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The Art of Downloadable Game Development
The Guardian's Games Blog looks at how the development of downloadable games has shifted over the past several years. As an example, they point to Capcom, its recent reinvention of the Mega Man franchise, and an upcoming game called Flock. Quoting:
"[CEO Paddy Sinclair said], 'The first thing we realised was, it wouldn't be as easy as we thought. Luckily we're funded privately so we had the luxury of getting it wrong. It was very... educational. We learned very quickly that, no, you can't write a game in three months. We also realized we'd need a bigger team than just two or three.' 'The XBLA market has really evolved,' continues business development head, Chris Wright. 'If you look at the very early games they were simple ports — single-player, retro emulation titles, and you can kick those out very quickly. That market is disappearing. If you're going to do retro remakes you have to extend it, you have to add multiplayer. If you're going to do something new, it has to be bigger. We've got a team of 10-12 people working on this title. If you look back, it's what we would have had on PS1, and the game is probably of the same sort of size. It's not the huge budgets of a retail title, but it's not a trivial undertaking, either.'"
THIS is art:
Stud dogs go about the whole sex thing rather differently than primates (or equines). Unlike us, male canines don't have an orgasm that involves a short, intense ejaculation. Instead, once they have become fully erect, they will have a continuous orgasm for from 10 to 45 minutes or longer. The "standard" procedure for dogs, when they are mating, is that the male "ties" with the bitch - which means that, after he has penetrated fully, his penis will develop a knot at its base that is several times wider than the rest of his shaft.
For reference, a 80 pound Golden stud dog might have, let's say, a cock that is 7 or 8 inches long when erect - but his knot will be at least as big around as a tennis ball. This knot swells inside the bitch, and so long as he remains erect the dogs are "tied." No, this isn't painful for her - canine females long ago developed an entire set of muscular supports for this process. Generally, once they are tied, most stud dogs prefer to step off and over, so he and the bitch are tail-to-tail. Theories abound on why this evolved - I have yet to see one that was truly convincing. Anyway, they'll stand like this, with the male having a continuous orgasm during the whole tie - until he starts to shrink and they pop apart. Bitches also have orgasms, and she'll likely have quite a few during the tie, as well - research has shown that her orgasms are essential to increasing the chances of pregnancy, due to muscular contractions.
Anyway. if a guy like me has a stud dog partner, one form of intimacy is for him to tie with us, anally. As young teenagers, many of us learned the hard way about the knot, and the tie - particularly back in pre-interweb days. So we'd suddenly find ourselves locked together, with this tennis-ball width cock inside us. Nowadays, I suspect most young zoos know all about this. However, some folks still have eyes bigger than their stomach, err their you-know-what.
It would not be accurate to say that I have a stream of visitors who show up at my house just for sex with my canine partners. However, it is true that I do not exercise any sort of unilateral control/ownership over the relationships my canine boys might develop with other people - they are adults, and if they desire to get frisky with another two-legger and I judge that the person is respectful and unlikely to do anything mean or stupid, I have no moral ground on which to say "oh, no, you aren't allowed - he can only have sex with me." That just makes no sense, so if there's a time when a friend is visiting and there's a spark between them and one of my partners, I'm ok with that. In truth, I think it's great to have the boys' enjoy other positive relationships and I love to see them happy, whatever the circumstances.
Many years ago, my friend Commander Taco was visiting - a zoo who had been active with his own stud dog for quite a few years. His boy was a breed that is not small, but is also somewhat known by old-school zoos as being, well, on average not so well-endowed relative to their body size. This friend had tied with his partner on a number of occasions - and he often talked about how intense and rewarding the experience was, for both of them. That's great, I said - while thinking that he'd probably not fare so well with a larger breed.
As it turns out, Taco and one of my canine friends hit it off quite clearly right from the get-go - the chemistry was there and the two of them seemed like they'd known each other for ages. After several visits, I could see that they were sort of getting closer and closer - my friend Taco was worried that I'd feel he was somehow intruding into my relationship with this handsome stud dog - who had been in my own family for close to a decade. Of course not, I told him - if you guys hit it off and things get steamy, I'd hardly throw cold water on it just so I can be all possessive and insecure. HOWEVER, I warned him, that handsome boy with whom you're making goo-goo eyes is much bigger than your own long-time partner.
