I'm not sure I'd necessarily agree that the breakdown is in "demanding of hardware" or "not demanding of hardware". I'd say the breakdown is more "do you need a huge team of dedicated artists to complete the project?" The "demanding of hardware" aspect tends to be a side effect of the fact that you've got a lot of high-resolution assets to display, which in turn can only come from a large team of artists. As a counter-example, you don't tend to see free versions of "The Curse of Monkey Island", which would be reasonably straightforward to program with low demands on hardware, but extremely art and design intensive.
Your typical AAA games are much more art-intensive than programmer-intensive nowadays. For whatever reason, it seems harder to organize large groups of artists, designers, writers, etc to work on a free project. Or at least, that's my working theory...
You're dividing three phenomena that are tightly linked--complainers, lost sales, and writers with a high number of eyeballs. There have definitely been times when I made purchasing decisions on the basis of discussions with other gamers--if everyone is complaining about something that sounds like it will bother me, I'll avoid the product.
Further, for websites like Rock Paper Shotgun, the complainers, or people who at least sympathize with some of the complaining, ARE the eyeballs in question. They have a particular vision of what computer gaming should be, or at least a vague sense that it could be more than it is, and write from that perspective. That vision and perspective don't exist in a vacuum--it's something that their writers have developed not just playing games but also listening to what other people (some of them complainers) had to say. And, ironically, that complaining can lead to increased sales--when someone who shares some of my complaints expresses an interest in a different product, I'm more inclined to check that product out.
Single complaints (especially like "this should be longer" or "this should be cheaper") don't add much, if anything, but taken together they have an effect on gaming's ecosystem.
Yeah, I probably should have clarified a bit more on that subject. We certainly do listen to complaints (I tend to read them on my lunch hour), but it's more in aggregate, because you always get some really bizarre outlier-type complaints, or completely opposing viewpoints, etc. And believe me, I'm not dismissing how bad word-of-mouth can negatively impact sales. Naturally, it's all related to some degree.
My primary point was that I don't believe it's the complaining that pushes games to innovate. What complaints can often do is give devs direction, of course. Maybe a new game mechanic doesn't work as well as the designer had hoped, etc. Maybe management made a really stupid decision (I count intrusive DRM among these). Maybe that's just hubris, but at every place I've been, there were a lot of really passionate gamers who were always interested in making things cooler, better, and more interesting.
So, the whole notion that the entire industry would stagnate if people didn't complain sounds a bit silly to me, I guess. After all, if you were making the games, wouldn't you want to try out cool new things? Well, of course any gamer would. Why would people think game developers are different?
Sorry, but you started ranting at me about how companies were money-sucking grubs even when I was telling you that I agree that companies are motivated by money, so I got a bit annoyed.
I don't even really understand you're arguing with me, because I completely agree with you. It's not a good policy to make people unhappy over the cost of a single sale. I don't think companies should be doing that.
On the other hand, you seem to be getting really, really angry about a single lemon of a game, of which I'm presuming you're out $50-$60. I know that's not chump change, but it's not exactly like you're losing your life savings either. I guess I'm maybe a bit less passionate about this than you are because 50 dollars is sort of the price range where it really stings to lose it, but you just learn your lesson and never buy from that company again. Unless you live somewhere with consumer protection laws that prevent shit like this, there's really nothing you can do, practically speaking.
Explain the difference between the money the company gets from happy customers and from customers they've screwed.
The difference is simple... Money from an unhappy customer is a one-shot deal. Money from a happy customer is a long term partnership. A happy customer is much more likely to purchase your next game, or add-ons and downloadable goodies for the current game. We get sustained revenue, and the customer gets products they enjoy. Win-win.
The best way for a producer and consumer relationship to work is when both parties have an amicable exchange. No, obviously not all companies understand this either (and in fact, *most* don't), and while you can froth and rant and write about it, there's really not much you can personally do except to never do business with them again - and warn your friends, I guess.
Your problem is that you're thinking about this issue far too rationally, like how an engineer would solve a problem. The Germans obviously don't want rational solutions, they want a feel-good solution.
