I think we should consider a more hollistic approach to retro gaming. I recently cobbled together an arcade-style controller using the following pieces:
1 Happ Joystick - I prefer the Happ Ultimate; it's very reasonably priced at about $11 apiece.
8 Happ Pushbuttons - Preferably each in its own color. They carry Red, White, Blue, Green, Purple, Yellow, Black, and Orange, so at $2/apiece, you have no choice but to get one of each.
Optionally, get them with the fancy dimpled variety.
A box. If you're cheap enough, you can actually make a viable controller out of a pizza box. Eat the pizza first.
Yes, you can go the whole nine yards and get the stand-up case; the vertical screen; and the coin slot. But isn't something missing?
Think back. What do you really remember about being in an '80s arcade? Consider the following additions:
Man does not play Pacman in a vacuum. While you're chomping away at those dots, consider a set of these attached to your home computer. Oh, no. They're not for your game. They're for pumping out ambient noise: a) Asteroids, Galaxian, et al., and b) That angry guy that's always yelling at the machine because he keeps losing at Mr. Do.
I never actually saw anyone with hair like this in an arcade, (and I admit I may be blocking it out), but you'd see them on signs and TV screens everywhere. Your home arcade is not complete without a few posters of Debbie Gibson. NOT to be confused with "Deborah Gibson."
If your pants are fancy enough to spend a few thousand on a replica arcade device, you probably have a posh gaming room. What's under your feet? Is it that nice, solid oak flooring? Not so fast, bucko! Cover that high-price floor of yours with -- yes -- office carpeting. It's cheap. It's durable. And, most importantly, it's so crummy, you won't notice when you drop that oily slice of pepperoni pizza you got from the consession stand.
It's touches like these that will truly allow us to re-live the childhoods that were torn from us as we passed from the '80s into an altogether more reasonable decade.
__________________________________ Epidemic Groove - Our latest indie game for Windows. It's, like, totally not like that game I saw down at the arcade in the mall. Let's go rent some videos on Betamax.
To me, the most interesting tidbits in this article are about women in gaming, and the implication that their influence on design will bring about new styles of gameplay. There's some interesting literature out there about how women play games:
I get the impression that this is one area where independent studios really have a chance to innovate. But given how conservative we can be, maybe the larger studios will figure it out first.
___________________________________________ Epidemic Groove - Our casual/action/real-time strategy hybrid about curing a worldwide epidemic by constructing nanomechanical defenses. You know, the usual stuff.
Where is everyone? The thread on the 2004 Indie Games of the Year brought about hunrdreds of comments! It's Star Wars, isn't it? Everyone's out watching the midnight showing of Episode III. By God, I blame George Lucas.
Damn you, Sir. Damn you, and such.
____________________________ Epidemic Groove - Our casual/action/real-time strategy hybrid about women curing a worldwide epidemic by constructing nanomechanical defenses. You know, the usual stuff.
A woman once contacted our customer support, thanking us for creating one of our puzzle games. She told us that she had suffered neurological damage, and was using the logic puzzles to "wake up" the parts of her brain that were sleeping.
Ever since that time, I've told people that games have the power to heal the human miiiind.
In 1993, players would routinely pay around $3-$6 per hour for text-based, commercial multiplayer online games versus today's ~$14.95/mo flatrate.
I got my first job in the industry working for a company that produced such a game. If memory serves, players for that game could get a dedicated Tymnet pipe to play the game, flatrate, for a mere $1,000.00/mo.
We politely referred to those players as being "dedicated." Or, on occasion, "committed."
Alternate Reality, Planetfall, Deus Ex, MUDs
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For Love of The Game
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· Score: 4, Interesting
#4 - The opening sequence to Alternate Reality (Atari 800 version only) by Gary Gilbertson and Phillip Price.
#3 - Deus Ex -- The death of Paul Denton. (If you're not careful.)
#2 - While playing in an RP-heavy text MUD. Take any of dozens of moments when the GMs or other players pulled at the heartstrings, as rarely happens in a modern MMORPG.
#1 - And weighing in at #1, the death of Floyd in Planetfall:
"Looks dangerous in there," says Floyd. "I don't think you should go inside." He peers in again. "We'll need card there to fix computer. Hmmm... I know! Floyd will get card. Robots are tough. Nothing can hurt robots. You open the door, then Floyd will rush in. Then you close door. When Floyd knocks, open door again. Okay? Go!" Floyd's voice trembles slightly as he waits for you to open the door.
] OPEN THE DOOR
"The door opens and Floyd, pausing only for the briefest moment, plunges into the Bio Lab. Immediately, he is set upon by hideous, mutated monsters! More are heading straight toward the open door! Floyd shrieks and yells to you to close the door."
]CLOSE THE DOOR
From within the lab you hear ferocious growlings, the sounds of a skirmish, and then a high-pitched metallic scream!