I tried to
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Pay attention audience. Noticed how things moved from low-hanging fruit to higher up with an increase in number of developers. That effect is why in part modern games cost as much as they do and take as long as they do.
Would a good game plot, overcome a lack of great graphics and features?
(i.e. Would yesteryear's Sierra and LucasArts games overcome today's market demands?)
From what I see most XBLA titles are dual-analog shooters or stuff like that and while the effects and such get more and more advanced the core gameplay just gets clunky. Then again I've only played the demos of most and those rarely get much past the tutorial. Seems to me like this upmarket trend here is just adding superficialities and needless complication.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Shame the wii retro console titles don't have any graphical filter work done on them. Depending on your loyalty to bad graphics, I found it difficult to commit to playing Donkey Kong Country with such awful pixelation (regular large lcd tv) when I could just as easily play the superior, smoothed (via emulator) and very functional version on my xbox 1.
I think that Nintendo sold us short on that (rather than the idea that they the left it that way for the purists). I'd rather play DKC on a nintendo but the difference is massive and stays in line with my impression of the Wii. Which is, that it is a console dominated by mediocre exploitation of the mainstream crowd it has sucked in. The amount of truly horrendous (and non functional) software out there for the Wii is staggering. Once upon a time, you couldn't put a game out if Nintendo didn't think it was up to scratch.
I record my sleeptalking
Most "retro" games have found a new home as flash games. It's pretty much logical that this technology would be used for it. Modern machines can easily handle that overhead (because what they have to "run" requires essentially the fraction of a percent of a current machine's power), downloading a game that had to fit into the very limited capacities of early consoles or early home computers takes only a few seconds, and for controls, well, many people are happy with keyboard input.
So I dunno, is there actually a market that you could sell real "retro" games to?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When 'indie' company tries to competes at the field dominated by larger studios hey become more corporate and less 'indie'.
Real indie developers code for the PC and rarely even cooperate.
and for controls, well, many people are happy with keyboard input.
A lot of the classic games, such as Contra, are meant to be played by two people looking at one screen. That can't be done comfortably in SWF unless you think all your players can follow your instructions on how to install JoyToKey.
Basically, whichever console is the most popular tends to attract developers looking for a way to cash-in quickly on that system's popularity.
The most popular platform capable of running video games is an x86-based personal computer running a Windows operating system, sometimes called "the PC". And your observation still holds here: the PC has an even bigger "problem" with shovelware than the consoles because non-corporate developers can develop for it, unlike the consoles.
There is a HUGE and growing number of so-called casual games being developed for sites like bigfishgames.com or gamesocks.com - most download development is in the casual game space these days.
Would a good game plot, overcome a lack of great graphics and features?
I'm not sure about a good storyline, but good gameplay can win out over limited graphics and features.
Probably the best example I can think of is The Kingdom of Loathing - http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/ - This needs way to many clicks to play and has stick figure graphics but the complex interaction of the various features make gameplay addictive.
This, and the humor in the game, has attracted a large loyal following.
N.B. this user is far too lazy to write a witty and intelligent sig.
Doesn't SWF have "key down" and "key up" events? If you have those, then you can easily allow two people to share a keyboard.
Without at least one person using JoyToKey, all I get is beep, beep, beep, beep when two players start pressing multiple keys.
Seems that a lot of them would still have a market under portables. Playing a good ol' game of Bubble Bobble or even Pacman as part of a "classics collection" is still a fun way to pass excess time while taking transit etc.
If they add basic networking capabilities to allow the multi-player stuff to work (just enough to connect and allow for two controllers and a shared screen) it should work rather well.
Quoting from the article, "You have to make a game of a certain size and certain type. It's got to be simple but also rewarding within the first 60 seconds." What's with this idea? I've written about the problem of conceptualizing "casual gaming" as being different from "hardcore" gaming before; I think that the medium of downloadable games lends itself well to properly executed game design, because you can't lean on graphics or massive worlds, but even so there's no reason to say that a small game has to pander to impatience.
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience