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John Romero On Reinventing the Shooter
An anonymous reader writes: John Romero helped bring us Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein, but he's also known for Daikatana — an immensely-hyped followup that flopped hard. After remaining on the periphery of game development since then, Romero announced last month that he's coming back to the FPS genre with a new game in development. Today, he spoke with Develop Magazine about his thoughts on the future of shooters. Many players worry that the genre is stagnant, but Romero disagrees that this has to be the case. "Shooters have so many places to go, but people just copy the same thing over and over because they're afraid to try something new. We've barely scratched the surface."
He also thinks the technology underpinning games matters less than ever. Romero says high poly counts and new shaders are a distraction from what's important: good game design. "Look at Minecraft – it's unbelievable that it was made by one person, right? And it shows there's plenty of room for something that will innovate and change the whole industry. If some brilliant designers take the lessons of Minecraft, take the idea of creation and playing with an environment, and try to work out what the next version of that is, and then if other people start refining that, it'll take Minecraft to an area where it will become a real genre, the creation game genre."
He also thinks the technology underpinning games matters less than ever. Romero says high poly counts and new shaders are a distraction from what's important: good game design. "Look at Minecraft – it's unbelievable that it was made by one person, right? And it shows there's plenty of room for something that will innovate and change the whole industry. If some brilliant designers take the lessons of Minecraft, take the idea of creation and playing with an environment, and try to work out what the next version of that is, and then if other people start refining that, it'll take Minecraft to an area where it will become a real genre, the creation game genre."
This guy is remembered best for an abject failure and hasn't produced anything good enough to change that in a long time. Perhaps he ought to make something that lives up to his own hype if he wants people to believe that he can make something that lives up to his own hype.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/co...
The need has always been there. What's lacking today is the desire to obtain venture capital. In an atmosphere of Kickstarter, which is maybe the worst thing to happen to gaming this decade, why the hell should anyone worry about convincing people to invest when you can get people to just give you the money you want, whether or not you actually build (or finish) a game.
The phenomenon of "Early Access" games that never, ever make it to final release occurred simultaneously with Kickstarter, and not coincidentally.
Nah, the requirement to get money to make a game has always been there. But today there are too many shortcuts. And it's everywhere in the corporate world. Why do the hard work of selling an idea to investors, hiring people, getting facilities up and running, etc etc? The goal for most of the corporate world today is obfuscate your income stream so well that people don't realize they're the product. Like google or Facebook. It's one reason you have so many people unemployed and underemployed. When there's so much money to be made by NOT providing a product or service to people who think they are your customers and hiding who your end-users really are, it makes sense that they'd go this route.
The problem is this shows a deep hostility for your customers and/or users. And it's not sustainable.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Please retire
Hell no!
Romero is right. Good quality entertaining FPS have been thin on the ground lately.
It's become a stagnant genre, and it's time we had an Doom/Duke Nukem/Unreal/Half-Life successor. Daikatana was a failure in a large part because the AI for both enemies and the NPC sidekick characters was crap and messed up the rest of the gameplay. The bad guys, Barney and Alyx etc in HL2 showed that's a solved problem now.
In the words of the Duke, I say "Bring it on!".
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Bullshit. You were probably 3 years old when it came out. For those of us who were into gaming at the time, it was revolutionary.
It did convincing pseudo-3D before 3D was even remotely possible though some brilliant use of precompiled BSP trees and sectors. And it had stereo audio and a kick ass sound track that were almost as creepy and immersive as the graphics.
And if the mind blowing graphics and audio at the time wasn't enough, it also supported 4 player gaming as well. The version that they released supported 2 player serial or 4 player IPX, but they released the source to the network drivers, which was another early first - game companies releasing source and working with players to add features and content. It wasn't long before a full Internet/UDP networked version was available, making it one of the early real-time multiplayer Internet games.