Dude! Not only did this guy make Rez - he can speak anchor tags!
Re:Does it even deserve the name journalism?
on
The New Games Journalism
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I know you want to justify your favorite lonely pastime but face it: it doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.
That attitude is one of the reasons a lot of games journalism is shit. Of course it deserves to be taken seriously. It's just that hardly anyone seems to want to do so.
The reason games aren't tackling serious issues is really the same reason the vast majority of them have the most godawful writing - it's the lowest priority for the developers. There are countless games that satirise Western culture, it's just that they do it in such a forced and clumsy way (the atrociously unfunny radio adverts in GTA3, billboards in retrofuturistic games, etc).
I daresay the first films to address "serious social issues" were frowned upon or simply ignored. The author of the article is right when he says that games will probably have to "hone their qualities" like cinema did.
Don't you know anything? "Dark" is about trenchoats, bullet time, drug dealers, pimps, dream sequences where you have to walk a pixel-thin tightrope of blood and the worst voice acting ever. Riding around on floating lilies? That's for kids!
A Ghost in the Shell sequel! I hope this one pushes back the boundaries of animation as much as the first one did! Dude, that film was revolutionary! It had guns and everything! Even James Cameron liked it!
I went to the doctor last week. He said, "what's the problem?". I said, "I've got a cough".
"You're a transvestite?"
"No, I've got a cough."
"Well, let's sort out the transvestite thing first."
it'd be very hard for developers to handle the difficulty curve if you're assuming that players can skip whole episodes of the game, while still trying to appeal to those that will finish each episode.
Why? Even now, some games offer to let you skip a mission if you fail it (e.g.) three times. It means that the primary, driving element behind playing the next episode is not to see how many enemies they're going to throw at you, but what interesting new things they're going to do with the game (not to mention What Happens Next plot-wise). Operation Flashpoint is a great example of something that could work fantastically in episodes - "I heard you get to drive a tank next month!"
Yet what no one's explained so far is how breaking a game up into episodes is going to hold someone's interest any better than getting the whole game at the start would have.
I think I've been doing just that, actually.
Beyond that, you have to wonder how many developers are going to finish releasing episodes if a game doesn't do well in the first couple of episodes.
It'd force the industry to adopt a more content- than technology-oriented approach to making and selling games, which is the direction it's been moving in anyway. Less focus on coding engines (which would ideally be the job of entirely separate companies, but let's not get into that argument here), more on getting some good design down in zeros and ones. Selling games is about style these days, which is, for example, the entire reason Rockstar exists - to sell "cool" games to "cool" people. If a game was something you picked up for next to nothing at the petrol station, think of the massmarket penetration.
"I never worry about not finishing a game, because there're always one or two dead periods in which very little is released worth playing, and I can come back to many of my games then, whether I finished them before or not."
You're the exception, not the rule. 80% of players will not finish a given game. It makes loads of sense, therefore, to break a game up. If the difficulty structure (TM) of a game follows a series of buildups and peaks, it's going to be a hell of a lot more interesting than your standard start-off-easy-end-hard fare. Especially since, if you couldn't finish last month's episode, you can start this month's anyway (after a quick "previously on..." catch-up, if it's narrative led).
There's more. If you buy the first episode and decide you don't like the game, what have you lost? Ten quid? Rather than, say, fourty?
Obviously, episodic structure only works for certain game types. Coincidentally, however, these seem to be exactly the games that typically *don't* hold the player's interest up until the end.
Mod developers have been tinkering with episodic gaming for ages now - The Cassandra Project have even released something (worth a look, by the way - not your typical FPRPG fare at all).
In the context of modding, episodic gaming is a fantastic idea. It prevents modmakers from losing focus halfway through, because they've only got a small amount of stuff to be working on at a time. Additionally, once the base coding is done, there's very little extra technical work to be done per episode, meaning nothing's holding the content team back from work.
Edge commented in their last issue that games set in 'gritty', 'realistic' environments (crime underworlds, more crime underworlds, etc) - Max Payne 2, GTA: Vice City, True Crime - sold far more copies than fantasy games this year (barring LOTR games, but then that was inevitable).
