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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."
^ See above.
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.
Sorry, I cannot read TFA without my trusty sidekick superfly
Son of a bitch, we don't need any more "reinventions" of this and "reimagining" of that and "rebooting" of franchises.
Any time anyone tries to do such things, the end product is total shit.
Look at GNOME 3. It tried to "reinvent the Linux desktop experience". It's total, utter, absolute shit in every way possible.
Look at Firefox. It has recently tried to "reimagine" itself as if it were Chrome. It's now total, utter, absolute shit in every way possible.
Look at all of the "rebooted" movie series. It's one total, utter, absolute shit Incredible Hulk reboot after another.
Going in with the reinvent/reimagine/reboot mindset just results in total, utter, absolute shit being produced. Please, if you're thinking of doing this sort of stuff, do us all a favor and DON'T FUCKING DO IT!
Like the dozens, possibly hundreds, of minecraft spinoffs? He is just now realizing that the genre has potential?
http://www.penny-arcade.com/co...
About to make Minecraft his bitch.
So he's going to take a decade to make a version of Guncraft his bitch? This sounds like comedy gold waiting to happen.
So, if it were offline, it would be Skyrim with Fallout weapons, yes? Or perhaps GTA?
Don't get me wrong, I love Bethesda and Rockstar games, so if someone wants to make more in that style, far be it from me to complain. But reloaded? Ugh.
But how do you know you're not in a local maximum? Not everybody can be Miles Davis and know exactly when something new is working, and be commercially successful at it. Hell, Miles Davis is probably the only person who ever did that in a low-probability field.
I'm probably preaching to the choir but this week's Zero Punctuation was all about Romero and doesn't paint him in the same positive light as TFA.
Son of a bitch, we don't need any more "reinventions" of this and "reimagining" of that and "rebooting" of franchises.
Any time anyone tries to do such things, the end product is total shit.
Look at GNOME 3. It tried to "reinvent the Linux desktop experience". It's total, utter, absolute shit in every way possible.
Look at Firefox. It has recently tried to "reimagine" itself as if it were Chrome. It's now total, utter, absolute shit in every way possible.
Look at all of the "rebooted" movie series. It's one total, utter, absolute shit Incredible Hulk reboot after another.
Going in with the reinvent/reimagine/reboot mindset just results in total, utter, absolute shit being produced. Please, if you're thinking of doing this sort of stuff, do us all a favor and DON'T FUCKING DO IT!
Speak for yourself, not all reboots are bad.
Would you still prefer to be using a text browser, or *shudder* Internet Explorer instead of Firefox? Technically Firefox is a re-invention of those.
Going in with the "lets do the same thing as everyone else is doing" is not a good mindset in any way, shape, or form. I for one love innovation, and ultimately despite road bumps along the way, it often leads to better products in the long term.
Games Programmer And Designer
I am more interested in reinventing of John Romero, the old one only good as a bait for the inevitable flamewars. I am sure we can add more features.
Uhhhhhh, you do realize that the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, was in fact a graphical browser, right? Lynx and other text mode browsers didn't come out until years later.
If you're going to question the GP, at least have your facts straight, son.
Daikatana was the only FPS where you could be killed by a mosquito.
Janes Addiction guy, who did some bass on Jagged little pill guy, who was doing Carmen Fuentes guy. That guy.
Son of a bitch, we don't need any more "reinventions" of this and "reimagining" of that and "rebooting" of franchises.
Yeah, Call of Duty is the peak of FPS, everyone can pack up and go home now, no more FPS needed ever again.
I'm only being half sarcastic actually; there are far too many FPS and not enough good games nowadays. This paint by numbers, lets just make the same thing over and over is really fucking tedious.
Uhhhhhh, you do realize that the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, was in fact a graphical browser, right? Lynx and other text mode browsers didn't come out until years later.
If you're going to question the GP, at least have your facts straight, son.
Thanks Dad, you raise a good point. Maybe you should go back and use that and tell me if Firefox is any better than that version. If Mosaic (which ultimately Firefox came from) had not come out in 1993, we might still be using that original version which was pretty crappy and difficult to use.
Bottom line: Not all reboots are bad and doing the same thing is not always a good thing.
Thanks for playing.
Games Programmer And Designer
I've got ideas for plenty of shooters that do things differently. Two have actually made it to playable prototypes, and confirmed that yes, the ideas are fun. I'd describe them, but I'm in talks to produce them so I'll keep my mouth shut for now. All the marketers think we want are "realistic" modern arena shooters, "realistic" modern open-map shooters, "old-school" twitch shooters, or maybe an occasional squad-level tactical shooter. In other words, a CoD clone, a Battefield clone, a Q3/UT clone, or a R6 clone. That's it. That's 90% of the industry, just remaking the same three games over and over with different settings or skins or variations on the same fucking theme. It's really quite infuriating, since half of them aren't even *good* clones.
