atari to mid 80's (Collecovision?).
There was no one type of game that dominated here, but in general games were simple do to the limitations of the devices. Graphics, of course, improved between the first of this generation (Atari and Oddesey II) and the end (Colecovision), but there was no change in the type of games played. Of course, we all know this generation ended with a crash.
Generation two: NES to SNES
Here sidescrollers dominated. Graphics (along with adding complexity) are probably the only signficant differences between the first of this genration (NES) and the last (SNES).
Generation three: PS1 to PS2
Now, 3D games dominate. Again, no real change in the type of games from the first to the last of this generation. Just better graphics and more complexity.
Generation four???
We are due for something new. As you and others have said, people are starting to get tired of the same old games with better graphics. In the past, better technology has not just simply allowed better graphics; improvements in technology allowed new types game types which weren't even possible before. However, there's not much you can do with a PS3 that you couldn't have done with a PS1, (with simpler graphics and scaled backed AI). The only difference in gameplay between PS1 games and PS3 games is networking. This, together with improved graphics, may be enough for people. Or, people might start to get bored.
Nintendo realized that brute force wasn't going to allow them to do anything that hadn't been done before. So, they decided that the way to create a new (4th generation) experience was to work on the controller. It seems they were right, although we won't really know for probably another year or so.
Although I don't agree with all of what Chris Hecker said, it is perhaps a shame that Nintendo didn't push the graphics and CPU in their new console a little bit harder than they did. Perhaps it won't matter, but people do like their shiny things.
Is this the same Chris Hecker that did all the (really good) articles on rigid body dynamics?
http://www.d6.com/users/checker/
Electroplankton (DS)
Oh wait that's art, but not a game. Never mind...
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
That "MMO" looks BORING. Like FFXI without the FF name.
Aside from that...
You can split hairs about Little Big Planet, but it is a basic platform style puzzle game. You can control each character co-operatively sure, but that doesn't nearly the standard of innovation you demand of Nintendo.
Unfortunately for the Wii, most developers don't understand the strengths of the Wii Remote yet. Mark my words. Pointing is where it is at.
I could go on and on and on about specific Nintendo innovations, but it will never be enough for the haters, so I will stop here. Look back and see for yourself what Nintendo has done for video games, both good and bad. They have made mistakes. They have flogged a few franchises, but if you look, the net gain is substantial. Very substantial.
This type of comment strikes me as increadibly unartistic when you really get down to it. Artists, since the beginning of time, have made incredible works using very simple, and seemingly "underdeveloped" mediums, and in some cases, they were able to do so because the medium was underdeveloped. It's like saying Black & White photographs are inferior to color photos, because they do not contain hues... while I happen to think B&W photography to be incredibly artistic, since it focuses the attention on form and texture, things that we aren't always aware of in everyday life. I don't see any difference here. Nintendo's system refocuses itself away from high quality graphics in order to capitalize on less traditionaly commercialized aspects of gaming, in order to bring attention to things like user involvement and gameplay design. I have no problem with graphically beautiful games. But after a while, their artistry ceases to stem from the "game" side of the equation, but from a "computer art" standpoint, which is a different art entirely. Video games, as art, is a marriage of different media... and I would agree that the focus has been, for far too long, been on technically perfected photorealistic visuals. Simply because it's an area of game developement that has some similarity to other artistic genres, doesn't mean that it's the only artistic area that can be developed in games. On the contrary, artistry in games comes from building something that isn't simply an offshoot from another commonly quoted genre.
I find it interesting that I believe the most visually artistic game of our day is Okami, a game that the GameCube could have easily done, but was, instead, done on the most underpowered system of its generation.
Now, as for Nintendo's attitude? There may be a hint of truth in the idea that Nintendo is pretty far off base in terms of thinking about games as high art. But that's sort of expected, seeing as though their first priority is to sell their system to mass audiences. Those with an artistically discerning philosophy are actually fairly few and far between. Hell, most of the populous finds "art" to be intimidating and unneccessary. Yet, the canvas is not yet a work of art until the artist makes his first stroke. Similarly Nintendo, as a hardware developer, isn't responsible for the artistry in games; although I'll give them that their game developement side is second to none in that area.
In closing, this guy sounds like a hack. If he can't figure out how the Wii can be used in an artistic manner, than he's a sorry excuse for an videogame artist.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
breaking consoles into generations///the first to do this?
e _consoles_(seventh_generation)
NO, and your scale is way off....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_gam
for a start....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
He should try writing a game for the Atari 2600. That would make him appreciate the hardware riches he has:
CS: The 2600 doesn't have a two-dimensional bitmap.
