The fact that most hits are sequels already proves that new innovation that leads to uncharted success is becoming rarer than ever before. And uncharted territory is where real growth is at.
Innovation is overrated, IMO. Execution is everything. Anyone can have a fantastic idea, but very few people can carry it through successfully to completion. Besides which, what's wrong with sequels? That's just continued success of a once-original IP.
Sony bet biggest on online distribution with their PSP Go which was a catastrophe. So if console games aren't being distributed online, and the storefronts are shrinking, that is a sign of major turmoil. That's really all I am saying. And if you prefer the Wall Street perspective, an industry that isn't growing is as good as dead.
You can point to flops like the PSP Go, but that had to do with a expensive yet lackluster product that no one wanted. Sony tried to sell the same handheld device, only you had to buy all your games again? Who thought that would fly off the shelves? Mobile phones have proven that digital distribution is certainly viable as a software service, but you have to make the product something people want. That's how the market works, and that's a good thing. Otherwise, corporations could shovel whatever crap they wanted at us for exorbitant prices, and we'd have no recourse.
Both Sony and Nintendo have had some recent tough times with lackluster product offerings, so if you're viewing the industry through that particular lens, I could see how things look a little bleak. I happen to think that long-term prospects remain solid, even with all the current doom and gloom. Call it blind optimism, or simply the belief that there are plenty of gamers like me out there who are planning to pick up the next generation of consoles with great delight as soon as they hit the stores.
How long have we been talking about this end? If anything console development is simply slowing and giving way to add-on devices (PS3 move, kinect, etc). As far as I can see game industry is stronger than ever.
Don't worry. All the "consoles are dead" visionaries will look foolishly short-sighted once the next generation of consoles comes out and... *gasp* people will once again plunk down $400-600 on a dedicated gaming machine that matches current high-end PC hardware, along with a new batch of games that take advantage of the new technological headroom.
These predictions all conveniently ignore that:
a) consoles can provide a richer and more immersive gaming experience than a handheld / phone b) console games can be more social c) consoles, by their nature, can *always* be more technically sophisticated than current handhelds d) consoles can pioneer new trends in input peripherals (consider what we've seen just in this generation)
I think it's likely the market could very well broaden. The "casual" gamers will be fine with iPhone and Android games. Handheld consoles will still probably be popular with kids, as they provide a better play experience on the go. And consoles will take the space in the living room. Home theatre systems aren't going anywhere - could you imagine people predicting that mobile phones will spell the death of large-screen TVs? Why are games any less deserving of a rich, high-resolution presentation?
I really am looking forward to the next console generation, for as much as it will do to shut up all these moronic "consoles are dead" predictions as for the next generation of games.
Hi from the game development industry. We're doing fine, thank you. Odd as it seems, the industry hasn't been been hurt all that badly by this extended recession like one might think. Apparently, people view videogames as a decent entertainment value, even during tough times.
The industry has ALWAYS been extremely volatile, though, which is sort of the tradeoff game developers live with as a matter of course. I've had companies fold out from under me, been laid off due to large-scale cuts, etc, etc. This is nothing new, and the pace hasn't accelerated in recent years, at least from what I can see. Companies that consistently produce titles that people want to buy and play are doing fine. Those that don't tend to fail. Mergers and buyouts happen because it's easier for larger companies to absorb losses and finance large, risky projects, or because they want to acquire talent and IP. Welcome to capitalism - that's how it works.
We're now seeing a healthy diversification of the industry. Indie and mobile games are booming right now. Console sales are seeing a lull because we're near the end of a generational cycle, but there are no shortages of titles that I've seen coming out. We'll see a nice ramp up when excitement for the next generation of machines kicks in (the whole 'consoles are dead' crowd are ridiculously short-sighted, IMO). A lot of developers are now eschewing the "hit or miss" AAA title rollercoaster, in which one flop would essentially doom a studio. Others want to live in that world, because they're confident they can consistently produce high-quality titles people want to play (that's my studio's attitude). PC gaming has shifted more toward online gaming and indie titles, but there are still big-name PC games out there. Brick and mortar reduction only indicates a shift toward digital distribution, but that doesn't say anything about the health of the industry as a whole.
In short, I have no idea what you're talking about when you claim the "game industry is dying."
Be very careful with Heinlein. I read a book of his (no idea what the name was) where a group of obnoxious intellectuals visited the land of Oz in a flying car, or some such nonsense. I swore off Heinlein after that. I've later since heard his early works were better, but... meh.
I only started reading the Dragonflight books recently, after I got a Kindle as a gift. They were certainly an enjoyable read. Sort of a light sci-fi / fantasy combo.
Many thanks, Anne. I think you made the world a little richer for having been in it.
We're beginning to hit a point of diminishing returns on graphics anyway- you're always going to be limited by what the eye can process, and the ability of the artists.... sure when 3D goes mainstream and is built into our monitors all of a sudden graphics cards will need to be more powerfull.
You might be surprised at the crazy amount of optimization and general smoke and mirrors game programmers have to use in order to get those "good enough" graphics. More headroom in CPU and GPU would allow us to either create similar quality scenes with a lot less effort, or create much larger scenes with similar levels of optimization. I'm sure it looks rather effortless when you only see the final result, but the current limitations of console hardware seem a lot more restraining when you're the one who's constantly banging your head against them - telling your artists that the beautiful landscape they've spent months creating needs to reduce it's texture budget by 25% in order to bring the memory budget in line, or tell the designers that their amazing idea for the final battle where you have to fight an entire army won't work because the physics and animation would be too expensive.
