If MS said, "We're scrapping the Windows kernel and writing a new Unix-based OS (Is that a pig that just flew by?), MS would try to drop support for the old Windows, to get developers, users, and enterprises all using the same software.
There's one problem with your theory: MS has been saying they are dropping the Win9x kernel for the last 4 years, and they finally stopped making new versions of the kernel after they released WindowsMe. However, they have a support roadmap that shows Windows Me still supported for a while yet (98 for a little while longer, but not much), and it's 3 years old (and the OS to replace them is 2 years old).
It looks like the soonest we'll see only 1 desktop OS supported by MS is shortly after the release of Longhorn, if it remains as far off as they've stated it will be (though if it goes much further out XP will be the only desktop OS supported for a while).
I only see one real problem with Microsoft's cycles, and that's with the current XP cycle. Longhorn is scheduled to be available sometime in 2005 or 2006, and XP's availability is going to be extremely limited at the end of 2005, with support stopping at the end of 2006. Basically, that means MS will have only 1 desktop OS supported at the end of that year. Sure, it's quite a long time to support XP since it came out at the end of 2001 (meaning support stops at 5 years), but it was their choice to spread out the major releases, and if Longhorn has a late 2005 release there won't even be much time to work out any release issues before XP support dies.
People complained about the frequency of releases because 98SE, 2000, Me, and even XP all came out within a 2.5 year period, but I don't think anyone wanted to see the release cycle get spaced out so much that everyone would have to be on the same desktop OS to be supported. Great way to get people to upgrade, though, and I'm sure we'll see more people moving up to XP as they become aware of 98's demise.
Well, obviously IANAGD (I Am Not A Game Developer) and suffering a little from FAS (false authority syndrome).;) I study math mostly. This whole situation reminds me of the problem with trying to quantify worker "productivity". You can do it with machines because their associated variables are typically bounded. But, humans are completely different. Many execs do not understand this, so they propose these naive measurement schemes like [lines of code / hour] for programmers or [number of patients served / day ] for respiratory or physical therapists. Clearly, there are problems with the models based on these metrics.
IANAGD, either, but I am a software developer, and in my particular field I sometimes deal with a lot of old code. I can tell you one thing quite easily, the 'lines of code / hour' measurement is not only naive, but wasteful. You have no idea how much code there is out there because of this that is simply copy/pasted into place and does absolutely nothing, or that was commented out on the last few days of the project so that it would work (developers on 'lines per hour' requirements would add code that prevented things from working and few people could decipher after they were finished with the project, and continue to do so until the time/money alloted to the project neared it's end). I thank those people fairly regularly for my job, since their companies lost their contracts for good reason.
Now, trying to measure game design is a similar problem. If there were a way to quantify game quality, a way to quantify game graphics quality, and a way to measure or estimate the amount of time required to produce a "good" game, then I think we would have enough to make a good model.
Exactly, it's very hard to quantify unless you have a basis from which to judge it, as well as a wide field in which to test it. A game could even do everything right according to what was done in the past and still not appeal to gamers simply because it 'feels' wrong or the story doesn't appeal to someone. Most people don't read literary canon for good reason: a lot of the books aren't entertaining, they're just examples of specific qualities of literature. That, and they often just don't appeal to people today, even if they were wildly popular in their own time. Imagine sitting down to play Pong today from a standpoint of trying to gain entertainment value. At the very least, developers should be able to approach other people's games from an analytical standpoint, but still remember that when they're finished with their own game, it will have to be fun.
Unfortunately, we have variables like game genre, machine architecture, controller ergonomics and button assignments, single- and group-playability, graphics, story and originality, length of objective, and re-playability. Then we have tradeoffs like if you were to base new games on popular old games, would this draw away from originality?
And then when all is said and done, after every variable's been tweaked, some ass is going to complain that it's not very fun, or even interesting. I watched something on TechTV looking the development of a handful of XBox games at Microsoft and they practically sacked the development team on Crimson Skies because even though all of the pieces were there, no one could really sit down with the game and have a good time with it. From what I've heard of the game so far, they may have succeeded after a year's delay because someone in the company actually had the power to do that, knowing that the point had been raised earlier in development and the current team wasn't getting it quite right. It wasn't any real fault of the team, they just couldn't get the vision quite right, and most of those people still have jobs there, they just needed different people to come to the game with a different outlook to bring the vision together and make the game fun.
Now, back to using junkfood as positive reinforcement for game development, this would depend on whether we c
Depends on the types of games you like to play. Each system has some 'must have' titles, but if they don't appeal to you then the whole console just looks pretty pointless.
The XBox has Halo and KOTOR, and possibly now Crimson Skies. If none of these appeal to you, then you can probably find most of the other good XBox titles on other platforms. Additionally, each is possibly the only title in each particular genre on that platform that is going to appeal to you. There are certainly no RPGs comparable to KOTOR on the platform.
The PS2 has a wide variety of titles, probably with must-haves in each genre. As a big fan of Japanese RPGs the console is pretty much a must-have for me, though early in it's life there were also Tekken Tag and GT3 (which also represent a large portion of the titles I actually have in their respective genres). At this point I'd also point to Amplitude + Frequency, Disgaea, and a few other very good titles in their respective genres. The PS1 library was also a strong selling point early on when launch titles may not have been so strong.
The Cube's must-have titles are mostly Nintendo-developed titles, such as Zelda, Metroid, soon Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros, maybe Animal Crossing, F-Zero, and so on. Super Monkey Ball is a strong title (Sega), and Eternal Darkness as well. Rogue Squadron for the fans of that series, and the Resident Evil remakes for the fans of that series (plus the exclusive RE:0 title). The library is lacking for fans of some genres (much like the XBox), but titles are on their way to fill some of those holes (also like the XBox).
When I was a kid, the excitement over games came mostly from not being able to get many of them, and having to choose carefully, or ending up with a dud for a long period of time before I could get another title. My dad even encouraged my grades by buying me an NES game if my report card was good, but stopped that when Ultima Exodus cost $60 (that was the last title I received for my grades, from then on it was cash at a fixed rate of $5 per A and $3 per B, which meant I maxed out at $30). This meant that I spent more time reading about titles, and more time with each title, than I do now. It also meant that when I heard about a new title that I really wanted I had to wait until I had enough money or could get it as a gift, whereas today I can pre-order it or buy it when I see some good reviews. It also means I have a lower tolerance for bullshit in my games, as I can just put the game back on the shelf when the developer amps the difficulty from 0 to 60 in 2.3 seconds and play something else, whereas before I'd have to slam my head against the wall until I got through the one insanely difficult part half way through the game (it's kindof like Tekken in a way, the guy before the last opponent is significantly harder than the last one).
I spent a couple of weeks going through Metroid with a friend of mine when we were young, cussing at the game and trying to figure out where to go next. 2 months ago I spent an hour or so a day for a week going through Metroid Fusion and got to a point where I died 10 times trying different methods for avoiding the evil Samus-thing, and I haven't played the game since (though I will eventually, I really want to unlock Metroid on my Cube without using Action Replay or something to do it). My tolerance level is just not as high when I have so many other games to play, even if every other one on the shelf is there because I got stuck somewhere on it, too (and that's when I eventually get back to it and see something I missed before, or wonder why it was so hard when I put it up).
What if other countries do the same to "protect themselves from terrorists" too? Some probably do.
Aren't we all in deep shit then?
Actually, most developed nations do. It's not about developing the diseases, though, it's about developing the antidotes and treatments once those diseases are developed. It's about finding out what kinds of effects various mutations will have on a particular virus or bacteria and then finding out how to counter that.
At the same time, you can look at it as being similar to mutually assured destruction. There wasn't an all-out war between the USA and the USSR simply because each side knew that there was no chance of surviving. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense, but you still have to have a good defense when you can, and that means developing a better offense and finding ways to defend against it before your opponent does.
You can't have peace just by talking about it, you must assure that your defenses are good enough to keep your people safe when someone decides to break the peace. Most of the US would not be considered a war zone, yet there are more homicides in some US states (and even cities) than there are in Iraq right now. Why is that? Because military forces are generally not an option in policing our own citizens in the US. Even in the perfect world where all of the countries got along you would still have to have police forces to defend the citizens from the criminals, and those police forces would have to study the criminal mind and technology to keep their own techniques up to date.
There are WMDs in many countries, especially the larger 1st-world nations. There are also regulations on most types of weapons and weapons technologies.
The reason that WMDs are a problem in Iraq, for instance, is because the country was under UN sanctions (because Iraq invaded Kuwait) that required removal of these weapons within a very specific timeframe, with requirements for tracking the removal and destruction of the weapons. While the UN seemed happy to extend these deadlines and to maintain very little tracking of the weapons themselves, the US decided to enforce the provision to enforce it with military force.
So, while the UN sat back while weapons were tested on Iraq's own citizens and stockpiles disappeared with no record of where they were sent (or of their destruction), the US decided to do something about it.
Exactly, and they know why the vaccines don't work (because of the changes they made), so, in theory, they can then work towards making vaccines that do work, or some other method of treatment to counter it.
I don't think he meant that we've reached the peak of video game graphics, but rather that the next generation of consoles and possibly even the one after that aren't going to have that "HOLY SHIT THIS IS AWESOME!" factor that, say, the Super Nintendo did with you loaded up Super Mario World for the first time or the PlayStation had when you loaded up FFVII for the first time. You may see more objects, less fog, less loading time, etc. but you're not going to see something that really shocks you graphically like the games of the past have.
