I do believe that games can be art, but I think the biggest problem is that 99% of games are made to make money. In the end, even the greatest designers can only pick one objective, and when it comes to sharing a vision, or putting in a features so that more people buy the game, it's going to be the game selling features that win out.
Games with AAA quality require multiple millions to create. No one is giving the lone artist in their loft the time or money to create anything on that scale, and they probably can't afford it on their own.
The closest you will get to games being art are the solo developers who are making smaller games with a purpose, who put their creation out there for free, for all to see. There are probably a few small games out there like this, but heck if I know where or what they are.
Games in their current form are considered the same kind of art that say a coca-cola logo, or any other kind of ad campaign has art. It's commercially driven work that looks nice with the focus on generating a profit. If you can consider the guy who make the nike swoosh logo an artist, then any game developer should work too.
From someone who got PK'ed a lot back in the good old days of Ultima Online and for a time, Tallon and Sullon zek of EQ. I enjoyed the PVP aspect, even if it meant dying. Most of all because it gave a sense to the world that other players could affect me, and not just everyone affecting the world by killing the same old mobs over and over. I enjoyed shadowbane for a little while, but the reason I left soon after I started was not because of the pvp, it was because the content was lacking. There were no dungeons, just a very flat and boring land which players had to run across and kill boring monsters.
My dream MMORPG would have the pvp rule set of the initial UO (without carebear land), the world depth and racial detailing of EQ, the sieges of Shadowbane, the easy and rewarding leveling/quest scheme of City of Heroes, all tied (somehow) into a real time fighting engine like PlanetSide. oh yeah, and all of this in a world that can hold double the amount of players, so that the solution to PK'ers should not be to get rid of PVP, but to try and move elsewhere just as nice, and not just a walk away, i'm talking deep into a wooded area where pk'ers would have to spend considerable amounts of time to find it.
But seriously, pvp is cool on both ends, as long as it doesn't put the dead player at a big disadvantage. In UO, it didn't really matter because equipment was cheap and the theif of it actually kept up the trade skill professions. That's really how trade skills are missing the marks in most games today. Once things are made, they're made but not lost. PVP and tradeskills go hand in hand. Lose your armour? that's good news for the blacksmith who need customers.
I like demos cause it gives me a chance to try a game on my hardware before laying down 60 bucks for a game that might run sluggish on my system.
Sometimes the requirements listed aren't always on the mark and nothing convinces me more than the demo. If it wasn't for battlefields smooth demo play on my system, I would have doubted I could have run it. But now I have bf1942 + expansions. woot!
of course, people might say "well if it ran sluggish you wouldn't have bought it and that's a loss in sales" but I say any company that would lie about specs only to give me a frustrating game experience would not sell ANY expansions and i'd be vary wary about purchasing their other titles.
Even though people are complaining about the virtua boy, I wish that I could've had one to try for myself. At the time I was too young to buy one myself and my parents weren't going to buy me another gadget for a while.
Lots of people hate it, that's for sure, but did anyone ever try modding one to do something else, maybe play a game they made themselves, or add another colour or two to the display? ambitious, yes, impossible, dunno.
Also, are there any handhelds that allow you to develop your own games for and play them on the handheld? I've heard of the lik-sang(sp?) ram carts that could allow you to do this, but it's frowned upon as far as I know.
Wouldn't it be nice if the Nintendo DS came with or allowed you to buy flash carts that had pc interfaces to allow you to develop your own games, let the public try their hand at taking advantage of two screens!
Can't wait for this thing to be stable, plan on grabbing an adapter soon as they get a 1.0 release with a match finder built in. as long as it runs decent, it will be great to play people from around the world at a game which, for the first time in a long time, I feel i'm deadly at.
Bring it on
Man, I don't understand what IGN is crying about, the BEST part about the hop is still in the game in the form of RESPONSIVE drifting controls. The hop didn't do anything for anyone, I'm GLAD it's gone! Now I can drift in peace without the small delay the hop left in it's wake!
Drifting in this game rocks, makes me feel like i'm playing Initial D:D
It's a blast so far, hell i'm turned away from it right now as I type this, just completed the cruise ship course on 100cc woot!
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I do believe that games can be art, but I think the biggest problem is that 99% of games are made to make money. In the end, even the greatest designers can only pick one objective, and when it comes to sharing a vision, or putting in a features so that more people buy the game, it's going to be the game selling features that win out.
Games with AAA quality require multiple millions to create. No one is giving the lone artist in their loft the time or money to create anything on that scale, and they probably can't afford it on their own.
The closest you will get to games being art are the solo developers who are making smaller games with a purpose, who put their creation out there for free, for all to see. There are probably a few small games out there like this, but heck if I know where or what they are.
Games in their current form are considered the same kind of art that say a coca-cola logo, or any other kind of ad campaign has art. It's commercially driven work that looks nice with the focus on generating a profit. If you can consider the guy who make the nike swoosh logo an artist, then any game developer should work too.
Any chance you could find this settlement on Google Earth?
From someone who got PK'ed a lot back in the good old days of Ultima Online and for a time, Tallon and Sullon zek of EQ. I enjoyed the PVP aspect, even if it meant dying. Most of all because it gave a sense to the world that other players could affect me, and not just everyone affecting the world by killing the same old mobs over and over. I enjoyed shadowbane for a little while, but the reason I left soon after I started was not because of the pvp, it was because the content was lacking. There were no dungeons, just a very flat and boring land which players had to run across and kill boring monsters.
My dream MMORPG would have the pvp rule set of the initial UO (without carebear land), the world depth and racial detailing of EQ, the sieges of Shadowbane, the easy and rewarding leveling/quest scheme of City of Heroes, all tied (somehow) into a real time fighting engine like PlanetSide. oh yeah, and all of this in a world that can hold double the amount of players, so that the solution to PK'ers should not be to get rid of PVP, but to try and move elsewhere just as nice, and not just a walk away, i'm talking deep into a wooded area where pk'ers would have to spend considerable amounts of time to find it.
But seriously, pvp is cool on both ends, as long as it doesn't put the dead player at a big disadvantage. In UO, it didn't really matter because equipment was cheap and the theif of it actually kept up the trade skill professions. That's really how trade skills are missing the marks in most games today. Once things are made, they're made but not lost. PVP and tradeskills go hand in hand. Lose your armour? that's good news for the blacksmith who need customers.
I like demos cause it gives me a chance to try a game on my hardware before laying down 60 bucks for a game that might run sluggish on my system.
Sometimes the requirements listed aren't always on the mark and nothing convinces me more than the demo. If it wasn't for battlefields smooth demo play on my system, I would have doubted I could have run it. But now I have bf1942 + expansions. woot!
of course, people might say "well if it ran sluggish you wouldn't have bought it and that's a loss in sales" but I say any company that would lie about specs only to give me a frustrating game experience would not sell ANY expansions and i'd be vary wary about purchasing their other titles.
Even though people are complaining about the virtua boy, I wish that I could've had one to try for myself. At the time I was too young to buy one myself and my parents weren't going to buy me another gadget for a while.
Lots of people hate it, that's for sure, but did anyone ever try modding one to do something else, maybe play a game they made themselves, or add another colour or two to the display? ambitious, yes, impossible, dunno.
Also, are there any handhelds that allow you to develop your own games for and play them on the handheld? I've heard of the lik-sang(sp?) ram carts that could allow you to do this, but it's frowned upon as far as I know.
Wouldn't it be nice if the Nintendo DS came with or allowed you to buy flash carts that had pc interfaces to allow you to develop your own games, let the public try their hand at taking advantage of two screens!
Can't wait for this thing to be stable, plan on grabbing an adapter soon as they get a 1.0 release with a match finder built in. as long as it runs decent, it will be great to play people from around the world at a game which, for the first time in a long time, I feel i'm deadly at. Bring it on
Man, I don't understand what IGN is crying about, the BEST part about the hop is still in the game in the form of RESPONSIVE drifting controls. The hop didn't do anything for anyone, I'm GLAD it's gone! Now I can drift in peace without the small delay the hop left in it's wake! Drifting in this game rocks, makes me feel like i'm playing Initial D :D
It's a blast so far, hell i'm turned away from it right now as I type this, just completed the cruise ship course on 100cc woot!