Increased fidelity will also mean another fantastic advance - once we hit a level of fidelity where it doesn't make sense to increase it, game developers won't have to recreate all their assets from scratch with each new generation of games. Instead, we'll instead be able to make use of libraries of props, similar to how most movies don't have to recreate all their props from scratch, and can use existing back lots instead of the additional expense of filming on location (ok, the analogy breaks down a bit there, but you get the point). In other words, as the technology improves, creating virtual worlds will become a LOT less expensive and time consuming than it is now.
Technically, we can do near photo-realism right now, but there are problems: we don't have enough CPU, GPU, or memory headroom in the machine to allow us to make general-purpose trade-offs for flexibility's sake. For instance, we could easily render a photo-realistic desk, coffee cup, or a tree, but when creating huge, sprawling scenes, we couldn't use those props - we need much more efficient versions that can fit in our budgets. So, often, props have to be tailored for the game, or sometimes even the specific scene they're used in. Moreover, if a game wants to do something interesting gameplay-wise (like have 100% destructable environments and props), this can drastically alter the way these props are built. This means that games still have to build almost all their visual assets from scratch for each new game.
I kind of hope for more stagnation in the graphics quality market. Let's just hang out where we are for a while and hopefully the game makers will start competing on interesting story lines, game mechanics, etc. rather than ripples in water in puddles.
Improved CPU and GPU capabilities and better gameplay are not mutually exclusive. There are physical limitations to, for instance, rendering a huge number of characters on the screen at once. Or the memory is simply not there to utilize all the interesting animations you need to support that interesting storyline you need.
Look at it this way... better CG technology hasn't necessarily made movies better, but it really expanded the range of what really good filmmakers could do with realistic budgets. Improved game technology is similar. Right now a huge amount of work has to be done optimizing the game engine and assets to reach acceptable quality levels. Once we hit a point where CPUs and GPUs no longer have to struggle to render, say, a nice open world, more gameplay options will naturally emerge as well, as developers won't have to spend quite so much time fighting against the constraints of the hardware.
Sure, we'll take advantage of the extra power to render extra shiny stuff (or, frankly, just MORE of what we can already do today - draw distance is still a big limitation for complex scenes). But better technology can also allow more gameplay options as well.
Also, if you haven't seen all the games that have focused heavily on story and/or interesting gameplay mechanics, then I'm not sure what to tell you except that you need to pay more attention. Some examples: Katamari Darmacy, Okami, Half-Live series, Portal series, Uncharted series, Mass Effect series, Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Bauldur's Gate series, Deux Ex (first or most recent), Bioshock, SWTOR, Guild Wars 1 & 2, Skyrim, SW: Knights of the Old Republic, Braid, Limbo, N+... seriously... we've never had it so good as gamers, and I've been a gamer since damn near the beginning of videogames. People who say otherwise are looking through rose-colored glasses.
Taxes on corporations are essentially meaningless, as far as I can figure out. Prices are simply raised to compensate for any lost revenue, since private enterprises have to make a profit or die, unlike governments. So it's really more a way of hiding additional taxes on ordinary folks - the consumers of said products and services. The only problem is that, for US companies, goods and services sold outside the US are effectively bypassing the tax structure. On the positive side, doing so would make it much more economical to stay based in the US, which is going to be a huge boon to the economy.
On the whole, the biggest problem is one of perception. People would be horrified that corporations aren't "paying their fair share", or getting "corporate welfare", etc. Maybe someone who feels this way could explain to me why they feel that corporations should be taxed - there might be arguments I haven't thought of yet, because it seems like a fairly good idea to me.
The latest 360 systems have built-in wi-fi, incidentally (not that it makes that much difference in your point).
If you think the online services of the other two consoles are anywhere close to Xbox Live, then you probably don't have enough experience contrasting the services to make a reasonable comparison. You'll have to trust me that most of my friends, while not exactly ecstatic about paying $60 a year for Live really don't consider it enough of a deterrent, considering how slick and seamless the service is to use (in fact, was just having fun with some 5-player GoW co-op with some co-workers last night).
Lest you think me an MS fanboy, I own all three consoles, and really wish Sony (apparently completely incompetent at creating and managing a network) and Nintendo (who isn't really even trying online) would give Microsoft some serious competition in the console online space. Otherwise, it gives MS carte blanche to do whatever they want to in their little walled garden, such as not allowing Valve to give free DLC packs for owners of its games. Very short-sighted of them, IMO, because otherwise they could probably have worked out a deal to get a small piece of all the microtransactions that are flowing through Team Fortress 2 right now.
As you may or may not know, the first and second parts of GDP are way down. People are not spending money, and businesses are not investing. Moreover, businesses are sitting on trillions of dollars in cash. In such an instance more tax cuts or deregulation (which, incidentally, is what put us in this mess) will not spur the economy.
I'd love to know how you think "deregulation" put us in this mess. One could argue that over-regulation was to blame, not under-regulation. The government-mandated Community Reinvestment Act, as well as other legislation and regulation forced banks to offer loans to people who were high-risk individuals for very affordable rates. This is the direct cause of the bubble, and the resultant housing collapse was a prime trigger of our current economic woes.
... it was government policy for these poor quality loans to be made. Since the early 1990s, the government has been attempting to expand home ownership in full disregard of the prudent lending principles that had previously governed the U.S. mortgage market. Now the motives of the GSEs fall into place. Fannie and Freddie were subject to "affordable housing" regulations, issued by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which required them to buy mortgages made to home buyers who were at or below the median income. This quota began at 30% of all purchases in the early 1990s, and was gradually ratcheted up until it called for 55% of all mortgage purchases to be "affordable" in 2007, including 25% that had to be made to low-income home buyers.