You obviously stopped reading my post a bit too early. For your convenience, I'll recap for you with fewer and shorter words:
Innovation in the game industry is motivated by: * creativity * sales
BTW, I think a loss of sales is a fantastic motivation for companies. It's the equivalent of threatening a company's life, so you can bet they'll take it seriously. That's why I say complaining doesn't do as much. Voting with your wallet is typically more powerful than ranting about something on a blog or in a forum, unless you happen to have a *lot* of eyeballs on your writing. Downloading and playing cracked versions of the game sends a mixed message - both 'I'm interested enough in the game to acquire and play it' and 'I don't want to pay for this game'. It's impossible for the company to divine exactly how to interpret large number of non-paying 'customers'. In my experience, truly happy customers intuitively know that their purchase drives the development of new games, and so don't mind the cost as much if the perceived value is high enough for the money.
And now that companies refuse to refund anything for a game that doesn't run at all, there is no financial motive for them to give a fuck. You bought it, they have the money, end of story.
Happy customers are repeat customers, and that's a huge motivation. Gaming customers are not an infinite resource that can be discarded, as companies require large numbers of sales to be profitable. It's in a company's best interest to make the customer as happy as possible (within reason). Again, vote with your wallet. If you have an issue with a company, don't support them. If you pay them for the next game they make, then you're rewarding that behavior.
If everyone stopped complaining, nothing would ever improve. Think about it: if you're a video game exec and people just shut up and bought anything you put out, why would you bother investing in better graphics, better narrative, better design? People think it's bad enough now with CoD17 and Madden2200, but it can get much worse. Without constant complaints we would see a race to the bottom, with even more unoriginal ideas and simplistic gameplay. Dissatisfaction drives innovation and change. Companies aren't going to fix what their customers don't see as broken.
Anecdotally, when I was younger, I was never able to finish video games. Now, I finish the majority of console games that I buy within the first day or 2, with the exception of sandbox games like Red Dead Redemption and Fallout. Either the games have gotten shorter, or they've gotten easier. Either way, something's wrong
It's not complaints that motivate companies. Creativity is driven largely by gamers working within the industry. Where I work, we're mostly a company of gamers, and we all really, really want to produce the most kickass game we can (this is fairly typical in the gaming industry). We're pretty fortunate that our management are also gamers, and support us both financially and creatively (which unfortunately is not so typical). The other motivator, of course, is sales. No matter how creative we wish to be, we're doing this as a business, and we need to be paid for our time in order to live (housing, food, etc isn't free). Complaints are inevitable to some extent, because people like complaining. Typically, a company can tell when it does something *wrong* by listening to complaints, but believe me, it's not a driving force in most cases.
BTW, as to why games have gotten shorter... there's no simple answer, but the general trend has been that high-fidelity content (meaning 3D, high-resolution graphics, fully voiced, fully orchestrated scores, movie-quality sound effects, etc) are unbelievably more expensive than games of a few decades ago. The game I'm working on now has over a hundred artists working for the past few years (it's a huge, huge game). Most games simply don't have the budget to do this. Huge worlds used to be created with simple 2D tilesets, and populated with sprite-based characters that only needed to speak in chat bubbles. Once you move to 3D graphics, this same open-world concept becomes incredibly difficult to achieve. I'm not trying to offer excuses for shorter games - it's just the reality of the situation. You *know* that if a game lowered the graphics standards or did too much copy and paste of content, they'd get creamed in the reviews. If they don't, people complain about the game length.
The good news is that I believe we're going to reach a relative plateau of fidelity, and from that point, the bulk of the development effort will be in finding ways of producing more content in a more efficient manner. It's still going to be expensive, as there are some tasks that just can't be easily animated, but there are still many things in the industry that we tend to do by brute force, unfortunately. It also doesn't help that we need to recreate the same types of assets for each new generation of hardware as capabilities increases. Once the tech settles down and we can start re-using more core assets from game to game, and we can focus more of our time on developing advanced content generation tools, you're going to start seeing much larger and more complex games, even from those with relatively modest budgets.
Console Gaming is on the decline anyway... I doubt their will be much of a Console Gaming comeback in the future either.
We're just seeing the typical slowdown closer to the end of product life cycles. Most everyone who wanted a current generation console has one (or two) by now - the market is becoming somewhat saturated. I'd wager that gamers will be just as excited when Sony and MS start talking about their next console offering. Besides which, sales of consoles is not really the best way to judge the health of the overall market. The real issue is: are games still being created and published for it? For all three major console platforms, the answer is still 'yes', of course.
I keep hearing wannabe pundits declaring the "death" of all the existing gaming platforms: PC gaming, console gaming, handheld gaming... just because iPhone/Android gaming is the hot new thing doesn't mean it's going to kill every other market. It's the current media darling, and we're just seeing the initial explosion of a new market. It's ridiculous to think that a phone can give the same gaming experience a console hooked up to a big screen TV can, or a PC game with it's vastly superior input devices and processing power.