I think people keep thinking this and keep saying this, and it keeps not happening. When I loaded up RE: Code Veronica on the DreamCast and it transitioned from the intro to the game I sat there and waited for the intro to continue because the graphics quality didn't look like what I expected from an actual playable game (and wasn't discernable from the intro). When I loaded up Soul Calibur the first time on my monitor it was eye candy for days (and was so good that it's hard to tell that Soul Calibur 2 looks better). Amplitude amazes me with it's ability to put flashy graphics (though admittedly low-poly, it still looks good and you don't really notice that polygons aren't a limiting factor) mixed with real-time video (in the backgrounds of most arenas) and have very precise gameplay that requires synchronizing the input to the music and what's seen on-screen.
Ikaruga made my jaw drop in more ways than can be explained.
It's not just about how many polys you can push, it's about what you do with the graphics capabilities. In many ways, US game developers have been pushing too much towards realism in the graphics, when it's some of the most unrealistic things that make the graphics so amazing in some games.
Plus, as long as game developers feel the need to put pre-rendered graphics into their games for any reason, we still need to increase the power of the graphics systems. The difference in some games gets less obvious over time, but in others is still glaringly obvious, primarily because character detail is limited to make a more believable environment, or vice versa. I'd have to say this is where Nintendo has the real advantage, because of all developers they have the tendency towards making the most cohesive environments, where the style of the character matches the environment best, where there isn't a clash between the two constantly pulling your eyes towards the technology rather than the game.
And to some degree, it's already true. If you played Final Fantasy X or Kingdom Hearts and then went to try out a beautiful GameCube or Xbox game for the first time, you'd probably have a "Wow, that's neat" sort of reaction, but you wouldn't have a spontaneous bowel movement or anything.
Halo gave me some drooling moments, but I don't think I saw FFX before I played Halo. KOTOR has had some truly beautiful scenes, as well, despite many people saying it's graphics aren't that great. Not to mention that even PC games are pushing beyond the capabilities of the consoles, although they still have options to drop them down to lower detail for systems that can't handle them (though in terms of resolution support PCs have almost always been beyond consoles).
Video game graphics will continue to steadily improve, but they won't feature the same sort of enormous graphical leap that you had between the NES and the SNES or the SNES and the PSX.
I think those particular leaps actually tended to be mitigated by later titles in each cartridge generation using cartridge-based hardware to increase the capabilities of the consoles. SMB3 was certainly an eye-candy-fest that made the NES nearly comparable to the 16-bit generation, especially since Nintendo was so late to the 16-bit table. The real difference seems to be that in the past the hardware was extended by adding new graphics and sound chips to the cartridges, whereas today people have to squeeze more out of the same hardware when they make games later in the g
I think most of the original games were made in the 1990-1996 era when there were more restrictions on graphics.
This isn't quite true. Sure, graphics cards weren't pushing the boundaries quite as often and developers were a little slow to push the existing boundaries themselves, but they were still pushing the graphics forward. Consoles went from 8 to 16 to 32 bit graphics, pushing the graphics forward with each iteration, and PC game developers were trying to push the graphics forward in their own fields, realizing that most PC graphics cards were already capable of much better graphics than what were being pushed on the consoles. The biggest limitation was what you could do with your CPU cycles to make the game push the graphics out without hurting the gameplay.
I think this forced some developers to deal with the content of the game instead of spending all the time in making it look good. To see my point, pit yourself on the tv show trading spaces. Ignoring the "reality" aspect, there is a lot of pressure to be creative when there is a budget ($1000). But if you set that budget higher ($100,000), you relieve a lot of the pressure of having to think or be "creative", or "innovative".
Yes, there's a lot more waste once the budget gets pushed out, but the level of creativity and innovation is no lower just because the bloat and waste has increased. In fact, as the budget gets higher, so do the barriers to entry, so fewer titles are knocked out quickly to take advantage of some fad or to exploit a franchise for marketing. Even Enter the Matrix took a lot of time and money to develop, or the latest Tomb Raider.
My favorite game of all time was "The secret of Monkey Island." It was made with the SCUMM [wikipedia.org] engine. Sure, the graphics weren't "Enter the Matrix"- or DeusEx-style, but the humor was awesome. The puzzles weren't totally convoluted and not too easy either, while Elaine Marley [scummbar.com] was pretty hot in 16-color!;)
Now, instead of comparing it to Enter the Matrix and Deus Ex in terms of graphics, compare it to what was available at the time. I think you'll find that while Lucas Arts may not have been pushing it a great deal with the SCUMM engine, they were keeping up. The Monkey Island series certainly never had Ultima I graphics.
Now if only we can pump out some more games like that. I mean, I haven't laughed that hard since MST3K went off the air years ago (ignoring reruns). How many games can do that? If you played these games, just consider how long it took to create all that humor, the storyline, the scenes, etc.
Your complaints are more valid if directed towards the near-death state of the genre, rather than the technological side of things. In fact, it was one of the first genres (other than FPS) that tried to embrace the 3D side of things, and I personally blame that, more than anything else, for it's demise. If they had kept producing solid 2D games the way RTS developers did while waiting for 3D technology to mature, they may have survived the transition better. Instead, they started dumping money into sub-par 3D games and the publishers lost interest in funding games that made no money. Only a handful of graphical adventure games were made in the late 90's, and the ones that remained in 2D gained a lot of praise, but sales didn't compare to the big money-makers like FPS games. They made the wrong decisions and basically killed off a genre, so you'll see it mostly relegated to independents until it gains some sort of revival in the future.
Your average game developer these days can probably code up a storm, but can he write a good story? I think thats whats missing in many games: a good story.
Which is probably why games with a good story tend to be doing fairly well these days. Of course, occasionally the stories become derivative or predictable, but the same is true in all media. Some of us avoid the predictable stuff, others don't notice the predictab
Secondly, I think would lead to political correctness seeping into games. Personally, I don't like the thought of having my games delayed because some organization/religion/race/nation/culture did not like the way they were depicted in the game.
You mean like one of the C&C games having it's cover art changed or MS Flight Simulator having a patch after 9/11, in both cases removing the World Trade Center (in the first from the cover, in the second from the game)? Or like the recent story here about a portion of a game being changed because people in Canada were offended about the depiction of a Quebec terrorist group attacking their subways?
Political Correct-ness isn't a result of real criticism, it's a result of people being afraid that someone will be offended by what they produce. People are too afraid to say what's on their mind and instead will say what they think people want to hear. This extends into all aspects of life, including our entertainment, regardless of whether we allow criticism rather than just simple reviewing (and considering the state of game reviews today, we could use a revamping of the entire system in the first place).
Morrowind is, however, relatively buggy. That, actually, is a huge game-design issue: it seems developers are releasing a lot of games that, while good, contain serious bugs.
I think all developers should be forced to play seriously buggy games as close to completion as the bugs permit (not saying until they encounter a bug, but rather until they complete the game or come to a point where the game has actually prevented them from completing it several times).
Then the publishers should be forced to do the same.
and no, I don't remember slowdowns in Planescape Torment, but maybe that's because I didn't get it until a couple patches came out, and I added the No-CD crack to get rid of most of the loading times and all of the disc swapping (look, if you're too cheap to give me jewel cases, don't make me keep your CDs in better condition than they were in when I bought them; which reminds me, they should be forced to play games on CD-ROM drives that don't work well with various copy protection schemes and store the CDs in paper and cardboard sleeves, or in a loose stack on the desk in front of them).
I think his point is that Bomberman, Wip3out, Rampage, and possibly even Chu-Chu Rocket could've all been made on the Unreal engine, with only slight modifications to the engine.
Rune (3rd person melee platformer), Deus Ex (3rd person RPG/shooter), and UT were all made on the Unreal engine. Someone added Tetris to Counterstrike (which is a Half-Life mod, which was made starting with the Quake engine). Dark Reign 2 (RTS) uses technology that many of us first heard about as being licensed for Team Fortress 2 (team-/class-based FPS). The Havok engine (physics engine used in HL2) is being licensed for many games, not all of which are FPS.
I think, overall, we'll see certain engines really dominate certain types of games, though, and that people will make things that really extend their genres using engines someone else primarily developed. The Baldur's Gate engine is being heavily used for most of the best PC RPGs and one of the best console RPGs of the last few years (PlaneScape: Torment, Icewind Dale I + II, Baldur's Gate 1 + 2, NeverWinter Nights, Star Wars: KOTOR), with each franchise having at least a somewhat different feel and in some cases an extremely different feel to the gameplay (KOTOR and Planescape). FPS games tend to use id-, Epic-, and Monolith-developed engines, with a few platformers and other genres mixed in also using them.
The absolute leaders in developing technology will continue developing engines, but a lot of the games that really push gameplay further and develop new ideas will probably more and more often license engines. Look at what Valve did, they hired some of the best mod developers and developers from other companies that had made names for themselves with certain additions to id's engines, or developing tools for id's engines, and brought them together to extend and rewrite portions of the Quake engine to a point that it was nearly unrecognizable, and now they're developing their own engine and extending the Havok physics engine for their next iteration. Rather than just taking what they've bought and using it as-is, they learn from it and develop it further.
So, not only will people license engines for similar titles, but they'll also push those engines into new realms, and adapt those engines for other genres. At the core, though, an FPS engine has optimizations that tend to make it ideal to FPS play, and an RPG engine is the same way for RPGs. Much of the core technology for the two game types has nothing in common, and the renderer may not represent the majority of the work (or the renderer may not handle some things, like inventories and conversation trees (or transparent HUDs and aim), as well as it needs to.