As to how to get businesses to get off their liquid assets - driving up US debt is not going to do that. While it sounds very noble, putting teachers, firefighters, and policemen to work for a year (part of Obama's stimulus plan) is going to do anything significant to stimulate the economy, especially when the money has to come from taxes, printing, or borrowing. Borrowing is the least likely to hurt the economy in the short term, yet as the government continues to accrue long term debts from which it appears unlikely we can easily climb out of (~$45K per capita and rising), it contributes to business' economic fears. Debt has to be paid off at some point, and the more debt the US has, the less will be available for sustained economic movement in the private sector, since it has to siphon a higher percentage of revenue to pay off the interest, meaning more money has to be collected overall to meet its financial obligations.
sigh... I can't understand how people think Keynesian economics makes sense. I'm not a government laissez-faire type person - some regulation is absolutely needed. The problem is that a massive amount of spending, while it may in fact provide stimulation, will also produce negative drains in equal amounts in other economic areas, either directly (taxes) or indirectly (increased debt -> lack of consumer confidence). Borrowing money is the least painful of these options, but because we're already so far in debt, a massive amount of additional debt will put a huge pressure on revenues because of future interest payments. Essentially, our back is against the wall because of previous administration's / congress' reckless spending (all parties). Our citizens are getting older, and Medicare is predicted by some to become insolvent by 2024 (that wonderfully efficient program you're talking about), and our national debt continues to skyrocket.
I don't have a magical answer to fix everything, but it feels like massive government spending as "stimulus" is just digging the hole deeper.
P.S. "death panels" is obvious hyperbole which I probably shouldn't have used, and likely pr
Until the general population believes and understands that this doesn't do a damned thing, nothing will change. Wishing for some nonsensical and nonexistent "revolution" won't really help matters.
However, I find it hard to blame people for this, when the federal government is touted as the answer to all our other problems. Bad economy? Spend a shitload of tax money to "stimulate" the economy (ignore the shell game aspect of taxing the same economy you're trying to stimulate). Problems with health care? Why, the government can fix this (ignore the death panels / health care rationing please)! Drugs a problem? No problem, the "war on drugs" is surely going to fix everything! Some people are making more money than you? Why, that's not fair! We'll tax the rich buggers and spread the wealth around.
Why do you expect people to think that the government shouldn't "fix" the problem of internal security just like it "fixes" every other problem?
The next generation of game consoles is in your hand. It's running either iOS 5, Ice Cream Sandwich or Mango, depending on why your interest lies (sorry, Android is the closest you're going to get to Linux).
The phones are selling such high volumes and adding capabilities so fast that any new hardware console, ostensibly designed for games only, will have a problem getting to critical mass. Not only are we in a post-PC world, we're in a post-game-console world as well.
Again with the post-PC and post-console prediction. The opening of a new market doesn't automatically mean the death of a previous market. Also, try telling me that I should be playing a game like Skyrim on my phone instead of a 60" screen with surround sound home theater speakers, and we'll all know that you and I are *very* different demographics.
"The (next generation of console) will offer graphics comparable to (the latest Hollywood CGI-laden blockbuster)". No. No it won't. It never has, and won't until our computers are so powerful that real-time photo-realism with nearly unlimited levels of detail becomes trivial. As good as current hardware is, it's still nowhere near that point, unless you're content with rendering a very limited scene, which is what all those impressive tech demos do.
Movie graphics are pre-rendered, of course. They take anywhere from minutes to hours per frame to render, and they can use high-end server farms to do this. Consoles are real-time systems. They must render their scene using commodity hardware in 1/30 to 1/60th of a second, in addition to computing everything else a game requires (physics, animation, audio, AI, etc).
I'm guessing some people would be pretty surprised at how much smoke and mirrors are still used, even on modern systems, in order to keep the frame rate reasonable with decent graphical fidelity. If we (speaking as a game developer here) want to be able to run on a reasonable range of systems, we have to do crazy amounts of optimization work. Our artists still have to reuse textures, conserve memory, reduce polygons, use LODs, and simplify shaders. If that's still not enough, then we're forced to cut content out (simplifying models or geometry) until we CAN run in real-time.
Aren't Microsoft/others working on a solution to prevent modification of the boot sector - essentially, the OS won't boot unless it's properly signed (trusted platform module)? Or is that something different?
I'm glad you took the comment in good humor as intended. There are a few posters who, for whatever reason, always use code tags when posting (although maybe I shouldn't assume it's intentional, eh?). It's amazing how much that makes a difference for readability.
Anyhow, as to your original point: I completely agree with your suggestion. YouTube definitely seems like a very logical early candidate, as I can envision a lot of ways for third parties to make use of a robust systems API.
And I'm going to ask you to re-read the lesson on accessibility. There's a reason why monospaced fonts are used only for code. To be blunt, whenever I see a slashdot posting in courier (or whatever), I have a strong desire to simply skip it. While we're at it... how many people do you think are going to copy paste that link into a browser. You're aware that you can enter nicely formatted HTML into your posts, like this, right? If you're going to ask Google to learn its lesson from this posting, might we ask the same of you?
PS, I hope you take this post with appropriate humor. It's intended to point out how it's pretty easy to pick up on someone else's failings while missing your own, not to slam obvious pedantic issues with your post.;-)
Inventory management was easier because they removed upgrades!/slaps forehead
Yeah, and the heat sinks were an atrocious idea. I loved not having to worry about ammo, and learning how to manage weapon heat was a new and different mechanic that I found enjoyable. Upgrading weapons to absorb more heat took care of the problem if you couldn't learn to fire in short bursts.
I still can't imagine the thought process behind the decision to completely abandon the tank in favor of that absolutely brain-numbing scanning mini-game. If I recall, most people's complaints were along the complaints that there were only about three or four unique building types. Hell, they could have just added a bunch more buildings and locations for variety and I would have been happy.
I know it's a bit hypocritical to complain about too many formulaic games that don't take risks, but when you're already slapping a 2 behind the name of a game, it makes a lot more sense to try to refine the game with each new release rather than completely futzing around with its basic gameplay.