No, sorry, console or PC gaming will not be going away, any more than the TV room in people's homes is going away. Markets will shift, of course, but I think what you're going to see is a general expansion / broadening of the entire market, not necessarily one market stealing from another, which is right in line with general technology adoption trends.
I guess I'll put it this way. I've never really seen a compelling reason where it should be necessary to do that where a saner design wouldn't suffice. I haven't had to break this rule during my career (at least, not that I recall - certainly not recently). Anytime I've gone down that path design-wise, a bit of thought usually leads me to a more elegant design anyhow.
My rules may not be the same as other rules - hence, why I would never suggest they be codified into the language rules. To me, that's part of what makes C++ both awesome and dangerous at the same time. Part of the trick of using C++ is, IMO, extracting the subset of rules and idioms you're comfortable with and work well for you, and then using them consistently. No one should be using some language feature just because it's there, or because you can do it.
Anytime I see someone trying to do 'clever' things with the language, I tend to cringe, because even if they save a few lines of code here and there, it often comes at the cost of maintainability down the road. It's taken me a long time to realize this, but boring code is beautiful code.
Thank you. Also, I'd love to know what the summary considers to be a "top-notch" game sold for a dollar. Really? I don't have an iPhone, but I do have an iPad, and most of the $1 games (hell, most of the sub $10 games) are absolute garbage, at least as far as I'm concerned. Novelty games, sure, but sorry, they don't really hold my interest.
It's funny, Gabe of PA posits: you buy one $40 game and I'll buy 40 $1 dollar game, and we'll see who has more fun. To be honest, I'm the sort that tends to prefer quality over quantity, so I guess I'll be taking the one $40 game. Call me strange if you want...
C++ is a powerful and pragmatic, but ugly and dangerous language. No doubt about it. I'm a game developer, so I'm either working on C++ in engine code (and a subset of C++ at that), or in higher-level languages such as C# or Python for tools.
And of course, C++ is definitely a language that requires a significant amount of programmer discipline - more so than other languages, at least from what I've seen. At a personal and a company level, you need to develop some guidelines that keep you from walking into tar pits. For instance, there's never a good excuse to use multiple inheritance, except if you're using it for interfaces (pure virtual classes). And of course, avoid the diamond of death at all costs. For a C++ programmer with any experience at all, that's just common sense (and any good tutorial will warn newbies well away from that trap as well).
Operator overloads? Don't use them stupidly, to be blunt about it. If I saw anyone using them inappropriately I'd say something during a code review, just like with any other bad coding-related decision.
Virtual destructors? A dangerous corner of the language and a potential source of bugs to be sure. But the option to NOT use a virtual destructor (only pay for what you use) is the reason we use C++ for our low-level engine code.
Nothing else is as fast and as portable, while still maintaining a reasonable level of abstraction for design and maintenance purposes. And frankly, one of the most important things about C++ is the ability to drop down to more functional-style programming when required to for optimization purposes.
I actually began working on a new codebase for a small game I'm writing at home, and I decided to embrace a lot of new C++0x features at a very core level (something you don't see in many game engines). It's pretty interesting when you make heavy use of smart pointers / ref counting to manage your resources. With some programming discipline, it feels quite a bit like writing C#, which to me has always been quite enjoyable as a language.
In the end, C++0x is a pretty big deal to those who use it, because even though boost is extremely portable, it's still not the standard. There's always a bit of a mental jump you have to make to adopt a third-party library as part of your core designs. Personally, I've been pretty impressed by what I've seen so far, and look forward to exploring more of the new features as they are adopted by the major compiler vendors.
I'd submit the game development industry is still one place where tight, fast-running code really matters. But the trick is, writing efficient code is extremely slow and expensive to develop. At my company, our game engine is written in C/C++ like most places, but we still write most of our tools in C# or Python (and from what I understand, that's also becoming the norm). We well understand that we're trading efficiency of execution for efficiency of performance in those cases. Both types of coding certainly have their place.
I get a little annoyed at zealots on both sides that claim that "C++ is dead" or "C# is too slow", blah, blah... If you ask a carpenter what is "best tool" is, he might ask you "for doing what?" Programming is no different. People who cling to a single language or paradigm are just missing the big picture, IMO.
I'd say it's likely a deliberate choice, likely done for technical, artistic, and psychological reasons.
