I find it interesting to see these journalists point of view in trying to critique themselves. It seems (at a hurried skimming) that each of these people lament the lack of professionalism in their craft. The games are evolving, but the writing is stagnant.
When I wrote an article about game journalists, I wrote it from the perspective of a developer and as a fan. In retrospect, it's slightly eerie that I chose ethics as the number one problem in journalism before the New York Times scandals. In some respects, these people are right in that game journalists just don't have any professionalism to them. (I just saved you eleven parts of reading just now.) The larger issue is separating the money from the writing.
You start to fix this by educating your writers and hiring those with professional experience outside of gaming or with a journalism degree. Make sure that your publication has an ethics statement and follows it. Educate your readers by pulling back the curtain and exposing the marketing machine of publishers. Have a long term plan for development and not be the "flava site of the month". Good writing starts with your own site.
Well, there's the developers at the announcment. Check. Publisher. Check. Engine developers from Epic. Check. There's something still missing, what could it be? Oh, that's right... Lord British. I know I need to move on and just get over the fact that Richard isn't there anymore, but it's like a ship without a rudder. It's still a ship and it sails, but it lacks direction.
Set your filter a notch lower and read the rest of the responses and the continuation of the thread. Note that I was complaining mostly that the title of the article was misleading. The ISDA lumps PC games and console games into the "videogame category".
Secondly, I listed three RPG games, two text adventures and one space flight-sim in my quoted statement. I don't know where you're getting the idea these are all CRPGS.
Also note that the website administrator and I talked about it and feel that it was probably Simoniker that was at fault for the misleading title and not the author, who did a good job writing about what he felt were good endings.
This was already done in a very simple way for character creation in the Ultima series. A visit to the gypsy trailer, some ethical questions on various situations and voila! You have your character based on your answers.
I"m going to take you to task on Donkey Kong though. I'm going to go by what I think you are defining as a "story". You're after something that is self-contained within the game itself. No instructions necessary. In this case, I agree that Breakout doesn't really have a story to it. Donkey Kong does fit this criteria set forth. So the question is: Is Donkey Kong the first?
So let's see if we can find a game (limiting ourselves to just console and arcade. Computers would be too easy) before 1981 that has a self-contained story. Well, Defender could fit. Everything is fine until aliens start grabbing our people! Defender to the rescue! Don't grab all the people and the planet explodes. A rather final ending I think. That was 1980.
Why not Adventure? Go ahead laugh, it's a great game for it's time. A proto-RPG if you will. There aren't any points involved and it has just as much story as Donkey Kong, if not more. Ah, but you want some sort of set up right? Some sort of narrative to explain the reason why you're doing things right? There's Frogger which was released the same year which includes in game instructions and the same basic premise. Frog's away from home, needs to get home, get's home, repeat.
So how did the frog get there? We're missing the story aren't we? Well, I could say the same about Donkey Kong. How did a giant ape get a girl? Did he escape from the zoo? Is he some space monkey? Is he a pet? Eh, it doesn't have a back story either. Lunar Lander has just as a flimsy story, but has one nonetheless. You're trying to land on the moon with limited fuel. You land. End of game. Eh, it's not Man vs. Man or Man vs. Nature, but more of a Man vs. Himself. There's 1980's Crazy Climber. Climb a building. Climb some more. Climb four! Repeat. Why do it? Because it's there.
If I had time, I could look up more examples. Donkey Kong certainly is one of the first games to have a self-contained story, but not the first. Granted, it's going to be somewhat subjective, but you need to set some groundrules on it. Does the entire story have to exist in the game? Can it have a backstory on the cabinet or instructions? Can you play against another player?
BTW, if none of the above examples sway you this one will. Kong, an arcade game released in 1976, has you in a biplane shooting at King Kong trying to save Fay Wray. It contains all the elements of Donkey Kong to a T, including monkey, girl, hero.
Good points all around. It certainly got me to thinking. Running an underground videogame trivia list, I have to put up with these kind of issues on a weekly basis. It gets really embarrasing when you ask a trivia question about a game, only to have the creater to email you later correcting you. Ouch. At least there's some wiggle room on this question.
Then perhaps it's just a case of mislabeling. But then again, since www.insertcredit.com is the one that submitted the story in the first place, you really have only yourself to blame for any misdirected anger coming your way.
To be fair, it's a good list of console games and Tim Rodgers did a good job of writing, with several little twists, even if he only mentions the games that he himself played. But even if we stick to the focus of "arcade/console concentration" that you mention, there aren't any arcade games listed either. There have been plenty of arcade games that had better endings other than Missle Command's "The End".