While I totally agree that Romero was an abject failure, his point still rings true. The need to obtain venture capital to launch a decent game has created an atmosphere stagnation in the genre, and dare I say, the field of game development as a whole. The requirement to produce results has superseded the game designers ability to implement new and interesting game mechanics in my opinion. It would be awesome to see more games that take the genre to a new level, even if the main proponent is someone who has't innovated in years.
Look at Minecraft – it's unbelievable that it was made by one person, right?
Wrong... the community created minecraft. All Notch did was let them do it. Shooters used to let you do that. Remember that? When we were allowed to make our own maps? I used to not even play the boxed game at all! I'd just go strait to the player made maps. Now you want so much control over the experience because you feel you need to monetize every damned pixel on the screen...
Hell, if you want to monetize it... monetize the map editor tools...
Want copy&paste? $5!
Pre-fab German bunker? $1!
Allow map makers that attract a lot of players to earn these tools based on visitors...
Give the players up-votes that would give the map makers in-game currency to improve maps with.
That would sell.
Let me guess, he's gonna make us his bitch?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Why anyone cares what this guy has to say boggles my mind. He may have had a hand in some good games decades ago, but what have you done for me lately?
Oh yeah, you took a steaming turd on my computer. Thanks.
In other news, North Korea is the best Korea.
A female canine player character might be an audience-alienating premise. Furry characters (as seen in Robin Hood and Star Fox) tend to be associated with E and E10+ ratings, while first person shooters tend toward M.
I hope that whatever Romero is doing doesn't turn out to be Free-2-Play or co-op or with multiplayer focus.
The beauty of his best games was that they were single-player, with some very fun multiplayer as a bonus. The current gaming industry mode seems to be co-op or multiplayer primarily with maybe a very short single-player campaign thrown in.
I understand that this trend started primarily as a way to prevent some kid in Estonia from having a nickel in his pocket that didn't belong to the gaming industry, and I don't fault them because their nature is to be money-grubbing monsters who basically hate their customers. But somehow, the great single-player games managed to make a nice profit. Nice enough to finance a stinker like Daikatana.
Oh, and there's a new meme going around the gaming industry and the domesticated, corrupt gaming press: The notion that someone current games are too long and give players too much to do. You'll hear phrases like "shorter, more focused game experiences" which basically means they can spend less on development (and let's face it, the gaming press is mostly made up of wannabe indie game devs). If they could figure out a way to sell a $59 game that lasted 45 minutes, they'd do it in a heartbeat. Yeah, it's going around. You're hearing about how "players don't want long games" and "gamers would rather have an intensely fun one hour game than a grindy 100 hour one", as if those were the only two choices. Of course, this ignores the wild success of games like Skyrim and even current ones like Divinity: Original Sin.
Anybody who observes consumer culture knows where this is going. It's not a new concept. Give people smaller boxes of cereal for the same price as a large box and maybe they won't notice or care. Start with a subscription-only service which markets itself as "commercial free" and then start slipping in commercials, as if it were always inevitable (maybe it was).
No, I'm pretty sure the big difference between the successful game publishers of today and the old-school types like Romero is that Romero actually seemed to like gaming and gamers. The level of cynicism in F2P, co-op, Day 1 DLC, etc etc is pretty shocking really when you step back and look at it. Until people start to understand the enormous power in their consumption choices, it will only get worse, and the industry is doing everything it can to make game customers feel helpless in the face of these inexorable industry changes. When in reality, they are anything but helpless.
I hope consumers wake up at some point, but I won't hold my breath.
You are welcome on my lawn.
everything else was lacking.
To be fair, the American reboot of "Old Boy" was pretty great, I thought.
But generally, I agree.
However, I don't mind one bit if a game company reuses assets from a successful game. I thought Saints Row IV was one of the best games to come out that year (in fact, it was my GOTY), even though it was the same location, the same character models, the same voice talent (with a few additions) and the same textures.
Hey, I'm all for companies looking for ways to get it done cheaper and more efficiently, as long as the product gives real value for the price, which SRIV most certainly did, IMO.
I guess it's not about "reboot or not reboot" so much as it is about, "Make your goddamn products worth their price for a change".
You are welcome on my lawn.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Just make the next Minecraft and you'll be rich" "all you have to do is be the next notch"
That's a different game that entirely changes many aspects while adding a cartooney-amusing factor.
Hell I just bought "Rock paper Scissors" in TF2 as a taunt. We play a few rounds with teammates before the match begins. If you play an opposing team member the loser explodes. Amusing and fun.