Obviously, it's easier to render a relatively barren landscape. Drawing large vistas filled with trees is still somewhat of a challenge, even for today's systems. But the largest reason is probably psychological. Green worlds feel alive, warm, inviting, and healthy. Brown barren landscapes are bleak and depressing, and this is the mood the game developers are trying to convey. Technically speaking, yes, the world should be overgrown and lush with vegetation in a post-apocalyptic world, but I think it doesn't create the correct mood for the game.
I don't think it's quite fair to paint either liberals or conservatives like that (I'm a conservative myself, btw). Most people I know, liberals and conservatives alike, place an extremely high value on both the fetus and child, especially their own. I'd go so far as to argue this is the natural human instinct - to protect and nurture one's progeny. Like any generalization, of course you'll find varying degrees and plenty of outright exceptions and contradictions.
The last major game console generation? Yeah, right...
I've heard the same predictions about mobile phones becoming the new dominant game system. Mobile phones are a growing market, certainly, but why does a growing market in one area mean the death of a market in another? I've never understood that logic. I have no interest in mobile gaming, since I have a screen to myself and rarely find myself in a position where I have a lot of time with just a phone to entertain me. My TV makes a much better gaming experience than a phone.
We're seeing the expansion of the gaming market as a whole. Personally, I think you're going to see a lot of cross-over, with game ports and tie-in apps to major PC and console titles with the new markets, as well as a continuing growth of small / indie devs across the board. Frankly, the market for games looks better than ever in all areas. PC has declined a bit in prominence, but honestly, there's a lot of activity there as well if you care to look - just not as many AAA exclusives.
Aaand... some other folks rightly pointed out (and the article did mention, to be fair) that these could belong to govt institutions for which it's highly appropriate to have some entertainment devices. A military recreational center, or perhaps a prison rec center for inmates who are behaving themselves.
I'm certainly one to decry government waste, and heaven knows our government actually spends way too much now, but these examples don't seem all that egregious to me. In fact, Blackberrys (a specially encrypted version) are what most classified communication in the government uses, isn't it? Does that seem appropriate? I guess it does to me.
i remember life before my blackberry when only PHB had it. go out for the whole saturday and check email at night and there are 5 emails from PHB with 4 of the being why someone didn't respond. sorry, don't have a blackberry like you do so no email on the road.
now with AT&T and VZW both going to tiered data expect the peons to stop putting work email acccounts on their iphones unless the company picks up part of the tab
Smartphones don't sound like some frivolous expense. Heck, my company subsidizes half the cost of a laptop purchase. After a year of payments, it belongs to us completely, although we're expected to use it at work of course. The gaming systems are a tad suspicous though (well, except for us. We develop videogames, so they're an honest-to-god business expense). Maybe you could explain away the PS3s as being good video playback devices, but... really?
Completely offtopic: I saw a license plate while driving home the other day that read 666-PHB. I burst out laughing, and was thankful I was alone in the car, because that's completely geeky to explain to someone else why it's so funny. I was also thinking how awesome it would be if the guy driving the car was actually some middle management schlub at some big, soul-sucking corporation.
Except PLEASE post the story the first time one of these arrogant, maladjusted little fuckers is caught and locked away for 10-20. I definitely want to read about that. These asinine attacks? Yeah, not so much.
They are legion. They do not forgive. They do not forget. They do not plan. They do not show restraint. They do not not choose their battles. They do not help.
They are juveniles. They are irresponsible. They have social issues. They are only brave because they are anonymous. They would sob like a girl if they actually got caught and put in prison.
It was a "Windows Live" game, not a general PC title. Also was developed by Microsoft, so it's not a great case. Microsoft simply won't allow a cross-network game if part of that network involves PSN customers. At least, that's their current policy.
It's almost a law that the current console market leader is going to be really dickish toward developers. Nintendo was during it's early heyday, and so was Sony (you'd be amazed at the change of attitude when developing a PS2 vs a PSP title). MS is currently the clear leader in online offerings, so they've got a nice "you're going to play by our rules" attitude right now.
I doubt.NET is really going anywhere. There's a huge eco-system of apps written for.NET, and a number of entire languages and core libraries written on top of it. People keep talking about this nonsense of a "post PC world". Utter tripe - the kind of inane banter made by people who only care about new shiny gizmos, or those who have a vested interest in killing off the PC. The expansion of new markets doesn't necessarily guarantee the demise of the old. PCs are great at lots of things that other devices simply can't touch... you know, like doing actual work on it. Cooler and wiser heads will prevail. Either that, or MS will commit suicide in front of the entire world by throwing out a pretty amazing piece of technology they've been developing for the past decade.
