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A Plea For Game Devs To Aim Higher
A recent article written by Mike Acton of Insomniac Games challenges video game developers to broaden their ambitions and fight to get back to their rebellious roots. Quoting:
"[W]hy is it that game developers are beginning to drown in a culture of fear, or more specifically, a fear of change? Is it because the gaming world has gone too corporate and is no longer exclusive to small teams of genius misfits and creative underdogs? Is it because the demographics of game players—once made up almost exclusively of teen boys—has widened to include nearly everyone from 5-50? There are people who would deny that it’s fear of change that keeps them where they are. There are those that are content with the status quo because they believe that they have a formula 'that works' and there’s no good reason to risk a major change when they already successful with what they’re doing. ... Game developers are, at their heart, futurists and this is what they need to do now—put themselves ahead of the times so that they can surpass the stale leadership and old models that are holding them back"
"Is it because the gaming world has gone too corporate and is no longer exclusive to small teams of genius misfits and creative underdogs"
While its true you have large corporations producing last year's games with better graphics, you shouldn't discount the indie scene.
I got the last humble bundle (and the ones before that) and its amazing how fun and different certain game concepts are. Support smaller developers who you feel are creative enough for your likes, and the industry will get better. If everyone keeps buying 'generic shooter with better graphics VII', then the industry will churn out more of those.
Because the average AAA game development budget is now eight figures. Next question?
It's not about sales. It's about innovation growing stale in triple-A game development. Developers and publishers don't want to take risks anymore so you'll see more copying of ideas being done than innovating for themselves. It is the indie market where the real innovation is being done these days.
The reason for this is simple though. Many indies work on their games as part of a hobby or on relatively small budgets, where taking a risk is a choice they can make all by themselves. A game developer that works on a $100 million+ title can't afford to take risks because that scares away investors. Investors don't want risk. They want profit.
Yes, it's the same problem as the film industry: Increased budgets means more money is at risk, meaning you're only allowed to play it safe.
When you're playing with your own money, you can do whatever you want, either in independent films or independent games, and only need to sell to customers, who desire innovation and fun. If you need to finance your project externally, you need to sell your not-yet-started project to your prospective backers, who desire monetary returns with reduced risks.
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Nah, that joke will only work if there comes a time when Game Developers Lead the Industry again.
Ice Cream has no bones.
the presentation of artwork, hiring of actors for 3D modelling and the massive development means that the average 3D game costs around $8 million. if users expect games to be of this standard, anyone expecting an independent team to develop something that's "competitive" is pissing in the wind. about the only possible hope is a free software massively collaborative effort, based around existing work and engines, such as WorldForge for MMORGs or the Quake or Doom 3D engines for 3D games.
It's a bit longwinded, but indeed a very good read. I really liked this part, it gives deep insight and is still true today:
"But even that isn't enough, you know.... There's talk nowadays
in publishing circles about a new device for books, called a
ReadMan. Like a Walkman only you carry it in your hands like
this.... Has a very nice little graphics screen, theoretically,
a high-definition thing, very legible.... And you play your
books on it.... You buy the book as a floppy and you stick it
in... And just think, wow you can even have graphics with your
book... you can have music, you can have a soundtrack....
Narration.... Animated illustrations... Multimedia... it can
even be interactive.... It's the New Hollywood for Publisher's
Row, and at last books can aspire to the exalted condition of
movies and cartoons and TV and computer games.... And just think
when the ReadMan goes obsolete, all the product that was written
for it will be blessedly gone forever!!! Erased from the memory
of mankind!
Now I'm the farthest thing from a Luddite ladies and gentlemen,
but when I contemplate this particular technical marvel my
author's blood runs cold... It's really hard for books to
compete with other multisensory media, with modern electronic
media, and this is supposed to be the panacea for withering
literature, but from the marrow of my bones I say get that
fucking little sarcophagus away from me. For God's sake don't
put my books into the Thomas Edison kinetoscope. Don't put me
into the stereograph, don't write me on the wax cylinder, don't
tie my words and my thoughts to the fate of a piece of hardware,
because hardware is even more mortal than I am, and I'm a hell
of a lot more mortal than I care to be. Mortality is one good
reason why I'm writing books in the first place. For God's sake
don't make me keep pace with the hardware, because I'm not
really in the business of keeping pace, I'm really in the
business of marking place.