Time passes...
You hear, slightly muffled by the door, three fast knocks, followed by the distinctive sound of tearing metal.
] OPEN THE DOOR
Floyd stumbles out of the Bio Lab, clutching the mini-booth card. The mutations rush toward the open doorway!
] CLOSE THE DOOR
And not a moment too soon! You hear a pounding from the door as the monsters within vent their frustration at losing their prey.
Floyd staggers to the ground, dropping the mini card. He is badly torn apart, with loose wires and broken circuits everywhere. Oil flows from his lubrication system. He obviously has only moments to live.
You drop to your knees and cradle Floyd's head in your lap. Floyd looks up at his friend with half-open eyes. "Floyd did it... got card. Floyd a good friend, huh?" Quietly, you sing Floyd's favorite song, the Ballad of the Starcrossed Miner:
O, they ruled the solar system
Near ten thousand years before
In their single starcrossed scout ships
Mining ast'roids, spinning lore.
Then one true courageous miner
Spied a spaceship from the stars
Boarded he that alien liner
Out beyond the orb of Mars.
Yes, that ship was filled with danger
Mighty monsters barred his way
Yet he solved the alien myst'ries
Mining quite a lode that day.
O, they ruled the solar system
Near ten thousand years before
'Til one brave advent'rous spirit
Brought that mighty ship to shore.
As you finish the last verse, Floyd smiles with contentment, and then his eyes close as his head rolls to one side. You sit in silence for a moment, in memory of a brave friend who gave his life so that you might live."
Steve Meretzky's like a tiny god. (To paraphrase Penny Arcade.) His game is one of the reasons I entered the industry.
An upcoming SCI-FI MMORPG from the BBC will allow you to buy "a hundred tacos for a hundred dollars," which "should provide adequate sustenance for the Dr. Who Marathon."
__________________________________________________ Buy "fresh" sushi from within an FPS, with Inago Rage.
You can be sure that at Gamers.com there are no bought reviews. In fact, in certain situations we've even received hate email by developers and publishers for not praising their game. We report what we consider to be fair and just, despite all the buzz.
The upside to that is if you don't get angry when a game is poorly-received, it means that you weren't passionate enough about making it.:) Of course, yelling at your reviewers may not work out so well in your favor, either. I'm always reluctant to contact reviewers asking them for more insight, but I do try to send a note of thanks.
From the outside, it seems that Rockstar did a good job in this respect -- the second-in-series, Grand Theft Auto II received low marks in various reviews, but they seem to have taken them as feedback, and produced a winner with GTA III.
Between reading a review and following up on other gamers opinions, one should have a rough idea if the game is worth purchasing.
I might twist that slightly -- given the number of games available these days, I'd say that professional and player reviews most often give me an idea as to whether it's even worthwhile to try the demo.
____________________________________________ Inago Rage - A demo worth downloading(!)
We've used Python in a few projects, from a relatively simple action/puzzle game, TapDown, to a larger, multi-user game. As jericho4.0 points out, it binds well with C, so for both projects, we wrote C/Python binders for the Fastgraph graphics library and the BASS audio library. I find that it's much easier to prototype in Python than in C, so, for example, when we wanted to implement a modified Perlin Noise algorithm for the larger project, we modelled it in Python first, then optimized the processor-consuming bits by implementing them in C.
I'd jump at the chance to use Python as a the scripting language in a first-person shooter. The Conitec engine uses something called C-Script, which is nice, but not nearly as sexy as Python is. Some drawbacks come to mind, (just off the top of my head, it may be tricky to have an entity sit around in the middle of its script), but its ease-of-use, combined with the simplicity of dropping down to C for the lower-level stuff makes it very appealing for all sorts of games.
_________________________________________________ Inago Rage - Create, fight, and fly in a first-person shooter.
I'll actually be at the Tuesday, February 22nd lecture, talking about development of our latest title. Come up and introduce yourself after class; I'm also a WPI alum.
________________________________________ Fight, fly, and create in Inago Rage.
You have a good point. I also think it would be a larger studio that would be most likely to go up against The Sims. However, where I disagree with you, (and apparently you're already in the right, here, because we don't see more such followers!), is that, just as larger studios see the success of FPSes and pour lots of money into creating their own, I would have expected more of them to see the success of The Sims and pour lots of money into creating their own, as well.
Again, what you're saying may be entirely true. I'm still surprised that there aren't, at least, more attempts at Sims-like games. Even if they fail.:)
___________________________________________ Build. Fight. Fly. Enjoy Inago Rage
The Sims is a fantastic series for a number of reasons, most notably its unique gameplay and the resulting cross-gender appeal that has led to sales of over 50 million units. Given this success, I'm surprised to see that few studios have attempted to go up against it and create an even better "society simulator." When Doom came out, it brought forth literally hundreds of followers. Some were clones, but many advanced the genre; there's no question that today's most popular first-person shooters came about by standing on the shoulders of its predecessors.
