That's interesting, because I've always considered Nethack to *be* highly visual. In short, without an easily-readable 2D map representing the areas of the dungeon around the player and already explored, how could a blind player explore and fight effectively? With a braille screen I can understand, but I don't know if, for example, a blindfolded me could bear to play with a screen reader.
I do understand that it's a lot harder to convert a 3D game to that sort of thing... though I have to wonder when you're talking about game play that's usually no more complicated than turn and shoot.
It depends on how much news it got (probably lots) and how widespread the practice would become (probably not very). Of course, if they were using Googlebar, they wouldn't even notice then.
I could care less about brands. However, I care a lot about not getting naggled and snagged by annoying and questionable practices, and since Google professes to care about them too, and since I have yet to see evidence to the contrary (despite the loud, strident tone of the Google Watch guy), I continue to use their service, and probably will even if/when it falls to number two, or further.
I think that may be Google's biggest advantage -- they saw which way the wind was blowing when every other web company was eagerly trying to monetize the good will of their users. Google saw that that wasn't a resource which would easily heal over time.
If their competitors adopt the same foresighted practices, well, then that's another matter, but I'll probably stick with Google in that event out of habit. And Google's recent push towards service diversification means even if I stop using them for search, I'm still likely to use them for Usenet and e-mail.
And playing around with Google Sets. But that's just fun.
I dispute that. If Google had obnoxious pop-ups with every page of search results, big annoying blinking banner ads and pages that took months to load, I wouldn't use them so much, or have made it my home page.
Even if another site were to handily beat Google's search results, if they didn't have that same basic level of respect for the user, I would not use them. They made the web useable again.
(Myst)
its a 'game', sure, but a game in the same sense that solitaire is a game. you cant possibly compare it to something like GTA3.
All non-networked computer games are solitaire. And oh yes I can compare it, not directly because they're very different types of games, but in terms of their effect on the industry, and how they opened people's eyes as to what gaming can be.
GTA3 is the best GTA3 it can be. Myst is the very best Myst. I was enchanted by Myst when I played through it, it shows exceptional attention to detail, it admirably presented a self-contained world with very little in the way of textual presentation, the puzzles were well-conceived....
But I don't have to resort to buzzwords to know I enjoyed it, and lots of other people did, too. It's not without flaws, but you can say that about almost anything. It's also surprisingly complete for what it is.
if the definition of a genius of game design is someone that can effectively mask a spreadsheet with fancy graphics to the point where people would actually want to manipulate it, then give that man the prize.
It is, and I do.
The utmost test of whether you're a good designer is if you can take something that everyone thinks would be awful, come up with a take on it that will engage Joe Gamer, and get it made. Will Wright created SimCity back when 8-bit computers were still popular. People thought he was crazy, and yet it's proven itself one of the most enduring of games.
A great game can be made about anything. The skill is in the implementation.
Just imagine: if Will Wright *could* get people to enjoy filling out accounting reports, how wonderful it would be! You've got your causes mixed up: accounting reports, and urban planning, are boring because they contain tedium, not because they are useful. Make a boring, yet necessary, thing fun and you've brought true good into the world.
GTA is, as suggested, not an american game. ergo, i assumed it worth mentioning.
But it is a game designed in the Western style, which boils down to non-Japanese when it comes to gaming. I assumed the original poster was referring to Western game styles in general, even if he said American, even if he thought GTA was made in the U.S. That's more important that the geographical fact of its origin.
generally its appreciated if people actually know what they are talking about instead of purely spouting sales figure titles and cutting and pasting from gaming articles.
And generally it's appreciated if you don't needlessly attack people. Especially since I didn't think he was quoting anyone, I thought everything he said was common knowledge.
why does everyone think themselves all high and mighty because they can name drop nethack? some people take this obsession with non-graphics just too far. FYI : its not a better game just because it uses ASCII characters, okay?
Oooooh, dude! It's not an obsession with non-graphics, it's an obsession with *gameplay*.
In fact, there are ports of Nethack now that do have graphics, and the basic game has 16-color VGA tiles now. One version has *great* graphics -- do a web search on Falcon's Eye and see what I mean.
But under the hood, it's still Nethack. And Nethack is very likely the most nuanced game ever made, in a way that games that haven't been worked on for a decade-and-a-half can't hope to match. In many ways it is still the ultimate solo-player take on an old-style Dungeons & Dragons-like adventure session.
I think it's admirable that you're willing to decide for yourself whether a game is good or not instead of echoing the opinions of others. But I recommend you try to give games, and people, a chance before cutting them down.
I'm convinced that if you learned the (admittedly clunky) interface and gave it a chance, you'd have a new favorite game in Nethack. It's that cool.
(Myst) what? nice try, but youve picked a glorified screensaver that hard merits being described as a 'game'
That you do not define it as a game does not mean it isn't. Myst indeed *is* a game -- it just doesn't look like the ones you are familiar with. And it was the first CD-ROM success story, despite not being *marketed* as as screensaver.
