Bottom line: game previews suck. They're never an indication of how good a game will be on release.
I, of course, agree with you. But I'm actually getting my info on the linearity from a big magazine preview where they say explicitly, "Manhunt will be much more linear than the GTA games."
But don't get me wrong; that doesn't mean I won't even try it. I'll be ecstatic if it brings the same sort of freedom that the GTAs did.
What made GTA3 & GTAVC great were their open environments wedded with non-linear game-play. Everything I've read about Manhunt suggests it's far more linear, leading me to believe that Rockstar North may not have learned from its successes.:(
If console designers want to see thousands of original titles, they need only make their platforms open to garage development.
Well-put. But consoles aren't generally where you innovate; consoles are where you make money. (Yes, there are exceptions.)
Where's the innovation in games today? In mod development and the interactive fiction community. Coincidence that neither of these is profit-driven? I think not.
Games have become incredibly expensive to produce, yet they haven't raised their prices to compensate. As a result, the success is terribly unbalanced -- 10% of the games make 90% of the profits. Because of this, publishers are getting more and more risk-averse. Risk averse == low innovation.
I suspect we'll eventually see the PC as the "local art gallery", where individuals and small groups can do innovative work, while consoles will be the "mass media", where real profits lie. And like the relationship between the gallery and the mass media, innovation first appear in one area and then slowly make its way into the other.
Crossing the current popularity of Homestar Runner with the retro-gaming craze on a dead but fairly ubiquitous console.
And perhaps best of all, game mechanic-wise it appears to be based on the early Ultimas. As others have observed, the only potential problem is if they only release a hardware (cartridge) version. If they also distribute a ROM version that will work on emulators, they'll be wildly successful.
Perhaps fortunatly for some, or unfortunatly for you, or something, my profession is game programming, so i'll just tell you that what you're asking for is impossible and propose a more "reasonable" solution;)
Besides, regardless of what any one designer or programmer desires, the entire game industry does not hinge on their position. There will continue to be semi-linear RPGs for quite some time, probably for as long as i and others like me continue to be interested in elaborate storylines.
If at all possible, I'd like to move the conversation away from the adversarial and toward the theoretical here.
Of course it's impossible to achieve a completely dynamic plot in a CRPG; however, there's a rich gradient between the poles of static and dynamic plotlines. Just within this/. topic, we're seeing people arguing the merits of games which fall all over the place within that gradient.
Framing your position as being "interested in elaborate storylines" is a little misleading, because I think gamers on both sides of this debate want elaborate storylines. The difference is the desired level of interactivity. And to suggest that a storyline's quality declines as interactivity rises, well... I can't agree. I think there are ways to approach this problem which haven't been explored yet. Ion Austin and Rockstar North are definitely heading in the right direction.
And if nothing else, we can rest assured that as long as there are a "West" and an "East" making games, we'll all get what we're looking for from the market:)
Hehe... how can you and I disagree so completely on games yet agree so completely on Howard Dean? 8D
(BTW, perhaps unfortunately for some, my profession is game design, so I am in some sense "the one making decisions". Although I don't see games getting as plotline-interactive as *I* would like for a long time, for a host of reasons.)
The actors who PLAY ROLEs in movies or plays, don't get much choice about how their character acts, or rather, they don't get to choose the major events, the just have some influence over delivery of lines. So it's still a ROLE you're PLAYing in the GAME, even if you didn't choose the ROLE yourself.
And that's precisely the difference between a static narrative (movie or play) and an interactive narrative (a "game"). When I play a rold-playing game, I want to play someone I'm not, but that doesn't mean I want my decisions made for me. There's a tremendous difference there.
As far as I'm concerned, games should be striving for fully interactive plotlines.
If you've played the game, you know the enormous amount of detail that was put into it. They'de have to take out all bump mapping, shrink the levels, remove most of the NPCs, etc, etc
While in general I agree with you regarding the PS2 being underpowered, I'm going to play devil's advocate here.
1. Save-games: A 64-meg save file is just lazy engineering as far as I'm concerned. Games just as complex have fit their save-games into 500k.