Maxis created a new genre in The Sims, but at this time, only two "followers" come to mind -- Singles and Playboy Mansion. Given the vast amounts of money The Sims series has made, why aren't more companies trying to one-up them? Is there an inclination towards pushing (say) the first-person shooter genre because most game developers are first-person shooter fans?
I'm a fan of The Sims. And I want to know who will beat Will Wright at his own game by making an even better game in the genre he created.
____________________________________________ Inago Rage for people who like to create things
The notion that a game in development may one day spawn a sequel can have a positive effect on development of that game. Knowing that we don't have to fit absolutely everything into that initial game makes it easier to focus on providing a solid product without feeling that we're trashing our great ideas forever.
By way of example, during development of Inago Rage, it was clear to us that players might enjoy a multiplayer mode. This is natural for an FPS, but in Inago, since players also create their own arenas, the idea of collaborative building made it doubly interesting. But it was not something we felt we could do in the time we had. A half-assed multiplayer compontent would disappoint players and diminish the single-player component. So, we didn't add it. What kept this from becoming a disappointment to us (enthusiasm counts for a lot in game development) was the knowledge that we could always add it as part of a sequel, an expansion, or even a version update.
During the development of a game, there always comes a time when you lock down the features and put the pages of brilliant concepts and great player suggestions away. I think that some of the greatest elements in a sequel come about when developers are given the chance to implement ideas they were passionate about in the first game, but had to tuck away for later.
________________________________________________ Inago Rage - A first-person shooter where you build and fly
Trip Hawkins is an interesting choice, in that the other inductees were all heavily involved in game development, whereas he was more of a facilitator. There's also a great deal of debate on whether Hawkins is to be villified or celebrated. I'll throw in with the latter category, because he pulled together the "electronic artists" who created my favorite games of the early '80s.
An article written by the Dot Eaters does a good job of describing how I think of Electronic Arts when it was just a small studio. I'm still fond of those LP-style packages. And their toolbox-titles, such as Adventure Construction Set, Pinball Construction Set and Racing Destruction Set brought about my own interest in creating games with a strong building component to them. There was nothing in the world like M.U.L.E. before Dan Bunten/Danielle Bunten Berry created it. And I think it was Hawkins that made these things possible.
Just as physics simulation is the "big thing" in games today, I think emergent behaviors will... well... emerge as the "next big thing" within a few years. Corrolary to that, emergent gameplay, wherein the actions players decide to take are based on rules not explicitly stated by the designers, will also become a popular staple of games.
As a simple example, you might play a modern-day RPG, where your character is at a Tennis match with an NPC. You might decide to throw that match, in order to have that NPC put in a good word with your boss. Traditionally, this has been scripted, like this:
You're playing tennis with Billy, when a pair of attractive women walk onto the court. What do you want to do?
1. Go all out and win to impress the women.
2. Throw the game to make Billy feel better.
] 2.
You throw the game. You end up looking like a chump, but Billy ends up looking like a champ! He puts a good word in with your boss, and you earn a promotion! Meanwhile, the women laugh at you.
In these cases, the designer explicitly considers which actions the player can take, and what their outcomes will be. What I think will happen more in the near future, will be that designers will set rules up, let the players know how their actions have affected the system, and then leave him to "game the game," as it were. The designer of the above scenario might, instead, give the player the chance to "play well" or "play poorly," independent of why the player would want to do that. The player knows the game's state, and therefore has an idea as to what he can do to alter that state.
This takes place to some extent in existing games, such as Deus Ex: IW and, especially, in The Sims 2. In the latter case, for example, a wedding party will go well if the guests are happy. The guests will be happy if their needs are met. Their needs will be met if they have X, Y, and Z. The designers did not implement a direct corrolation between X, Y, and Z and the wedding party; changes in the game's state occur because of the third or fourth-order consequences of a player's actions. In comparison, most interaction in a first-person shooter is first-order: kill the critter to get past the critter. (I love first-person shooters, but judging from the way some Slashdot posts received Doom 3, I think that an FPS that adds complexity in this manner may do well.)
My prediction here isn't a divine revelation that we'll have this newfangled style of "emergent gameplay" -- we already have it. However, I think that, come 2006, we'll have a sexy buzzword for it, and that it'll be sprawled over the covers of CGW and PCG.
__________________________________________________ ___________ Inago Rage - Fight, Fly, and Create your own 3D arenas in our first-person shooter
IGN has a number of videos, from which you can glean single-player gameplay. They also have footage of Nintendo's conference presentation, which talks about the multiplayer aspect. The latter is more interesting, as the former seems similar to other games in the genre. (Tap the controls in time with the music.)
_________________________________________________ Inago Rage - Fight in 3D arenas of your own design.
Re:Why do the assets always go to waste?