(The Sims) a virtual doll house that may cater to the boring EA mainstream crowd but isnt paid much attention in actual gaming circles
That statement about gaming circles is *false*. The fact that the circles that admire The Sims do not intersect with the ones to which you may belong doesn't mean that people don't pay attention to The Sims. That the game looks little like anything that came before it and yet has become so massively successful is an indication of its genius, not its lack of such.
(Pac-Man) a 20+ year old game that was only enjoyed because games couldnt actually render anything remotely resembling a complex environment at the time(but seriously, why the fuck have you mentioned this anyway?)
He mentioned it because Pac-Man is *a good game*, one that struck the delicate balance between difficulty and player enjoyment (a much harder task in the arcade than on a console!), and still one of the top-selling arcade games of all time. Age and competing technology doesn't invalidate the fun millions of people had playing it. Graphics, sound and style may all fall out of fashion, but gameplay is forever.
Further, why would you need more than Pac-Man's graphics to render it? There have been many, many updates of the original game, many of which by Namco, but arguably the series peaked with Super Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man (which Namco *didn't* produce), both first-order sequels with comparable graphics. And the original visuals have a charm completely lacking in any of the updates, no matter how powerful the 3D engine that drives them.
(Sim-City) a spreadsheet with fancy graphics over the top
Again, you have a deficient understanding of gaming. And again, the fact that such a dry simulation has been made so involving only shows the brilliance of the design. It's interesting that you derided both this and The Sims as being things other than what you define to be games, when they're both designed by Will Wright, one of *the* geniuses of computer game design.
(GTA3) and a top selling, amazingly artistic and near perfect action/adventure game
It's great in many ways, but it's not near-perfect. I like it a lot, but Rockstar still has a ways to go in lending the simulated city enough verisimilitude to seem real.
except it isnt even american.
True. But not really important unless you're trying to merely impugn the parent post's intelligence, which it does not deserve.
oh yeah, and Sam & Max. hey, one out of six aint that bad.
Sam & Man is hilarious, but also a fairly by-the-numbers adventure game. Not to say I wouldn't have loved a sequel, but it would be to laugh at rather than to puzzle through.
Methinks you need to spend a little more time with Nethack. It'll be an education for you....
I've felt for a long time that Crawford suffers from the exact problem he stated in the article: He's too stuck in his ways. Oh, he does try to break out and "see the light," and he's ready to rant and make others do so, but it's just not in him. He made games, and many of them were pretty good, but he just can't seem to fathom approaches other than the ones he took 15+ years ago.
If a problem was solved then, then way doesn't that solution work now? And the things he attempted back then working with less than 128k of memory are much more profound problems than most people (with some brilliant exceptions) are trying today. Siboot was a game about communication, knowledge acquition, and even human nature. It had its own simplified icon-based language, and it ran on classic Macs! That sounds to me like a much more interesting game than DOOM 3.
His storytelling work, at its core, might be seen an attempt to bridge the worlds. He's sure worked on it for a long time, but I don't think he's locked into anything. As near as I can tell, he wants to create stories algorithmically, or rather a system by which everyday people can set the basis for it and have it play out in the machine.
That's a cool idea. One of the coolest, in fact. I don't know if it's possible, but thinking about the problem myself, a little here and there, I suspect it just might.
We tend to only to get the better Japanese games on our shores. And many of those those games, to me at least, are showing as least as much me-tooness as Western games show.
However, when it comes to the number of *companies* that do a good job of encouraging creativity among their developers, I'd say the percentage is slightly higher in Japan. But just slightly.
Good. Game designers who can't at least begin to understand the technical aspects have no place in game development.
There's a difference between being able to "at least begin to understand the technical aspects" and being able to build a 3D engine. Lots of modders just know how to create levels, and can do it well, even if they can't implement the editor.
The best game designers understand why a programming team can't implement a solution in a particular way due to the underlying complexity. The simpler the design, the better it folds and fits onto the hardware.
But also, the simpler the design, *the better*. And as graphics programming continues to fly off on its long journey towards Mars, so also it becomes its own little cul-de-sac in game production. Look at Crawford's own work -- none of his games require a lick of linear algebra in order to understand their implementation, yet many of them are among the best designed of all.
Designers who simply sit around spouting unimplementable nonsense are eventually going to get punched in the face by the developers who have to actually build the game.
I say it's possible to know, in general, what's possible and what's not, without having to keep in your head all the sundry elements of implementation. Now I've heard horror stories about designers who knew so little that they might well deserve a punch in the face, but I'd say we're loaded down with the opposite at the moment, people devoting ever more energy into better-looking sports uniforms and increasing the number of polygons on demons. Same old games, to a longer and longer decimal expansion.
Unless somebody is set on making their own little games in their spare time, heeding your advice and learning art alongside programming is a good way to dilute talent and torpedo someone's game development career before it's even started.
Do you think talent can be diluted like that? I don't, although I can see how learning similar things produces large "synergy bonuses" (a term I'm stealing from some game system used somewhere), and how you can have a limited amount of time in which to learn things.
But becoming a well-rounded individual is plain-out advisable. Not to game designers, but to every damn person who ever damn lived.
Executive summary: we can build amazing-looking games, but we're finding it harder and harder to some up with something to make all that built-up ado over. I think a balance needs to be found between technical prowess and good design sense. Thas' all.
Dude, the second the industry becomes open to hiring semi-technical, well-rounded, English major types to *design* games, I'm *so there*. They aren't, but I'm very patiently waiting for the day when they are, if they ever do.
Most designers in the game industry get there by working up a highly technical ladder. While you're leaning all that higher math, linear algebra, programming languages and techniques, data structures, etc., you're not learning about decent storytelling, the pantheon of literary greats, the human condition, etc. Instead, you're probably reading comic books and watching action movies, which despite some standouts (I can't tell you how much I love the compilation of Batman: Year One someone gave me recently), do not take a lot of effort to understand.
But this makes sense, as I consider that there's only enough room in your head for so much. Now what I describe as "room" isn't a question of capacity, but is more like opportunity times effort times alignment of perspective. You can only do so much with your day, and you only have so many days, and you tend to learn in terms of relating acquired information with what you already know, which would make it harder to learn either subject when you're taking two lit classes and two calculus, than if you were taking four English and four high-math.
But while there's arguably a good bit of high-level math a game designer doesn't need, it's unavoidable that a game designer learn at least *some* math. If you don't know a good bit of statistics and algebra it's gets much harder to cook up a plan for a game, and there are definitely uses for the higher stuff as well. But once it gets past a certain point, it becomes less useful for just designing.
So anyway, judging from the fact that I learned programming and game design on my own when I was 14, and am now finishing up a B.A. in English, I must be the perfect game designer. Somebody, hire meeee!!
P.S. You'd better believe Crawford knows his stuff.
Ouchies! Your message needs to be starred, boldfaced and moved to the front of the discussion. Good job.
As Linux moves more into the mainstream however, we're just going to see more of these attempts at discreding based on mere assertion. Of course there are fringes of both Linux and Microsoft boosters do a lot of this, but Microsoft has the cash to move this kind of baseless propaganda into slightly-mainstream news outlets, such as, in this case, Yahoo News.
Me, I'm just waiting for someone to post something here about "All the slashbots piling in to complain about this," which seems to happen with most anti-Microsoft, pro-Linux stories eventually.
Well, it *was* very different from what came before it.
It was a Zelda game in terms of scenario, but, in retrospect, the gameplay is the most atypical of the series. (Of course, when it came out it was only the second game, so people didn't know back then.)
I think Zelda II has gotten a bad rap over the years. While it supports random exploration and item acquition and usage much less than the typical Zelda, has markedly less complex dungeons, and has that whole side-scrolling thing, it has an excellent combat system. I can really jam on that game if I can get focused on it.
I've only recently started playing the GTA games, and they're pretty cool. Not for the whole criminal focus, though I understand there are people who like that sort of thing, but for all the submissions and stuff. When I found out that GTA3 had its very own Crazy Taxi mode I nearly died.
To me, that's what makes GTA worth playing: the giant sandbox play style. Like Zelda taking place in a real city.
Indeed, GTA is a real argument against setting your gigantic sprawling action-adventure game in a fantastic setting. Because when you see a taxi running down the street, you immediately understand what that means, that there's a guy inside running fares for customers, and in general how that works. A sci-fi or fantasy implementation of that would have to do some extra work to connect that concept with that game's world.
It's possible, mind you, and one of the great things about Zelda is how they manage to put in a little of that despite the somewhat alien setting, but it doesn't have the same feeling of verisimilitude GTA has.
On the other hand, um, uh, GTA's talk radio stations cycle too much! Yeah!
Or, it's cool enough in enough people's minds that people will still try to buy them, and thus aggressively bid each other up to almost-retail. That's often the case with relatively new video game units, since there's typically some games for it that can't be played on anything else.
Perhaps. Though old-time RPG fanatics might be excited about the PS annoucement, Phantasy Stars I-IV have perhaps the best of all the 8/16-bit console RPG stories (*seriously* epic), and I'd even rank them above recent Final Fantasy games.
But yeah, it's probably not all that earth-shattering to most people.
I like that they're doing something more with Phantasy Star, hopefully something that connects with the original games instead of the PSO stuff. That could be really cool.
Pay for the stuff if you think it's worth the money, use something else if you don't. It's not a hard choice.
It doesn't quite work like that. In practice, I find it's more like: "Find the product with the best feature set. Then look for second best, and so on down until features start lacking or you run out. Be mindful of ties. Consider crippled payware as two products, one with registration and one without. Then, check prices, and download/buy the one with the best features for the lowest price."
The important distinction I'm trying to make is that, if two products offer identical features, and one costs and the other is free, the free one is obviously the correct choice, and that's what seems to be the case here.
The obvious use of the touch-sensitive screen is to provide a point-and-click interface to RPGs. Games like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance have a very convoluted menu system. An actual GUI could make those games substantially more accessable to new players.
Real-time strategy games could also benefit greatly from a point-and-click interface, and arguably a screen and stylus solution is easier to use than even a mouse + monitor once you're used to it.
Also, games could rather easily add customization options, where a player could draw an image to be mapped on the hood of his car, or paint his spaceship, or come up with a crest for his kingdom, or draw a character portrain 1st Edition D&D character sheet style.
And naturally, creative software like Mario Paint also seem like a natural -- indeed, a Mario Paint-like app with an export function, making use of wireless connectivity to save images to a computer's filesystem, could be *extremely* cool, and could make it possible to use a DS for -- dare I say it?? -- real work.
I'd pay real money for a Palm-like productivity card for the DS if it was also filled with fun Gameboy Camera-style features, and with its generous default feature-set it almost looks as useful as a PDA. And imagine using Animal Crossing DS with the wireless connection to send *real* e-mail, to people in other towns? Or visiting other towns, over the internet, and actually meeting the people living there in-game?
It's not a sphere you boneheaded cretin, I think it's more than obvious to anyone with a rudimentary frontal lobe that Link's head is an oval. An oval with a droopy elf hat. Sheesh.
You're obviously thinking of Charlie Brown, who never gets past Level One and always whiffs with his sword, and whose dog collects all the rupees before he can reach them.
And I sincerely doubt this will reach the epic level of the great vi vs. emacs feud, for the simple reason that "Church of Oval Link's Head" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
Nerd Lobby! I love it! It's not just a chatroom right before a networked computer game anymore!
Two processors in every box! A Segway in every garage! Tax breaks for Sci-Fi shows! The institution of nationwide robotic animal shelters for Aibos! Important research into the use of Lego as a building material!
And legal recognition of personal relationships between young frustrated men and their inflatagirls. Vote "yes" on Proposition e!
But the Patriot Act was passed in the aftermath of 9/11, when the hell was scared out of a large number of Congressmen (one of the planes, after all, crashed into the Pentagon right there in Washy Deek). It was a bad choice, and he's now campaigning on getting some provisions, deemed "too invasive," repealed.
A lot of badness in the law comes from Ashcroft & Co.'s interpretation of it. Which is not to say that it's not a bad law, but that it's effects seem to be worse than the creators intended. Magnified.
(P.S. To my knowledge, this is the first usage ever in the world of the term "Washy Deek." My gift to humanity!)
Still, Link was a kid in the original game, as the artwork in the manual made clear. That Wind Waker makes it impossible to ignore this fact is not a point that I hold against it.
This is the third tree-shaking response I've gotten. Although there's been one supportive response, and one partial turn-around after a response of my own, I still think this indicates that my original statement is at least somewhat wrong.
But I stand by my own idea of what makes Link cool, as a character: that he's a child assigned a very grown-up task, and completes it with flying colors, and Wind Waker simply makes more visible this essential element of the Zelda formula.
And most recent Zeldas do have a "training period," where the dungeons are easier and the monsters aren't as bad (Peahats notwithstanding), that make it a little credible that a child could follow this path to heroness.
Avoiding Wind Waker "on the off chance it's good despite the art?" Grasshopper, you should have greater trust in the ability of the masta. Remember, the Oracle games were actually produced by Capcom. And there are places where the artwork is stunning - the toon-style lighting from torches and such in dungeons is what sticks out in my mind. There are some great things to see far-beneath-the-waves (hint hint spoiler hint!) as well, and I've already said somewhere around here that I consider the last fights to be very cool.
On the Oracle games: I played through one, bought and played a little of the other, then lost interest. I agree, they somehow don't feel quite up to the traditional Zelda style, though they do have their moments. It'll be interesting to see how the Capcom produced(?) Minish Cap game, for GBA, turns out.
That said, I didn't like the look of Wind Waker because I felt it was a step in the wrong direction.
I believe that's the point where we part ways. I don't think computer gaming is an ever-advancing thing, like processor speed and memory. Its marriage to technology can make it difficult to distinguish, perhaps, but I would say that, although a great deal of math and science goes into their making, that ultimately it's more of an art. And art doesn't advance, it just mutates into new forms, getting reinvented over and over by new generations of artists.
That's why I think Midway Arcade Treasures is doing so well at retail, or well enough to get a successor anyway, because the included games still stand up. There are games included in that compilation that have yet to be equaled from a design standpoint: I'm thinking of Rampart, 720 Degrees, Robotron and Joust, specifically, but there may be more.
But I digress a bit. I think what Nintendo was mindful of is that gaming doesn't have to resemble reality. In fact, often it's best that it doesn't. I think that approach will become much more common as more and more games become so hyper-realistic that they all come to resemble reality, and thus each other.
Slashdot Mirror
That's interesting, because I've always considered Nethack to *be* highly visual. In short, without an easily-readable 2D map representing the areas of the dungeon around the player and already explored, how could a blind player explore and fight effectively? With a braille screen I can understand, but I don't know if, for example, a blindfolded me could bear to play with a screen reader.
I do understand that it's a lot harder to convert a 3D game to that sort of thing... though I have to wonder when you're talking about game play that's usually no more complicated than turn and shoot.
I have no earthly idea how it works, but there's a number of mentions in the source.
I don't even know if it's some sort of joke. Can you buy a braille screen?
It depends on how much news it got (probably lots) and how widespread the practice would become (probably not very). Of course, if they were using Googlebar, they wouldn't even notice then.
I could care less about brands. However, I care a lot about not getting naggled and snagged by annoying and questionable practices, and since Google professes to care about them too, and since I have yet to see evidence to the contrary (despite the loud, strident tone of the Google Watch guy), I continue to use their service, and probably will even if/when it falls to number two, or further.
I think that may be Google's biggest advantage -- they saw which way the wind was blowing when every other web company was eagerly trying to monetize the good will of their users. Google saw that that wasn't a resource which would easily heal over time.
If their competitors adopt the same foresighted practices, well, then that's another matter, but I'll probably stick with Google in that event out of habit. And Google's recent push towards service diversification means even if I stop using them for search, I'm still likely to use them for Usenet and e-mail.
And playing around with Google Sets. But that's just fun.
I dispute that. If Google had obnoxious pop-ups with every page of search results, big annoying blinking banner ads and pages that took months to load, I wouldn't use them so much, or have made it my home page.
Even if another site were to handily beat Google's search results, if they didn't have that same basic level of respect for the user, I would not use them. They made the web useable again.
(Myst) its a 'game', sure, but a game in the same sense that solitaire is a game. you cant possibly compare it to something like GTA3.
All non-networked computer games are solitaire. And oh yes I can compare it, not directly because they're very different types of games, but in terms of their effect on the industry, and how they opened people's eyes as to what gaming can be.
GTA3 is the best GTA3 it can be. Myst is the very best Myst. I was enchanted by Myst when I played through it, it shows exceptional attention to detail, it admirably presented a self-contained world with very little in the way of textual presentation, the puzzles were well-conceived....
But I don't have to resort to buzzwords to know I enjoyed it, and lots of other people did, too. It's not without flaws, but you can say that about almost anything. It's also surprisingly complete for what it is.
if the definition of a genius of game design is someone that can effectively mask a spreadsheet with fancy graphics to the point where people would actually want to manipulate it, then give that man the prize.
It is, and I do.
The utmost test of whether you're a good designer is if you can take something that everyone thinks would be awful, come up with a take on it that will engage Joe Gamer, and get it made. Will Wright created SimCity back when 8-bit computers were still popular. People thought he was crazy, and yet it's proven itself one of the most enduring of games.
A great game can be made about anything. The skill is in the implementation.
Just imagine: if Will Wright *could* get people to enjoy filling out accounting reports, how wonderful it would be! You've got your causes mixed up: accounting reports, and urban planning, are boring because they contain tedium, not because they are useful. Make a boring, yet necessary, thing fun and you've brought true good into the world.
GTA is, as suggested, not an american game. ergo, i assumed it worth mentioning.
But it is a game designed in the Western style, which boils down to non-Japanese when it comes to gaming. I assumed the original poster was referring to Western game styles in general, even if he said American, even if he thought GTA was made in the U.S. That's more important that the geographical fact of its origin.
generally its appreciated if people actually know what they are talking about instead of purely spouting sales figure titles and cutting and pasting from gaming articles.
And generally it's appreciated if you don't needlessly attack people. Especially since I didn't think he was quoting anyone, I thought everything he said was common knowledge.
why does everyone think themselves all high and mighty because they can name drop nethack? some people take this obsession with non-graphics just too far. FYI : its not a better game just because it uses ASCII characters, okay?
Oooooh, dude! It's not an obsession with non-graphics, it's an obsession with *gameplay*.
In fact, there are ports of Nethack now that do have graphics, and the basic game has 16-color VGA tiles now. One version has *great* graphics -- do a web search on Falcon's Eye and see what I mean.
But under the hood, it's still Nethack. And Nethack is very likely the most nuanced game ever made, in a way that games that haven't been worked on for a decade-and-a-half can't hope to match. In many ways it is still the ultimate solo-player take on an old-style Dungeons & Dragons-like adventure session.
I think it's admirable that you're willing to decide for yourself whether a game is good or not instead of echoing the opinions of others. But I recommend you try to give games, and people, a chance before cutting them down.
I'm convinced that if you learned the (admittedly clunky) interface and gave it a chance, you'd have a new favorite game in Nethack. It's that cool.
Oy! Where do I start?
(Myst)
what? nice try, but youve picked a glorified screensaver that hard merits being described as a 'game'
That you do not define it as a game does not mean it isn't. Myst indeed *is* a game -- it just doesn't look like the ones you are familiar with. And it was the first CD-ROM success story, despite not being *marketed* as as screensaver.