Standardizing the engines used in a particular genre isn't going to make the entire realm of gaming stale, it will simply make developers try harder to do things that make their games different. There will always be cookie-cutter games, regardless of the engines used, but those will not stand out in the crowd, and will be known (if they are known at all) for their cookie-cutter status.
then explain the 3 to 6 month port times of games that where written for Wintel only by companies for the Mac, since most Mac games are not ported by the firm that created them (obviously some are built with the plans for them to be ported in the first place, Blizzard which has put out plenty of cross-platform games even subscibes to the multi-platform disk idea, which gives them major points in my mind) examples of this would be the huge number of games MacPlay ports over, many in 6 months or less with the longest being 9.
Any company that makes a good amount of money porting applications (or in this case games) to other platforms (in this case the Mac OS, in other cases to *nix) will have a set of tools that make porting easier, including searching code files for Windows-specific code (and replacing it in the cases where it's easy to automate, but at the least commenting it as such for ease in finding the offending code in text editors with find functions or in code editors with the functionality of highlighting specific comment types or even categorizing comments), having in-house libraries that replace or handle Windows-specific code for the given platform, and in general just having the experience from previous porting efforts. All of this is exactly why developers often outsource the porting process, because to do it in-house, despite the advantages of familiarity with the code base, would be much harder in many cases due to relative inexperience porting to the platform in question.
Obviously if its a good game, its going to get ported, so why not put the code in ahead of time so it doesnt cost you more later.
It depends on the trade-offs at hand and whether or not you actually expect there to be demand for a Mac port. If you believe from the start that the game might have a small user base or that there won't be demand from Mac or Linux users from the game, it might make sense to just go straight in with DirectX and never even think about the possibility of porting the game. The cost of using OpenGL and something like SDL may be higher for some development houses than using DirectX (though that's unlikely, unless your developers simply don't know SDL and OpenGL as well as DirectX), or performance tweaks may cost more on the other APIs (all of this from the design side, estimating costs rather than actual costs). But, in the end, it's always going to be easier for Mac developers to port the games than it is for Windows developers to have a cross-platform mindset. Additionally, it's even harder to convince corporations (rather than developers) that cross-platform means more sales when the market share and user base of the other platforms is estimated as being a very small percentage compared to Windows.
That's because Microsoft won't let you develop online multiplayer games for Xbox unless you agree to let Microsoft own your customer data and host your online presence on Microsoft software [xboxsolution.com]. Activision and EA won't agree to that, so no online Xbox multiplayer. Don't like it? Blame Microsoft for acting like they have a console monopoly and can make developers agree to anything.
I'm not sure why Activision doesn't support online play in one game and not another (though I'd imagine cash has something to do with it), but EA doesn't support Live play because Microsoft won't let EA have customer data so that EA can sell it. Remember that it wasn't too long ago that EA was ready to shut down online support for all of their games, excepting UO (which obviously brings in a monthly subscription to support it), because they were losing money hand over fist. Now, all of a sudden (in the last couple of years) they want to run the online portion of all of their games for themselves. Why do you think that is?
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and so on. To say the least, EA found out that they could sell information, which keeps their online efforts afloat. Microsoft may also sell data (I'm certainly not saying they don't), but the reason EA wouldn't release games for the XBox that play online is because Microsoft would not give customer data to EA, whereas EA is perfectly happy giving customer data to just about anyone (though you can opt out of most of it except for giving information to AOL Time Warner).
Additionally, with Nintendo taking the same hands-off policy (in other words, they don't do anything but provide the adapter) on internet play that Sony initially took, why is it that EA's games don't support their system online?
Either it's nearly impossible to get a GameCube game online (possible, but unlikely, given that PSO exists and there are an increasing number of LAN games for the Cube) as a developer, or EA has monetary incentives to keep online gaming exclusive to the PS2 beyond just their selling of customer information.
Active X used to big a big problem, since there was for some time no program to convert Active X controls to Mac, but that has also changed.
ActiveX? Never a big problem with porting games, since game developers rarely (if ever) used it. Maybe application developers had big problems there, though.
While I love the 3 month wait time from PC release to Mac release, since it both gives me a wait period to see if A) the game is good, and B) get rid of the huge amount of bugs Games always have since they are pushed through, the truth is that its not so hard anymore to compile for both platforms.
Considering how much Windows supplies with DirectX in terms of allowing developers easy access to the hardware for sound and input, as well as graphics (though many still use OpenGL, and probably always will, especially when they intend for the game to be cross-platform), it's not quite as easy as you make it out to be. In theory it should be easy for everyone to develop for multiple platforms, but in practice it all comes down to what each environment supplies for you, and how much time you're willing to spend abstracting your core code from the interfaces with the OS. If you design it from the ground up to be multi-platform you should be able to release on subsequent platforms with a fairly short port and test cycle (with the port process becoming shorter for each subsequent platform in many cases), but you can't just develop a game and then at the last minute decide to recompile for OS X, as it's a change of operating system and architectures which could cause any number of unforseen consequences when not planned from the start.
In this case, you simply have to remember that there's a difference between popular literature (Harry Potter, Stephen King books), and scholarly literature. I'm not saying this is definitely a good thing, but it's definitely there.
It's only there because the people at the top of our academic totem pole say it's there. There's not necessarily a substantial textual difference.
I can't really discuss Harry Potter books, since I've never read them, but having read most of Stephen King's books (and enjoyed them quite a bit), I can say there's a very substantial difference in the methods of writing. I can't say that one is really better than the other, simply that King's writing is in a much more common English, and rarely means anything more than what it says. He also tends to be quite predictable, especially after you've read a handful of his books. None of this takes away from the entertainment value, but it keeps him quite firmly out of many literary circles (and yes, this could be quite heavily based on elitism in that particular circle).
However, if you want an idea of where everything came from, if you want to be able to put some evidence behind claims of originality or derivation in current games, then you at least need some foundation in the history of that particular genre or platform.
"Everything." "Need some foundation." Fair enough, but realize that you're only talking about where the current popular canon came from. And just because A precedes A', doesn't mean that A' derived from A, even if they have similar form.
Yes, I agree that just because A precedes B doesn't mean that B derived from A, however they both may have a common ancestor (even if it's Pong, which derived from Ping Pong). I find the study of derivation particularly interesting, although I'm aware that many others do not, and I firmly believe that developers specifically should be aware of the other work in their field before diving in, at the very least to learn from the mistakes of others rather than repeating them for themselves.
Damn Aristotle for inflicting causality and categorization on us. Canonization flattens a multidimensional field and thus diminishes it.
Canonization only flattens a field for those that allow it to do so;) Just because Stephen King and others aren't part of literary canon doesn't mean I don't read them, but at the same time I may look at literary canon from time to time to see if I can find something of interest for me, which also may allow me to branch out into new authors and subject matter. Similarly, when I look at these attempts at game canon, I see a handful of games I haven't played in areas that do interest me, and hope that I might be able to try some of them, as well as many games I have played and enjoyed. It also gives me a good place to start if I decide that I'm interested in looking at, for instance, adventure games, which I haven't played much since I was fairly young (on an Apple II no less).
Unfortunately, you're right, since if we return to the issue at hand, we're looking at this from a developer's point of view, and we want to avoid copying a pre-existing concept too closely even if its inadvertently. But who knows what rigidity of thinking the designer's mind will suffer after the inevitable homogenization of submitting to a canon...
As opposed to the homogenization that's occured in the field every few years when a particularly successful game comes along? The difference with a canon is that when that homogenization occurs there may be an existing reference for developers to look at the past works and maybe produce better games, even if they are just processed cookie-cutter crap. There was a time when I felt like there was a new FPS coming out every week, and slightly later a new RTS every week. The truly bright minds in any industry become well known (at least within their industry) for new thoughts and evolution of their field, regardless of
Hello? Command & Conquer had this long before Starcraft. Even Warcraft II: Through the Dark Portal had good in-game story elements (even though that game didn't support between-mission cutscenes).
Command & Conquer never gave me that feeling. Sure, there were cut-scenes with actors playing various roles, but very few of them were involved in the actual gameplay, and even those that were had very basic characters. WarCraft 2 had slightly more story elements in the game itself, and did have between mission cutscenes (though only a few), but still didn't seem to push it very far. Only a few of the characters from the cut-scenes had any real personality, and even fewer actually were in the game itself. Starcraft just seemed to push beyond that in a way that's almost hard to put into words.
So what was it that Starcraft did that made it a great game? The only really new thing it did was to have three very different factions - everything else had been done before. But its story was engaging, the game was easy to play and had personality. It didn't do a lot new, but it did everything it did very well. Starcraft is proof that a game doesn't have to break ground to be superb and become a classic.
I agree on those points, but I still believe StarCraft broke ground in story telling that transcended just having cut-scenes that told the story to you. I think there are also a handful of ways in which it failed to make it's characters truly useful (ie one of your goals in many missions is to keep character X alive, which means that the easiest way to complete the mission is to put that character in the middle of your base and never use them), but it did try to tell the story both in the game as well as through cut-scenes, which RTS games rarely did before, let alone doing it well. On the other hand, I was a bit obsessed with Dark Reign and Total Annihilation when StarCraft came out, so it took quite a bit on this end to get me to play, as the technological side of the game was obviously quite out-paced by either of these other games. The fact that Dark Reign plays at insanely high speeds on modern processors makes it nearly impossible to pick up any more, unfortunately.