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Wish Cancelled
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· Score: 1
Isn't it obvious?...if you're not producing it from scratch with a specific intention in mind you're going to get bad performance and poor consistancy and the players will notice it.
Well, if you're saying that bad content will diminish my game, and that not all content is appropriate for all games, I agree with you. Still, people sell texture packs or music libraries or sound effects libraries which aren't specifically created for a particular production, but are used in artwork, film, and games, to good effect. So, I'd say that there exists the potential for certain types of content to be re-used.
Wow, 800 polys for a plain straight backed chair. Yep, that's gunna be great for my FPS or MMORPG.
I agree, again -- bad content does me no good. But I do think that some of the good stuff may be (as Jonathan Clark put it) rotting away needlessly.
_________________________ Inago Rage
...to compete with WoW and Evercrack 2 you need to be at least on par with their fees and ideally less.
Underpricing is more important for commodities and less so for something like an MMORPG. I don't think that (say) a game with a monthly fee of $5 less than WoW's would entice anyone to switch to them. There's also the matter of perception-of-quality -- I would guess that most people, upon seeing a $4.95/mo MMORPG would turn their noses up at it.
Conversely, if there are gameplay elements that make the game worth $14.95, consumers would probably be willing to pay a few dollars more.
There are, of course, limits to this. If you're going to charge $50/mo for a subscription, you'd better either a) provide something pretty amazing, or b) disassociate the subscription fee from actual money. (Ever been to Dave and Buster's? When you walk in, you buy credits, then use arbitrary numbers of credits to play games. They disassociate the cost of playing a game from actual money. So, while you're probably paying $2.50 for a game, it doesn't feel that way.)
As a corrolary to this, in the early '90s, I used to work for a company that charged $6.95 an hour to play its online game, (with a $3/hr connection surcharge). This was pretty standard. We had a few flatrate customers who paid a whopping $1,000/month for unlimited access. Yeeaaaugh!
As a result $14.95 never seemed so bad to me.
__________________________________________ Inago Rage - Our first-person shooter
Why do the assets always go to waste?
on
Wish Cancelled
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I'd like to see more instances where the teams of cancelled projects either release their assets into the public domain or license them via a system like Turbosquid. This may not be appropriate for all projects -- for example, in many instances, there is no single owner of all of a game's IP -- but I've seen too many cases where gorgeous art assets, (take a look at Wish's, for example) go essentially wasted.
As an independent games developer, this strikes me the same way as a bakery tossing away perfectly good bread one one side of town while someone's hungry on the other side. Remember when Crack-Dot-Com went out of business and released its content to the public?
Around July, Crack first missed payroll. August came and we moved out of the office. September offered no new news, so we decided to call it quits. Rather than letting all that hard work sit around and rot, we released it to the public domain.
There's a special place in Indie Valhalla for the Jonathan Clark and those like him. Why don't we see more of this?
________________________________ Inago Rage - Create and fight in first-person arenas of your own design.
I believe that Interplay lost its IPLY ticker symbol sometime around December, 2002, and was downgraded(?) to IPLY.OB. Given the way things are going, it's clear why we're hearing plenty of liquidation rumors, even if they're still hanging in there. I have been following their stock for some time; here's a depressing scene:
The price, as of today, was 1.6 cents per share, (which is actually a nice purchase, if they pull out of their rut). Contrary to what the/. post says, they haven't liquidated yet. However:
LOS ANGELES, Dec 22 (Reuters) - Video game company Interplay Entertainment Corp. (IPLYE.OB: Quote, Profile, Research) did not pay most of its employees for the four months through mid-November, has no cash reserves left and cannot meet its obligations, the company said in a quarterly report to regulators on Wednesday.
I suppose they could raise capital by issuing more stock -- only 1,000,000,000 shares, and they could have a cool $16M! (Okay, maybe not.)
I'm not sure what IP assets they have left to liquidate, but such sales may breathe new life into properties that have not been celebrated since (say) 2002.
____________________________ Inago Rage - Fight, fly, and create your own arenas in this first-person shooter.
Smoking and Video Games
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Wi-Fi Gaming
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· Score: 3, Funny
These games come in many forms, such as a "fox and hounds" game, capture the flag, or a treasure hunt.
In the 1973 Woody Allen comedy, Sleeper, it was cigarettes that turned out to promote health. Now, we have instances where video games promote physical activity.
I think (hope!) that we'll be reading in Wired about a young entrepreneur who turns this into a viable business, either as a service, where games are hosted professionally (as in MMORPGs), or as a product, where games are purchased and played on a peer-to-peer basis (as in most retail games). Perhaps I'm looking at this through rose-colored glasses, (I miss playing laser tag as a kid), but I think this has the potential to turn out some fantastic stuff.
___________________________________ Inago Rage - Create and Fight in an Indie-Developed First-Person Shooter
I'll take a moment to plug our indie-developed first-person shooter, Inago Rage. We tried to make the game different from most by focusing gameplay on short burts of flight (MPEG), but what we really concentrated on was the ability for players to create their own arenas (scroll down) without having to use external mod tools. Basically, we've implemented a drag-and-drop system to allow players to place buildings, towers, bridges, enemies, prizes, and particle generators.
The graphics are not likely to outdo those of this past year's AAA titles, but I'm happy with what we were able to produce. There are a good number of reasonably-priced tools that (I think) make it possible for smaller studios to create visually attractive games.
We're hoping to release a demo by the end of Janary, and have experimented with attempts at web commercials to get the word out. (The holy grail of the Viral Video eludes us, as yet -- we'll keep trying). We're also in the alpha test stage of an overhead shooter using the same technology called Last Man on Mars (WMV video).
Here's hoping Inago Rage will be a contender for the top 10 indie titles of 2005.
__________________________ Inago Rage
It's been my experience that Indie developers are, as you say, eager to share resources that benefit the game development community. This might include marketing strategies, source code, or tools. However, as businesses, small studios have to have something to sell; traditional business models suggest that it makes sense to retain control of certain assets.
One scenario where a business might open source an entire product is an MMOG where the client and server are under an open license, and revenue is generated by unique, pay-for-play quests. I'm sure that the optimal level of open-sourceness varies from project to project.
It's tough to get a feel for what Unity was all about, but as they say, a screenshot is worth a thousand words (scroll down). There's also a bit on VLM3, which they say predated the Unity project.
I still remember reading about (I believe it was) Attack of the Mutant Camels in Antic/Angalog magazine during the early '80s. Unity's cancellation may be disappointing, but the fact that Jeff Minter is still involved in the industry after 20 years is, IMO, nothing put a positive.
___________________________________ Inago Rage - Create and Fight
Slashdot Mirror
- 1 Happ Joystick - I prefer the Happ Ultimate; it's very reasonably priced at about $11 apiece.
- 8 Happ Pushbuttons - Preferably each in its own color. They carry Red, White, Blue, Green, Purple, Yellow, Black, and Orange, so at $2/apiece, you have no choice but to get one of each.
- Optionally, get them with the fancy dimpled variety.
- A box. If you're cheap enough, you can actually make a viable controller out of a pizza box. Eat the pizza first.
- Yes, you can go the whole nine yards and get the stand-up case; the vertical screen; and the coin slot. But isn't something missing?
Think back. What do you really remember about being in an '80s arcade? Consider the following additions:- Man does not play Pacman in a vacuum. While you're chomping away at those dots, consider a set of these attached to your home computer. Oh, no. They're not for your game. They're for pumping out ambient noise: a) Asteroids, Galaxian, et al., and b) That angry guy that's always yelling at the machine because he keeps losing at Mr. Do.
- I never actually saw anyone with hair like this in an arcade, (and I admit I may be blocking it out), but you'd see them on signs and TV screens everywhere. Your home arcade is not complete without a few posters of Debbie Gibson. NOT to be confused with "Deborah Gibson."
- If your pants are fancy enough to spend a few thousand on a replica arcade device, you probably have a posh gaming room. What's under your feet? Is it that nice, solid oak flooring? Not so fast, bucko! Cover that high-price floor of yours with -- yes -- office carpeting. It's cheap. It's durable. And, most importantly, it's so crummy, you won't notice when you drop that oily slice of pepperoni pizza you got from the consession stand.
It's touches like these that will truly allow us to re-live the childhoods that were torn from us as we passed from the '80s into an altogether more reasonable decade.__________________________________
Epidemic Groove - Our latest indie game for Windows. It's, like, totally not like that game I saw down at the arcade in the mall. Let's go rent some videos on Betamax.
To me, the most interesting tidbits in this article are about women in gaming, and the implication that their influence on design will bring about new styles of gameplay. There's some interesting literature out there about how women play games:
Killing Like a Girl (PDF)
The Norrathian Scrolls: A Study of Everquest (PDF)
I get the impression that this is one area where independent studios really have a chance to innovate. But given how conservative we can be, maybe the larger studios will figure it out first.
___________________________________________
Epidemic Groove - Our casual/action/real-time strategy hybrid about curing a worldwide epidemic by constructing nanomechanical defenses. You know, the usual stuff.
Where is everyone? The thread on the 2004 Indie Games of the Year brought about hunrdreds of comments! It's Star Wars, isn't it? Everyone's out watching the midnight showing of Episode III. By God, I blame George Lucas.
Damn you, Sir. Damn you, and such.
____________________________
Epidemic Groove - Our casual/action/real-time strategy hybrid about women curing a worldwide epidemic by constructing nanomechanical defenses. You know, the usual stuff.