Trying to force stories into games is one of the reasons why so many new games are so bad.
To me, games simply aren't as engaging or interesting unless it also tells a story. And frankly, for as many people like you who are more interested in the gameplay, there are plenty of people like me who who tend to view story-driving cutscenes as a tangible reward for gameplay progress, and look forward to them. I lost interest in pure twitch-fest gameplay quite a while ago. While the occasional arcade game is entertaining for brief periods, it just can't hold my attention for long anymore.
The inclusion of story is not a new phenomenon, nor is it a poor fit. It's just that technology allows us to present the story in a more engaging fashion nowadays. Donkey Kong was telling a story through its characters and setting, and even had a simple cutscene! Even the simplest arcade games typically provided some sort of character motivation to drive the player forward toward some ultimate goal. Actions without motivation are extremely boring to me. That being said, the overall quality of storytelling and presentation needs to be high quality, or game devs shouldn't even bother. Nor is an engaging story an excuse to neglect core gameplay elements.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go pick up my copy of LA Noir.
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I'm not sure I'd necessarily agree that the breakdown is in "demanding of hardware" or "not demanding of hardware". I'd say the breakdown is more "do you need a huge team of dedicated artists to complete the project?" The "demanding of hardware" aspect tends to be a side effect of the fact that you've got a lot of high-resolution assets to display, which in turn can only come from a large team of artists. As a counter-example, you don't tend to see free versions of "The Curse of Monkey Island", which would be reasonably straightforward to program with low demands on hardware, but extremely art and design intensive.
Your typical AAA games are much more art-intensive than programmer-intensive nowadays. For whatever reason, it seems harder to organize large groups of artists, designers, writers, etc to work on a free project. Or at least, that's my working theory...
You're dividing three phenomena that are tightly linked--complainers, lost sales, and writers with a high number of eyeballs. There have definitely been times when I made purchasing decisions on the basis of discussions with other gamers--if everyone is complaining about something that sounds like it will bother me, I'll avoid the product.
Further, for websites like Rock Paper Shotgun, the complainers, or people who at least sympathize with some of the complaining, ARE the eyeballs in question. They have a particular vision of what computer gaming should be, or at least a vague sense that it could be more than it is, and write from that perspective. That vision and perspective don't exist in a vacuum--it's something that their writers have developed not just playing games but also listening to what other people (some of them complainers) had to say. And, ironically, that complaining can lead to increased sales--when someone who shares some of my complaints expresses an interest in a different product, I'm more inclined to check that product out.
Single complaints (especially like "this should be longer" or "this should be cheaper") don't add much, if anything, but taken together they have an effect on gaming's ecosystem.
Yeah, I probably should have clarified a bit more on that subject. We certainly do listen to complaints (I tend to read them on my lunch hour), but it's more in aggregate, because you always get some really bizarre outlier-type complaints, or completely opposing viewpoints, etc. And believe me, I'm not dismissing how bad word-of-mouth can negatively impact sales. Naturally, it's all related to some degree.
My primary point was that I don't believe it's the complaining that pushes games to innovate. What complaints can often do is give devs direction, of course. Maybe a new game mechanic doesn't work as well as the designer had hoped, etc. Maybe management made a really stupid decision (I count intrusive DRM among these). Maybe that's just hubris, but at every place I've been, there were a lot of really passionate gamers who were always interested in making things cooler, better, and more interesting.
So, the whole notion that the entire industry would stagnate if people didn't complain sounds a bit silly to me, I guess. After all, if you were making the games, wouldn't you want to try out cool new things? Well, of course any gamer would. Why would people think game developers are different?
Don't be an ass.
Sorry, but you started ranting at me about how companies were money-sucking grubs even when I was telling you that I agree that companies are motivated by money, so I got a bit annoyed.
I don't even really understand you're arguing with me, because I completely agree with you. It's not a good policy to make people unhappy over the cost of a single sale. I don't think companies should be doing that.
On the other hand, you seem to be getting really, really angry about a single lemon of a game, of which I'm presuming you're out $50-$60. I know that's not chump change, but it's not exactly like you're losing your life savings either. I guess I'm maybe a bit less passionate about this than you are because 50 dollars is sort of the price range where it really stings to lose it, but you just learn your lesson and never buy from that company again. Unless you live somewhere with consumer protection laws that prevent shit like this, there's really nothing you can do, practically speaking.