Bioware, if you're listening:
* If I wanted a brainless action game or shooter, I wouldn't be looking to you. Don't be afraid to make your RPGs deep and tactical. * Get rid of the damn heat-clips. You had a unique weapon mechanic with ME1. I certainly wasn't pining for ammo clips like *every other game ever*. * Don't "fix" problems by completely eliminating the feature. I liked collecting upgrades, and I liked the planet-side missions in the vehicles. They just needed more refinement.
--end rant
Sorry, but I loved ME1 so much, and 2 was a huge disappointment to me, despite the slightly better shooter mechanics (pretty much at the expense of everything else). And as shooters went, it was still only second-rate.
Some of the guys at PA + Scott Kurtz made an an entire comic about game testers. Rather entertaining so far. Also, the real-life stories are both funny and sad at the same time.
It depends on why you enjoy playing games. If you enjoy immersion and escapism, unintended analysis might be problematic. In the same manner, would you find a magician's illusions as entertaining if you knew beforehand exactly how the trick was accomplished? For some people, it might ruin the 'magic', so to speak. For others, it might make the show even more fascinating to see all the behind the scenes mechanics of how illusions are presented. It probably depends on your personality.
I don't mind knowing how things work behind the scenes. However, I do make an effort not to think too much about that during a game on the first play-through at least, because I'm more interested in losing myself in the gameplay, story, characters, setting, etc.
Ah, ok. That's 60% less insane.:) In general, discouraging investment still has a lot of negative repercussions, which I think is the last thing our economy needs right now.
Well, as a programmer in the gaming industry, I can't say that holds true for me. Most of my my friends and co-workers are enthusiastic gamers as well. Granted, you get sick of the game (and sometimes the genre) that you're currently working on, but that doesn't dampen my enthusiasm for other games. I pretty much own most every console and handheld device there is (although I only bought a PSP because I wanted to show off the game I made) because I'm first and foremost a gamer at heart. Otherwise, I'd get a more traditional programming job that's less difficult and stressful for far more pay. I certainly make a concerted effort to switch out of "game programmer mode" when playing, though. I do, though, on occasion, actually purchase and play a title simply because I'm interested in it at a purely professional level.
If you would have a hard time switching between "work mode" and "play mode", I could certainly understand not wanting to ruin your fun time. To be honest, working on a game and playing a game are such different experiences that I can't recall any of my colleagues ever complaining that they were no longer able to enjoy videogaming in general.
Favorite game types: RPGs (both JRPGs and western-style, although I consider them two wildly separate genres) Shooters Strategy / God-games Puzzle games
Currently in the play queue: Ico / Shadow of the Collosus (picked them up for PS3 - never played the originals) Uncharted 2 (need to finish before 3 comes out) Gears of War 3 Disgaea 4 Atlier Rorona
Raising the minimum wage tends to both increase unemployment (since it cost more to hire people, businesses tend to hire fewer people), and increase the general cost of living across the board (again, logical if you think about it for just a moment).
Taking away 80% of investment income is insane. Investments are largely about providing capital to companies that wish to expand operations. This is a critical part of our economy, and disincentivizing a monetary return on already risky investments mean our economy will tank even further.
If simple solutions like these would actually fix the problems, I'd be all for it. The law of unintended consequences means you'd probably hurt working-class people more than the rich by doing this. Case example: The failure of the luxury tax.
Maybe, but as patents get more specific, they also become less relevant. Sounds like you're even more jaded than I am. I hold out some hope, because we've already seen patents such as LZW expire, and (at least to my knowledge), no one has been able to patent it again with "slightly different wording". The system is bad right now, but I don't believe it's that completely corrupt yet.
Sigh... I'm not very optimistic about the software patent situation. The only bright spot is the very long view. Companies are patenting absolutely anything they can get away with right now. While this poses a problem for short term software development, I wonder if this will have ramifications for long term development. That is... once all the "core technology" patents have expired, they'll be free to use henceforth.
There are likely natural limitations to how much audio or video data can be compressed. Once these patents expire, it will probably occur at a point in time when any incremental advancements in the next codec don't render enough of an advantage given the likely increases in network speeds. I think we've already hit that point with audio encoding - for nearly everyone, mp3 is now good enough and small enough that more sophisticated codecs don't really matter anymore, even if they marginally improve compression/quality ratios.
Scant comfort, I know, as 17 years is a hell of a long time to wait for things to be freed up. Still, it's nice to know these companies won't have an eternal lock on these methods.
Maybe I'm a little prejudiced, (I'm a game dev working on a more traditional MMO right now), but our customers still seem to be interested high-fidelity worlds, complete with rich graphics and audio. People have been shouting about how the thin client is the future for a decade or more now, and it simply never happens. There's still something to be said for the ability to create high-performance applications that can be run directly on the user's machine, in native code. We do incredibly demanding things, and the fact of the matter is that until we literally have more performance than we know what to do with, native binaries will always have a huge advantage when it comes to manipulating and displaying high-fidelity virtual worlds.
Naturally, there are plenty of opportunities in more specialized, smaller, niche markets, but to say everything is going that direction is a bit far-fetched. Granted, we're not oblivious to this direction, as we have a small team working on a lot of web-based and mobile integration initiatives, but I really hate when people are so quick to come to some sort of "all or nothing" conclusion about any new emerging market or technology.
Will HTML5 eventually kill Flash? Probably, if there is really good tool support. It it going to be the be-all and end-all for future MMOs? Yes and no... there will certainly be a move there, especially among games with lighter requirements, but big-budget native clients are going to be with us for quite a while still.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that most hits are sequels already proves that new innovation that leads to uncharted success is becoming rarer than ever before. And uncharted territory is where real growth is at.
Innovation is overrated, IMO. Execution is everything. Anyone can have a fantastic idea, but very few people can carry it through successfully to completion. Besides which, what's wrong with sequels? That's just continued success of a once-original IP.
Sony bet biggest on online distribution with their PSP Go which was a catastrophe. So if console games aren't being distributed online, and the storefronts are shrinking, that is a sign of major turmoil. That's really all I am saying. And if you prefer the Wall Street perspective, an industry that isn't growing is as good as dead.
You can point to flops like the PSP Go, but that had to do with a expensive yet lackluster product that no one wanted. Sony tried to sell the same handheld device, only you had to buy all your games again? Who thought that would fly off the shelves? Mobile phones have proven that digital distribution is certainly viable as a software service, but you have to make the product something people want. That's how the market works, and that's a good thing. Otherwise, corporations could shovel whatever crap they wanted at us for exorbitant prices, and we'd have no recourse.
Both Sony and Nintendo have had some recent tough times with lackluster product offerings, so if you're viewing the industry through that particular lens, I could see how things look a little bleak. I happen to think that long-term prospects remain solid, even with all the current doom and gloom. Call it blind optimism, or simply the belief that there are plenty of gamers like me out there who are planning to pick up the next generation of consoles with great delight as soon as they hit the stores.
How long have we been talking about this end? If anything console development is simply slowing and giving way to add-on devices (PS3 move, kinect, etc). As far as I can see game industry is stronger than ever.
Don't worry. All the "consoles are dead" visionaries will look foolishly short-sighted once the next generation of consoles comes out and... *gasp* people will once again plunk down $400-600 on a dedicated gaming machine that matches current high-end PC hardware, along with a new batch of games that take advantage of the new technological headroom.
These predictions all conveniently ignore that:
a) consoles can provide a richer and more immersive gaming experience than a handheld / phone
b) console games can be more social
c) consoles, by their nature, can *always* be more technically sophisticated than current handhelds
d) consoles can pioneer new trends in input peripherals (consider what we've seen just in this generation)
I think it's likely the market could very well broaden. The "casual" gamers will be fine with iPhone and Android games. Handheld consoles will still probably be popular with kids, as they provide a better play experience on the go. And consoles will take the space in the living room. Home theatre systems aren't going anywhere - could you imagine people predicting that mobile phones will spell the death of large-screen TVs? Why are games any less deserving of a rich, high-resolution presentation?
I really am looking forward to the next console generation, for as much as it will do to shut up all these moronic "consoles are dead" predictions as for the next generation of games.
Hi from the game development industry. We're doing fine, thank you. Odd as it seems, the industry hasn't been been hurt all that badly by this extended recession like one might think. Apparently, people view videogames as a decent entertainment value, even during tough times.
The industry has ALWAYS been extremely volatile, though, which is sort of the tradeoff game developers live with as a matter of course. I've had companies fold out from under me, been laid off due to large-scale cuts, etc, etc. This is nothing new, and the pace hasn't accelerated in recent years, at least from what I can see. Companies that consistently produce titles that people want to buy and play are doing fine. Those that don't tend to fail. Mergers and buyouts happen because it's easier for larger companies to absorb losses and finance large, risky projects, or because they want to acquire talent and IP. Welcome to capitalism - that's how it works.
We're now seeing a healthy diversification of the industry. Indie and mobile games are booming right now. Console sales are seeing a lull because we're near the end of a generational cycle, but there are no shortages of titles that I've seen coming out. We'll see a nice ramp up when excitement for the next generation of machines kicks in (the whole 'consoles are dead' crowd are ridiculously short-sighted, IMO). A lot of developers are now eschewing the "hit or miss" AAA title rollercoaster, in which one flop would essentially doom a studio. Others want to live in that world, because they're confident they can consistently produce high-quality titles people want to play (that's my studio's attitude). PC gaming has shifted more toward online gaming and indie titles, but there are still big-name PC games out there. Brick and mortar reduction only indicates a shift toward digital distribution, but that doesn't say anything about the health of the industry as a whole.
In short, I have no idea what you're talking about when you claim the "game industry is dying."
Be very careful with Heinlein. I read a book of his (no idea what the name was) where a group of obnoxious intellectuals visited the land of Oz in a flying car, or some such nonsense. I swore off Heinlein after that. I've later since heard his early works were better, but... meh.
I only started reading the Dragonflight books recently, after I got a Kindle as a gift. They were certainly an enjoyable read. Sort of a light sci-fi / fantasy combo.
Many thanks, Anne. I think you made the world a little richer for having been in it.
We're beginning to hit a point of diminishing returns on graphics anyway- you're always going to be limited by what the eye can process, and the ability of the artists.... sure when 3D goes mainstream and is built into our monitors all of a sudden graphics cards will need to be more powerfull.
You might be surprised at the crazy amount of optimization and general smoke and mirrors game programmers have to use in order to get those "good enough" graphics. More headroom in CPU and GPU would allow us to either create similar quality scenes with a lot less effort, or create much larger scenes with similar levels of optimization. I'm sure it looks rather effortless when you only see the final result, but the current limitations of console hardware seem a lot more restraining when you're the one who's constantly banging your head against them - telling your artists that the beautiful landscape they've spent months creating needs to reduce it's texture budget by 25% in order to bring the memory budget in line, or tell the designers that their amazing idea for the final battle where you have to fight an entire army won't work because the physics and animation would be too expensive.
Increased fidelity will also mean another fantastic advance - once we hit a level of fidelity where it doesn't make sense to increase it, game developers won't have to recreate all their assets from scratch with each new generation of games. Instead, we'll instead be able to make use of libraries of props, similar to how most movies don't have to recreate all their props from scratch, and can use existing back lots instead of the additional expense of filming on location (ok, the analogy breaks down a bit there, but you get the point). In other words, as the technology improves, creating virtual worlds will become a LOT less expensive and time consuming than it is now.