Chris: What!? You mean the bitmap can only hold one scan line worth of image?
CS: Well, not a whole scan line.
Chris: What?
CS: Did I mention that background pixels are about 1/4 inch in width.
Chris: Arrgh! Give me a Wii, give me a Wii!
i disagree. i think nintendo's strength has always been making unique game experiences. sony and MS would do well to treat nintendo as free R&D. sony and microsoft can battle head to head over technological superiority since they have the money to do so. MS is especially focused on delivering a highly polished titles from well established genres that appeal to hardcore gamers (shooters, GTA clones, major league sports... etc.) nintendo is much smaller, and does well making fun and quirky games with familiar characters that we fall in love with.
halo is a great game, but at the end of the day, it's just a highly evolved first person shooter. nintendo invents whole new categories of games, such as the party game or the team racer, using it's extensive library of characters to promote it. thier games appeal to more casual gamers like kids.
the only reason the wii fanbase currently loves sports and minigames is because those titles are so unique right now. once a new unique title comes out there will that will become the new fanbase favotite.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
The thing is, more power makes a platform easier to program for.
Holy crap, what crack are *you* smoking?? The PS3 is, by all accounts, the most difficult to program platform yet, and the PS2 held the same title during it's generation. And the only reason the XBoxes are relatively easy to target is because they're so similar to a PC, and Microsoft writes fairly decent devkit. Meanwhile, the GC, GBA, DS, and Wii are all reported to be incredibly easy to dev for, with very solid, inexpensive kits.
Hell, my own experience is that the GBA and DS are paragons of simplicity. If the GC and Wii are at all similar, I'm sure they're an absolute dream to develop for.
Wow, those jokes haven't been funny since... well, ever. Congrats on your originality! I'm sure your mother is proud of you.
I must extrapolate on what he means by artistic games, and it's hard not to take liberties with such a loaded phrase. But that we still attach such significance to names like Kojima and Wright is quite valuable for the artistically inclined gamer. It suggests game development isn't completely dictated by the whims of corporate boards and target sampling. If anything, the biggest threat to "artistic" gaming is the rapid increase in development costs. When every game takes 10s a millions of dollars to produce, every company must incorporate as much risk negation as possible into every product. They'd be fools not to. So what's that leave us with? The continuation of the trend to put out sequels and rehashes.
The ds is so interesting precisely because it's allowed brilliant young developers to put out incredibly compelling niche games. If the wii continues it's early success, undoubtedly we'll see more of this risk taking in the console space than we would in another sony dominated generation. That's not to say big 360/ps3 games are bad, it's just to say the wii offers a development space with unique attributes that would not be served by a more technologically advanced console.
That he's attaching value to how the company talks about art is pedantic and asinine. I don't even know where to begin arguing the point accept to say it means nothing. Tell me what you want when you say artistic. What fundamental attributes make Spore more artistic then Twilight Princess or Hotel Dusk or fing Halo 3? Do you really think Sony and Microsoft (and Nintendo) give a damn just because they put it in a list? As an "artistically" inclined gamer, I'd love to believe it true.
> "Hecker also took Nintendo to task for not taking games seriously enough. "It's not clear to me that Nintendo gives a s*** about games as an art form," he said. To illustrate his point, he searched for references to games as art on all three console manufacturers web sites. While he found numerous such references on both the official PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 sites, Wii.com had none at all.
Then again, if you follow games as art, you don't need to look up anywhere to know that Nintendo has published a retrospective of Toshio Iwai's seminal interactive toys for the DS under the name of Elektroplankton. If that is not taking the medium seriously enough, I don't know what is.
http://barrapunto.com/ - News for nerds, en español
### You can control each character co-operatively sure, but that doesn't nearly the standard of innovation you demand of Nintendo.
Actually I would love to see a networked cooperative Mario game from Nintendo. But since Nintendo is still avoiding network gaming for most part and I haven't seen Luigi in Galaxy yet I doubt it will happen any time soon.
### Look back and see for yourself what Nintendo has done for video games, both good and bad.
I know what Nintendo has done for video games in the past and I love them for that. The problem is, what are they doing for the games I care about today and in the coming years? So far the answer is simply: Not much at all. Nintendogs, BrainAge, Wii Sports and friends are just not the games that get me interested. Mario always was good or ever great in the past, but after NewSuperMarioBros, YoshisIsland2 and MarioSunshine I feel that Nintendo lost its edge, still ok games, but just a shallow shadow of their predecessors greatness, same with Zelda, StarFox and many other things. MetroidPrime is probably the only exception, while I don't like the Prime games at all, they at least tried to do something new with them and most people seem to be happy with the results. Might just be that I had hoped for something different/better.