(The Sims)
a virtual doll house that may cater to the boring EA mainstream crowd but isnt paid much attention in actual gaming circles
That statement about gaming circles is *false*. The fact that the circles that admire The Sims do not intersect with the ones to which you may belong doesn't mean that people don't pay attention to The Sims. That the game looks little like anything that came before it and yet has become so massively successful is an indication of its genius, not its lack of such.
(Pac-Man)
a 20+ year old game that was only enjoyed because games couldnt actually render anything remotely resembling a complex environment at the time(but seriously, why the fuck have you mentioned this anyway?)
He mentioned it because Pac-Man is *a good game*, one that struck the delicate balance between difficulty and player enjoyment (a much harder task in the arcade than on a console!), and still one of the top-selling arcade games of all time. Age and competing technology doesn't invalidate the fun millions of people had playing it. Graphics, sound and style may all fall out of fashion, but gameplay is forever.
Further, why would you need more than Pac-Man's graphics to render it? There have been many, many updates of the original game, many of which by Namco, but arguably the series peaked with Super Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man (which Namco *didn't* produce), both first-order sequels with comparable graphics. And the original visuals have a charm completely lacking in any of the updates, no matter how powerful the 3D engine that drives them.
(Sim-City)
a spreadsheet with fancy graphics over the top
Again, you have a deficient understanding of gaming. And again, the fact that such a dry simulation has been made so involving only shows the brilliance of the design. It's interesting that you derided both this and The Sims as being things other than what you define to be games, when they're both designed by Will Wright, one of *the* geniuses of computer game design.
(GTA3)
and a top selling, amazingly artistic and near perfect action/adventure game
It's great in many ways, but it's not near-perfect. I like it a lot, but Rockstar still has a ways to go in lending the simulated city enough verisimilitude to seem real.
except it isnt even american.
True. But not really important unless you're trying to merely impugn the parent post's intelligence, which it does not deserve.
oh yeah, and Sam & Max. hey, one out of six aint that bad.
Sam & Man is hilarious, but also a fairly by-the-numbers adventure game. Not to say I wouldn't have loved a sequel, but it would be to laugh at rather than to puzzle through.
Methinks you need to spend a little more time with Nethack. It'll be an education for you....
I've felt for a long time that Crawford suffers from the exact problem he stated in the article: He's too stuck in his ways. Oh, he does try to break out and "see the light," and he's ready to rant and make others do so, but it's just not in him. He made games, and many of them were pretty good, but he just can't seem to fathom approaches other than the ones he took 15+ years ago.
If a problem was solved then, then way doesn't that solution work now? And the things he attempted back then working with less than 128k of memory are much more profound problems than most people (with some brilliant exceptions) are trying today. Siboot was a game about communication, knowledge acquition, and even human nature. It had its own simplified icon-based language, and it ran on classic Macs! That sounds to me like a much more interesting game than DOOM 3.
His storytelling work, at its core, might be seen an attempt to bridge the worlds. He's sure worked on it for a long time, but I don't think he's locked into anything. As near as I can tell, he wants to create stories algorithmically, or rather a system by which everyday people can set the basis for it and have it play out in the machine.
That's a cool idea. One of the coolest, in fact. I don't know if it's possible, but thinking about the problem myself, a little here and there, I suspect it just might.
You beat me to it, aww man.
We tend to only to get the better Japanese games on our shores. And many of those those games, to me at least, are showing as least as much me-tooness as Western games show.
However, when it comes to the number of *companies* that do a good job of encouraging creativity among their developers, I'd say the percentage is slightly higher in Japan. But just slightly.
Good. Game designers who can't at least begin to understand the technical aspects have no place in game development.
There's a difference between being able to "at least begin to understand the technical aspects" and being able to build a 3D engine. Lots of modders just know how to create levels, and can do it well, even if they can't implement the editor.
The best game designers understand why a programming team can't implement a solution in a particular way due to the underlying complexity. The simpler the design, the better it folds and fits onto the hardware.
But also, the simpler the design, *the better*. And as graphics programming continues to fly off on its long journey towards Mars, so also it becomes its own little cul-de-sac in game production. Look at Crawford's own work -- none of his games require a lick of linear algebra in order to understand their implementation, yet many of them are among the best designed of all.
Designers who simply sit around spouting unimplementable nonsense are eventually going to get punched in the face by the developers who have to actually build the game.
I say it's possible to know, in general, what's possible and what's not, without having to keep in your head all the sundry elements of implementation. Now I've heard horror stories about designers who knew so little that they might well deserve a punch in the face, but I'd say we're loaded down with the opposite at the moment, people devoting ever more energy into better-looking sports uniforms and increasing the number of polygons on demons. Same old games, to a longer and longer decimal expansion.
Unless somebody is set on making their own little games in their spare time, heeding your advice and learning art alongside programming is a good way to dilute talent and torpedo someone's game development career before it's even started.
Do you think talent can be diluted like that? I don't, although I can see how learning similar things produces large "synergy bonuses" (a term I'm stealing from some game system used somewhere), and how you can have a limited amount of time in which to learn things.