Technically, we can do near photo-realism right now, but there are problems: we don't have enough CPU, GPU, or memory headroom in the machine to allow us to make general-purpose trade-offs for flexibility's sake. For instance, we could easily render a photo-realistic desk, coffee cup, or a tree, but when creating huge, sprawling scenes, we couldn't use those props - we need much more efficient versions that can fit in our budgets. So, often, props have to be tailored for the game, or sometimes even the specific scene they're used in. Moreover, if a game wants to do something interesting gameplay-wise (like have 100% destructable environments and props), this can drastically alter the way these props are built. This means that games still have to build almost all their visual assets from scratch for each new game.
I kind of hope for more stagnation in the graphics quality market. Let's just hang out where we are for a while and hopefully the game makers will start competing on interesting story lines, game mechanics, etc. rather than ripples in water in puddles.
Improved CPU and GPU capabilities and better gameplay are not mutually exclusive. There are physical limitations to, for instance, rendering a huge number of characters on the screen at once. Or the memory is simply not there to utilize all the interesting animations you need to support that interesting storyline you need.
Look at it this way... better CG technology hasn't necessarily made movies better, but it really expanded the range of what really good filmmakers could do with realistic budgets. Improved game technology is similar. Right now a huge amount of work has to be done optimizing the game engine and assets to reach acceptable quality levels. Once we hit a point where CPUs and GPUs no longer have to struggle to render, say, a nice open world, more gameplay options will naturally emerge as well, as developers won't have to spend quite so much time fighting against the constraints of the hardware.
Sure, we'll take advantage of the extra power to render extra shiny stuff (or, frankly, just MORE of what we can already do today - draw distance is still a big limitation for complex scenes). But better technology can also allow more gameplay options as well.
Also, if you haven't seen all the games that have focused heavily on story and/or interesting gameplay mechanics, then I'm not sure what to tell you except that you need to pay more attention. Some examples: Katamari Darmacy, Okami, Half-Live series, Portal series, Uncharted series, Mass Effect series, Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Bauldur's Gate series, Deux Ex (first or most recent), Bioshock, SWTOR, Guild Wars 1 & 2, Skyrim, SW: Knights of the Old Republic, Braid, Limbo, N+... seriously... we've never had it so good as gamers, and I've been a gamer since damn near the beginning of videogames. People who say otherwise are looking through rose-colored glasses.
Taxes on corporations are essentially meaningless, as far as I can figure out. Prices are simply raised to compensate for any lost revenue, since private enterprises have to make a profit or die, unlike governments. So it's really more a way of hiding additional taxes on ordinary folks - the consumers of said products and services. The only problem is that, for US companies, goods and services sold outside the US are effectively bypassing the tax structure. On the positive side, doing so would make it much more economical to stay based in the US, which is going to be a huge boon to the economy.
On the whole, the biggest problem is one of perception. People would be horrified that corporations aren't "paying their fair share", or getting "corporate welfare", etc. Maybe someone who feels this way could explain to me why they feel that corporations should be taxed - there might be arguments I haven't thought of yet, because it seems like a fairly good idea to me.
The latest 360 systems have built-in wi-fi, incidentally (not that it makes that much difference in your point).
If you think the online services of the other two consoles are anywhere close to Xbox Live, then you probably don't have enough experience contrasting the services to make a reasonable comparison. You'll have to trust me that most of my friends, while not exactly ecstatic about paying $60 a year for Live really don't consider it enough of a deterrent, considering how slick and seamless the service is to use (in fact, was just having fun with some 5-player GoW co-op with some co-workers last night).
Lest you think me an MS fanboy, I own all three consoles, and really wish Sony (apparently completely incompetent at creating and managing a network) and Nintendo (who isn't really even trying online) would give Microsoft some serious competition in the console online space. Otherwise, it gives MS carte blanche to do whatever they want to in their little walled garden, such as not allowing Valve to give free DLC packs for owners of its games. Very short-sighted of them, IMO, because otherwise they could probably have worked out a deal to get a small piece of all the microtransactions that are flowing through Team Fortress 2 right now.
As you may or may not know, the first and second parts of GDP are way down. People are not spending money, and businesses are not investing. Moreover, businesses are sitting on trillions of dollars in cash. In such an instance more tax cuts or deregulation (which, incidentally, is what put us in this mess) will not spur the economy.
I'd love to know how you think "deregulation" put us in this mess. One could argue that over-regulation was to blame, not under-regulation. The government-mandated Community Reinvestment Act, as well as other legislation and regulation forced banks to offer loans to people who were high-risk individuals for very affordable rates. This is the direct cause of the bubble, and the resultant housing collapse was a prime trigger of our current economic woes.
Peter Wallison described it fairly well in his wsj article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574475110152189446.html
... it was government policy for these poor quality loans to be made. Since the early 1990s, the government has been attempting to expand home ownership in full disregard of the prudent lending principles that had previously governed the U.S. mortgage market. Now the motives of the GSEs fall into place. Fannie and Freddie were subject to "affordable housing" regulations, issued by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which required them to buy mortgages made to home buyers who were at or below the median income. This quota began at 30% of all purchases in the early 1990s, and was gradually ratcheted up until it called for 55% of all mortgage purchases to be "affordable" in 2007, including 25% that had to be made to low-income home buyers.