It seems Max Payne 2 et al are Joe Twentysomething's idea of a "mature" game. I find that quite sad. The creators of Lula: Virtual Babe though, strangely enough, seem to want to appeal to people half his age.
The new hook? It's physics, man. Physics is the new cel-shading.
Back on topic, though: I think one pivotal reason in the levelling-off of graphical advances is the sheer unfeasibility of building such densely modelled environments. How long does it take to model a skyscraper right down to the screw threads?
There's no denying that games can invoke an emotional response from the player, but they're typically limited to a very small set. Games are fantastic at fear, excitement and victory, but there's very little else.
There are exceptions, obviously. The article hypothesises about a failed military mission in which you fail to save your teammates and feel sad for them in your defeat. I'd say Operation Flashpoint achieved this a long time ago, and along with Halo and several other games, managed to create a very convincing sense of cameraderie.
Online competitive games are another area where genuine emotion can run high, but again the range is limited to a small set of extremes - a notable exception being PSO, which (if you played with the right people) offered a huge amount of kindness and cooperation. The kind of thing Facade seems to be aiming for is a lot more interesting, though it could very easily go horribly wrong. The only similar game I know of is Galatea.
I've just remembered what my favourite gaming-invoked emotion is, actually: wonder. Set a game in the right kind of world, pull it off well, and simple exploration can be astonishing. A good example is Noctis, where exploration and discovery is the entire point of the game. It pulls it off marvellously, and is a refreshing antithesis to conventional gaming wisdom on almost every front.
Slashdot Mirror
"Well, it's been about six months since I left Sega..."
Dude! Not only did this guy make Rez - he can speak anchor tags!
I know you want to justify your favorite lonely pastime but face it: it doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.
That attitude is one of the reasons a lot of games journalism is shit. Of course it deserves to be taken seriously. It's just that hardly anyone seems to want to do so.
It's up now, oddly, which makes me look a bit stupid since he posted the essay there as well... at least there's a backup source for it now.
HOT PACKET ON SERVER ACTION! Click here for FREE ACCESS to streaming video of dirty packets penetrating badly-configured firewalls!!!
No-one inlines presentation and data in complicated web apps though. Because it's bad design. PHP lets you do either, which is The Point.
Coincidentally, I just finished reading a piece on the depiction of war in videogames.
The reason games aren't tackling serious issues is really the same reason the vast majority of them have the most godawful writing - it's the lowest priority for the developers. There are countless games that satirise Western culture, it's just that they do it in such a forced and clumsy way (the atrociously unfunny radio adverts in GTA3, billboards in retrofuturistic games, etc).
I daresay the first films to address "serious social issues" were frowned upon or simply ignored. The author of the article is right when he says that games will probably have to "hone their qualities" like cinema did.
Like anyone can actually pronounce those names.
I guess this proves that there really is something for everyone online.
I think it's more a case of there being someone for everything.
Don't you know anything? "Dark" is about trenchoats, bullet time, drug dealers, pimps, dream sequences where you have to walk a pixel-thin tightrope of blood and the worst voice acting ever.
Riding around on floating lilies? That's for kids!
What, this thing still hasn't been released?
That's it, I'm creating a Defender clone based on the released screenshots.
Robot Fist have already settled the argument the old-fashioned way.
A Ghost in the Shell sequel! I hope this one pushes back the boundaries of animation as much as the first one did! Dude, that film was revolutionary! It had guns and everything! Even James Cameron liked it!
I went to the doctor last week. He said, "what's the problem?". I said, "I've got a cough".
"You're a transvestite?"
"No, I've got a cough."
"Well, let's sort out the transvestite thing first."
--Eddie Izzard
once he concludes that a different CEO candidate exists who could return value more effectively.
The purpose of a CEO is to return a value? Shit, I can do that in a line of C! They should hire me!
"Does it play Ogg?"
it'd be very hard for developers to handle the difficulty curve if you're assuming that players can skip whole episodes of the game, while still trying to appeal to those that will finish each episode.
Why? Even now, some games offer to let you skip a mission if you fail it (e.g.) three times. It means that the primary, driving element behind playing the next episode is not to see how many enemies they're going to throw at you, but what interesting new things they're going to do with the game (not to mention What Happens Next plot-wise). Operation Flashpoint is a great example of something that could work fantastically in episodes - "I heard you get to drive a tank next month!"
Yet what no one's explained so far is how breaking a game up into episodes is going to hold someone's interest any better than getting the whole game at the start would have.
I think I've been doing just that, actually.
Beyond that, you have to wonder how many developers are going to finish releasing episodes if a game doesn't do well in the first couple of episodes.
It'd force the industry to adopt a more content- than technology-oriented approach to making and selling games, which is the direction it's been moving in anyway. Less focus on coding engines (which would ideally be the job of entirely separate companies, but let's not get into that argument here), more on getting some good design down in zeros and ones. Selling games is about style these days, which is, for example, the entire reason Rockstar exists - to sell "cool" games to "cool" people. If a game was something you picked up for next to nothing at the petrol station, think of the massmarket penetration.
"I never worry about not finishing a game, because there're always one or two dead periods in which very little is released worth playing, and I can come back to many of my games then, whether I finished them before or not."
You're the exception, not the rule. 80% of players will not finish a given game. It makes loads of sense, therefore, to break a game up. If the difficulty structure (TM) of a game follows a series of buildups and peaks, it's going to be a hell of a lot more interesting than your standard start-off-easy-end-hard fare. Especially since, if you couldn't finish last month's episode, you can start this month's anyway (after a quick "previously on..." catch-up, if it's narrative led).
There's more. If you buy the first episode and decide you don't like the game, what have you lost? Ten quid? Rather than, say, fourty?
Obviously, episodic structure only works for certain game types. Coincidentally, however, these seem to be exactly the games that typically *don't* hold the player's interest up until the end.
Mod developers have been tinkering with episodic gaming for ages now - The Cassandra Project have even released something (worth a look, by the way - not your typical FPRPG fare at all).
In the context of modding, episodic gaming is a fantastic idea. It prevents modmakers from losing focus halfway through, because they've only got a small amount of stuff to be working on at a time. Additionally, once the base coding is done, there's very little extra technical work to be done per episode, meaning nothing's holding the content team back from work.
For Christ's sake. It's version 3.3 and I still can't figure out how to install this thing on my computer.
Presumably, they've been slashdotted almost entirely by Mozilla/Firebird users. How wonderfully ironic.
Not even an iPod? Dude, they've got 40GB ones now.
Edge commented in their last issue that games set in 'gritty', 'realistic' environments (crime underworlds, more crime underworlds, etc) - Max Payne 2, GTA: Vice City, True Crime - sold far more copies than fantasy games this year (barring LOTR games, but then that was inevitable).
It seems Max Payne 2 et al are Joe Twentysomething's idea of a "mature" game. I find that quite sad. The creators of Lula: Virtual Babe though, strangely enough, seem to want to appeal to people half his age.
Lots of fun. On a related note...
The new hook? It's physics, man. Physics is the new cel-shading.
Back on topic, though: I think one pivotal reason in the levelling-off of graphical advances is the sheer unfeasibility of building such densely modelled environments. How long does it take to model a skyscraper right down to the screw threads?
There's no denying that games can invoke an emotional response from the player, but they're typically limited to a very small set. Games are fantastic at fear, excitement and victory, but there's very little else.
There are exceptions, obviously. The article hypothesises about a failed military mission in which you fail to save your teammates and feel sad for them in your defeat. I'd say Operation Flashpoint achieved this a long time ago, and along with Halo and several other games, managed to create a very convincing sense of cameraderie.
Online competitive games are another area where genuine emotion can run high, but again the range is limited to a small set of extremes - a notable exception being PSO, which (if you played with the right people) offered a huge amount of kindness and cooperation. The kind of thing Facade seems to be aiming for is a lot more interesting, though it could very easily go horribly wrong. The only similar game I know of is Galatea.
I've just remembered what my favourite gaming-invoked emotion is, actually: wonder. Set a game in the right kind of world, pull it off well, and simple exploration can be astonishing. A good example is Noctis, where exploration and discovery is the entire point of the game. It pulls it off marvellously, and is a refreshing antithesis to conventional gaming wisdom on almost every front.