I think your rant was very well written and made some good observations, but I think you side-tracked a bit and missed what actually happened to the show. Primarily, I think you give Morgan Webb too little credit. You go off on her part in the show before you get back to Adam Sessler, who's case would actually show the core of the problem more than anything Morgan Webb could've done for the show.
If you look at Adam Sessler alone, and then look at Morgan Webb (who often has insightful commentary, yet gets 'sidetracked' almost every time she speaks), you see that at the core the show was changed and they were told to do these stupid bits. Shortening 'Extended' to 'X' wasn't just a change of name, or even co-hosts, but also a shortening of the attention span they expect from their viewers, and nothing gets the teenage geeks like Morgan Webb saying 'Bawls'. Adam Sessler turned into a spaz because that's what the producers wanted from him. Morgan Webb went on a tangent about 'Bawls' because that's what the producers wanted (and it was convenient).
The interludes, gags, and bad jokes can be tiring, but the core of the show is still very solid. I would be very happy if they could tone down the BS and provide more content, but I'll take X-Play over my other options for TV coverage of video games (although, for the most part, those other options are about none). At least the reviews, when they aren't sidetracked for long-running gags, are still fairly straightforward and tell me what I want to know (and since they aired a show a couple weeks ago explaining their review scores in a bit more detail I've realised that their scores are pretty consistent, which is more than I can say for most game reviewers).
I'm not sure which episodes are the new ones, but the latest one appears to be it. 4PM, 4:30PM, and 11PM (all times Eastern) Monday-Friday
I usually just set my cable box to switch to the 4:30 and 11 shows, and it's usually the last thing I watch at nite (or if I can't sleep I'll watch Unscrewed, which comes on at 11:30).
The only real difference I see is that the literary canon has had a lot more time to develop and a lot more sources of input and debate, so it's bound to be leaner and more in line with general tastes and opinion than any gaming canon would be at this point.
I think you'll also find that there are far fewer people in the world that could enjoy even a handful of books considered literary canon, whereas there's a good chance that anyone that can get past the technological differences (ie wow these graphics suck) can probably find a good subset of games in a canon like this that they'll enjoy. I think that a games canon needs to be categorized, and maybe even include justifications for entries, but overall could benefit people that want to know more about how games got to where they are today, as well as possibly finding a handful of classic games that they might enjoy. Since the majority of games to this point have been made to entertain, there's little chance that a games canon won't include a great deal of entertainment (though, again, only for those that can get past the surface with things like poor graphics and sound, even in games that may have been ahead of their time in those areas).
I'd say that both of you have a point. On one hand, I'd say that we should value the value of peer review. If a lot of people say that a book is particularly good, then we should likely give it a shot. I still have yet to read (or watch, FWIW) The Count of Monte Cristo, despite a number of recommendations, but I recognize that it's a good idea to do so, and intend to read it.
I'll start by mentioning that I have not read The Count of Monte Cristo, either, though I have seen the movie (only because someone else was going to watch it anyways and I was at their house). In my opinion, a canon should be more about listing particularly good examples of different types of work in an artform, in the case of games the various genres and possibly platforms (which generally lead to particular genres being more or less explored). The problem with literary canon tends to be that it is used as a basis for course-work in many levels of school (there was certainly a canon from which titles were chosen in high school), and often is used as a basis for teaching people to read into literature in a particular way (looking for symbolism for instance), rather than getting students interested in literature and teaching at the same time. As someone past my high school years, if The Grapes of Wrath comes up as necessary reading for my grade ever again, I'll withdraw from the course (but since I'm not an English or Literature major, this isn't a major set-back for me). With games, you're looking at giving developers good examples of what advanced the art, or advanced a particular genre, or even a staple of work for a particular platform that might give some insight into what was popular on that platform, and eventually what about that platform (or the time period) lead to those genres evolving there. For gamers, it's more a matter of involving players in the history of the games they play. Some may be interested, others may not. The more recent games also offer chances for gamers to look at games they may have overlooked (such as Frequency which was on one of the lists) and may enjoy, at a time when they cost relatively little. Another point may be for critics and reviewers, who sometimes seem to bring no historical reference to their work. While it's nice that games are generally reviewed on their own merits, I'd like to see statements on original elements being qualified with their origins rather than just accepted at face value.
However, I *also* find it annoying when I see people criticizing literature because it doesn't follow what they consider to be solid writing style. I read an AP article by an English professor about the Harry Potter books (which I also haven't read) about how the books were basically poorly written crap that didn't compare with classical literature, and on how depressing it is that our society now considers *this* good literature. He particularly panned the use of cliches. To me, that seems ridiculous. If most people enjoy a book, then it's doing a good job of being entertaining, at least for a certain target audience. Because of realities of marketing (Stephen King nvels get pushed more these days than Andre Dumas novels), there may be *some* distortion from "the way things would ideally be". However, ultimately, if people are enjoying a work of literature, criticizing that writing is a lost cause. Very few people I know enjoy reading Moby Dick. Perhaps it makes wonderful use of metaphor, and perhaps it has many layers of meaning. Perhaps it even tries to contain a certain degree of insight. However, if it's not enjoyable to read, ultimately the author has failed to do something that I consider an important element of writing. Melville, begone!
In this case, you simply have to remember that there's a difference between popular literature (Harry Potter, Stephen King books), and scholarly literature. I'm not saying this is definitely a good thing, but it's definitely there. Similarly, there are many people that can rely on certain well-known movie reviewers to let them know what
The best way would not to divide them into genres but to label them in a way that gives some indication of what should be looked for. Take starcraft. A fine RTS, but why. I would argue for its game balance, but mainly for the pure personality and individualness of the units. The zerg, protoss and terrans each had different and strong characters, that I haven't seen rivaled in a game yet.
An addition to this would be that Starcraft was arguably one of the first RTS games to really have an involving story (and again this comes back to the characters, as they were developed in the cut-scenes but still had actual character to them even in the game itself). Technically, Starcraft wasn't much of an achievment, but it did very well in balancing the 3 sides and bringing together a solid story element (and while C&C and Warcraft tried, I don't think they did nearly as well).
One of the lists also skipped either of the first 2 WarCraft titles, which added more character to the units than was available in previous RTS titles, even if most of it was in jest (Stop poking me!).
Personally, although I think a canon would have some value to developers, as well as gamers that have an interest in how we got to where we are, I also think that it should be used as an important step towards preservation of these games, as many of the titles take a great deal of work to get running on current hardware (if it can be done at all, and often involving emulation). Additionally, both of the lists made a handful of mistakes attributing games incorrectly, though mostly minor (such as Tekken 3 for PS2 on one list, while Tekken 3 would've been possibly a more accurate port on the PS2, it was released on the PS1 before the PS2 was even available in the US).
nd I maintain that most monitors don't support 100fps. yeah, some do and it's nice that you have one that does, but look around stores and check the specs on them. the vast majority are not capable of running at 100Hz. you'll see that most top out around 60-85.
Anything that 'tops out around 60-85' is doing so at the highest resolutions it supports. Most people don't play games at the highest resolution possible, unless they are playing older games. In the case of high-end 19" CRTs, this means that 85Hz is at 1856 x 1392 or higher resolutions, 1600x1200 for mid-range, and 1024x768 or 1280x1024 for low-end monitors. That means that most people running 19" CRTs are probably able to get a refresh rate comperable to mine at 1024x768, unless they went to the store and saw a monitor strobing (1024x768 or 1280x1024 @ 85Hz) and decided to take it home with them. As an added bonus, the particular monitor sitting on the desk in front of me is about 4 years old, and a similar one I had at home was a year older and stopped working 18 months ago (due to a number of contributing factors, like speakers and a laserjet printer too close to the monitor and being turned off and on much more often), meaning that the technology is nothing new, and the cost is significantly lower than it was when this monitor was originally purchased. 17" CRTs tend to be similar in numbers, though the mid-range would tend towards 1280x1024 as the 85Hz resolution.
Of course, there are always people sitting around using 10+ year old monitors, but those people are giving themselves more eye-strain than it's worth. I also happen to know a handful of people that feel some insane need to upgrade to fairly SOTA monitors from time to time, but I can't afford to go in that direction, let alone justify those types of expenditures. The monitor should be one of the (if not the single) most expensive parts of a computer, because your eyes are worth it. However, that doesn't mean you need the absolute top of the line, and for a good CRT (as opposed to LCD) you can do very well for a low price today (unless you absolutely must have a 21" or larger display).
Not to mention that the physical location of the tech support center could be perfectly fine. However, the phone system in the area is a mess right now, and many people probably can't get to work. In a time of crisis like this for so many people it's fairly common for corporations to shut down areas local to these types of disasters just for the safety of the people that work there, if not to give them time to assess their losses and work out the essentials.
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If MS said, "We're scrapping the Windows kernel and writing a new Unix-based OS (Is that a pig that just flew by?), MS would try to drop support for the old Windows, to get developers, users, and enterprises all using the same software.
There's one problem with your theory:
MS has been saying they are dropping the Win9x kernel for the last 4 years, and they finally stopped making new versions of the kernel after they released WindowsMe. However, they have a support roadmap that shows Windows Me still supported for a while yet (98 for a little while longer, but not much), and it's 3 years old (and the OS to replace them is 2 years old).
It looks like the soonest we'll see only 1 desktop OS supported by MS is shortly after the release of Longhorn, if it remains as far off as they've stated it will be (though if it goes much further out XP will be the only desktop OS supported for a while).