But becoming a well-rounded individual is plain-out advisable. Not to game designers, but to every damn person who ever damn lived.
Executive summary: we can build amazing-looking games, but we're finding it harder and harder to some up with something to make all that built-up ado over. I think a balance needs to be found between technical prowess and good design sense. Thas' all.
Dude, the second the industry becomes open to hiring semi-technical, well-rounded, English major types to *design* games, I'm *so there*. They aren't, but I'm very patiently waiting for the day when they are, if they ever do.
Most designers in the game industry get there by working up a highly technical ladder. While you're leaning all that higher math, linear algebra, programming languages and techniques, data structures, etc., you're not learning about decent storytelling, the pantheon of literary greats, the human condition, etc. Instead, you're probably reading comic books and watching action movies, which despite some standouts (I can't tell you how much I love the compilation of Batman: Year One someone gave me recently), do not take a lot of effort to understand.
But this makes sense, as I consider that there's only enough room in your head for so much. Now what I describe as "room" isn't a question of capacity, but is more like opportunity times effort times alignment of perspective. You can only do so much with your day, and you only have so many days, and you tend to learn in terms of relating acquired information with what you already know, which would make it harder to learn either subject when you're taking two lit classes and two calculus, than if you were taking four English and four high-math.
But while there's arguably a good bit of high-level math a game designer doesn't need, it's unavoidable that a game designer learn at least *some* math. If you don't know a good bit of statistics and algebra it's gets much harder to cook up a plan for a game, and there are definitely uses for the higher stuff as well. But once it gets past a certain point, it becomes less useful for just designing.
So anyway, judging from the fact that I learned programming and game design on my own when I was 14, and am now finishing up a B.A. in English, I must be the perfect game designer. Somebody, hire meeee!!
P.S. You'd better believe Crawford knows his stuff.
Ouchies! Your message needs to be starred, boldfaced and moved to the front of the discussion. Good job.
As Linux moves more into the mainstream however, we're just going to see more of these attempts at discreding based on mere assertion. Of course there are fringes of both Linux and Microsoft boosters do a lot of this, but Microsoft has the cash to move this kind of baseless propaganda into slightly-mainstream news outlets, such as, in this case, Yahoo News.
Me, I'm just waiting for someone to post something here about "All the slashbots piling in to complain about this," which seems to happen with most anti-Microsoft, pro-Linux stories eventually.
Well, it *was* very different from what came before it.
It was a Zelda game in terms of scenario, but, in retrospect, the gameplay is the most atypical of the series. (Of course, when it came out it was only the second game, so people didn't know back then.)
I think Zelda II has gotten a bad rap over the years. While it supports random exploration and item acquition and usage much less than the typical Zelda, has markedly less complex dungeons, and has that whole side-scrolling thing, it has an excellent combat system. I can really jam on that game if I can get focused on it.
I've only recently started playing the GTA games, and they're pretty cool. Not for the whole criminal focus, though I understand there are people who like that sort of thing, but for all the submissions and stuff. When I found out that GTA3 had its very own Crazy Taxi mode I nearly died.
To me, that's what makes GTA worth playing: the giant sandbox play style. Like Zelda taking place in a real city.
Indeed, GTA is a real argument against setting your gigantic sprawling action-adventure game in a fantastic setting. Because when you see a taxi running down the street, you immediately understand what that means, that there's a guy inside running fares for customers, and in general how that works. A sci-fi or fantasy implementation of that would have to do some extra work to connect that concept with that game's world.
It's possible, mind you, and one of the great things about Zelda is how they manage to put in a little of that despite the somewhat alien setting, but it doesn't have the same feeling of verisimilitude GTA has.
On the other hand, um, uh, GTA's talk radio stations cycle too much! Yeah!
Or, it's cool enough in enough people's minds that people will still try to buy them, and thus aggressively bid each other up to almost-retail. That's often the case with relatively new video game units, since there's typically some games for it that can't be played on anything else.
Perhaps. Though old-time RPG fanatics might be excited about the PS annoucement, Phantasy Stars I-IV have perhaps the best of all the 8/16-bit console RPG stories (*seriously* epic), and I'd even rank them above recent Final Fantasy games.
But yeah, it's probably not all that earth-shattering to most people.
I like that they're doing something more with Phantasy Star, hopefully something that connects with the original games instead of the PSO stuff. That could be really cool.
Pay for the stuff if you think it's worth the money, use something else if you don't. It's not a hard choice.
It doesn't quite work like that. In practice, I find it's more like: "Find the product with the best feature set. Then look for second best, and so on down until features start lacking or you run out. Be mindful of ties. Consider crippled payware as two products, one with registration and one without. Then, check prices, and download/buy the one with the best features for the lowest price."
The important distinction I'm trying to make is that, if two products offer identical features, and one costs and the other is free, the free one is obviously the correct choice, and that's what seems to be the case here.