For some reason TF2 still seems to be a benchmark of insanely fun multiplayer with maps designed so well that it seems we're always having a blast trying to overtake the next checkpoint.
" Maybe you should go back and use that and tell me if Firefox is any better than that version."
Nope, because WWW didn't leak memory like a fucking sieve. Firefox 32? Just like every iteration before it, from XP to Win 7, is a straight up piece of swiss cheese when it comes to memory. I actually moved back to IE.
"we might still be using that original version which was pretty crappy and difficult to use."
Funny, having installed it in a Windows 3.1 VM and tested it out, it's nowhere near as bad as you think, assuming you have the brains and intuition to find stuff.
"Thanks for playing."
Oh please, you weren't even a player in the first place. You were just a pawn.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Reinventions and creatively redesigning games and activities into a virtual space is like, the thing that made the big devs of the old studios of yor. I don't think people inspired to change paradigms are bad people to design.
It's just a risky business model. But the results can be gr8. Most likely this guy can survive another failure and is more than happy to get the chance to take a risk on this next en devour they dream of.
Honestly I don't know really where the hell FPS's can be taken... that they havn't at some point by a mod... but I guess someone could roll out an fps quite quickly by mashing up mod ideas and just using a stock engine.
he would know..
Wanna try something different check out the Hook and Minsta servers on Xonotic. Not my cup of tea but some super fast game play while you can fly around better than spider man.
http://www.xonotic.org/
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I dunno. I kind of agree with him [shudder]. FPS is sorely missing new ideas and his link to Minecraft is the most promising observation in years. I have always said that I may not be the best shooter but I am a good designer. Give me the ability to design my own weapons in-game and I will win a lot. But we are not talking about mech type building. We are talking fine-grained physics with metalworking, advanced chemistry and other real world complexity. This level of gaming is still beyond what computers can do but minecraft-type building would be a great step in that direction. I really want to see a game where you spend a month building, testing and refining your designs and five minutes in the actual battle. I am sure Romero will find a way to screw up but he sure is talking a good vision.
"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"
Red Faction: originally you could destroy terrain, in the newest you can rebuild some of it
he used the phrase "take the lessons of"
At the time doom was made *anything* would be pretty much innovative. That does not mean romero was ever a visionary or even a good game developper. "But he's still a better game developer than anyone posting on this article will ever be.". Because no recent game developer post ever on slashdot. Like Ever. Yeah. Right. /sarcasm
Praising one-man work (Minecraft), then "if only some brilliant designers take the lessons from Minecraft" (aka like Romero, right?), then it would elevate the genre and the gaming scene etc etc.
Hey Romero, people have already been creating/playing with the environment, if you want to "refine", better start working and stop talking, others are ahead in the game.
I wish there was something similar to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory in the pipeworks. In its simplicity it was a huge hit with an active modding community. Ah, all those countless hours playing TrueCombat: Elite!
Technology is essential to gaming, because without great code to back up your design (no matter how modest that design may be) your game will be glitchy, slow, or unplayable. In fact, Notch is a programmer first, designer second. The design of Minecraft (and many of his other games) seems to have evolved organically out of his programming experiments as well as the community.
So technology is still a big deal in gaming. Stop trying to convince us you're still relevant, Romero, and go sling some code. No game, no weiner.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Notch.
Romero's example of re-defining the creation/sandbox genre post-Minecraft is a little late to the game (pun shamelessly intended). At least one big player, Sony, has introduced a next-gen sandbox (currently in open Beta) called Landmark, and I'm sure others are forging ahead as well.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
This genre already exists, and if you consider it heavily, it has existed for a while now.
In the console area, I'd say it mostly exists in something like LittleBigPlanet style games.
And in part, games like Timesplitters, Far Cry and others that let you make your own maps.
In the PC area, it exists in things like Sims where you still have to actually manually BUILD things in it. There aren't any prefab structures, just objects you can place in them. Not so much crafting admittedly.
And with extension, some other games overlap, like Warzone 2100 (technically console first, but it lived on with PC) where you have to do heavy research to unlock the ability to build certain things at all.
These aren't even exhaustive and I've likely missed loads. But I did just wake up recently, give me a break. Plus, I also like the games above.
Well, except new Sims, Sims 4 is an embarrassment. EA are dead. They have ruined everything they have touched. I was willing to give them a chance, but they have ruined it all. Again. I highly expect Mirrors Edge 2 will be butchered to an unrecognisable state too.
but he sure is talking a good vision
I'm with you. I still recall fondly the DOOM levels that you can't forget, mostly because he had a hand in designing them. Rising platforms, teleporters at the edge of the lava pit? I say bring it on
" Maybe you should go back and use that and tell me if Firefox is any better than that version."