A woman once contacted our customer support, thanking us for creating one of our puzzle games. She told us that she had suffered neurological damage, and was using the logic puzzles to "wake up" the parts of her brain that were sleeping.
Ever since that time, I've told people that games have the power to heal the human miiiind.
In 1993, players would routinely pay around $3-$6 per hour for text-based, commercial multiplayer online games versus today's ~$14.95/mo flatrate.
I got my first job in the industry working for a company that produced such a game. If memory serves, players for that game could get a dedicated Tymnet pipe to play the game, flatrate, for a mere $1,000.00/mo.
We politely referred to those players as being "dedicated." Or, on occasion, "committed."
#3 - Deus Ex -- The death of Paul Denton. (If you're not careful.)
#2 - While playing in an RP-heavy text MUD. Take any of dozens of moments when the GMs or other players pulled at the heartstrings, as rarely happens in a modern MMORPG.
#1 - And weighing in at #1, the death of Floyd in Planetfall:
Steve Meretzky's like a tiny god. (To paraphrase Penny Arcade.) His game is one of the reasons I entered the industry.
An upcoming SCI-FI MMORPG from the BBC will allow you to buy "a hundred tacos for a hundred dollars," which "should provide adequate sustenance for the Dr. Who Marathon."_
_________________________________________________
Buy "fresh" sushi from within an FPS, with Inago Rage.
You can be sure that at Gamers.com there are no bought reviews. In fact, in certain situations we've even received hate email by developers and publishers for not praising their game. We report what we consider to be fair and just, despite all the buzz.
:) Of course, yelling at your reviewers may not work out so well in your favor, either. I'm always reluctant to contact reviewers asking them for more insight, but I do try to send a note of thanks.
The upside to that is if you don't get angry when a game is poorly-received, it means that you weren't passionate enough about making it.
From the outside, it seems that Rockstar did a good job in this respect -- the second-in-series, Grand Theft Auto II received low marks in various reviews, but they seem to have taken them as feedback, and produced a winner with GTA III.
Between reading a review and following up on other gamers opinions, one should have a rough idea if the game is worth purchasing.
I might twist that slightly -- given the number of games available these days, I'd say that professional and player reviews most often give me an idea as to whether it's even worthwhile to try the demo.
____________________________________________
Inago Rage - A demo worth downloading(!)
We've used Python in a few projects, from a relatively simple action/puzzle game, TapDown, to a larger, multi-user game. As jericho4.0 points out, it binds well with C, so for both projects, we wrote C/Python binders for the Fastgraph graphics library and the BASS audio library. I find that it's much easier to prototype in Python than in C, so, for example, when we wanted to implement a modified Perlin Noise algorithm for the larger project, we modelled it in Python first, then optimized the processor-consuming bits by implementing them in C.
I'd jump at the chance to use Python as a the scripting language in a first-person shooter. The Conitec engine uses something called C-Script, which is nice, but not nearly as sexy as Python is. Some drawbacks come to mind, (just off the top of my head, it may be tricky to have an entity sit around in the middle of its script), but its ease-of-use, combined with the simplicity of dropping down to C for the lower-level stuff makes it very appealing for all sorts of games.
_________________________________________________
Inago Rage - Create, fight, and fly in a first-person shooter.
I'll actually be at the Tuesday, February 22nd lecture, talking about development of our latest title. Come up and introduce yourself after class; I'm also a WPI alum.
________________________________________
Fight, fly, and create in Inago Rage.
You have a good point. I also think it would be a larger studio that would be most likely to go up against The Sims. However, where I disagree with you, (and apparently you're already in the right, here, because we don't see more such followers!), is that, just as larger studios see the success of FPSes and pour lots of money into creating their own, I would have expected more of them to see the success of The Sims and pour lots of money into creating their own, as well.
:)
Again, what you're saying may be entirely true. I'm still surprised that there aren't, at least, more attempts at Sims-like games. Even if they fail.
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Build. Fight. Fly. Enjoy Inago Rage
The Sims is a fantastic series for a number of reasons, most notably its unique gameplay and the resulting cross-gender appeal that has led to sales of over 50 million units. Given this success, I'm surprised to see that few studios have attempted to go up against it and create an even better "society simulator." When Doom came out, it brought forth literally hundreds of followers. Some were clones, but many advanced the genre; there's no question that today's most popular first-person shooters came about by standing on the shoulders of its predecessors.
Maxis created a new genre in The Sims, but at this time, only two "followers" come to mind -- Singles and Playboy Mansion. Given the vast amounts of money The Sims series has made, why aren't more companies trying to one-up them? Is there an inclination towards pushing (say) the first-person shooter genre because most game developers are first-person shooter fans?
I'm a fan of The Sims. And I want to know who will beat Will Wright at his own game by making an even better game in the genre he created.