Watching Miyamoto's keynote today just confirmed the issues I have with the Wii: Its a console build for non-gamers. I am no longer in the target audience for Nintendo and this is not because I changed, but because Nintendo simply changed focus.
### Unfortunately for the Wii, most developers don't understand the strengths of the Wii Remote yet. Mark my words. Pointing is where it is at.
Where is the strength in pointing? I mean, its sure a nice thing to have and useful in some games, but we had lightguns for years and they haven't really revolutionized the gaming much at all.
The thing is, why is Nintendo automatically labeled "enabler of innovation"?
Because they innovate and inspire others. A few the things they've invented about joypads and that you now take for granted:
- The cross on your joypad (sorry, I'm not a native speaker, I don't know the english name for it).
- Shoulder buttons.
- I'm not sure about the trigger button.
- Analog stick.
Since Wii:So, that's why they're labeled "innovative" and enable others to be innovative: they allow for new types of games and gameplays that previously were impossible or awkward.
> He wants Nintendo to change before it's too late for them to get out of the trap of DS and GameCube rehashes.
Huh? Yes, true, they've redone a lot of old, popular games (e.g. Final Fantasy), but it's not like they don't have Phoenix Wright, Trauma Center, Nintendogs, etc. on the DS and a whole bunch of crazy-ass games on the Wii.
So they have lots of innovative games we haven't seen the like of, as well as plenty of old rehashed ones. I don't see why there isn't room for both, given that there's apparently a lot of interest in them. I mean, it's not like the X-Box and PS3 have don't have crappy remakes, either.
And lastly, what does he have against fun games? It's the entire point of a game. If he thinks I actually care about the "art" of game making, well, tough. I want to have a good time. If you can do that with impressive visuals, great. If you can do that with ASCII (like, say, nethack), great. I don't really care, but if it's not fun in some way, there's no way in hell I'll want to buy it.
Well, certainly "Pi" is less than "American Pie". By 9 letters and a space. - Izhido
What you consider "art" and what someone else considers "art" and what heckler considers "art" and what Sony considers "art" are all different, and all irrelevant.
"Too Drunk to Fuck" by the Dead Kennedies is every bit as much art as anything Mozart composed.
The Legend of Zelda is every bit as much art as Spore is.
It's irrelevant, but I have to say I have absolutely no interest in Spore. It sounds like a tech demo, and not a game at all.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Carbon based humanoid in training.
While all that is true, at the same time, no one thing makes any of these good.
Literature needs to have a good plot, the author needs to effectively use words to describe the scene, they need to have good pacing of their story, and appropriate character development (which can cover a wide range depending on the story they are telling).
Music has always been a bit more abstract for me, but I hope we can agree that there isn't any one thing that makes music good.
Movies many of the same things as literature, and in addition they need good actors, a well done score, camera work and lighting, and many other things.
By the same token, saying "A game is art because of it's gameplay" is far too narrow. Notice that I didn't say good visuals make a great game (Otherwise I probably would have put something like Gears of War on my little list). They are, however, a part of making a great game. The visuals in a game like Shadow of the Colossus are one of the many things that come together to make it so great. And yes, gameplay is another.
Games, like movies, build on what has come before. They need many of the things a movie does, and well done gameplay in addition. Saying gameplay on its own can hold up a game seems a lot like saying special effects can hold up a movie to me.
Side note: I should have said in my first post that a lot of these things are somewhat subjective. "Good visuals" isn't the same as "EVERYTHING has specular highlights and bloom! And 1024x1024 textures only please!"
I agree with your list, but I would also add:
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (N64)
Grim Fandango (PC)
Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time (DS)
Electroplankton (DS)
Psychonauts (PC, PS2, XBox)
Pac-Pix (DS)
Pikmin (GameCube)
Okami (PS2)
Super Mario RPG (SNES)
Crono Trigger (SNES)
I do see some Nintendo games in there, but then again, its my list. I found an elegance in Partners in Time that was akin to dancing; maybe you just don't see the same things. But that is art.
I've played games before where all I want is the story, and all these fights or puzzles or what have you getting in the way are just a big nuisance. And when I'm playing them, I usually wish that games like that would choose a different medium to tell their story in.
The games I mentioned all use gameplay very well, and it's a big part of the reason I enjoyed them so much.