Okay.... Now I've sometimes heard it asked why computer game
designers are deprived of the full artistic respect they
deserve. God knows they work hard enough. They're really
talented too, and by any objective measure of intelligence they
rank in the top percentiles... I've heard it said that maybe
this problem has something to do with the size of the author's
name on the front of the game-box. Or it's lone wolves versus
teams, and somehow the proper allotment of fame gets lost in the
muddle. One factor I don't see mentioned much is the sheer lack
of stability in your medium. A modern movie-maker could probably
make a pretty good film with DW Griffith's equipment, but you
folks are dwelling in the very maelstrom of Permanent
Technological Revolution. And that's a really cool place, but
man, it's just not a good place to build monuments.
Okay. Now I live in the same world you live in, I hope I've
demonstrated that I face a lot of the same problems you face...
Believe me there are few things deader or more obsolescent than
a science fiction novel that predicts the future when the future
has passed it by."
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
There's a demo (I believe) and it's on Steam anyway.
It's kinda like a X-COM/UFO turn-based shooter but where both players turns are submitted independently and then played out simultaneously (so your perfect plan that you submitted may go awry because your artillery gets shot from behind before he can move by someone you couldn't see).
Each "turn" is 5-seconds of gameplay and you can only issue orders in between turns (and take as long as you like - it can be anything from 10 seconds to play-by-email timings until your opponents sends *their* turn) with the next 5 seconds decided by a central server depending on the orders given and what happens in the world in those 5 seconds.
Units are few and maps are all the same "electric blue" but with different layouts, objectives, mix of units, etc. Certainly good fun and very nice if you miss X-COM-by-email from the past.
No. He's saying the evidence of stagnation is when you walk past the PC games at E3 and you cannot tell them apart because they're all soldiers running around with guns.
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But to be fair a lot of the "GTA style" games isn't about actually doing the missions but just seriously fucking off. One of my absolute favorite games is Just Cause II, which if you have never played it brings "just fucking off" to the height of crazy. You have this crazy hookshot grapple hook thing that lets you do crazy shit like tie a bad guy to the bumper of a chopper and use him for a fricking wrecking ball, tie two cars together while going 100 miles an hour on top of a third, totally crazy shit. Frankly I quit giving a shit about the story after like the third mission because I was having too much fun going nuts to really care.
If anyone here watches Zero Punctuation old Yahtzee pointed something out that is really wrong that I hadn't even noticed before. He said basically "we are awash in a sea of brown chest high walls surrounded by thick neck marine types" and frankly he is dead on! Too many of these developers seem to forget that ultimately its a game and games are supposed to be fun not a dragging your ass around while following the numbers snoozefest. I swear if I see one more WWII shooter or one more game featuring thick neck marines with convenient chest high walls I'm gonna scream!
Ultimately it wouldn't be so bad if games ripped off one another if they just did like Just Cause II and remembered that games are supposed to be fun. If they would have made the game in ANY way realistic it would have been the uber suck. After playing Stalker I already know how I would do in a real war, very very badly. So how about make it fun! Give me AI that is a challenge without obvious cheating, like how EA shooters will have grunts that can instantly spot you even when you are behind cover and snipe you from 1000 yards away with a pistol while taking more rounds than the T-800, give me something to shoot other than the same damned weapons everybody else has, like the sneaky crossbow in NOLF II, or even the "angry kitty" bomb! Who cares if that "would never happen in real life" because it ISN'T REAL LIFE it is a fricking game!
You don't have to give us five legged kittens riding purple ponies devs, just quit rehashing the same old shit, okay?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
What strikes me as odd is when people complain how things used to be great and how it used to be so good back way back when...
Except when they start mentioning the old hits, the classics, they don't seem to understand that in the years that those games/movies/music/etc came out, there was a dozen crappy counter examples. TV has gotten much better, but that is the exception, not the rule.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
..it's the publishers. Most publishers will only play it safe, sticking to established brands and themes. I'm sure there are a hell of a lot of game dev studios out there with great game ideas, but what's the point if no-one will publish it?
Playing devil's advocate, perhaps the publishers have a point. Today's game-buying community loves franchises (FIFA, Final Fantasy, Mario, Zelda), loves playing the same game over and over again (CoD) and virtually ignores great new games (Enslaved, Bayonetta).
"You heard the man, Tubbs.. get undressed."