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Inago Rage for people who like to create things
The notion that a game in development may one day spawn a sequel can have a positive effect on development of that game. Knowing that we don't have to fit absolutely everything into that initial game makes it easier to focus on providing a solid product without feeling that we're trashing our great ideas forever.
By way of example, during development of Inago Rage, it was clear to us that players might enjoy a multiplayer mode. This is natural for an FPS, but in Inago, since players also create their own arenas, the idea of collaborative building made it doubly interesting. But it was not something we felt we could do in the time we had. A half-assed multiplayer compontent would disappoint players and diminish the single-player component. So, we didn't add it. What kept this from becoming a disappointment to us (enthusiasm counts for a lot in game development) was the knowledge that we could always add it as part of a sequel, an expansion, or even a version update.
During the development of a game, there always comes a time when you lock down the features and put the pages of brilliant concepts and great player suggestions away. I think that some of the greatest elements in a sequel come about when developers are given the chance to implement ideas they were passionate about in the first game, but had to tuck away for later.
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Inago Rage - A first-person shooter where you build and fly
You're right! September 2001, it is.
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Inago Rage - Fight. Fly. Create.
Trip Hawkins is an interesting choice, in that the other inductees were all heavily involved in game development, whereas he was more of a facilitator. There's also a great deal of debate on whether Hawkins is to be villified or celebrated. I'll throw in with the latter category, because he pulled together the "electronic artists" who created my favorite games of the early '80s.
An article written by the Dot Eaters does a good job of describing how I think of Electronic Arts when it was just a small studio. I'm still fond of those LP-style packages. And their toolbox-titles, such as Adventure Construction Set, Pinball Construction Set and Racing Destruction Set brought about my own interest in creating games with a strong building component to them. There was nothing in the world like M.U.L.E. before Dan Bunten/Danielle Bunten Berry created it. And I think it was Hawkins that made these things possible.
He may deserve the harsh scrutiny he receives -- and, certainly, he's not going to win any points with anyone for his comments earlier this year. But somehow I can't hate the fellow who brought together so many bright folks under one roof. Electronic Arts has recently published some of my favorite games, but it's the early ones I remember best.
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Inago Rage - Create and fight within your own FPS arenas.
Try the new demo for Windows!
As a simple example, you might play a modern-day RPG, where your character is at a Tennis match with an NPC. You might decide to throw that match, in order to have that NPC put in a good word with your boss. Traditionally, this has been scripted, like this:
In these cases, the designer explicitly considers which actions the player can take, and what their outcomes will be. What I think will happen more in the near future, will be that designers will set rules up, let the players know how their actions have affected the system, and then leave him to "game the game," as it were. The designer of the above scenario might, instead, give the player the chance to "play well" or "play poorly," independent of why the player would want to do that. The player knows the game's state, and therefore has an idea as to what he can do to alter that state.
This takes place to some extent in existing games, such as Deus Ex: IW and, especially, in The Sims 2. In the latter case, for example, a wedding party will go well if the guests are happy. The guests will be happy if their needs are met. Their needs will be met if they have X, Y, and Z. The designers did not implement a direct corrolation between X, Y, and Z and the wedding party; changes in the game's state occur because of the third or fourth-order consequences of a player's actions. In comparison, most interaction in a first-person shooter is first-order: kill the critter to get past the critter. (I love first-person shooters, but judging from the way some Slashdot posts received Doom 3, I think that an FPS that adds complexity in this manner may do well.)
My prediction here isn't a divine revelation that we'll have this newfangled style of "emergent gameplay" -- we already have it. However, I think that, come 2006, we'll have a sexy buzzword for it, and that it'll be sprawled over the covers of CGW and PCG.
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Inago Rage - Fight, Fly, and Create your own 3D arenas in our first-person shooter
IGN has a number of videos, from which you can glean single-player gameplay. They also have footage of Nintendo's conference presentation, which talks about the multiplayer aspect. The latter is more interesting, as the former seems similar to other games in the genre. (Tap the controls in time with the music.)
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Inago Rage - Fight in 3D arenas of your own design.
Isn't it obvious? ...if you're not producing it from scratch with a specific intention in mind you're going to get bad performance and poor consistancy and the players will notice it.
Well, if you're saying that bad content will diminish my game, and that not all content is appropriate for all games, I agree with you. Still, people sell texture packs or music libraries or sound effects libraries which aren't specifically created for a particular production, but are used in artwork, film, and games, to good effect. So, I'd say that there exists the potential for certain types of content to be re-used.
Wow, 800 polys for a plain straight backed chair. Yep, that's gunna be great for my FPS or MMORPG.
I agree, again -- bad content does me no good. But I do think that some of the good stuff may be (as Jonathan Clark put it) rotting away needlessly.
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Inago Rage
...to compete with WoW and Evercrack 2 you need to be at least on par with their fees and ideally less.