Eh, I don't want to nitpick (if I did I'd start with the assertion that Donkey Kong had the first "narrative story" completely ignoring the text adventure genre and console games like Adventure, but I digress.) but if you're going to submit an article to Slashdot called "Best Videogame Endings Discussed" you need to understand that the rabid oldtimers here will pounce on you for not clarifying what the article is about.
Best videogame endings? Hardly. Maybe it should be titled "Best videogame endings of the games I played all time according to me even though I've never touched a computer."
It is a very, very sad list. No mention of Ultima IV, Planescape, Wing Commander III, Baldur's Gate, Planetfall, Zork, or any of the myriad of games with *REAL* endings.
Hint: If you want to make a "all-time" list, do yourself and your readers a favor. Spend a lot of time doing research. That means interviewing and polling friends, people on the street, reading reviews and visiting a library. Then write your article.
Can I hear an Amen on that brother?
Case in point, John Romero (disclaimer: he's a friend of mine) is probably the poster boy of marketing gone wrong. He never said "I'll make you my bitch" or approve of the marketing campaign that Eidos put together. It was a marketing campaign put together by some markethead who thought it would play over well.
Years later, when people talk about John the first thing they think of is that statement and he has been trying to distance himself from it ever since.
Buyer Demographics: Ninety-two percent of those who purchase console games are over the age of 18, and 98 percent of computer game buyers are over 18. Forty-seven percent of console game buyers and 57 percent of computer game buyers are women.
Computer Player Demographics: Fifty-eight percent of computer game players are male, while 42 percent are female. Thirty percent are under 18 years old, 29 percent are 18 to 35, and 41 percent are over 36.
Console Player Demographics: Seventy-two percent of console game players are male and 28 percent are female. Thirty-eight percent are under 18, 40 percent are 18 to 35, and 22 percent are over 36.
Types of Games Played Most Often: Console game players say that they most often play: action games (51 percent); driving/racing games (50 percent); sports games (47 percent); and role-play/adventure games (35 percent). Computer game players say they are most likely to play: puzzle/board/card games (36 percent); action games (36 percent); driving/racing games (34 percent); and sports (32 percent).
Number of Games Owned: Console game players report that they own an average of 16 games, while computer gamers report that they own about 12 titles.
Online Games: Thirty-seven percent of game players say they play games online, up from 31 percent last year and 18 percent in 1999.
Type of Game Played Most Often Online: puzzle, board, game show, trivia or card game (56 percent); action, sports, strategy or role-play game (20 percent); persistent multi-player universe (7 percent); or none of the above (7 percent).
Mobile Gaming: More than one-third (39 percent) of Americans who own consoles or computers report that they also play games on mobile devices like handheld systems, PDAs, and cell phones. Eighteen percent play games on cell phones, up from 14 percent a year ago.
Sixteen of the top 20 best selling games in 2002 were rated ?E? for everyone or ?T? for teen.
What makes me pissed off about this article is that Jeremy Dunham didn't even *SEE* the friggin' game. It's all based on a press release.
Go back and re-read the article and count how many times he uses "supposedly". Hype hype hype. This is not journalism. Jeremy just turned himself into a marketing shill.
Actually, the process starts before the game goes gold. The negotiation for game guides starts fairly early in the development process. Once rights are secured, then the guide publisher will assign a writer to spend time at the developer. The developer will usually kick in nuggets of info from the design manual, artwork, stats, etc. The guide is usually finished before the game is. Once the game goes gold, any errata is taken care of and the guide is off to the publishers.
Why start so early? The key is that by having both guide and game available at the same time you are more apt to purchase the guide. Stores use it as a bundle or as a loss leader on one of the two.
Hmmmm.... CPL? or QuakeCon? CPL? QuakeCon? QuakeCon or CPL?
In all honesty, a lot of people have given up on the CPL since Angel Munoz's little spat with [H]ardOCP. The CPL events charge too much, have nothing outside of the event itself in the way of entertainment or information and end up being an ego trip for Angel et al.
Sad part is that this is the only thing really going in the US. (Unlike Korea where the real action is.)
After reading some of the comments to my original post, I can see that I'm right on this. I mean, what is the marketing department going to do to hype up the game?
Darth: I need a bounty hunter to go after Cmmdr. Solo. Tell me about yourself.
Boba Fett: Well, I'm a people person. I'm good with a blaster and have a pretty cool backpack.