I'm with you on that. Sure AAA games from the major publishers may be somewhat bland (still good in many cases though), but the Indie scene is making the running so well that it hardly matters.
It also is something of a US/western thing. I'm becoming a real fan of Russian game development, there have been some absolutely fantastic Russian games in the last few years. Ice Pick Lodge's The Void for example firmly answers the question "can computer games be art?"
Honestly, this is a great time for computer game development, at least on the PC. We've got good, solid AAA games with huge budgets, and a burgeoning Indie scene turning out more innovative new types of games than I've ever seen. Added to that is maturing games industries in Eastern Europe and Russia bringing a new perspective on games. Hopefully this carries on, or we may look back at 2011 as a golden age.
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It's so short sighted though. This quote from the summary just makes me shake my head:
"There are those that are content with the status quo because they believe that they have a formula 'that works' and thereâ(TM)s no good reason to risk a major change when they already successful with what theyâ(TM)re doing."
Isn't this the same industry that's already whining about decreasing revenues and AAA studios whining that innovative new mobile games are a danger to them?
I don't understand how on one hand they can use the excuse that the formula works and they're succesful and the on the other whine about how they're struggling, complain for tax breaks, impose DRM to prevent second hand sales and so forth.
If anything it seems clear their model isn't working from the amount they bitch and moan. Either way they can't have it both ways- claim everything is rosy when consumers say they want something new, and claim these are dark days when they want more profits.
...I find games are better than they've ever been - whether or not they're doing something new. They're more accessible, more immersive, better-written, with a more in-depth and convincing set of stories. Innovative gameplay quirks, while fun, aren't the point of video games any more. We've come a long way from "Come up with a new mechanic, write a paragraph justification in a manual, sell for $10" that was around twenty years ago.
Now, games are about telling stories or creating a world. Look at the Halo series, the Half-Life series, the Mass Effect series, the recent Modern Warfare games. You have games as a medium to tell a story now, and an interactive one at that. I vastly prefer a re-used gameplay mechanic to tell an interesting and original tale with believable characters to a beautiful mechanic with nothing to keep me interested beyond the thirty minutes of "Huh, that's cool."
Never underestimate the stupidity inherent in all human beings.
I was with you until you mentioned Terraria, a game that just rehashes Minecraft in a rush to make a buck.
The whole point is that the current AAA titles are all aiming for the *median* gamer. The indie market covers MORE than the AAA titles, for the simple reason that 20 hits at 5% groups usually hits wider than 1 hit at 50%... and the real figures are way over 20:1.
But it's a trap for AAA: everywhere the go from there current local maxima means higher costs and lower income.
Indies don't have that problem, plus many of them will fail thereby leaving those that remain to further seek out great new directions and signal starting points for newcomers and reboots.
Best of all for PC gamers, there is little monopolisation and lock-in distorting the market: you're free to play MW, CoD, DoD CS, and NetHack all on the same hardware (you probably don't even need the latest drivers for NetHack). Angry Birds is on every mobile device (even Nokia). Console gamers aren't too oppressed even.
GG in au gave it a pretty mediocre 7, IIRC, for exactly the reasons in TFA: formulaic, relying of bells and whistles over good character development... the usual AAA f-ups. just another soliders with guns game, just based on the ludicrous premise of a starving third world nation becoming a superpower. Nazis with dinosaurs make more sense.
It's a cycle that's in a lot of industries. You take a circle of influence with the hardcore dedicated at the center, and people with a passing interest at the edges. Those at the fringes easily tire and drop away and it looks like a drop in sales. Instead of trying to better expand that market, their logic is that they need to do more of what made them successful and further concentrate on that thing. From that point it can go into a death spiral with more and more people losing interest each iteration, and they just keep pumping out the same stuff. The music industry seems to struggle the most with it until they stumble on something "new" which restarts the whole thing. TV, comic books and probably the current state of anime also come to mind.
Passing the blame has nothing to do with it other than showing a symptom of an industry that doesn't know what to do (like something different).
I can't believe that someone from Insomniac Games, who has worked on what... 3 series (total) over their 15 year existence... is commenting on innovation.
They were the developer of the first 3 Spyro the Dragon for the PlayStation, 8 of the Ratchet & Clank titles (the eighth being All 4 One, due out this year), and 3 Resistance games (number 3 due out this year or next year).
I don't know about Resistance, but the other two series are notable for introducing 1-2 new gimmicks in each new game rather than real innovation.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011