As to how to get businesses to get off their liquid assets - driving up US debt is not going to do that. While it sounds very noble, putting teachers, firefighters, and policemen to work for a year (part of Obama's stimulus plan) is going to do anything significant to stimulate the economy, especially when the money has to come from taxes, printing, or borrowing. Borrowing is the least likely to hurt the economy in the short term, yet as the government continues to accrue long term debts from which it appears unlikely we can easily climb out of (~$45K per capita and rising), it contributes to business' economic fears. Debt has to be paid off at some point, and the more debt the US has, the less will be available for sustained economic movement in the private sector, since it has to siphon a higher percentage of revenue to pay off the interest, meaning more money has to be collected overall to meet its financial obligations.
sigh... I can't understand how people think Keynesian economics makes sense. I'm not a government laissez-faire type person - some regulation is absolutely needed. The problem is that a massive amount of spending, while it may in fact provide stimulation, will also produce negative drains in equal amounts in other economic areas, either directly (taxes) or indirectly (increased debt -> lack of consumer confidence). Borrowing money is the least painful of these options, but because we're already so far in debt, a massive amount of additional debt will put a huge pressure on revenues because of future interest payments. Essentially, our back is against the wall because of previous administration's / congress' reckless spending (all parties). Our citizens are getting older, and Medicare is predicted by some to become insolvent by 2024 (that wonderfully efficient program you're talking about), and our national debt continues to skyrocket.
I don't have a magical answer to fix everything, but it feels like massive government spending as "stimulus" is just digging the hole deeper.
P.S. "death panels" is obvious hyperbole which I probably shouldn't have used, and likely pr
Until the general population believes and understands that this doesn't do a damned thing, nothing will change. Wishing for some nonsensical and nonexistent "revolution" won't really help matters.
However, I find it hard to blame people for this, when the federal government is touted as the answer to all our other problems. Bad economy? Spend a shitload of tax money to "stimulate" the economy (ignore the shell game aspect of taxing the same economy you're trying to stimulate). Problems with health care? Why, the government can fix this (ignore the death panels / health care rationing please)! Drugs a problem? No problem, the "war on drugs" is surely going to fix everything! Some people are making more money than you? Why, that's not fair! We'll tax the rich buggers and spread the wealth around.
Why do you expect people to think that the government shouldn't "fix" the problem of internal security just like it "fixes" every other problem?
The next generation of game consoles is in your hand. It's running either iOS 5, Ice Cream Sandwich or Mango, depending on why your interest lies (sorry, Android is the closest you're going to get to Linux).
The phones are selling such high volumes and adding capabilities so fast that any new hardware console, ostensibly designed for games only, will have a problem getting to critical mass. Not only are we in a post-PC world, we're in a post-game-console world as well.
Again with the post-PC and post-console prediction. The opening of a new market doesn't automatically mean the death of a previous market. Also, try telling me that I should be playing a game like Skyrim on my phone instead of a 60" screen with surround sound home theater speakers, and we'll all know that you and I are *very* different demographics.
How many times do we fall for that line?
"The (next generation of console) will offer graphics comparable to (the latest Hollywood CGI-laden blockbuster)". No. No it won't. It never has, and won't until our computers are so powerful that real-time photo-realism with nearly unlimited levels of detail becomes trivial. As good as current hardware is, it's still nowhere near that point, unless you're content with rendering a very limited scene, which is what all those impressive tech demos do.
Movie graphics are pre-rendered, of course. They take anywhere from minutes to hours per frame to render, and they can use high-end server farms to do this. Consoles are real-time systems. They must render their scene using commodity hardware in 1/30 to 1/60th of a second, in addition to computing everything else a game requires (physics, animation, audio, AI, etc).
I'm guessing some people would be pretty surprised at how much smoke and mirrors are still used, even on modern systems, in order to keep the frame rate reasonable with decent graphical fidelity. If we (speaking as a game developer here) want to be able to run on a reasonable range of systems, we have to do crazy amounts of optimization work. Our artists still have to reuse textures, conserve memory, reduce polygons, use LODs, and simplify shaders. If that's still not enough, then we're forced to cut content out (simplifying models or geometry) until we CAN run in real-time.
Aren't Microsoft/others working on a solution to prevent modification of the boot sector - essentially, the OS won't boot unless it's properly signed (trusted platform module)? Or is that something different?
I'm glad you took the comment in good humor as intended. There are a few posters who, for whatever reason, always use code tags when posting (although maybe I shouldn't assume it's intentional, eh?). It's amazing how much that makes a difference for readability.
Anyhow, as to your original point: I completely agree with your suggestion. YouTube definitely seems like a very logical early candidate, as I can envision a lot of ways for third parties to make use of a robust systems API.
And I'm going to ask you to re-read the lesson on accessibility. There's a reason why monospaced fonts are used only for code. To be blunt, whenever I see a slashdot posting in courier (or whatever), I have a strong desire to simply skip it. While we're at it... how many people do you think are going to copy paste that link into a browser. You're aware that you can enter nicely formatted HTML into your posts, like this, right? If you're going to ask Google to learn its lesson from this posting, might we ask the same of you?
PS, I hope you take this post with appropriate humor. It's intended to point out how it's pretty easy to pick up on someone else's failings while missing your own, not to slam obvious pedantic issues with your post. ;-)
Inventory management was easier because they removed upgrades! /slaps forehead
Yeah, and the heat sinks were an atrocious idea. I loved not having to worry about ammo, and learning how to manage weapon heat was a new and different mechanic that I found enjoyable. Upgrading weapons to absorb more heat took care of the problem if you couldn't learn to fire in short bursts.
I still can't imagine the thought process behind the decision to completely abandon the tank in favor of that absolutely brain-numbing scanning mini-game. If I recall, most people's complaints were along the complaints that there were only about three or four unique building types. Hell, they could have just added a bunch more buildings and locations for variety and I would have been happy.
I know it's a bit hypocritical to complain about too many formulaic games that don't take risks, but when you're already slapping a 2 behind the name of a game, it makes a lot more sense to try to refine the game with each new release rather than completely futzing around with its basic gameplay.