Explain the difference between the money the company gets from happy customers and from customers they've screwed.
The difference is simple... Money from an unhappy customer is a one-shot deal. Money from a happy customer is a long term partnership. A happy customer is much more likely to purchase your next game, or add-ons and downloadable goodies for the current game. We get sustained revenue, and the customer gets products they enjoy. Win-win.
The best way for a producer and consumer relationship to work is when both parties have an amicable exchange. No, obviously not all companies understand this either (and in fact, *most* don't), and while you can froth and rant and write about it, there's really not much you can personally do except to never do business with them again - and warn your friends, I guess.
Your problem is that you're thinking about this issue far too rationally, like how an engineer would solve a problem. The Germans obviously don't want rational solutions, they want a feel-good solution.
You obviously stopped reading my post a bit too early. For your convenience, I'll recap for you with fewer and shorter words:
Innovation in the game industry is motivated by:
* creativity
* sales
BTW, I think a loss of sales is a fantastic motivation for companies. It's the equivalent of threatening a company's life, so you can bet they'll take it seriously. That's why I say complaining doesn't do as much. Voting with your wallet is typically more powerful than ranting about something on a blog or in a forum, unless you happen to have a *lot* of eyeballs on your writing. Downloading and playing cracked versions of the game sends a mixed message - both 'I'm interested enough in the game to acquire and play it' and 'I don't want to pay for this game'. It's impossible for the company to divine exactly how to interpret large number of non-paying 'customers'. In my experience, truly happy customers intuitively know that their purchase drives the development of new games, and so don't mind the cost as much if the perceived value is high enough for the money.
And now that companies refuse to refund anything for a game that doesn't run at all, there is no financial motive for them to give a fuck. You bought it, they have the money, end of story.
Happy customers are repeat customers, and that's a huge motivation. Gaming customers are not an infinite resource that can be discarded, as companies require large numbers of sales to be profitable. It's in a company's best interest to make the customer as happy as possible (within reason). Again, vote with your wallet. If you have an issue with a company, don't support them. If you pay them for the next game they make, then you're rewarding that behavior.
If everyone stopped complaining, nothing would ever improve. Think about it: if you're a video game exec and people just shut up and bought anything you put out, why would you bother investing in better graphics, better narrative, better design? People think it's bad enough now with CoD17 and Madden2200, but it can get much worse. Without constant complaints we would see a race to the bottom, with even more unoriginal ideas and simplistic gameplay. Dissatisfaction drives innovation and change. Companies aren't going to fix what their customers don't see as broken.
Anecdotally, when I was younger, I was never able to finish video games. Now, I finish the majority of console games that I buy within the first day or 2, with the exception of sandbox games like Red Dead Redemption and Fallout. Either the games have gotten shorter, or they've gotten easier. Either way, something's wrong
It's not complaints that motivate companies. Creativity is driven largely by gamers working within the industry. Where I work, we're mostly a company of gamers, and we all really, really want to produce the most kickass game we can (this is fairly typical in the gaming industry). We're pretty fortunate that our management are also gamers, and support us both financially and creatively (which unfortunately is not so typical). The other motivator, of course, is sales. No matter how creative we wish to be, we're doing this as a business, and we need to be paid for our time in order to live (housing, food, etc isn't free). Complaints are inevitable to some extent, because people like complaining. Typically, a company can tell when it does something *wrong* by listening to complaints, but believe me, it's not a driving force in most cases.
BTW, as to why games have gotten shorter... there's no simple answer, but the general trend has been that high-fidelity content (meaning 3D, high-resolution graphics, fully voiced, fully orchestrated scores, movie-quality sound effects, etc) are unbelievably more expensive than games of a few decades ago. The game I'm working on now has over a hundred artists working for the past few years (it's a huge, huge game). Most games simply don't have the budget to do this. Huge worlds used to be created with simple 2D tilesets, and populated with sprite-based characters that only needed to speak in chat bubbles. Once you move to 3D graphics, this same open-world concept becomes incredibly difficult to achieve. I'm not trying to offer excuses for shorter games - it's just the reality of the situation. You *know* that if a game lowered the graphics standards or did too much copy and paste of content, they'd get creamed in the reviews. If they don't, people complain about the game length.