Darth: I see. I find your lack of experience disturbing.
Give status reports to the Emperor!
Darth: My Master. During our last game turn we were able to harvest enough resources from our harvestors to enable our AT-AT rush to succeed. By building five new armories and researching new technology, we were able to increase our worker production by 33%!
Emperor: Excellent Lord Vader! Your game ranking has increased!
Build your own SimDeath Star!
Darth: Let's see. Need to move this here, build that. Wait! What do you mean my droids are revolting? Now what's that symbol over my stormtroopers heads? Aren't they happy with that rec room I just built?
I'm just not seeing it. Somehow the image of Darth Vader in a third-person perspective doing bunny hops, clinging to railing edges and running doesn't seem right.
The cool thing about Vader is the fact that he's so bad-ass he doesn't do those type of things. He's all about choking people from afar using his fingers and lightsabers. He's about presence and fear. He's management. Vader let's his minions do the piddly stuff and steps in to finish it off. This game design really, really worries me.
That's funny. During our planning meetings for Age of Empires, I don't ever recall the topic of "artificial life" ever coming up. Come to think of it, I don't ever remember Bruce ever talking about it. If he did, he didn't mention it in my presence or write in the design docs. From what I remember, the goal was to make a kick ass real-time strategy game along the lines of Civilization.
Lots of comments being posted about the sky falling on the video game industry. Time to set things straight.
A nine percent drop is not that big a deal. Really. The reason being that June already is a slow month. The drop is due to several reasons (some I've already posted). The first (and biggest) is that we're right in the middle of a console development cycle, with the already existing consoles having been on the market for several years. Console sales also drive game sales. Secondly, June is right in the middle of crunch time for the AAA game titles. Everyone is holding off on buying games to get the huuuuge blockbuster games of Christmas. Thirdly, the games on the market aren't that good. Enter the Matrix is bad and Lara Croft isn't that great either.
Some people have mentioned the economy. Actually the game industry does better when the economy is bad. (More people buy games looking to escape their troubles.) If you look at past revenue figures, the gaming industry has always thrived during hard times. Just look at the past sales number of the past three years in the US. It's not piracy either. Operation Buccaneer and the recent closure of many pirate groups have put the finger in the dyke so to speak, but piracy is something the industry has lived with for twenty years. There hasn't been any discernable increase in piracy that would affect sales this much, especially when it comes to consoles.
If you really want something to gloom and doom about, I'd seriously pay attention to the SEC probes of gaming companies. That has some serious implications. Fact is come Christmas sales records will be broken and you'll forget that you ever saw this article.
Slashdot Mirror
When I wrote an article about game journalists, I wrote it from the perspective of a developer and as a fan. In retrospect, it's slightly eerie that I chose ethics as the number one problem in journalism before the New York Times scandals. In some respects, these people are right in that game journalists just don't have any professionalism to them. (I just saved you eleven parts of reading just now.) The larger issue is separating the money from the writing.
You start to fix this by educating your writers and hiring those with professional experience outside of gaming or with a journalism degree. Make sure that your publication has an ethics statement and follows it. Educate your readers by pulling back the curtain and exposing the marketing machine of publishers. Have a long term plan for development and not be the "flava site of the month". Good writing starts with your own site.
Well, there's the developers at the announcment. Check. Publisher. Check. Engine developers from Epic. Check. There's something still missing, what could it be? Oh, that's right... Lord British. I know I need to move on and just get over the fact that Richard isn't there anymore, but it's like a ship without a rudder. It's still a ship and it sails, but it lacks direction.
Secondly, I listed three RPG games, two text adventures and one space flight-sim in my quoted statement. I don't know where you're getting the idea these are all CRPGS.
Also note that the website administrator and I talked about it and feel that it was probably Simoniker that was at fault for the misleading title and not the author, who did a good job writing about what he felt were good endings.
Actually, QuakeCon could have used them. Queer Eye for the Gamer Guy is sorely needed. (I'm strangely now addicted to that show.)
This was already done in a very simple way for character creation in the Ultima series. A visit to the gypsy trailer, some ethical questions on various situations and voila! You have your character based on your answers.
Hopefully, by doing that players will be so sick of just reusing ideas, game publishers will be forced into using fresh ideas from developers.
Red Baron was out in '76 and is considered by many to be the first FPS game.
I"m going to take you to task on Donkey Kong though. I'm going to go by what I think you are defining as a "story". You're after something that is self-contained within the game itself. No instructions necessary. In this case, I agree that Breakout doesn't really have a story to it. Donkey Kong does fit this criteria set forth. So the question is: Is Donkey Kong the first?