Bioware, if you're listening:
* If I wanted a brainless action game or shooter, I wouldn't be looking to you. Don't be afraid to make your RPGs deep and tactical.
* Get rid of the damn heat-clips. You had a unique weapon mechanic with ME1. I certainly wasn't pining for ammo clips like *every other game ever*.
* Don't "fix" problems by completely eliminating the feature. I liked collecting upgrades, and I liked the planet-side missions in the vehicles. They just needed more refinement.
--end rant
Sorry, but I loved ME1 so much, and 2 was a huge disappointment to me, despite the slightly better shooter mechanics (pretty much at the expense of everything else). And as shooters went, it was still only second-rate.
Some of the guys at PA + Scott Kurtz made an an entire comic about game testers. Rather entertaining so far. Also, the real-life stories are both funny and sad at the same time.
It depends on why you enjoy playing games. If you enjoy immersion and escapism, unintended analysis might be problematic. In the same manner, would you find a magician's illusions as entertaining if you knew beforehand exactly how the trick was accomplished? For some people, it might ruin the 'magic', so to speak. For others, it might make the show even more fascinating to see all the behind the scenes mechanics of how illusions are presented. It probably depends on your personality.
I don't mind knowing how things work behind the scenes. However, I do make an effort not to think too much about that during a game on the first play-through at least, because I'm more interested in losing myself in the gameplay, story, characters, setting, etc.
Ah, ok. That's 60% less insane. :) In general, discouraging investment still has a lot of negative repercussions, which I think is the last thing our economy needs right now.
Well, as a programmer in the gaming industry, I can't say that holds true for me. Most of my my friends and co-workers are enthusiastic gamers as well. Granted, you get sick of the game (and sometimes the genre) that you're currently working on, but that doesn't dampen my enthusiasm for other games. I pretty much own most every console and handheld device there is (although I only bought a PSP because I wanted to show off the game I made) because I'm first and foremost a gamer at heart. Otherwise, I'd get a more traditional programming job that's less difficult and stressful for far more pay. I certainly make a concerted effort to switch out of "game programmer mode" when playing, though. I do, though, on occasion, actually purchase and play a title simply because I'm interested in it at a purely professional level.
If you would have a hard time switching between "work mode" and "play mode", I could certainly understand not wanting to ruin your fun time. To be honest, working on a game and playing a game are such different experiences that I can't recall any of my colleagues ever complaining that they were no longer able to enjoy videogaming in general.
Favorite game types:
RPGs (both JRPGs and western-style, although I consider them two wildly separate genres)
Shooters
Strategy / God-games
Puzzle games
Currently in the play queue:
Ico / Shadow of the Collosus (picked them up for PS3 - never played the originals)
Uncharted 2 (need to finish before 3 comes out)
Gears of War 3
Disgaea 4
Atlier Rorona
I'll settle for anyone who I believe will not deficit-spend our government and economy into insolvency.
Raising the minimum wage tends to both increase unemployment (since it cost more to hire people, businesses tend to hire fewer people), and increase the general cost of living across the board (again, logical if you think about it for just a moment).
Taking away 80% of investment income is insane. Investments are largely about providing capital to companies that wish to expand operations. This is a critical part of our economy, and disincentivizing a monetary return on already risky investments mean our economy will tank even further.
If simple solutions like these would actually fix the problems, I'd be all for it. The law of unintended consequences means you'd probably hurt working-class people more than the rich by doing this. Case example: The failure of the luxury tax.
Maybe, but as patents get more specific, they also become less relevant. Sounds like you're even more jaded than I am. I hold out some hope, because we've already seen patents such as LZW expire, and (at least to my knowledge), no one has been able to patent it again with "slightly different wording". The system is bad right now, but I don't believe it's that completely corrupt yet.
Sigh... I'm not very optimistic about the software patent situation. The only bright spot is the very long view. Companies are patenting absolutely anything they can get away with right now. While this poses a problem for short term software development, I wonder if this will have ramifications for long term development. That is... once all the "core technology" patents have expired, they'll be free to use henceforth.
There are likely natural limitations to how much audio or video data can be compressed. Once these patents expire, it will probably occur at a point in time when any incremental advancements in the next codec don't render enough of an advantage given the likely increases in network speeds. I think we've already hit that point with audio encoding - for nearly everyone, mp3 is now good enough and small enough that more sophisticated codecs don't really matter anymore, even if they marginally improve compression/quality ratios.
Scant comfort, I know, as 17 years is a hell of a long time to wait for things to be freed up. Still, it's nice to know these companies won't have an eternal lock on these methods.
Maybe I'm a little prejudiced, (I'm a game dev working on a more traditional MMO right now), but our customers still seem to be interested high-fidelity worlds, complete with rich graphics and audio. People have been shouting about how the thin client is the future for a decade or more now, and it simply never happens. There's still something to be said for the ability to create high-performance applications that can be run directly on the user's machine, in native code. We do incredibly demanding things, and the fact of the matter is that until we literally have more performance than we know what to do with, native binaries will always have a huge advantage when it comes to manipulating and displaying high-fidelity virtual worlds.
Naturally, there are plenty of opportunities in more specialized, smaller, niche markets, but to say everything is going that direction is a bit far-fetched. Granted, we're not oblivious to this direction, as we have a small team working on a lot of web-based and mobile integration initiatives, but I really hate when people are so quick to come to some sort of "all or nothing" conclusion about any new emerging market or technology.
Will HTML5 eventually kill Flash? Probably, if there is really good tool support. It it going to be the be-all and end-all for future MMOs? Yes and no... there will certainly be a move there, especially among games with lighter requirements, but big-budget native clients are going to be with us for quite a while still.