The good news is that I believe we're going to reach a relative plateau of fidelity, and from that point, the bulk of the development effort will be in finding ways of producing more content in a more efficient manner. It's still going to be expensive, as there are some tasks that just can't be easily animated, but there are still many things in the industry that we tend to do by brute force, unfortunately. It also doesn't help that we need to recreate the same types of assets for each new generation of hardware as capabilities increases. Once the tech settles down and we can start re-using more core assets from game to game, and we can focus more of our time on developing advanced content generation tools, you're going to start seeing much larger and more complex games, even from those with relatively modest budgets.
Console Gaming is on the decline anyway... I doubt their will be much of a Console Gaming comeback in the future either.
We're just seeing the typical slowdown closer to the end of product life cycles. Most everyone who wanted a current generation console has one (or two) by now - the market is becoming somewhat saturated. I'd wager that gamers will be just as excited when Sony and MS start talking about their next console offering. Besides which, sales of consoles is not really the best way to judge the health of the overall market. The real issue is: are games still being created and published for it? For all three major console platforms, the answer is still 'yes', of course.
I keep hearing wannabe pundits declaring the "death" of all the existing gaming platforms: PC gaming, console gaming, handheld gaming... just because iPhone/Android gaming is the hot new thing doesn't mean it's going to kill every other market. It's the current media darling, and we're just seeing the initial explosion of a new market. It's ridiculous to think that a phone can give the same gaming experience a console hooked up to a big screen TV can, or a PC game with it's vastly superior input devices and processing power.
No, sorry, console or PC gaming will not be going away, any more than the TV room in people's homes is going away. Markets will shift, of course, but I think what you're going to see is a general expansion / broadening of the entire market, not necessarily one market stealing from another, which is right in line with general technology adoption trends.
Too direct of an approach. Maybe just switch things around a bit, AC?
"Downfall" was also excellent. It's a shame if the only footage of it you've seen is in the many youtube parodies everyone here has undoubtedly seen.
I guess I'll put it this way. I've never really seen a compelling reason where it should be necessary to do that where a saner design wouldn't suffice. I haven't had to break this rule during my career (at least, not that I recall - certainly not recently). Anytime I've gone down that path design-wise, a bit of thought usually leads me to a more elegant design anyhow.
My rules may not be the same as other rules - hence, why I would never suggest they be codified into the language rules. To me, that's part of what makes C++ both awesome and dangerous at the same time. Part of the trick of using C++ is, IMO, extracting the subset of rules and idioms you're comfortable with and work well for you, and then using them consistently. No one should be using some language feature just because it's there, or because you can do it.
Anytime I see someone trying to do 'clever' things with the language, I tend to cringe, because even if they save a few lines of code here and there, it often comes at the cost of maintainability down the road. It's taken me a long time to realize this, but boring code is beautiful code.
Thank you. Also, I'd love to know what the summary considers to be a "top-notch" game sold for a dollar. Really? I don't have an iPhone, but I do have an iPad, and most of the $1 games (hell, most of the sub $10 games) are absolute garbage, at least as far as I'm concerned. Novelty games, sure, but sorry, they don't really hold my interest.
It's funny, Gabe of PA posits: you buy one $40 game and I'll buy 40 $1 dollar game, and we'll see who has more fun. To be honest, I'm the sort that tends to prefer quality over quantity, so I guess I'll be taking the one $40 game. Call me strange if you want...
C++ is a powerful and pragmatic, but ugly and dangerous language. No doubt about it. I'm a game developer, so I'm either working on C++ in engine code (and a subset of C++ at that), or in higher-level languages such as C# or Python for tools.
And of course, C++ is definitely a language that requires a significant amount of programmer discipline - more so than other languages, at least from what I've seen. At a personal and a company level, you need to develop some guidelines that keep you from walking into tar pits. For instance, there's never a good excuse to use multiple inheritance, except if you're using it for interfaces (pure virtual classes). And of course, avoid the diamond of death at all costs. For a C++ programmer with any experience at all, that's just common sense (and any good tutorial will warn newbies well away from that trap as well).
Operator overloads? Don't use them stupidly, to be blunt about it. If I saw anyone using them inappropriately I'd say something during a code review, just like with any other bad coding-related decision.
Virtual destructors? A dangerous corner of the language and a potential source of bugs to be sure. But the option to NOT use a virtual destructor (only pay for what you use) is the reason we use C++ for our low-level engine code.
Nothing else is as fast and as portable, while still maintaining a reasonable level of abstraction for design and maintenance purposes. And frankly, one of the most important things about C++ is the ability to drop down to more functional-style programming when required to for optimization purposes.
