And they're going to be overtaken in the handheld market by... what again? The PSP, which is an excuse for Sony and their third parties to do the exact same thing on a smaller screen?
Lack of innovation is not, as you seem to think, confined to Nintendo.
About five years ago, we got DSL on our old Gateway 2000... it didn't have a network card in it, so Southwestern Bell sent us one. Being relative novices at this sort of thing, my friend who was helping me and I couldn't get the card to go in. So... we called tech support. After waiting on the line for 30 minutes and getting redirected repeatedly, we tell the tech support guy we can't get the card to go in, and we get this response:
"Oh, we have a different network card for Gateway 2000 computers. Let me send you over to [department of ordering stuff, forgot the exact name]."
10 minutes later... and the person we're referred to has absolutely no idea what we're talking about. In the meantime, we figured out we simply needed to push harder, so we didn't even need them to solve it for us.
I spent quite a bit of time playing Achaea *ducks*... they had the roleplay thing down pretty well, at least until I decided my guild and I had nothing in common philosophically...
The problem is that they're not really doing #2 at all. The kind of online game I, personally, would love to see is an Everquest-size game with actual roleplaying... you know, the RP in MMORPG. But as innovative as MMORPGs could be, they're hampered by the inevitable onslaught of 13 year olds with no idea what RP actually refers to.
Oh yeah, and... cue a half-dozen people telling me that such games do exist.
Now, of course, I'm sure you just forgot about the whole cell phone company-style "free with 2 year subscription" option. And if you look back a few days in the games section, maybe you'll find the specs, which involve (among other things) Windows XP as an embedded OS.
That said, at $30 a month I'll go buy my own games.
Not only do you try to twist your words in your response to a sibling comment, but you don't really understand your own point.
Nintendo should have realized that the average gamer wants his franchises like they remember them and may not be willing to try something different right away
Erm. And you're going to tell me next that Ocarina of Time is exactly how the average gamer remembered Zelda from the 8/16 bit generations. Ocarina of Time was a radical change from previous Zelda games, and it didn't do poorly at all.
(remember at the time of gamecubes release there were a few teaser trailers for a realistic zelda game, then they announced the cel shading)
That was a tech demo, not necessarily a game in development, as mentioned elsewhere.
And, as sibling comment stated, it's the gameplay, stupid. Wind Waker, as far as game engine went, was VERY similar to Ocarina of Time. For some inexplicable reason, though, people took one look at the game and decided it was bad BEFORE ACTUALLY PLAYING IT.
I, personally, disliked Wind Waker, but NOT because of the graphics. I personally rather enjoyed the graphical style. However, Wind Waker eventually devolved into endless sailing and one gigantic fetch quest with really nothing original about it.
You make the baseless assumption that Wind Waker hurt Gamecube sales. What makes you think this? And what makes you think that Ocarina of Time-style Zelda is more "realistic" and less likely to garner the same complaints of "kiddy" that idiots and fanboys spew about Gamecube games of all description?
I daresay many of the people taking the AP test have no intention of becoming CS majors. Even after 2 years of CS classes in high school, some of them don't know how to sort a list. (I should know, I was one of the people essentially telling them how to write their programming assignments.)
Even when you take a "challenging" AP test, like Physics C (calculus-based), it's graded on such a curve that you can get half of them wrong and still get a 5.
Believe me, I took the test last year (the second level test), and it was a joke and a half. I finished each section with about half the time to spare. Realize that the AP subset of C++ ignored most of the features that aren't in Java... the case study might as well have been written in Java.
And, as mentioned elsewhere in the thread probably, the AP CS exam is not really about concepts. Yes, they taught me a little bit of OOP design, but in the end it's based mostly on algorithms and how to use the language. I agree that this should not be the emphasis, but for better or worse, it's a "how to program" class, not an introductory CS class per se.
You don't get it, do you? It's not a contest of whichever game was actually BETTER. It never was... seriously, do you expect the average casual game player to have played some of the less visible games? It's a contest of which game is more POPULAR. As such, and given the dynamics of the site, expect one of {FF6, Chrono Trigger, FF7} to win.
All of these new developments share the same flaw: in the end, games are not about what you see, they're about what you DO.
Innovation in graphics is easy, since you know exactly where to go with it. The amount of work required to create the content goes up, but making prettier graphics is conceptually not hard... more computing power + better optimization = better graphics.
To be perfectly honest, I could care less how photorealistic games look. It's impressive, yes. But in the end it's not the important part. If I wanted to see really amazing computer graphics I wouldn't need to play a game to do so.
What about innovation in gameplay? Shinier widgets do not a more fun game make. Unfortunately, innovation in gameplay involves risk... will people like it? And the problem is that because of the higher development costs (due to the better graphics; see also the games story from a few days back), publishers are less likely to take a risk on a new idea... they'll go for what sells: a sequel to an established franchise, a sports game, a movie franchise... something they know people will like.
Games, as an art, are really not about the shiny things on your screen. Yes, you need them, but at this point quadrupling the detail of the picture is really not going to significantly augment your gaming experience.
Agreed. You do start to wonder why, if modern games get better and better with every generation (or so the hype goes), people still even play games from the 1980s. Is it, perhaps, that simplicity has advantages?
As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the hardest part of making a game is the artwork. And yet, strangely, the artwork isn't the most important part of the game! (Some will argue that, I'm aware.) The gameplay, dare I say it, is the most important part. If publishers instead concentrated on making good games, and skimped on the artwork perhaps, wouldn't that decrease the cost of the development cycle, and therefore mitigate the whole problem the article discusses?
Well, to be fair, in the case of Final Fantasy: Spirits Within, there wasn't a main story to begin with, although one of the main problems with it was that it didn't even really follow the style of the series... no magic, none of the 500 other things that show up in every other FF game.
Oh, and since the other reply doesn't cover this, my version of Sim City 2000 works just fine on my current machine... maybe you're referring to the original Sim City?
The problem is not the range of the system, but the ingrained perception in just about every (don't know about other countries, but) American kid that 7/10 is average (read: C, or if you're in my school system D). Therefore, if a game is average, they'll give it a 7, when they should give it a 5. And, of course, since they only have 7, 8, 9, and 10 to work with, many game review sites went to a decimal system some time ago to give themselves more room to work with.
The reason they don't give it the 5 it deserves, in addition, is that the publishers complain about such a negative review... after all, they have this same perception that 7 is average and 5 is failing.
The problem gets even worse on a user review site such as GameFAQs, where just about anything which looks like it took more than a minute to write and has halfway decent spelling and grammar gets posted. If you look at the reviews for any halfway popular game, 97% of them will be 9s or 10s, with a couple people who didn't like the game giving it a 7, and one troll giving it something below that. I even see reviews with headlines like "This game has a few flaws" and the score 10! Yes, some of this is selection bias, but sometimes it just gets ridiculous.
The reason the review numbers are less helpful than they could be is because the scale is skewed. I think only a few games should get 10s... maybe a few dozen in all of video game history, and that's being generous. A game that gets a 7 should be worth playing, and a game that gets a 5 is "average".
The reason there are "stereotypical" female characters is because it's a fairly well defined and recognizeable archetype, and it's something people are drawn to. So... you connect with games that follow that archetype, and tend to ignore (or possibly just shrug your shoulders at) counterexamples. There are lots of them... many of them mentioned in this thread already.
Should we be complaining about all archetypes in all forms of entertainment which portray a group unfairly? Not by a long shot. It's like writing a piece of music with instruments that you make up entirely on your own for that particular piece: an unnecessary amount of work for very little (read: possibly negative) payoff.
Starting to use the in-game engine? My, the more things change, the more they stay the same...
It wasn't but about 1 1/2 generations ago that pretty much EVERYONE used the in-game engine. Try Goldeneye, if you want an example from the N64... and the vast majority of earlier games, as well.
Here's the trick: for the Average Joe User (tm), by the second algorithm they're more than happy to use Windows, IE, and Outlook Express. It's the first one they're likely to come across, since they're buying a box off the shelf, and it does exactly what they want it to do. By your own logic, there's no reason to go looking for a better option if the current one is sufficient.
I agree. And even if each distribution picks, say, 1 standard software package to put in an "average Joe" version, you still have to pick a distribution, which isn't exactly the most straightforward choice when there really isn't any means of comparison (everything's so customizable that it really doesn't matter a whole lot, but it looks like it does).
The reason the average person doesn't switch to Linux is a lot like the reason the average person doesn't build their own computer; not because it's hard, but because it gives you too many choices (hard drive, motherboard, processor, case, etc.), and most people would rather just pick up a box that they can plug in and use.
Slashdot Mirror
And they're going to be overtaken in the handheld market by... what again? The PSP, which is an excuse for Sony and their third parties to do the exact same thing on a smaller screen?
Lack of innovation is not, as you seem to think, confined to Nintendo.
About five years ago, we got DSL on our old Gateway 2000... it didn't have a network card in it, so Southwestern Bell sent us one. Being relative novices at this sort of thing, my friend who was helping me and I couldn't get the card to go in. So... we called tech support. After waiting on the line for 30 minutes and getting redirected repeatedly, we tell the tech support guy we can't get the card to go in, and we get this response:
"Oh, we have a different network card for Gateway 2000 computers. Let me send you over to [department of ordering stuff, forgot the exact name]."
10 minutes later... and the person we're referred to has absolutely no idea what we're talking about. In the meantime, we figured out we simply needed to push harder, so we didn't even need them to solve it for us.
I spent quite a bit of time playing Achaea *ducks*... they had the roleplay thing down pretty well, at least until I decided my guild and I had nothing in common philosophically...
I see your Mozilla UberCthulu and raise you a Mozilla Powerbadger.
The problem is that they're not really doing #2 at all. The kind of online game I, personally, would love to see is an Everquest-size game with actual roleplaying... you know, the RP in MMORPG. But as innovative as MMORPGs could be, they're hampered by the inevitable onslaught of 13 year olds with no idea what RP actually refers to.
Oh yeah, and... cue a half-dozen people telling me that such games do exist.
Now, of course, I'm sure you just forgot about the whole cell phone company-style "free with 2 year subscription" option. And if you look back a few days in the games section, maybe you'll find the specs, which involve (among other things) Windows XP as an embedded OS.
That said, at $30 a month I'll go buy my own games.
RTFA... Donkey Konga != DK Jungle Beat.
Erm. And you're going to tell me next that Ocarina of Time is exactly how the average gamer remembered Zelda from the 8/16 bit generations. Ocarina of Time was a radical change from previous Zelda games, and it didn't do poorly at all.
That was a tech demo, not necessarily a game in development, as mentioned elsewhere.
And, as sibling comment stated, it's the gameplay, stupid. Wind Waker, as far as game engine went, was VERY similar to Ocarina of Time. For some inexplicable reason, though, people took one look at the game and decided it was bad BEFORE ACTUALLY PLAYING IT.
I, personally, disliked Wind Waker, but NOT because of the graphics. I personally rather enjoyed the graphical style. However, Wind Waker eventually devolved into endless sailing and one gigantic fetch quest with really nothing original about it.
You make the baseless assumption that Wind Waker hurt Gamecube sales. What makes you think this? And what makes you think that Ocarina of Time-style Zelda is more "realistic" and less likely to garner the same complaints of "kiddy" that idiots and fanboys spew about Gamecube games of all description?
I daresay many of the people taking the AP test have no intention of becoming CS majors. Even after 2 years of CS classes in high school, some of them don't know how to sort a list. (I should know, I was one of the people essentially telling them how to write their programming assignments.)
Even when you take a "challenging" AP test, like Physics C (calculus-based), it's graded on such a curve that you can get half of them wrong and still get a 5.
Believe me, I took the test last year (the second level test), and it was a joke and a half. I finished each section with about half the time to spare. Realize that the AP subset of C++ ignored most of the features that aren't in Java... the case study might as well have been written in Java.
And, as mentioned elsewhere in the thread probably, the AP CS exam is not really about concepts. Yes, they taught me a little bit of OOP design, but in the end it's based mostly on algorithms and how to use the language. I agree that this should not be the emphasis, but for better or worse, it's a "how to program" class, not an introductory CS class per se.
You don't get it, do you? It's not a contest of whichever game was actually BETTER. It never was... seriously, do you expect the average casual game player to have played some of the less visible games? It's a contest of which game is more POPULAR. As such, and given the dynamics of the site, expect one of {FF6, Chrono Trigger, FF7} to win.
The first two are usually very similar, the third is something entirely different/better.
All of these new developments share the same flaw: in the end, games are not about what you see, they're about what you DO.
Innovation in graphics is easy, since you know exactly where to go with it. The amount of work required to create the content goes up, but making prettier graphics is conceptually not hard... more computing power + better optimization = better graphics.
To be perfectly honest, I could care less how photorealistic games look. It's impressive, yes. But in the end it's not the important part. If I wanted to see really amazing computer graphics I wouldn't need to play a game to do so.
What about innovation in gameplay? Shinier widgets do not a more fun game make. Unfortunately, innovation in gameplay involves risk... will people like it? And the problem is that because of the higher development costs (due to the better graphics; see also the games story from a few days back), publishers are less likely to take a risk on a new idea... they'll go for what sells: a sequel to an established franchise, a sports game, a movie franchise... something they know people will like.
Games, as an art, are really not about the shiny things on your screen. Yes, you need them, but at this point quadrupling the detail of the picture is really not going to significantly augment your gaming experience.
Agreed. You do start to wonder why, if modern games get better and better with every generation (or so the hype goes), people still even play games from the 1980s. Is it, perhaps, that simplicity has advantages?
As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the hardest part of making a game is the artwork. And yet, strangely, the artwork isn't the most important part of the game! (Some will argue that, I'm aware.) The gameplay, dare I say it, is the most important part. If publishers instead concentrated on making good games, and skimped on the artwork perhaps, wouldn't that decrease the cost of the development cycle, and therefore mitigate the whole problem the article discusses?
Well, to be fair, in the case of Final Fantasy: Spirits Within, there wasn't a main story to begin with, although one of the main problems with it was that it didn't even really follow the style of the series... no magic, none of the 500 other things that show up in every other FF game.
Oh, and since the other reply doesn't cover this, my version of Sim City 2000 works just fine on my current machine... maybe you're referring to the original Sim City?
The problem is not the range of the system, but the ingrained perception in just about every (don't know about other countries, but) American kid that 7/10 is average (read: C, or if you're in my school system D). Therefore, if a game is average, they'll give it a 7, when they should give it a 5. And, of course, since they only have 7, 8, 9, and 10 to work with, many game review sites went to a decimal system some time ago to give themselves more room to work with.
The reason they don't give it the 5 it deserves, in addition, is that the publishers complain about such a negative review... after all, they have this same perception that 7 is average and 5 is failing.
The problem gets even worse on a user review site such as GameFAQs, where just about anything which looks like it took more than a minute to write and has halfway decent spelling and grammar gets posted. If you look at the reviews for any halfway popular game, 97% of them will be 9s or 10s, with a couple people who didn't like the game giving it a 7, and one troll giving it something below that. I even see reviews with headlines like "This game has a few flaws" and the score 10! Yes, some of this is selection bias, but sometimes it just gets ridiculous.
The reason the review numbers are less helpful than they could be is because the scale is skewed. I think only a few games should get 10s... maybe a few dozen in all of video game history, and that's being generous. A game that gets a 7 should be worth playing, and a game that gets a 5 is "average".
So... we go from playing games as an escape from real life to playing games ABOUT real life. Funny how that works.
Then again, given The Sims, this isn't exactly a new development.
The reason there are "stereotypical" female characters is because it's a fairly well defined and recognizeable archetype, and it's something people are drawn to. So... you connect with games that follow that archetype, and tend to ignore (or possibly just shrug your shoulders at) counterexamples. There are lots of them... many of them mentioned in this thread already.
Should we be complaining about all archetypes in all forms of entertainment which portray a group unfairly? Not by a long shot. It's like writing a piece of music with instruments that you make up entirely on your own for that particular piece: an unnecessary amount of work for very little (read: possibly negative) payoff.
Starting to use the in-game engine? My, the more things change, the more they stay the same...
It wasn't but about 1 1/2 generations ago that pretty much EVERYONE used the in-game engine. Try Goldeneye, if you want an example from the N64... and the vast majority of earlier games, as well.
Oh, and did anyone mention that Paper Mario was not nearly as good as Mario RPG or (at least from what I've heard) Mario and Luigi?
Here, jetfuel, have a trophy.
Hm... not sure about you, but I'm fairly sure I breathe out carbon DIoxide.
Here's the trick: for the Average Joe User (tm), by the second algorithm they're more than happy to use Windows, IE, and Outlook Express. It's the first one they're likely to come across, since they're buying a box off the shelf, and it does exactly what they want it to do. By your own logic, there's no reason to go looking for a better option if the current one is sufficient.
I agree. And even if each distribution picks, say, 1 standard software package to put in an "average Joe" version, you still have to pick a distribution, which isn't exactly the most straightforward choice when there really isn't any means of comparison (everything's so customizable that it really doesn't matter a whole lot, but it looks like it does).
The reason the average person doesn't switch to Linux is a lot like the reason the average person doesn't build their own computer; not because it's hard, but because it gives you too many choices (hard drive, motherboard, processor, case, etc.), and most people would rather just pick up a box that they can plug in and use.