So let's see if we can find a game (limiting ourselves to just console and arcade. Computers would be too easy) before 1981 that has a self-contained story. Well, Defender could fit. Everything is fine until aliens start grabbing our people! Defender to the rescue! Don't grab all the people and the planet explodes. A rather final ending I think. That was 1980.
Why not Adventure? Go ahead laugh, it's a great game for it's time. A proto-RPG if you will. There aren't any points involved and it has just as much story as Donkey Kong, if not more. Ah, but you want some sort of set up right? Some sort of narrative to explain the reason why you're doing things right? There's Frogger which was released the same year which includes in game instructions and the same basic premise. Frog's away from home, needs to get home, get's home, repeat.
So how did the frog get there? We're missing the story aren't we? Well, I could say the same about Donkey Kong. How did a giant ape get a girl? Did he escape from the zoo? Is he some space monkey? Is he a pet? Eh, it doesn't have a back story either. Lunar Lander has just as a flimsy story, but has one nonetheless. You're trying to land on the moon with limited fuel. You land. End of game. Eh, it's not Man vs. Man or Man vs. Nature, but more of a Man vs. Himself. There's 1980's Crazy Climber. Climb a building. Climb some more. Climb four! Repeat. Why do it? Because it's there.
If I had time, I could look up more examples. Donkey Kong certainly is one of the first games to have a self-contained story, but not the first. Granted, it's going to be somewhat subjective, but you need to set some groundrules on it. Does the entire story have to exist in the game? Can it have a backstory on the cabinet or instructions? Can you play against another player?
BTW, if none of the above examples sway you this one will. Kong, an arcade game released in 1976, has you in a biplane shooting at King Kong trying to save Fay Wray. It contains all the elements of Donkey Kong to a T, including monkey, girl, hero.
Good points all around. It certainly got me to thinking. Running an underground videogame trivia list, I have to put up with these kind of issues on a weekly basis. It gets really embarrasing when you ask a trivia question about a game, only to have the creater to email you later correcting you. Ouch. At least there's some wiggle room on this question.
To be fair, it's a good list of console games and Tim Rodgers did a good job of writing, with several little twists, even if he only mentions the games that he himself played. But even if we stick to the focus of "arcade/console concentration" that you mention, there aren't any arcade games listed either. There have been plenty of arcade games that had better endings other than Missle Command's "The End".
Eh, I don't want to nitpick (if I did I'd start with the assertion that Donkey Kong had the first "narrative story" completely ignoring the text adventure genre and console games like Adventure, but I digress.) but if you're going to submit an article to Slashdot called "Best Videogame Endings Discussed" you need to understand that the rabid oldtimers here will pounce on you for not clarifying what the article is about.
It is a very, very sad list. No mention of Ultima IV, Planescape, Wing Commander III, Baldur's Gate, Planetfall, Zork, or any of the myriad of games with *REAL* endings.
Hint: If you want to make a "all-time" list, do yourself and your readers a favor. Spend a lot of time doing research. That means interviewing and polling friends, people on the street, reading reviews and visiting a library. Then write your article.
Does this mean that when I play the game, I'll hear constantly "Green Legolas needs food badly!"
Coconut shells? Darn. Too bad that in North America we don't have enough African Swallows to supply them.
NVidia might have had a chance if 3DMark2K3 was ported to the XBox.
Years later, when people talk about John the first thing they think of is that statement and he has been trying to distance himself from it ever since.
Buyer Demographics: Ninety-two percent of those who purchase console games are over the age of 18, and 98 percent of computer game buyers are over 18. Forty-seven percent of console game buyers and 57 percent of computer game buyers are women.
Computer Player Demographics: Fifty-eight percent of computer game players are male, while 42 percent are female. Thirty percent are under 18 years old, 29 percent are 18 to 35, and 41 percent are over 36.
Console Player Demographics: Seventy-two percent of console game players are male and 28 percent are female. Thirty-eight percent are under 18, 40 percent are 18 to 35, and 22 percent are over 36.
Types of Games Played Most Often: Console game players say that they most often play: action games (51 percent); driving/racing games (50 percent); sports games (47 percent); and role-play/adventure games (35 percent). Computer game players say they are most likely to play: puzzle/board/card games (36 percent); action games (36 percent); driving/racing games (34 percent); and sports (32 percent).
