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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."
Sorry, I cannot read TFA without my trusty sidekick superfly
http://www.penny-arcade.com/co...
I don't know, pretty much every modern FPS is based on ideas thought up by this guy. I'm willing to give him a pass even on that last gigantic swing and miss.
Rob, Top five gaming crimes perpetuated by John Romero in the '00s. Go. Sub-question: is it in fact unfair to criticize a formerly great artist for his latter day sins, is it better to burn out or fade away?
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.
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.
He's right, you're wrong. Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake. That's a career any developer would be envious of, and yes, those games clearly defined the FPS genre.
Has he done anything lately? Not really. Has he had some big failures? Definitely. But he's still a better game developer than anyone posting on this article will ever be.
That said, I'm not sure I'm going to go to him first as an expert on the future of the gaming industry...
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.
You're probably too young to remember, but Redneck Rampage had mosquitoes as big as a man's head, and they could, given time, do enough damage to kill you.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
" 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.
"Oh yeah, you took a steaming turd on my computer."
I don't recall him having any part of Windows, Linux, or OSX development.
MenuetOS Master Race. Making n00bs like you into bitches one install at a time.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
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*
"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
I'm not sure I get your point. I was for the most part defending him and his career. But still, if he hasn't done anything notable in the industry in over a decade, there is good reason to question current relevancy of his opinions.
Though if you want to talk those with higher batting averages - John Carmack is the Babe Ruth of the Game Developer Hall of Fame, but even his recent games have been fairly mediocre. How about Michael Morhaime? Ray Muzyka? Sid Meyer? Tim Schafer? Sam Houser? Jason Jones? Ken Levine? Mostly relevant for 15+ years with consistent hits the whole time.
Romero did make at least one good point in his interview - it's not all about the technology. Good design, writing, understanding the customers/market, and adapting to that new market is just as important, and all of this I listed are still relevant because they focused on all of those things beyond the technology...
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.
Wait, the Simpsons has no violence (and adult content)? You must have been watching a different TV show from what I have been watching the last 20+ years...
And I think you are talking about a completely different game genre. Do you actually know what the S in FPS stands for? Pretty sure there isn't a "whole market just waiting for" Nerf Deathmatch.
You are trying to avoid having your children exposed to all forms of violent entertainment? Including violent cartoons?
So what happens when they get into their teens and you no longer can control what they watch? (I assume that you don't have them locked up in the basement.)
They are going to be exposed to violence at a time when they feel the need to rebel against their parents and become more independent while associating the censorship with you. Does that sound like a good idea?
Pretty sure there isn't a "whole market just waiting for" Nerf Deathmatch.
Actually, there very probably is. Deathmatch without the completely-unnecassary-anyway blood splatters. Fun weapons that cover you in goo, or shrink you to a tiny size, or whatever. Stuff you can play with your kids without the whole simulated murder thing going on. And yes I know we should all be outside climbing trees and/or inside singing songs around the piano, but video games can be quite fun.
Pretty sure there isn't a "whole market just waiting for" Nerf Deathmatch.
Actually, there very probably is. Deathmatch without the completely-unnecassary-anyway blood splatters. Fun weapons that cover you in goo, or shrink you to a tiny size, or whatever. Stuff you can play with your kids without the whole simulated murder thing going on. And yes I know we should all be outside climbing trees and/or inside singing songs around the piano, but video games can be quite fun.
There are lots of Nerf Deathmatch games. One I remember in particular, was based on the Unreal 1 engine Nerf Arena Blast. It came out around the same time as UT so it felt very similar. There are plenty of gameplay videos on youtube.
I had fun with the demo back in the day
Given them my money
"It's become a stagnant genre, and it's time we had an Doom/Duke Nukem/Unreal/Half-Life successor"
The reality is many games single player aspect back then don't hold up very well if you play them back to back with modern games if you measure them on a feelings and "this is so awesome" standpoint, the rise of the cinemtic game - even as me an older gamer has shifted my preference hierarchy to want "both". I force myself to play brutal doom to get my "gameplay vegetables" because I hate the fact that hollywood props and cheap tricks give human brains higher highs in terms of excitement over intrinsic gameplay in terms of single player experiences. I really hate the fact that when I go back and play doom 2 I wish it was some hybrid of the cartoony doom I know and love and the best elements of hollywood deadspace, but minus the hollywood hyper realism. I was never a fan of the push towards realism in doom 3 on mars, I always loved the pixel art/toony type style of doom 2 and it was kind of awkward seeing the Cyber-Demon rendered realistically, when doom 2 had more of an artistic comic vibe with it's enemies like the walking spider brain that felt poached from Teenage mutant ninja turtles.
To say that modern games are all boring is a bit of an overstatement, they certainly DO cause excitement in their hollywood parts. I enjoy Assassins creeds world even if I have serious issues with the dumbed down combat when compared to prince of persia series also made by Ubisoft. I really do think the push for hollywood has seriously made developers dumber, newer generations of developers raised on Halo regen shields and hollywood handholding campaigns has been infecting all of gaming, I seriously question developers, that "they know what they are doing". Too often even simple and cheap to program things are missing in many modern games.
The problem modern games main problem is gameplay, PC (modding/dedicated servers) and challenge related but this is publishers trying to drive DRM and control the market by confiscating game ownership with encrypted steam games via steamworks DRM for multiplayer/matchmaking. Shooters FPS/TPS, they are most certainly by the numbers but the mass gaming audience prefers hollywood action movie over intrinsic gameplay generated by fun and challenge. To be honest with you, I thought half-life 2 was just a giant pile of fail, trying too hard to be the hollywood action movie type game it never really was really "here's an empty base with an experiment gone wrong, you are on your own". Half life one did it's best to get out of the players way, while Half-life 2 feels like a very force sequel. I think it comes down to Valve not really not know what they are doing storywise. When I got to the buggy desert/section I gave up, I just got too bored. Half-life 2 was poorly made in many areas and poorly paced. I lost interest.
Half-life, while it was one of the first 'movie based games' where there was story integrated into it, but it wasn't done as obnoxiously and overbearingly as it is done today. That being said, some obnoxious overbearingness works, if you play the singleplayer campaign of Transformers - Fall of cybertron, you'd be hard pressed to say that it couldn't compare in terms of fun to Doom 2.
Doom was made at a time before the integration of 'hollywood action movie/cartoon show inside a videogame' was mastered. The newer generation has problems going back and playing games that haven't mastered the hollywood integration like Mass effect 2, Call of duty and transformers fall of cybetron (sp campaign). I don't fault newer genreation gamers for that because even I as an older gamer know that when CPU/GPU power hit a threshold it was just easier to use high def AV to flash our primate brain in sensation, problem is instrinsic feelings related internally generated gameplay are easily overwhelmed and outcompeted in many (not all) instances of set piece hollywood bullshit. The kind of excitement we get from the hollywood is of a different character them the stre
First off, UO=Ultima Online. But that's not important.
You could definitely walk seamlessly, using the keyboard, in Ultima Underworld, it's not at all grid-based like Dungeon Master. You could also run and swim, you could have platforms you could see above and below at the same time(something not even duke 3d could do when it came out years later). It had 3d objects, not just sprites for everything(but still for most things). It had inclines and leaning walls, also something Doom lacked.
I'll give you that the lighting was better, the sky effects helped a *lot* with the claustrophobia, and the shooting was better since it was a shooter, not an RPG.
various first person in a plainly 2D maze (Wolf3D, Ultima Underworld, Might and Magic 3...)
Ultima Underworld was not a 2D maze. Look at the first screenshot in the wikipedia article for instance.