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The New Difficulties In Making a 3D Game
eldavojohn writes "MSNBC spoke with the senior producer of a new stereoscopic 3D game called Killzone 3 and highlighted problems they are trying to solve with being one of the first FPS 3D games for the PS3. The team ran into serious design problems, like where to put the crosshairs for the players (do they constantly hover in front of your vision?) and what to do with any of the heads-up display components. Aside from the obvious marketing thrown in at the end of the article (in a very familiar way), there is an interesting point raised concerning normalized conventions in all video games and how one ports that to the new stereoscopic 3D model — the same way directors continue to grapple with getting 3D right. Will 3D games be just as gimmicky as most 3D movies? If they are, at least Guerrilla Games is making it possible for the player to easily and quickly switch in and out of stereoscopic 3D while playing."
I can turn off sounds in most games as well. Including a toggle doesn't necessarily make it a gimmick, but rather if it hurts the experience and people prefer playing with 3D off.
When was the last time you could turn 'color' off in a game?
You mean like how televisions allow the viewer to reduce or remove the amount of color on-screen, whether the viewer is watching traditional programming or a videogame? Or like how during the transition from greyscale to colour broadcasting, it was important for most stations to make sure their content was useful to people with both types of television?
3D is a gimmic, and the fact they offer you the ability to turn it off WHILE playing means it's not required to immerse you in the gameplay.
3D isn't for everyone, at least in its current incarnation. That doesn't necessarily make it a gimmick. Is surround sound a gimmick just because it's not actually required in order to appreciate most films and games?
The developers in this case are smart enough to realize that not everyone who plays their game is going to have a 3D display. Therefore they have to make the game playable in 2D. Making a big-budget game that *required* 3D today would be commercial suicide.
I don't have a 3D TV, and I probably won't for quite awhile. But I do think it's an interesting technology.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
>>Will 3D games be just as gimmicky as most 3D movies?
Yes, yes they will - but moreso, and with gusto. But gimmicky doesn't have to be bad - the Wii and Nintendo DS libraries are chock full of gimmicky games that are actually quite good. Actually, most blockbuster games in history have been filled with fairly new exploits of gimmicks hamfistedly attached to a narrative.
Video games are marketed on the idea that an analog of yourself is being placed somewhere, with something interesting to do. The very definition of a game is tied to goals that exist only for you to solve - its gimmicks all the way down to the simplest games of rocks and sticks.
Ain't nothing wrong with gimmicks.
Ryan Fenton
I think you've hit on exactly the issue - especially considering how much console FPSs tend to compensate for the clumsiness of the input mechanism (usually there is some degree of autoaim involved). It's not so noticable in 2D, but to achieve this effect in 3D without either making it look like your sights are incredibly inaccurate (because you're hitting people even when it's cleared you're off by a fraction in either direction and the game is "compensating") or else you're going to have to have the sights "jump" to cover the target, too much jumping and it's going to feel very fake. The other alternative is of course to not compensate, but when people see their frag count drop off a cliff they're probably not going to want to play your game so much, even if it is a lot more accurate. The final difficulty is that you need to offer 2D and 3D modes of play without undue disadvantage to one or the other group of gamers (if everyone playing in 2D mode is more accurate, you've pretty much killed 3D in your game, meanwhile if everyone in 3D mode is more accurate, you'll get massive backlash from consumers who don't want to splash out on a new TV just to compete in multiplayer).
Just like PowerGlove foretold the failure of the Wiimote?