Number of Games Owned: Console game players report that they own an average of 16 games, while computer gamers report that they own about 12 titles.
Online Games: Thirty-seven percent of game players say they play games online, up from 31 percent last year and 18 percent in 1999.
Type of Game Played Most Often Online: puzzle, board, game show, trivia or card game (56 percent); action, sports, strategy or role-play game (20 percent); persistent multi-player universe (7 percent); or none of the above (7 percent).
Mobile Gaming: More than one-third (39 percent) of Americans who own consoles or computers report that they also play games on mobile devices like handheld systems, PDAs, and cell phones. Eighteen percent play games on cell phones, up from 14 percent a year ago.
Sixteen of the top 20 best selling games in 2002 were rated ?E? for everyone or ?T? for teen.
I soon predict that the first thing to happen is that people will start avoiding farmer's markets completely.
What makes me pissed off about this article is that Jeremy Dunham didn't even *SEE* the friggin' game. It's all based on a press release. Go back and re-read the article and count how many times he uses "supposedly". Hype hype hype. This is not journalism. Jeremy just turned himself into a marketing shill.
Why start so early? The key is that by having both guide and game available at the same time you are more apt to purchase the guide. Stores use it as a bundle or as a loss leader on one of the two.
In all honesty, a lot of people have given up on the CPL since Angel Munoz's little spat with [H]ardOCP. The CPL events charge too much, have nothing outside of the event itself in the way of entertainment or information and end up being an ego trip for Angel et al.
Sad part is that this is the only thing really going in the US. (Unlike Korea where the real action is.)
Play as Darth Vader! The action includes:
Pacing on the bridge of your Star Destroyer!
One, two, three, turn, One, two, three, turn, choke officer, One, two, three, turn...
Interview Bounty Hunters!
Darth: I need a bounty hunter to go after Cmmdr. Solo. Tell me about yourself.
Boba Fett: Well, I'm a people person. I'm good with a blaster and have a pretty cool backpack.
Darth: I see. I find your lack of experience disturbing.
Give status reports to the Emperor!
Darth: My Master. During our last game turn we were able to harvest enough resources from our harvestors to enable our AT-AT rush to succeed. By building five new armories and researching new technology, we were able to increase our worker production by 33%!
Emperor: Excellent Lord Vader! Your game ranking has increased!
Build your own SimDeath Star!
Darth: Let's see. Need to move this here, build that. Wait! What do you mean my droids are revolting? Now what's that symbol over my stormtroopers heads? Aren't they happy with that rec room I just built?
Preorder your copy today!
The cool thing about Vader is the fact that he's so bad-ass he doesn't do those type of things. He's all about choking people from afar using his fingers and lightsabers. He's about presence and fear. He's management. Vader let's his minions do the piddly stuff and steps in to finish it off. This game design really, really worries me.
The Atari 1300 was a printer if I remember correctly. There never was a "1300" console.
Yes, and while you're at it, also erase all those numbers that say that I owe you money for my Visa and Mastercard. Thank you Citibank!
That's funny. During our planning meetings for Age of Empires, I don't ever recall the topic of "artificial life" ever coming up. Come to think of it, I don't ever remember Bruce ever talking about it. If he did, he didn't mention it in my presence or write in the design docs. From what I remember, the goal was to make a kick ass real-time strategy game along the lines of Civilization.
A nine percent drop is not that big a deal. Really. The reason being that June already is a slow month. The drop is due to several reasons (some I've already posted). The first (and biggest) is that we're right in the middle of a console development cycle, with the already existing consoles having been on the market for several years. Console sales also drive game sales. Secondly, June is right in the middle of crunch time for the AAA game titles. Everyone is holding off on buying games to get the huuuuge blockbuster games of Christmas. Thirdly, the games on the market aren't that good. Enter the Matrix is bad and Lara Croft isn't that great either.
Some people have mentioned the economy. Actually the game industry does better when the economy is bad. (More people buy games looking to escape their troubles.) If you look at past revenue figures, the gaming industry has always thrived during hard times. Just look at the past sales number of the past three years in the US. It's not piracy either. Operation Buccaneer and the recent closure of many pirate groups have put the finger in the dyke so to speak, but piracy is something the industry has lived with for twenty years. There hasn't been any discernable increase in piracy that would affect sales this much, especially when it comes to consoles.
If you really want something to gloom and doom about, I'd seriously pay attention to the SEC probes of gaming companies. That has some serious implications. Fact is come Christmas sales records will be broken and you'll forget that you ever saw this article.