2. Take out bump-mapping: True enough. I guess you could do this if you've got the programming time and power to devote to a custom graphics pipeline, but what a pain in the butt.
3. Shrink levels: Baby, if DMA/Rockstar North can do an entire city streamed on the PS2, Bioware can avoid slicing up their already-tiny levels.
4. Updates: No console developer should expect to patch their game in the first place.
I'm certainly enjoying it. Not as much as Neverwinter Nights (which the engine and design are based on) but it's still fun.
So... wait a second... I'm counting 4 major processors on this thing -- 2 333MHZ processors, a VU, and a GPU. That's assuming that their "Graphics Core 1" and "Graphics Core 2" share the same GPU.
Did they conclude that the parallel nature of the PS2 was an engineering success?!? Do they ever even talk to their software developers?
Very important difference.
Rockstar is a publisher.
Rockstar North, formerly DMA, is a developer -- the people behind the Grand Theft Auto series.
Don't assume a GTA-level of quality just because Rockstar is publishing the game. One link within the article mentioned Rockstar North, but not in an official or definitive way. We'll see, I guess.
You sound exactly like the Sega Saturn owners did only a decade ago. It's sad and funny at the same time.
Hey! The Saturn is alive and well, I'll have you know! Radiant Silvergun still sells for $150 on Ebay.:)
Ironically, "born again" is not an inappropriate description for the life that old consoles gain after they go out of production. For the Saturn, it took the form of Americans discovering the vast library of Japanese titles that were never ported. For the Dreamcast, it's taken the form of home-brewed software -- Linux ports, home-grown games, MAME, emulators of other consoles... all after the console was declared "dead". It seems that "dead" in this context means "no longer generating revenue for anyone", which acts almost like a green-light for hobbyists to start working their magic. Very cool stuff.
Wow. I mean... wow. There's so much to tackle in this post. First of all, you seem to be mixing up your political axes -- the opposite of "libertarian" isn't "liberal", it's "authoritarian". The degree of control the government should have over its populace (i.e. "protect us from ourselves"). The conservative-liberal axis is centered on different issues.
Now, line by line:
when you only have leftist answers available, you only get leftist choices.
Probably a side effect of the fact that there are as many Democratic candidates as there are Republican, Green, Socialist, Constitution, etc. candidates combined.
That poll is a pure scam. IT says I support Dean %52.
That's very possible. It said I support Dean 100%, and while that's possible, it seems a little hard to swallow. It's easy to steer a poll's questions to get the result you want.
But I'm a supporter of human rights, I support liberty, freedom and oppose socialism.
Thus Dean, and all other fascists (like Bush) are the antithesis of what I support. Yet this survey says I support bush %68 as well.
Dean... a fascist... you're descending into hyperbole. I'd call John Ashcroft a potential fascist. Bush? I don't like him one bit, but I don't think he qualifies as a fascist. Dean? Not even close.
I imagine they get to post numbers like "Libertarians who took our poll supported dean %52!" and "Republican support Dean %70!" and crap like that.
For most of those questions, only leftist answers were there. For instance, on gun control the two choices are a Gun ban organization and a gun control organization (The NRA is pro-gun control, like howard dean). There were no organizations that support the basic human right for my teenage daughter to defend herself from a rapist. Let alone those who support the second ammendment (Which merely recognizes, NOT GRANTS, the RKBA).
Again, the survey may well have been constructed to achieve specific results.
I could go on and on. I bet Dean is pro-drug prosecution, anti-gay rights, and pro-socialism. Just like all the democrats we've seen in recent years. (There really is no difference between the parties-- two flavors of the same agenda.)
As others have already replied to you, Dean is anti-drug prosecution, pro-gay rights, and "pro-socialism" is broad enough that I won't touch it. Now... no difference between the two parties?!? That's madness. I guarantee you, Al Gore wouldn't have pushed to invade and occupy a sovereign nation which didn't pose an imminent threat to the U.S.
I will not vote for anyone who does not take a %100 pro-human rights stand.
This sounds to me like realism suffering at the hands of idealism. And that's your right as a voter. Personally, I'm more apt to pick my battles, because I've learned that I can't win every one.