Underpricing is more important for commodities and less so for something like an MMORPG. I don't think that (say) a game with a monthly fee of $5 less than WoW's would entice anyone to switch to them. There's also the matter of perception-of-quality -- I would guess that most people, upon seeing a $4.95/mo MMORPG would turn their noses up at it.
Conversely, if there are gameplay elements that make the game worth $14.95, consumers would probably be willing to pay a few dollars more.
There are, of course, limits to this. If you're going to charge $50/mo for a subscription, you'd better either a) provide something pretty amazing, or b) disassociate the subscription fee from actual money. (Ever been to Dave and Buster's? When you walk in, you buy credits, then use arbitrary numbers of credits to play games. They disassociate the cost of playing a game from actual money. So, while you're probably paying $2.50 for a game, it doesn't feel that way.)
As a corrolary to this, in the early '90s, I used to work for a company that charged $6.95 an hour to play its online game, (with a $3/hr connection surcharge). This was pretty standard. We had a few flatrate customers who paid a whopping $1,000/month for unlimited access. Yeeaaaugh!
As a result $14.95 never seemed so bad to me.
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Inago Rage - Our first-person shooter
As an independent games developer, this strikes me the same way as a bakery tossing away perfectly good bread one one side of town while someone's hungry on the other side. Remember when Crack-Dot-Com went out of business and released its content to the public?
There's a special place in Indie Valhalla for the Jonathan Clark and those like him. Why don't we see more of this?
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Inago Rage - Create and fight in first-person arenas of your own design.
(Year - Price)
Q1, 2000 - ~$3.75
Q1, 2001 - ~$2.75
Q1, 2002 - ~$0.60
Q1, 2003 - ~$0.07 (Then changed to IPLY.OB)
Q1, 2004 - ~$0.10
Q1, 2005 - ~$0.01
The price, as of today, was 1.6 cents per share, (which is actually a nice purchase, if they pull out of their rut). Contrary to what the
I suppose they could raise capital by issuing more stock -- only 1,000,000,000 shares, and they could have a cool $16M! (Okay, maybe not.)
I'm not sure what IP assets they have left to liquidate, but such sales may breathe new life into properties that have not been celebrated since (say) 2002.
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Inago Rage - Fight, fly, and create your own arenas in this first-person shooter.
These games come in many forms, such as a "fox and hounds" game, capture the flag, or a treasure hunt.
In the 1973 Woody Allen comedy, Sleeper, it was cigarettes that turned out to promote health. Now, we have instances where video games promote physical activity.
I think (hope!) that we'll be reading in Wired about a young entrepreneur who turns this into a viable business, either as a service, where games are hosted professionally (as in MMORPGs), or as a product, where games are purchased and played on a peer-to-peer basis (as in most retail games). Perhaps I'm looking at this through rose-colored glasses, (I miss playing laser tag as a kid), but I think this has the potential to turn out some fantastic stuff.
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Inago Rage - Create and Fight in an Indie-Developed First-Person Shooter
I'll take a moment to plug our indie-developed first-person shooter, Inago Rage. We tried to make the game different from most by focusing gameplay on short burts of flight (MPEG), but what we really concentrated on was the ability for players to create their own arenas (scroll down) without having to use external mod tools. Basically, we've implemented a drag-and-drop system to allow players to place buildings, towers, bridges, enemies, prizes, and particle generators.
The graphics are not likely to outdo those of this past year's AAA titles, but I'm happy with what we were able to produce. There are a good number of reasonably-priced tools that (I think) make it possible for smaller studios to create visually attractive games.
We're hoping to release a demo by the end of Janary, and have experimented with attempts at web commercials to get the word out. (The holy grail of the Viral Video eludes us, as yet -- we'll keep trying). We're also in the alpha test stage of an overhead shooter using the same technology called Last Man on Mars (WMV video).
Here's hoping Inago Rage will be a contender for the top 10 indie titles of 2005.
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Inago Rage
It's been my experience that Indie developers are, as you say, eager to share resources that benefit the game development community. This might include marketing strategies, source code, or tools. However, as businesses, small studios have to have something to sell; traditional business models suggest that it makes sense to retain control of certain assets.
/. did a thread about all 81 IGF submissions earlier in the week.)
One scenario where a business might open source an entire product is an MMOG where the client and server are under an open license, and revenue is generated by unique, pay-for-play quests. I'm sure that the optimal level of open-sourceness varies from project to project.
(As a sidenote,
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Inago Rage - An Independent Game About Building and Shooting Things
It's tough to get a feel for what Unity was all about, but as they say, a screenshot is worth a thousand words (scroll down). There's also a bit on VLM3, which they say predated the Unity project.
I still remember reading about (I believe it was) Attack of the Mutant Camels in Antic/Angalog magazine during the early '80s. Unity's cancellation may be disappointing, but the fact that Jeff Minter is still involved in the industry after 20 years is, IMO, nothing put a positive.
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Inago Rage - Create and Fight