The obvious use of the touch-sensitive screen is to provide a point-and-click interface to RPGs. Games like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance have a very convoluted menu system. An actual GUI could make those games substantially more accessable to new players.
Real-time strategy games could also benefit greatly from a point-and-click interface, and arguably a screen and stylus solution is easier to use than even a mouse + monitor once you're used to it.
Also, games could rather easily add customization options, where a player could draw an image to be mapped on the hood of his car, or paint his spaceship, or come up with a crest for his kingdom, or draw a character portrain 1st Edition D&D character sheet style.
And naturally, creative software like Mario Paint also seem like a natural -- indeed, a Mario Paint-like app with an export function, making use of wireless connectivity to save images to a computer's filesystem, could be *extremely* cool, and could make it possible to use a DS for -- dare I say it?? -- real work.
I'd pay real money for a Palm-like productivity card for the DS if it was also filled with fun Gameboy Camera-style features, and with its generous default feature-set it almost looks as useful as a PDA. And imagine using Animal Crossing DS with the wireless connection to send *real* e-mail, to people in other towns? Or visiting other towns, over the internet, and actually meeting the people living there in-game?
It's not a sphere you boneheaded cretin, I think it's more than obvious to anyone with a rudimentary frontal lobe that Link's head is an oval. An oval with a droopy elf hat. Sheesh.
You're obviously thinking of Charlie Brown, who never gets past Level One and always whiffs with his sword, and whose dog collects all the rupees before he can reach them.
And I sincerely doubt this will reach the epic level of the great vi vs. emacs feud, for the simple reason that "Church of Oval Link's Head" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
Due to Godwin's Law, or due to the Patriot Act?
My god, a law that, itself, doesn't all you to know what's in it. Just when did the world turn into a great idea for a Monty Python sketch?
Nerd Lobby! I love it! It's not just a chatroom right before a networked computer game anymore!
Two processors in every box! A Segway in every garage! Tax breaks for Sci-Fi shows! The institution of nationwide robotic animal shelters for Aibos! Important research into the use of Lego as a building material!
And legal recognition of personal relationships between young frustrated men and their inflatagirls. Vote "yes" on Proposition e!
But the Patriot Act was passed in the aftermath of 9/11, when the hell was scared out of a large number of Congressmen (one of the planes, after all, crashed into the Pentagon right there in Washy Deek). It was a bad choice, and he's now campaigning on getting some provisions, deemed "too invasive," repealed.
A lot of badness in the law comes from Ashcroft & Co.'s interpretation of it. Which is not to say that it's not a bad law, but that it's effects seem to be worse than the creators intended. Magnified.
(P.S. To my knowledge, this is the first usage ever in the world of the term "Washy Deek." My gift to humanity!)
Still, Link was a kid in the original game, as the artwork in the manual made clear. That Wind Waker makes it impossible to ignore this fact is not a point that I hold against it.
This is the third tree-shaking response I've gotten. Although there's been one supportive response, and one partial turn-around after a response of my own, I still think this indicates that my original statement is at least somewhat wrong.
But I stand by my own idea of what makes Link cool, as a character: that he's a child assigned a very grown-up task, and completes it with flying colors, and Wind Waker simply makes more visible this essential element of the Zelda formula.
And most recent Zeldas do have a "training period," where the dungeons are easier and the monsters aren't as bad (Peahats notwithstanding), that make it a little credible that a child could follow this path to heroness.
Avoiding Wind Waker "on the off chance it's good despite the art?" Grasshopper, you should have greater trust in the ability of the masta. Remember, the Oracle games were actually produced by Capcom. And there are places where the artwork is stunning - the toon-style lighting from torches and such in dungeons is what sticks out in my mind. There are some great things to see far-beneath-the-waves (hint hint spoiler hint!) as well, and I've already said somewhere around here that I consider the last fights to be very cool.
On the Oracle games: I played through one, bought and played a little of the other, then lost interest. I agree, they somehow don't feel quite up to the traditional Zelda style, though they do have their moments. It'll be interesting to see how the Capcom produced(?) Minish Cap game, for GBA, turns out.
That said, I didn't like the look of Wind Waker because I felt it was a step in the wrong direction.
I believe that's the point where we part ways. I don't think computer gaming is an ever-advancing thing, like processor speed and memory. Its marriage to technology can make it difficult to distinguish, perhaps, but I would say that, although a great deal of math and science goes into their making, that ultimately it's more of an art. And art doesn't advance, it just mutates into new forms, getting reinvented over and over by new generations of artists.
That's why I think Midway Arcade Treasures is doing so well at retail, or well enough to get a successor anyway, because the included games still stand up. There are games included in that compilation that have yet to be equaled from a design standpoint: I'm thinking of Rampart, 720 Degrees, Robotron and Joust, specifically, but there may be more.
But I digress a bit. I think what Nintendo was mindful of is that gaming doesn't have to resemble reality. In fact, often it's best that it doesn't. I think that approach will become much more common as more and more games become so hyper-realistic that they all come to resemble reality, and thus each other.