And that means, they must end slavery (eg: taxation, where %50 of the time we work for massa state rather than ourselves)-- they must respect the right to defend oneself. The right to marry who one wants (Clinton signed and 2/3 of the democrats voted for that anti-gay marriage law! ) The right to free speech (violated by the "campaign finance reform") the right to privacy (violated by the patriot act-- which drew wide support from democrats and republicans both).... and end US adventurism abroad (another policy the democrats nad republicans both support).
Okay, whatever. "Slavery" is not comparable to high taxation. Be reasonable here. 50% taxation is arguably in the realm of socialism, and within that system, the money doesn't just disappear -- it goes back into the populace in a way
There's no excuse. Their software is cross platform and so should this be.
Valve? I don't think they're a "cross platform" development house, as a rule. (Not like id is.) I'm pretty sure Half-Life 2 won't run on anything but Windows.
Reagan's memory loss occured long before he suffered from Alzheimers. I suggest you read his testimony to the Iran-Contra affair, in which he (somewhat conveniently) "failed to recall" how much he knew about the deal. He also "forgot" many other facets of it, such as his requirement to inform Congress...
(In case any of you young'uns weren't around back then, I'd argue that the parent post should be modded "+1 Funny". Reagan "forgot" these things as a political convenience to avoid being drawn into the Iran-Contra scandal.)
Isn't a PDA OS better suited to be a low-footprint gem like QNX?
I've wondered this myself. My guess is that the QNX folks either haven't pushed very hard to get their OS into handhelds, or they have tried but eventually gave up. Plus they've probably got their hands full with the non-handheld embedded market.
Not really... there is just a correlation between 2D vs. 3D games and time, and a correlation between cartridge vs. optical media and time. Polygons became a viable option about the same time CD-ROMs did.
There's often substance to correlations like this, but the relationship between polygons & CD-ROMs isn't one of them. 3D has one distinct timeline based on processor speed, while CD-ROMs have a completely different timeline based on advances in consumer-level hardware.
The most important factor of an analyzation of any entertainment based industry is this: When there's no extra money, what money is there isn't going to be spent on luxuries.
Actually, the game industry traditionally does well in times of recession.
Is it just me or are special effects in movies getting worse? Maybe I am just getting older and too attached to the "good ol' days" or something like that, but I sincerely feel that the original Star Wars series was far more moving and "believable" than the latest 2 movies. Same with Terminator, as this reviewer notes. There is just something really not right about all the over blown CG effects. The Matrix suffered from this too.
Right. Here's what I think is happening: Effects are getting more and more ubiquitous, but they're not getting easier to implement at the same rate. Here's the scenario I imagine:
Producer: Okay, I love this nth rewrite of the script. And scenes x, y, and z are gonna be CGI.
Director: That's not really necessary, we can do those scenes with practical effects...
Producer: Nonsense. CGI is easy these days. Everyone's doing it. Remember Gollum? They can do anything now.
...but there's a point that gets glossed over: Just because one or two effects houses are capable of the best work, that doesn't mean the entire art/industry is capable of the same. A lot of stuff in the second Matrix film seemed like it could've looked right with some polish.
Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL) is an independent, not-for-profit product safety testing and certification organization. We have tested products for public safety for more than a century. Each year, more than 17 billion UL Marks are applied to products worldwide.
Okay, so... isn't this a textbook case for a.org TLD? It bugs me when organizations, for whatever reason, utilize.com when they should really be.org.
Slashdot Mirror
Bottom line: game previews suck. They're never an indication of how good a game will be on release.
I, of course, agree with you. But I'm actually getting my info on the linearity from a big magazine preview where they say explicitly, "Manhunt will be much more linear than the GTA games."
But don't get me wrong; that doesn't mean I won't even try it. I'll be ecstatic if it brings the same sort of freedom that the GTAs did.
What made GTA3 & GTAVC great were their open environments wedded with non-linear game-play. Everything I've read about Manhunt suggests it's far more linear, leading me to believe that Rockstar North may not have learned from its successes. :(
As if to say, "From 'their' perspective, if they are indeed composed of two or more individuals, they did not..."