Where is the strength in pointing? I mean, its sure a nice thing to have and useful in some games, but we had lightguns for years and they haven't really revolutionized the gaming much at all.
Have you ever played a FPS? The wiimote is not a lightgun, is a pointing device as capable as a mouse and more intuitive when pointing to a screen.
It looks like a very interesting series, thanks for pointing it out to me. Some of them look like other games I've played (Orbital resembles looks like it resembles flow, and Dialhex reminds me of Hexic), while others are very unique and creative (especially soundvoyager looks like it would be interesting).
;)
I hope I can be forgiven for not knowing about a Japan-only release, though.
I'm sorry but "fun" is not a genre, it's the form. If a game isn't fun, it shouldn't be a game. Fun is the reason for games to exist.
You can get all that other stuff -- suspense, mystery, sadness, whatever -- in cinema. I think FF7 was great, but the death of Aeris was a cinematic moment, not a gameplay one. There's no reason to go to the trouble of making a game just to jerk around traditional emotions.
I believe that fun has been made into an art form; High Fun if you will. I don't know about you, but when I see a big bad monster on the horizon, and I give a flick of my wrist to draw Link's sword, the feeling, the emotion, isn't the same as what I get from watching a movie or a sword-fighting cutscene. That's because I'm going to go kill that big bad monster, not somebody else. If I win, the victory will be mine directly, not mine through some character on the screen. If I lose, the agony of defeat will be mine.
Aeris's death was tragic, and tragedy is great... but real heartbreak is when you make it all the way to the last level, and fall into a pit. There's a whole world of different experiences available through video games, and our poor language denigrates them all into "fun". So don't tell me that "fun" isn't "art".
if nintendo released the wiimote back in the 80s instead of the control pad, we would all be clamoring about how the new control pads are so great: "wow, i can control the actions with just a press of a few buttons instead of moving my whole arm/hand. this is great and simplifies interaction to allow me to concentrate on the actual game!".
Don't be silly. Think about it for half a minute. If the PS3 had been released in 1980, the Atari wouldn't be some sort of improvement. "Wow, I can see what's going on by only looking at three sprites instead of a whole screen of 3d figures!" Absurd.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
In other news, paintings should not be in art galleries, since paint and ink are not realistic enough to be art. Camera lens also distort what the eye could naturally see, and so photography is not art. Movies require people to 'act' and behave in ways they might not normally, and so those are not art either.
FreshWii is still in the early stages of development but I felt the urge to post this commentary in response to a developer calling the Wii a "piece of s***" at the GDC:
http://freshwii.com/wii_gdc2007.html
Regards, Lex
I followed links and came up with the game his main company is making.
http://www.d6.com/games/pic1.jpg
We have seen better graphics on PS1. And surely this does not need much in AI.
Sure, he is working for the Spore project but is that all he is credible for?
Sometimes the font and page layout are part of the artistic work.
Would a Bond film be worth watching without the special effects? no. They are integral to it as a work of art.
What about Shakespeare's sonnets without all the formatting? well, maybe.. if they're read correctly anyway, but the page formatting certainly helps.
Would you consider a tourism brochure an artistic work? Why not? Page layout and font are certainly important there.
What about the font itself?
I agree that if the console can't handle the graphics, that doesn't mean its games aren't art, but it does close the console to certain categories of works.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
The DS sucks. The GBA was the last handheld I bought, and I see no reason to expect the purchase of some shitty thing with two screens and gimmicky gameplay.
Anyway.
GBFS is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about an actual file system supported in hardware on the cartridge.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
And I wouldn't have a problem with that claim. I ultimately don't care about who copied from whom. My point was that copying and improving a competitor's product is a part of good business. As you've helped me to point out, the assumption that any one company is the originator of all good ideas is erroneous.
To answer your question simply, no.
/.
I did not say Nintendo has never been about cutting edge graphics, nor did I say that they are against or stifling art. Those words came to your mind for some reason, but I never stated nor insinuated them. Nintendo fought tooth and nail with Sega during the era of 16-bit consoles. They focused heavily on graphics back then. They still did when they created the Nintendo 64, and the GameCube.
I stated that Nintendo does not appreciate games as an art form. That is separate from anything they do with their console hardware. It's a business and design perspective. Microsoft and Sony don't care about games as an art form either. Neither did Sega when they used to make consoles. The only people who cared or still care about games as art are the developers of games and some gamers.
I'm glad you like your Wii. Now go and spend more time playing it and less time misinterpreting my comments on