I only see one real problem with Microsoft's cycles, and that's with the current XP cycle. Longhorn is scheduled to be available sometime in 2005 or 2006, and XP's availability is going to be extremely limited at the end of 2005, with support stopping at the end of 2006. Basically, that means MS will have only 1 desktop OS supported at the end of that year. Sure, it's quite a long time to support XP since it came out at the end of 2001 (meaning support stops at 5 years), but it was their choice to spread out the major releases, and if Longhorn has a late 2005 release there won't even be much time to work out any release issues before XP support dies.
People complained about the frequency of releases because 98SE, 2000, Me, and even XP all came out within a 2.5 year period, but I don't think anyone wanted to see the release cycle get spaced out so much that everyone would have to be on the same desktop OS to be supported. Great way to get people to upgrade, though, and I'm sure we'll see more people moving up to XP as they become aware of 98's demise.
Well, obviously IANAGD (I Am Not A Game Developer) and suffering a little from FAS (false authority syndrome). ;) I study math mostly. This whole situation reminds me of the problem with trying to quantify worker "productivity". You can do it with machines because their associated variables are typically bounded. But, humans are completely different. Many execs do not understand this, so they propose these naive measurement schemes like [lines of code / hour] for programmers or [number of patients served / day ] for respiratory or physical therapists. Clearly, there are problems with the models based on these metrics.
IANAGD, either, but I am a software developer, and in my particular field I sometimes deal with a lot of old code. I can tell you one thing quite easily, the 'lines of code / hour' measurement is not only naive, but wasteful. You have no idea how much code there is out there because of this that is simply copy/pasted into place and does absolutely nothing, or that was commented out on the last few days of the project so that it would work (developers on 'lines per hour' requirements would add code that prevented things from working and few people could decipher after they were finished with the project, and continue to do so until the time/money alloted to the project neared it's end). I thank those people fairly regularly for my job, since their companies lost their contracts for good reason.
Now, trying to measure game design is a similar problem. If there were a way to quantify game quality, a way to quantify game graphics quality, and a way to measure or estimate the amount of time required to produce a "good" game, then I think we would have enough to make a good model.
Exactly, it's very hard to quantify unless you have a basis from which to judge it, as well as a wide field in which to test it. A game could even do everything right according to what was done in the past and still not appeal to gamers simply because it 'feels' wrong or the story doesn't appeal to someone. Most people don't read literary canon for good reason: a lot of the books aren't entertaining, they're just examples of specific qualities of literature. That, and they often just don't appeal to people today, even if they were wildly popular in their own time. Imagine sitting down to play Pong today from a standpoint of trying to gain entertainment value. At the very least, developers should be able to approach other people's games from an analytical standpoint, but still remember that when they're finished with their own game, it will have to be fun.
Unfortunately, we have variables like game genre, machine architecture, controller ergonomics and button assignments, single- and group-playability, graphics, story and originality, length of objective, and re-playability. Then we have tradeoffs like if you were to base new games on popular old games, would this draw away from originality?
And then when all is said and done, after every variable's been tweaked, some ass is going to complain that it's not very fun, or even interesting. I watched something on TechTV looking the development of a handful of XBox games at Microsoft and they practically sacked the development team on Crimson Skies because even though all of the pieces were there, no one could really sit down with the game and have a good time with it. From what I've heard of the game so far, they may have succeeded after a year's delay because someone in the company actually had the power to do that, knowing that the point had been raised earlier in development and the current team wasn't getting it quite right. It wasn't any real fault of the team, they just couldn't get the vision quite right, and most of those people still have jobs there, they just needed different people to come to the game with a different outlook to bring the vision together and make the game fun.
Now, back to using junkfood as positive reinforcement for game development, this would depend on whether we c
What are "must have" games these days?
Depends on the types of games you like to play. Each system has some 'must have' titles, but if they don't appeal to you then the whole console just looks pretty pointless.
The XBox has Halo and KOTOR, and possibly now Crimson Skies. If none of these appeal to you, then you can probably find most of the other good XBox titles on other platforms. Additionally, each is possibly the only title in each particular genre on that platform that is going to appeal to you. There are certainly no RPGs comparable to KOTOR on the platform.
The PS2 has a wide variety of titles, probably with must-haves in each genre. As a big fan of Japanese RPGs the console is pretty much a must-have for me, though early in it's life there were also Tekken Tag and GT3 (which also represent a large portion of the titles I actually have in their respective genres). At this point I'd also point to Amplitude + Frequency, Disgaea, and a few other very good titles in their respective genres. The PS1 library was also a strong selling point early on when launch titles may not have been so strong.
The Cube's must-have titles are mostly Nintendo-developed titles, such as Zelda, Metroid, soon Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros, maybe Animal Crossing, F-Zero, and so on. Super Monkey Ball is a strong title (Sega), and Eternal Darkness as well. Rogue Squadron for the fans of that series, and the Resident Evil remakes for the fans of that series (plus the exclusive RE:0 title). The library is lacking for fans of some genres (much like the XBox), but titles are on their way to fill some of those holes (also like the XBox).
When I was a kid, the excitement over games came mostly from not being able to get many of them, and having to choose carefully, or ending up with a dud for a long period of time before I could get another title. My dad even encouraged my grades by buying me an NES game if my report card was good, but stopped that when Ultima Exodus cost $60 (that was the last title I received for my grades, from then on it was cash at a fixed rate of $5 per A and $3 per B, which meant I maxed out at $30). This meant that I spent more time reading about titles, and more time with each title, than I do now. It also meant that when I heard about a new title that I really wanted I had to wait until I had enough money or could get it as a gift, whereas today I can pre-order it or buy it when I see some good reviews. It also means I have a lower tolerance for bullshit in my games, as I can just put the game back on the shelf when the developer amps the difficulty from 0 to 60 in 2.3 seconds and play something else, whereas before I'd have to slam my head against the wall until I got through the one insanely difficult part half way through the game (it's kindof like Tekken in a way, the guy before the last opponent is significantly harder than the last one).
I spent a couple of weeks going through Metroid with a friend of mine when we were young, cussing at the game and trying to figure out where to go next. 2 months ago I spent an hour or so a day for a week going through Metroid Fusion and got to a point where I died 10 times trying different methods for avoiding the evil Samus-thing, and I haven't played the game since (though I will eventually, I really want to unlock Metroid on my Cube without using Action Replay or something to do it). My tolerance level is just not as high when I have so many other games to play, even if every other one on the shelf is there because I got stuck somewhere on it, too (and that's when I eventually get back to it and see something I missed before, or wonder why it was so hard when I put it up).
What if other countries do the same to "protect themselves from terrorists" too? Some probably do.
Aren't we all in deep shit then?
Actually, most developed nations do. It's not about developing the diseases, though, it's about developing the antidotes and treatments once those diseases are developed. It's about finding out what kinds of effects various mutations will have on a particular virus or bacteria and then finding out how to counter that.
At the same time, you can look at it as being similar to mutually assured destruction. There wasn't an all-out war between the USA and the USSR simply because each side knew that there was no chance of surviving. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense, but you still have to have a good defense when you can, and that means developing a better offense and finding ways to defend against it before your opponent does.
You can't have peace just by talking about it, you must assure that your defenses are good enough to keep your people safe when someone decides to break the peace. Most of the US would not be considered a war zone, yet there are more homicides in some US states (and even cities) than there are in Iraq right now. Why is that? Because military forces are generally not an option in policing our own citizens in the US. Even in the perfect world where all of the countries got along you would still have to have police forces to defend the citizens from the criminals, and those police forces would have to study the criminal mind and technology to keep their own techniques up to date.
WMDs in the US, anybody?
There are WMDs in many countries, especially the larger 1st-world nations. There are also regulations on most types of weapons and weapons technologies.
The reason that WMDs are a problem in Iraq, for instance, is because the country was under UN sanctions (because Iraq invaded Kuwait) that required removal of these weapons within a very specific timeframe, with requirements for tracking the removal and destruction of the weapons. While the UN seemed happy to extend these deadlines and to maintain very little tracking of the weapons themselves, the US decided to enforce the provision to enforce it with military force.
So, while the UN sat back while weapons were tested on Iraq's own citizens and stockpiles disappeared with no record of where they were sent (or of their destruction), the US decided to do something about it.
Exactly, and they know why the vaccines don't work (because of the changes they made), so, in theory, they can then work towards making vaccines that do work, or some other method of treatment to counter it.
I don't think he meant that we've reached the peak of video game graphics, but rather that the next generation of consoles and possibly even the one after that aren't going to have that "HOLY SHIT THIS IS AWESOME!" factor that, say, the Super Nintendo did with you loaded up Super Mario World for the first time or the PlayStation had when you loaded up FFVII for the first time. You may see more objects, less fog, less loading time, etc. but you're not going to see something that really shocks you graphically like the games of the past have.
I think people keep thinking this and keep saying this, and it keeps not happening. When I loaded up RE: Code Veronica on the DreamCast and it transitioned from the intro to the game I sat there and waited for the intro to continue because the graphics quality didn't look like what I expected from an actual playable game (and wasn't discernable from the intro). When I loaded up Soul Calibur the first time on my monitor it was eye candy for days (and was so good that it's hard to tell that Soul Calibur 2 looks better). Amplitude amazes me with it's ability to put flashy graphics (though admittedly low-poly, it still looks good and you don't really notice that polygons aren't a limiting factor) mixed with real-time video (in the backgrounds of most arenas) and have very precise gameplay that requires synchronizing the input to the music and what's seen on-screen.