Okay, okay, I suck for being OT.
old man murray, while probably not being so much of a video game journal itself, was much more of a meta-video game journal...
I also always found OMM to be an excellent source of bile.
If console designers want to see thousands of original titles, they need only make their platforms open to garage development.
Well-put. But consoles aren't generally where you innovate; consoles are where you make money. (Yes, there are exceptions.)
Where's the innovation in games today? In mod development and the interactive fiction community. Coincidence that neither of these is profit-driven? I think not.
Games have become incredibly expensive to produce, yet they haven't raised their prices to compensate. As a result, the success is terribly unbalanced -- 10% of the games make 90% of the profits. Because of this, publishers are getting more and more risk-averse. Risk averse == low innovation.
I suspect we'll eventually see the PC as the "local art gallery", where individuals and small groups can do innovative work, while consoles will be the "mass media", where real profits lie. And like the relationship between the gallery and the mass media, innovation first appear in one area and then slowly make its way into the other.
i have yet to find a WM that fits all of my needs. for now i'm using blackbox
Since you're already in the box family, have you tried Openbox?
M.A.T.R.I.X is not an acronym.
So maybe that should be the new name -- MINA. "MATRIX Is Not an Acronym".
Crossing the current popularity of Homestar Runner with the retro-gaming craze on a dead but fairly ubiquitous console.
And perhaps best of all, game mechanic-wise it appears to be based on the early Ultimas. As others have observed, the only potential problem is if they only release a hardware (cartridge) version. If they also distribute a ROM version that will work on emulators, they'll be wildly successful.
Perhaps fortunatly for some, or unfortunatly for you, or something, my profession is game programming, so i'll just tell you that what you're asking for is impossible and propose a more "reasonable" solution ;)
/. topic, we're seeing people arguing the merits of games which fall all over the place within that gradient.
:)
Besides, regardless of what any one designer or programmer desires, the entire game industry does not hinge on their position. There will continue to be semi-linear RPGs for quite some time, probably for as long as i and others like me continue to be interested in elaborate storylines.
If at all possible, I'd like to move the conversation away from the adversarial and toward the theoretical here.
Of course it's impossible to achieve a completely dynamic plot in a CRPG; however, there's a rich gradient between the poles of static and dynamic plotlines. Just within this
Framing your position as being "interested in elaborate storylines" is a little misleading, because I think gamers on both sides of this debate want elaborate storylines. The difference is the desired level of interactivity. And to suggest that a storyline's quality declines as interactivity rises, well... I can't agree. I think there are ways to approach this problem which haven't been explored yet. Ion Austin and Rockstar North are definitely heading in the right direction.
And if nothing else, we can rest assured that as long as there are a "West" and an "East" making games, we'll all get what we're looking for from the market
Hehe... how can you and I disagree so completely on games yet agree so completely on Howard Dean? 8D
(BTW, perhaps unfortunately for some, my profession is game design, so I am in some sense "the one making decisions". Although I don't see games getting as plotline-interactive as *I* would like for a long time, for a host of reasons.)
The actors who PLAY ROLEs in movies or plays, don't get much choice about how their character acts, or rather, they don't get to choose the major events, the just have some influence over delivery of lines. So it's still a ROLE you're PLAYing in the GAME, even if you didn't choose the ROLE yourself.
And that's precisely the difference between a static narrative (movie or play) and an interactive narrative (a "game"). When I play a rold-playing game, I want to play someone I'm not, but that doesn't mean I want my decisions made for me. There's a tremendous difference there.
As far as I'm concerned, games should be striving for fully interactive plotlines.
If you've played the game, you know the enormous amount of detail that was put into it. They'de have to take out all bump mapping, shrink the levels, remove most of the NPCs, etc, etc
While in general I agree with you regarding the PS2 being underpowered, I'm going to play devil's advocate here.
1. Save-games: A 64-meg save file is just lazy engineering as far as I'm concerned. Games just as complex have fit their save-games into 500k.
2. Take out bump-mapping: True enough. I guess you could do this if you've got the programming time and power to devote to a custom graphics pipeline, but what a pain in the butt.