Nope, because WWW didn't leak memory like a fucking sieve. Firefox 32? Just like every iteration before it, from XP to Win 7, is a straight up piece of swiss cheese when it comes to memory. I actually moved back to IE.
"we might still be using that original version which was pretty crappy and difficult to use."
Funny, having installed it in a Windows 3.1 VM and tested it out, it's nowhere near as bad as you think, assuming you have the brains and intuition to find stuff.
"Thanks for playing."
Oh please, you weren't even a player in the first place. You were just a pawn.
I think you are getting a little confused.
Firstly if you are seriously suggesting that Firebox is worse than Tim Berners-Lee's original WorldWideWeb brower, you are seriously deranged. The original WWW had no image support, and no bookmarks, to name just two features.
Ridiculous to suggest Firefox is not a massive improvement.
Secondly I genuinely would like to know how you managed to get a program designed for the NextStep platform to work on Windows 3.1. Here is a hint. You didn't.
The original WWW was developed in 1990 and was developed for the NextStep platform, Windows 3.1 came out in 1992. So you were probably using Mosaic if you indeed setup Windows 3.1 in a VM to make a point! Well done on that. Thanks actually for completely proving my point, Mosaic is significantly easier to use than the original WWW program. Go back and use the original WWW and compare the two.
Games Programmer And Designer
Descent 3D, one of the best games ever. Its from back in the DOS days, and the graphics were not great back then. BUT it was a well designed and fun game, something many of today's games are sadly lacking in. Far too many of today's games are vastly overpriced crap despite having great graphics. It takes more than than the latest high end graphics to make a good game.
At first glance, I thought John Romero had reinvented the scooter. Segway 2.0 with a BFG on the handle bar?
#o#
O Moo.
You suck!
That is all.
One of the biggest limitations of the Shooter genre is right there in the name.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
NO?
One thing which has long irked me about the FPS genre is the static nature of the game world.
The advent of realistic physics engines has made it possible to move past this limitation, but very little effort has been expended to actually do so. Admittedly, I don't game as much as I used to, but the only game that's coming to mind right now is Crysis. I don't think I ever got very far in the game, but I vaguely remember buildings and other larger structures actually being made up of smaller pieces which could then be blown apart. A step in the right direction, for sure, but I've played a few shooters since then and this feature doesn't seem to have gained adoption in other games. In any case, even the implementation in Crysis was rather limited; as far as I know, the distinct structural elements of buildings couldn't be subsequently broken down into smaller-still pieces.
In Fallout 4, I want the explosives skill to be useful for gaining entry to otherwise-inaccessible areas by way of blowing up walls, doors, rubble. Wishful thinking, I know, but why can't we have this level of realism in 2014 when game physics engines have been impressing us for nearly a decade now? Couldn't this level of realism be used to enhance gameplay instead of just serving as eye candy?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
... this is the innovation that was Minecraft has led to a whole bunch of copy-cats by itself just like with the FPS games.
And within those groups many may not be very innovative.
Obvious troll is obvious.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I ditched Firefox back at v3 due to the horrible memory leak. Recently, with spyware Chrome and the shit reboot of Opera being so slow and uncustomizable, I have gone back to Firefox. The memory leak seems to be gone, but a new problem has cropped up where sometimes Firefox won't die. I close the browser and see the process still sitting there until I manually kill it.
I am highly disappointed in all current web browsers. Despite not supporting such things as HTML5 video, Opera 12 will remain my primary browser until someone can create a better browser.
Um, technically Firefox (2004) is a branch of a rebrand (Mozilla Suite, 1998) of an open-sourced product (Netscape Communicator, 1997) that was the successor of a commercial suite (Netscape Navigator, 1994) written by the same guys who did Mosaic back in 1993.
Apparently IE was also based on Mosaic around the same time. But did IE end up in the same boat as Windows 1.0-3.0 where nobody actually used it willingly until 3.1? 3.0 was August 1996, then 6.0 sat and chilled from 2001 until 2006.
With the amount of redesigning they've done with IE over the last several years I hardly think it's accurate to say Firefox is more of a reinvention. It was a long evolution that kept getting new names and teams working on it (although the Mozilla Suite lives on as SeaMonkey today, too).
P.S: For some bizarre reason, the IE Wikipedia article jumps from 1.5 to 8 in their main narrative. Um...pretty sure 6 was pretty noteworthy for a long time...
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
So we're getta a Diakatana 2!?
sounds good to me. I always felt like minecraft was missing rocket launchers and warthogs .
Shooter games -- what could be in poorer taste these days?
No, Firefox is an evolution of those. "Reboots" are abrupt and major changes to establish franchises that come without warning. Everybody saw where browsers were heading long before Firefox.
First Person Skiing
Are you referring to Tribes ?