Ikaruga made my jaw drop in more ways than can be explained.
It's not just about how many polys you can push, it's about what you do with the graphics capabilities. In many ways, US game developers have been pushing too much towards realism in the graphics, when it's some of the most unrealistic things that make the graphics so amazing in some games.
Plus, as long as game developers feel the need to put pre-rendered graphics into their games for any reason, we still need to increase the power of the graphics systems. The difference in some games gets less obvious over time, but in others is still glaringly obvious, primarily because character detail is limited to make a more believable environment, or vice versa. I'd have to say this is where Nintendo has the real advantage, because of all developers they have the tendency towards making the most cohesive environments, where the style of the character matches the environment best, where there isn't a clash between the two constantly pulling your eyes towards the technology rather than the game.
And to some degree, it's already true. If you played Final Fantasy X or Kingdom Hearts and then went to try out a beautiful GameCube or Xbox game for the first time, you'd probably have a "Wow, that's neat" sort of reaction, but you wouldn't have a spontaneous bowel movement or anything.
Halo gave me some drooling moments, but I don't think I saw FFX before I played Halo. KOTOR has had some truly beautiful scenes, as well, despite many people saying it's graphics aren't that great. Not to mention that even PC games are pushing beyond the capabilities of the consoles, although they still have options to drop them down to lower detail for systems that can't handle them (though in terms of resolution support PCs have almost always been beyond consoles).
Video game graphics will continue to steadily improve, but they won't feature the same sort of enormous graphical leap that you had between the NES and the SNES or the SNES and the PSX.
I think those particular leaps actually tended to be mitigated by later titles in each cartridge generation using cartridge-based hardware to increase the capabilities of the consoles. SMB3 was certainly an eye-candy-fest that made the NES nearly comparable to the 16-bit generation, especially since Nintendo was so late to the 16-bit table. The real difference seems to be that in the past the hardware was extended by adding new graphics and sound chips to the cartridges, whereas today people have to squeeze more out of the same hardware when they make games later in the g
I think most of the original games were made in the 1990-1996 era when there were more restrictions on graphics.
;)
This isn't quite true. Sure, graphics cards weren't pushing the boundaries quite as often and developers were a little slow to push the existing boundaries themselves, but they were still pushing the graphics forward. Consoles went from 8 to 16 to 32 bit graphics, pushing the graphics forward with each iteration, and PC game developers were trying to push the graphics forward in their own fields, realizing that most PC graphics cards were already capable of much better graphics than what were being pushed on the consoles. The biggest limitation was what you could do with your CPU cycles to make the game push the graphics out without hurting the gameplay.
I think this forced some developers to deal with the content of the game instead of spending all the time in making it look good. To see my point, pit yourself on the tv show trading spaces. Ignoring the "reality" aspect, there is a lot of pressure to be creative when there is a budget ($1000). But if you set that budget higher ($100,000), you relieve a lot of the pressure of having to think or be "creative", or "innovative".
Yes, there's a lot more waste once the budget gets pushed out, but the level of creativity and innovation is no lower just because the bloat and waste has increased. In fact, as the budget gets higher, so do the barriers to entry, so fewer titles are knocked out quickly to take advantage of some fad or to exploit a franchise for marketing. Even Enter the Matrix took a lot of time and money to develop, or the latest Tomb Raider.
My favorite game of all time was "The secret of Monkey Island." It was made with the SCUMM [wikipedia.org] engine. Sure, the graphics weren't "Enter the Matrix"- or DeusEx-style, but the humor was awesome. The puzzles weren't totally convoluted and not too easy either, while Elaine Marley [scummbar.com] was pretty hot in 16-color!
Now, instead of comparing it to Enter the Matrix and Deus Ex in terms of graphics, compare it to what was available at the time. I think you'll find that while Lucas Arts may not have been pushing it a great deal with the SCUMM engine, they were keeping up. The Monkey Island series certainly never had Ultima I graphics.
Now if only we can pump out some more games like that. I mean, I haven't laughed that hard since MST3K went off the air years ago (ignoring reruns). How many games can do that? If you played these games, just consider how long it took to create all that humor, the storyline, the scenes, etc.
Your complaints are more valid if directed towards the near-death state of the genre, rather than the technological side of things. In fact, it was one of the first genres (other than FPS) that tried to embrace the 3D side of things, and I personally blame that, more than anything else, for it's demise. If they had kept producing solid 2D games the way RTS developers did while waiting for 3D technology to mature, they may have survived the transition better. Instead, they started dumping money into sub-par 3D games and the publishers lost interest in funding games that made no money. Only a handful of graphical adventure games were made in the late 90's, and the ones that remained in 2D gained a lot of praise, but sales didn't compare to the big money-makers like FPS games. They made the wrong decisions and basically killed off a genre, so you'll see it mostly relegated to independents until it gains some sort of revival in the future.
Your average game developer these days can probably code up a storm, but can he write a good story? I think thats whats missing in many games: a good story.
Which is probably why games with a good story tend to be doing fairly well these days. Of course, occasionally the stories become derivative or predictable, but the same is true in all media. Some of us avoid the predictable stuff, others don't notice the predictab
Secondly, I think would lead to political correctness seeping into games. Personally, I don't like the thought of having my games delayed because some organization/religion/race/nation/culture did not like the way they were depicted in the game.
You mean like one of the C&C games having it's cover art changed or MS Flight Simulator having a patch after 9/11, in both cases removing the World Trade Center (in the first from the cover, in the second from the game)? Or like the recent story here about a portion of a game being changed because people in Canada were offended about the depiction of a Quebec terrorist group attacking their subways?
Political Correct-ness isn't a result of real criticism, it's a result of people being afraid that someone will be offended by what they produce. People are too afraid to say what's on their mind and instead will say what they think people want to hear. This extends into all aspects of life, including our entertainment, regardless of whether we allow criticism rather than just simple reviewing (and considering the state of game reviews today, we could use a revamping of the entire system in the first place).
Morrowind is, however, relatively buggy. That, actually, is a huge game-design issue: it seems developers are releasing a lot of games that, while good, contain serious bugs.
I think all developers should be forced to play seriously buggy games as close to completion as the bugs permit (not saying until they encounter a bug, but rather until they complete the game or come to a point where the game has actually prevented them from completing it several times).
Then the publishers should be forced to do the same.
and no, I don't remember slowdowns in Planescape Torment, but maybe that's because I didn't get it until a couple patches came out, and I added the No-CD crack to get rid of most of the loading times and all of the disc swapping (look, if you're too cheap to give me jewel cases, don't make me keep your CDs in better condition than they were in when I bought them; which reminds me, they should be forced to play games on CD-ROM drives that don't work well with various copy protection schemes and store the CDs in paper and cardboard sleeves, or in a loose stack on the desk in front of them).
I think his point is that Bomberman, Wip3out, Rampage, and possibly even Chu-Chu Rocket could've all been made on the Unreal engine, with only slight modifications to the engine.
Rune (3rd person melee platformer), Deus Ex (3rd person RPG/shooter), and UT were all made on the Unreal engine. Someone added Tetris to Counterstrike (which is a Half-Life mod, which was made starting with the Quake engine). Dark Reign 2 (RTS) uses technology that many of us first heard about as being licensed for Team Fortress 2 (team-/class-based FPS). The Havok engine (physics engine used in HL2) is being licensed for many games, not all of which are FPS.
I think, overall, we'll see certain engines really dominate certain types of games, though, and that people will make things that really extend their genres using engines someone else primarily developed. The Baldur's Gate engine is being heavily used for most of the best PC RPGs and one of the best console RPGs of the last few years (PlaneScape: Torment, Icewind Dale I + II, Baldur's Gate 1 + 2, NeverWinter Nights, Star Wars: KOTOR), with each franchise having at least a somewhat different feel and in some cases an extremely different feel to the gameplay (KOTOR and Planescape). FPS games tend to use id-, Epic-, and Monolith-developed engines, with a few platformers and other genres mixed in also using them.
The absolute leaders in developing technology will continue developing engines, but a lot of the games that really push gameplay further and develop new ideas will probably more and more often license engines. Look at what Valve did, they hired some of the best mod developers and developers from other companies that had made names for themselves with certain additions to id's engines, or developing tools for id's engines, and brought them together to extend and rewrite portions of the Quake engine to a point that it was nearly unrecognizable, and now they're developing their own engine and extending the Havok physics engine for their next iteration. Rather than just taking what they've bought and using it as-is, they learn from it and develop it further.
So, not only will people license engines for similar titles, but they'll also push those engines into new realms, and adapt those engines for other genres. At the core, though, an FPS engine has optimizations that tend to make it ideal to FPS play, and an RPG engine is the same way for RPGs. Much of the core technology for the two game types has nothing in common, and the renderer may not represent the majority of the work (or the renderer may not handle some things, like inventories and conversation trees (or transparent HUDs and aim), as well as it needs to.
Standardizing the engines used in a particular genre isn't going to make the entire realm of gaming stale, it will simply make developers try harder to do things that make their games different. There will always be cookie-cutter games, regardless of the engines used, but those will not stand out in the crowd, and will be known (if they are known at all) for their cookie-cutter status.
then explain the 3 to 6 month port times of games that where written for Wintel only by companies for the Mac, since most Mac games are not ported by the firm that created them (obviously some are built with the plans for them to be ported in the first place, Blizzard which has put out plenty of cross-platform games even subscibes to the multi-platform disk idea, which gives them major points in my mind) examples of this would be the huge number of games MacPlay ports over, many in 6 months or less with the longest being 9.