3. Shrink levels: Baby, if DMA/Rockstar North can do an entire city streamed on the PS2, Bioware can avoid slicing up their already-tiny levels.
4. Updates: No console developer should expect to patch their game in the first place.
I'm certainly enjoying it. Not as much as Neverwinter Nights (which the engine and design are based on) but it's still fun.
So... wait a second... I'm counting 4 major processors on this thing -- 2 333MHZ processors, a VU, and a GPU. That's assuming that their "Graphics Core 1" and "Graphics Core 2" share the same GPU.
Did they conclude that the parallel nature of the PS2 was an engineering success?!? Do they ever even talk to their software developers?
I've seen the game widely reported as being out of Rockstar North...
Cool. I'll be watching for it, then.
Very important difference.
Rockstar is a publisher.
Rockstar North, formerly DMA, is a developer -- the people behind the Grand Theft Auto series.
Don't assume a GTA-level of quality just because Rockstar is publishing the game. One link within the article mentioned Rockstar North, but not in an official or definitive way. We'll see, I guess.
Ironically, "born again" is not an inappropriate description for the life that old consoles gain after they go out of production. For the Saturn, it took the form of Americans discovering the vast library of Japanese titles that were never ported. For the Dreamcast, it's taken the form of home-brewed software -- Linux ports, home-grown games, MAME, emulators of other consoles... all after the console was declared "dead". It seems that "dead" in this context means "no longer generating revenue for anyone", which acts almost like a green-light for hobbyists to start working their magic. Very cool stuff.
Now, line by line:
Probably a side effect of the fact that there are as many Democratic candidates as there are Republican, Green, Socialist, Constitution, etc. candidates combined.
That's very possible. It said I support Dean 100%, and while that's possible, it seems a little hard to swallow. It's easy to steer a poll's questions to get the result you want.
Dean... a fascist... you're descending into hyperbole. I'd call John Ashcroft a potential fascist. Bush? I don't like him one bit, but I don't think he qualifies as a fascist. Dean? Not even close.
Again, the survey may well have been constructed to achieve specific results.
As others have already replied to you, Dean is anti-drug prosecution, pro-gay rights, and "pro-socialism" is broad enough that I won't touch it. Now... no difference between the two parties?!? That's madness. I guarantee you, Al Gore wouldn't have pushed to invade and occupy a sovereign nation which didn't pose an imminent threat to the U.S.
This sounds to me like realism suffering at the hands of idealism. And that's your right as a voter. Personally, I'm more apt to pick my battles, because I've learned that I can't win every one.
Okay, whatever. "Slavery" is not comparable to high taxation. Be reasonable here. 50% taxation is arguably in the realm of socialism, and within that system, the money doesn't just disappear -- it goes back into the populace in a way
There's no excuse. Their software is cross platform and so should this be.
Valve? I don't think they're a "cross platform" development house, as a rule. (Not like id is.) I'm pretty sure Half-Life 2 won't run on anything but Windows.
Isn't a PDA OS better suited to be a low-footprint gem like QNX?
I've wondered this myself. My guess is that the QNX folks either haven't pushed very hard to get their OS into handhelds, or they have tried but eventually gave up. Plus they've probably got their hands full with the non-handheld embedded market.
Not really... there is just a correlation between 2D vs. 3D games and time, and a correlation between cartridge vs. optical media and time. Polygons became a viable option about the same time CD-ROMs did.
There's often substance to correlations like this, but the relationship between polygons & CD-ROMs isn't one of them. 3D has one distinct timeline based on processor speed, while CD-ROMs have a completely different timeline based on advances in consumer-level hardware.
The most important factor of an analyzation of any entertainment based industry is this: When there's no extra money, what money is there isn't going to be spent on luxuries.
Actually, the game industry traditionally does well in times of recession.
Producer: Okay, I love this nth rewrite of the script. And scenes x, y, and z are gonna be CGI.
Director: That's not really necessary, we can do those scenes with practical effects...
Producer: Nonsense. CGI is easy these days. Everyone's doing it. Remember Gollum? They can do anything now.
Anyway, that's my hypothesis.
*Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land
*007: Nightfire
*Rock N' Roll Racing