Any company that makes a good amount of money porting applications (or in this case games) to other platforms (in this case the Mac OS, in other cases to *nix) will have a set of tools that make porting easier, including searching code files for Windows-specific code (and replacing it in the cases where it's easy to automate, but at the least commenting it as such for ease in finding the offending code in text editors with find functions or in code editors with the functionality of highlighting specific comment types or even categorizing comments), having in-house libraries that replace or handle Windows-specific code for the given platform, and in general just having the experience from previous porting efforts. All of this is exactly why developers often outsource the porting process, because to do it in-house, despite the advantages of familiarity with the code base, would be much harder in many cases due to relative inexperience porting to the platform in question.
Obviously if its a good game, its going to get ported, so why not put the code in ahead of time so it doesnt cost you more later.
It depends on the trade-offs at hand and whether or not you actually expect there to be demand for a Mac port. If you believe from the start that the game might have a small user base or that there won't be demand from Mac or Linux users from the game, it might make sense to just go straight in with DirectX and never even think about the possibility of porting the game. The cost of using OpenGL and something like SDL may be higher for some development houses than using DirectX (though that's unlikely, unless your developers simply don't know SDL and OpenGL as well as DirectX), or performance tweaks may cost more on the other APIs (all of this from the design side, estimating costs rather than actual costs). But, in the end, it's always going to be easier for Mac developers to port the games than it is for Windows developers to have a cross-platform mindset. Additionally, it's even harder to convince corporations (rather than developers) that cross-platform means more sales when the market share and user base of the other platforms is estimated as being a very small percentage compared to Windows.
That's because Microsoft won't let you develop online multiplayer games for Xbox unless you agree to let Microsoft own your customer data and host your online presence on Microsoft software [xboxsolution.com]. Activision and EA won't agree to that, so no online Xbox multiplayer. Don't like it? Blame Microsoft for acting like they have a console monopoly and can make developers agree to anything.
I'm not sure why Activision doesn't support online play in one game and not another (though I'd imagine cash has something to do with it), but EA doesn't support Live play because Microsoft won't let EA have customer data so that EA can sell it. Remember that it wasn't too long ago that EA was ready to shut down online support for all of their games, excepting UO (which obviously brings in a monthly subscription to support it), because they were losing money hand over fist. Now, all of a sudden (in the last couple of years) they want to run the online portion of all of their games for themselves. Why do you think that is?
Some high points from EA's Privacy Policy (and their terms of service refer directly to the privacy policy) include the following:
If you register to become a member of EA.com (our online games service), and you are 18 years of age or older, your email address is also provided to our partner, America Online, Inc. and you are automatically registered for an AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) Account... As with all third party sites, Electronic Arts does not control AOL's privacy policies and practices. We urge you to review AOL's privacy policy at www.aol.com.
From time to time, we are approached by companies and organizations that provide products or services that we believe may be of interest to you, and we may provide your personal information to such third parties. We see this as a value-added service helping you to find useful products or services. We strive to limit use of the information you provide to those offers that we think you would appreciate receiving. You may opt out of this service. See the opt out information below.
We may use survey information in marketing surveys to select and direct advertising that is more likely to be of interest to a particular member. This information may be transmitted to an ad server owned by the advertising company (for example, on pogo. com, this is DoubleClick) to match members with ads that they are more likely to be interested in. However, we do not disclose any member's personal information to our advertisers without the member's consent. Participation in member surveys is entirely optional. We may share aggregate consumer data (which does not contain personal information) with the advertising companies.
and so on. To say the least, EA found out that they could sell information, which keeps their online efforts afloat. Microsoft may also sell data (I'm certainly not saying they don't), but the reason EA wouldn't release games for the XBox that play online is because Microsoft would not give customer data to EA, whereas EA is perfectly happy giving customer data to just about anyone (though you can opt out of most of it except for giving information to AOL Time Warner).
Additionally, with Nintendo taking the same hands-off policy (in other words, they don't do anything but provide the adapter) on internet play that Sony initially took, why is it that EA's games don't support their system online?
Either it's nearly impossible to get a GameCube game online (possible, but unlikely, given that PSO exists and there are an increasing number of LAN games for the Cube) as a developer, or EA has monetary incentives to keep online gaming exclusive to the PS2 beyond just their selling of customer information.
Active X used to big a big problem, since there was for some time no program to convert Active X controls to Mac, but that has also changed.
ActiveX? Never a big problem with porting games, since game developers rarely (if ever) used it. Maybe application developers had big problems there, though.
While I love the 3 month wait time from PC release to Mac release, since it both gives me a wait period to see if A) the game is good, and B) get rid of the huge amount of bugs Games always have since they are pushed through, the truth is that its not so hard anymore to compile for both platforms.
Considering how much Windows supplies with DirectX in terms of allowing developers easy access to the hardware for sound and input, as well as graphics (though many still use OpenGL, and probably always will, especially when they intend for the game to be cross-platform), it's not quite as easy as you make it out to be. In theory it should be easy for everyone to develop for multiple platforms, but in practice it all comes down to what each environment supplies for you, and how much time you're willing to spend abstracting your core code from the interfaces with the OS. If you design it from the ground up to be multi-platform you should be able to release on subsequent platforms with a fairly short port and test cycle (with the port process becoming shorter for each subsequent platform in many cases), but you can't just develop a game and then at the last minute decide to recompile for OS X, as it's a change of operating system and architectures which could cause any number of unforseen consequences when not planned from the start.
In this case, you simply have to remember that
;) Just because Stephen King and others aren't part of literary canon doesn't mean I don't read them, but at the same time I may look at literary canon from time to time to see if I can find something of interest for me, which also may allow me to branch out into new authors and subject matter. Similarly, when I look at these attempts at game canon, I see a handful of games I haven't played in areas that do interest me, and hope that I might be able to try some of them, as well as many games I have played and enjoyed. It also gives me a good place to start if I decide that I'm interested in looking at, for instance, adventure games, which I haven't played much since I was fairly young (on an Apple II no less).
there's a difference between popular literature
(Harry Potter, Stephen King books), and scholarly
literature. I'm not saying this is definitely a
good thing, but it's definitely there.
It's only there because the people at the top of our academic totem pole say it's there. There's not necessarily a substantial textual difference.
I can't really discuss Harry Potter books, since I've never read them, but having read most of Stephen King's books (and enjoyed them quite a bit), I can say there's a very substantial difference in the methods of writing. I can't say that one is really better than the other, simply that King's writing is in a much more common English, and rarely means anything more than what it says. He also tends to be quite predictable, especially after you've read a handful of his books. None of this takes away from the entertainment value, but it keeps him quite firmly out of many literary circles (and yes, this could be quite heavily based on elitism in that particular circle).
However, if you want an idea of where
everything came from, if you want to be able to
put some evidence behind claims of originality or
derivation in current games, then you at least
need some foundation in the history of that
particular genre or platform.
"Everything." "Need some foundation." Fair enough, but realize that you're only talking about where the current popular canon came from. And just because A precedes A', doesn't mean that A' derived from A, even if they have similar form.
Yes, I agree that just because A precedes B doesn't mean that B derived from A, however they both may have a common ancestor (even if it's Pong, which derived from Ping Pong). I find the study of derivation particularly interesting, although I'm aware that many others do not, and I firmly believe that developers specifically should be aware of the other work in their field before diving in, at the very least to learn from the mistakes of others rather than repeating them for themselves.
Damn Aristotle for inflicting causality and categorization on us. Canonization flattens a multidimensional field and thus diminishes it.
Canonization only flattens a field for those that allow it to do so
Unfortunately, you're right, since if we return to the issue at hand, we're looking at this from a developer's point of view, and we want to avoid copying a pre-existing concept too closely even if its inadvertently. But who knows what rigidity of thinking the designer's mind will suffer after the inevitable homogenization of submitting to a canon...
As opposed to the homogenization that's occured in the field every few years when a particularly successful game comes along? The difference with a canon is that when that homogenization occurs there may be an existing reference for developers to look at the past works and maybe produce better games, even if they are just processed cookie-cutter crap. There was a time when I felt like there was a new FPS coming out every week, and slightly later a new RTS every week. The truly bright minds in any industry become well known (at least within their industry) for new thoughts and evolution of their field, regardless of
Hello? Command & Conquer had this long before Starcraft. Even Warcraft II: Through the Dark Portal had good in-game story elements (even though that game didn't support between-mission cutscenes).
Command & Conquer never gave me that feeling. Sure, there were cut-scenes with actors playing various roles, but very few of them were involved in the actual gameplay, and even those that were had very basic characters. WarCraft 2 had slightly more story elements in the game itself, and did have between mission cutscenes (though only a few), but still didn't seem to push it very far. Only a few of the characters from the cut-scenes had any real personality, and even fewer actually were in the game itself. Starcraft just seemed to push beyond that in a way that's almost hard to put into words.
So what was it that Starcraft did that made it a great game? The only really new thing it did was to have three very different factions - everything else had been done before. But its story was engaging, the game was easy to play and had personality. It didn't do a lot new, but it did everything it did very well. Starcraft is proof that a game doesn't have to break ground to be superb and become a classic.
I agree on those points, but I still believe StarCraft broke ground in story telling that transcended just having cut-scenes that told the story to you. I think there are also a handful of ways in which it failed to make it's characters truly useful (ie one of your goals in many missions is to keep character X alive, which means that the easiest way to complete the mission is to put that character in the middle of your base and never use them), but it did try to tell the story both in the game as well as through cut-scenes, which RTS games rarely did before, let alone doing it well. On the other hand, I was a bit obsessed with Dark Reign and Total Annihilation when StarCraft came out, so it took quite a bit on this end to get me to play, as the technological side of the game was obviously quite out-paced by either of these other games. The fact that Dark Reign plays at insanely high speeds on modern processors makes it nearly impossible to pick up any more, unfortunately.
I think your rant was very well written and made some good observations, but I think you side-tracked a bit and missed what actually happened to the show. Primarily, I think you give Morgan Webb too little credit. You go off on her part in the show before you get back to Adam Sessler, who's case would actually show the core of the problem more than anything Morgan Webb could've done for the show.
If you look at Adam Sessler alone, and then look at Morgan Webb (who often has insightful commentary, yet gets 'sidetracked' almost every time she speaks), you see that at the core the show was changed and they were told to do these stupid bits. Shortening 'Extended' to 'X' wasn't just a change of name, or even co-hosts, but also a shortening of the attention span they expect from their viewers, and nothing gets the teenage geeks like Morgan Webb saying 'Bawls'. Adam Sessler turned into a spaz because that's what the producers wanted from him. Morgan Webb went on a tangent about 'Bawls' because that's what the producers wanted (and it was convenient).
The interludes, gags, and bad jokes can be tiring, but the core of the show is still very solid. I would be very happy if they could tone down the BS and provide more content, but I'll take X-Play over my other options for TV coverage of video games (although, for the most part, those other options are about none). At least the reviews, when they aren't sidetracked for long-running gags, are still fairly straightforward and tell me what I want to know (and since they aired a show a couple weeks ago explaining their review scores in a bit more detail I've realised that their scores are pretty consistent, which is more than I can say for most game reviewers).
I'm not sure which episodes are the new ones, but the latest one appears to be it.
4PM, 4:30PM, and 11PM (all times Eastern) Monday-Friday
I usually just set my cable box to switch to the 4:30 and 11 shows, and it's usually the last thing I watch at nite (or if I can't sleep I'll watch Unscrewed, which comes on at 11:30).
Shit, I'm 25 and was still fairly young when Miami Vice was on the air and Scarface came out.
That being said, Scarface has been plastered all over TV lately, and is still pretty decent even with words changed and bleeped out every 2 seconds.
The only real difference I see is that the literary canon has had a lot more time to develop and a lot more sources of input and debate, so it's bound to be leaner and more in line with general tastes and opinion than any gaming canon would be at this point.
I think you'll also find that there are far fewer people in the world that could enjoy even a handful of books considered literary canon, whereas there's a good chance that anyone that can get past the technological differences (ie wow these graphics suck) can probably find a good subset of games in a canon like this that they'll enjoy. I think that a games canon needs to be categorized, and maybe even include justifications for entries, but overall could benefit people that want to know more about how games got to where they are today, as well as possibly finding a handful of classic games that they might enjoy. Since the majority of games to this point have been made to entertain, there's little chance that a games canon won't include a great deal of entertainment (though, again, only for those that can get past the surface with things like poor graphics and sound, even in games that may have been ahead of their time in those areas).
I'd say that both of you have a point. On one hand, I'd say that we should value the value of peer review. If a lot of people say that a book is particularly good, then we should likely give it a shot. I still have yet to read (or watch, FWIW) The Count of Monte Cristo, despite a number of recommendations, but I recognize that it's a good idea to do so, and intend to read it.
I'll start by mentioning that I have not read The Count of Monte Cristo, either, though I have seen the movie (only because someone else was going to watch it anyways and I was at their house). In my opinion, a canon should be more about listing particularly good examples of different types of work in an artform, in the case of games the various genres and possibly platforms (which generally lead to particular genres being more or less explored). The problem with literary canon tends to be that it is used as a basis for course-work in many levels of school (there was certainly a canon from which titles were chosen in high school), and often is used as a basis for teaching people to read into literature in a particular way (looking for symbolism for instance), rather than getting students interested in literature and teaching at the same time. As someone past my high school years, if The Grapes of Wrath comes up as necessary reading for my grade ever again, I'll withdraw from the course (but since I'm not an English or Literature major, this isn't a major set-back for me). With games, you're looking at giving developers good examples of what advanced the art, or advanced a particular genre, or even a staple of work for a particular platform that might give some insight into what was popular on that platform, and eventually what about that platform (or the time period) lead to those genres evolving there. For gamers, it's more a matter of involving players in the history of the games they play. Some may be interested, others may not. The more recent games also offer chances for gamers to look at games they may have overlooked (such as Frequency which was on one of the lists) and may enjoy, at a time when they cost relatively little. Another point may be for critics and reviewers, who sometimes seem to bring no historical reference to their work. While it's nice that games are generally reviewed on their own merits, I'd like to see statements on original elements being qualified with their origins rather than just accepted at face value.
However, I *also* find it annoying when I see people criticizing literature because it doesn't follow what they consider to be solid writing style. I read an AP article by an English professor about the Harry Potter books (which I also haven't read) about how the books were basically poorly written crap that didn't compare with classical literature, and on how depressing it is that our society now considers *this* good literature. He particularly panned the use of cliches. To me, that seems ridiculous. If most people enjoy a book, then it's doing a good job of being entertaining, at least for a certain target audience. Because of realities of marketing (Stephen King nvels get pushed more these days than Andre Dumas novels), there may be *some* distortion from "the way things would ideally be". However, ultimately, if people are enjoying a work of literature, criticizing that writing is a lost cause. Very few people I know enjoy reading Moby Dick. Perhaps it makes wonderful use of metaphor, and perhaps it has many layers of meaning. Perhaps it even tries to contain a certain degree of insight. However, if it's not enjoyable to read, ultimately the author has failed to do something that I consider an important element of writing. Melville, begone!
In this case, you simply have to remember that there's a difference between popular literature (Harry Potter, Stephen King books), and scholarly literature. I'm not saying this is definitely a good thing, but it's definitely there. Similarly, there are many people that can rely on certain well-known movie reviewers to let them know what
The best way would not to divide them into genres but to label them in a way that gives some indication of what should be looked for. Take starcraft. A fine RTS, but why. I would argue for its game balance, but mainly for the pure personality and individualness of the units. The zerg, protoss and terrans each had different and strong characters, that I haven't seen rivaled in a game yet.
An addition to this would be that Starcraft was arguably one of the first RTS games to really have an involving story (and again this comes back to the characters, as they were developed in the cut-scenes but still had actual character to them even in the game itself). Technically, Starcraft wasn't much of an achievment, but it did very well in balancing the 3 sides and bringing together a solid story element (and while C&C and Warcraft tried, I don't think they did nearly as well).
One of the lists also skipped either of the first 2 WarCraft titles, which added more character to the units than was available in previous RTS titles, even if most of it was in jest (Stop poking me!).
Personally, although I think a canon would have some value to developers, as well as gamers that have an interest in how we got to where we are, I also think that it should be used as an important step towards preservation of these games, as many of the titles take a great deal of work to get running on current hardware (if it can be done at all, and often involving emulation). Additionally, both of the lists made a handful of mistakes attributing games incorrectly, though mostly minor (such as Tekken 3 for PS2 on one list, while Tekken 3 would've been possibly a more accurate port on the PS2, it was released on the PS1 before the PS2 was even available in the US).
nd I maintain that most monitors don't support 100fps. yeah, some do and it's nice that you have one that does, but look around stores and check the specs on them. the vast majority are not capable of running at 100Hz. you'll see that most top out around 60-85.
Anything that 'tops out around 60-85' is doing so at the highest resolutions it supports. Most people don't play games at the highest resolution possible, unless they are playing older games. In the case of high-end 19" CRTs, this means that 85Hz is at 1856 x 1392 or higher resolutions, 1600x1200 for mid-range, and 1024x768 or 1280x1024 for low-end monitors. That means that most people running 19" CRTs are probably able to get a refresh rate comperable to mine at 1024x768, unless they went to the store and saw a monitor strobing (1024x768 or 1280x1024 @ 85Hz) and decided to take it home with them. As an added bonus, the particular monitor sitting on the desk in front of me is about 4 years old, and a similar one I had at home was a year older and stopped working 18 months ago (due to a number of contributing factors, like speakers and a laserjet printer too close to the monitor and being turned off and on much more often), meaning that the technology is nothing new, and the cost is significantly lower than it was when this monitor was originally purchased. 17" CRTs tend to be similar in numbers, though the mid-range would tend towards 1280x1024 as the 85Hz resolution.
Of course, there are always people sitting around using 10+ year old monitors, but those people are giving themselves more eye-strain than it's worth. I also happen to know a handful of people that feel some insane need to upgrade to fairly SOTA monitors from time to time, but I can't afford to go in that direction, let alone justify those types of expenditures. The monitor should be one of the (if not the single) most expensive parts of a computer, because your eyes are worth it. However, that doesn't mean you need the absolute top of the line, and for a good CRT (as opposed to LCD) you can do very well for a low price today (unless you absolutely must have a 21" or larger display).
Not to mention that the physical location of the tech support center could be perfectly fine. However, the phone system in the area is a mess right now, and many people probably can't get to work. In a time of crisis like this for so many people it's fairly common for corporations to shut down areas local to these types of disasters just for the safety of the people that work there, if not to give them time to assess their losses and work out the essentials.