I actually began working on a new codebase for a small game I'm writing at home, and I decided to embrace a lot of new C++0x features at a very core level (something you don't see in many game engines). It's pretty interesting when you make heavy use of smart pointers / ref counting to manage your resources. With some programming discipline, it feels quite a bit like writing C#, which to me has always been quite enjoyable as a language.
In the end, C++0x is a pretty big deal to those who use it, because even though boost is extremely portable, it's still not the standard. There's always a bit of a mental jump you have to make to adopt a third-party library as part of your core designs. Personally, I've been pretty impressed by what I've seen so far, and look forward to exploring more of the new features as they are adopted by the major compiler vendors.
I'd submit the game development industry is still one place where tight, fast-running code really matters. But the trick is, writing efficient code is extremely slow and expensive to develop. At my company, our game engine is written in C/C++ like most places, but we still write most of our tools in C# or Python (and from what I understand, that's also becoming the norm). We well understand that we're trading efficiency of execution for efficiency of performance in those cases. Both types of coding certainly have their place.
I get a little annoyed at zealots on both sides that claim that "C++ is dead" or "C# is too slow", blah, blah... If you ask a carpenter what is "best tool" is, he might ask you "for doing what?" Programming is no different. People who cling to a single language or paradigm are just missing the big picture, IMO.
I'd say it's likely a deliberate choice, likely done for technical, artistic, and psychological reasons.
Obviously, it's easier to render a relatively barren landscape. Drawing large vistas filled with trees is still somewhat of a challenge, even for today's systems. But the largest reason is probably psychological. Green worlds feel alive, warm, inviting, and healthy. Brown barren landscapes are bleak and depressing, and this is the mood the game developers are trying to convey. Technically speaking, yes, the world should be overgrown and lush with vegetation in a post-apocalyptic world, but I think it doesn't create the correct mood for the game.
I don't think it's quite fair to paint either liberals or conservatives like that (I'm a conservative myself, btw). Most people I know, liberals and conservatives alike, place an extremely high value on both the fetus and child, especially their own. I'd go so far as to argue this is the natural human instinct - to protect and nurture one's progeny. Like any generalization, of course you'll find varying degrees and plenty of outright exceptions and contradictions.
The last major game console generation? Yeah, right...
I've heard the same predictions about mobile phones becoming the new dominant game system. Mobile phones are a growing market, certainly, but why does a growing market in one area mean the death of a market in another? I've never understood that logic. I have no interest in mobile gaming, since I have a screen to myself and rarely find myself in a position where I have a lot of time with just a phone to entertain me. My TV makes a much better gaming experience than a phone.
We're seeing the expansion of the gaming market as a whole. Personally, I think you're going to see a lot of cross-over, with game ports and tie-in apps to major PC and console titles with the new markets, as well as a continuing growth of small / indie devs across the board. Frankly, the market for games looks better than ever in all areas. PC has declined a bit in prominence, but honestly, there's a lot of activity there as well if you care to look - just not as many AAA exclusives.
Kotick is Activition/Blizzard, not EA. It takes someone pretty special to be even MORE hated than EA, but he's somehow managed it.
Aaand... some other folks rightly pointed out (and the article did mention, to be fair) that these could belong to govt institutions for which it's highly appropriate to have some entertainment devices. A military recreational center, or perhaps a prison rec center for inmates who are behaving themselves.
I'm certainly one to decry government waste, and heaven knows our government actually spends way too much now, but these examples don't seem all that egregious to me. In fact, Blackberrys (a specially encrypted version) are what most classified communication in the government uses, isn't it? Does that seem appropriate? I guess it does to me.
i remember life before my blackberry when only PHB had it. go out for the whole saturday and check email at night and there are 5 emails from PHB with 4 of the being why someone didn't respond. sorry, don't have a blackberry like you do so no email on the road.
now with AT&T and VZW both going to tiered data expect the peons to stop putting work email acccounts on their iphones unless the company picks up part of the tab
Smartphones don't sound like some frivolous expense. Heck, my company subsidizes half the cost of a laptop purchase. After a year of payments, it belongs to us completely, although we're expected to use it at work of course. The gaming systems are a tad suspicous though (well, except for us. We develop videogames, so they're an honest-to-god business expense). Maybe you could explain away the PS3s as being good video playback devices, but... really?
Completely offtopic: I saw a license plate while driving home the other day that read 666-PHB. I burst out laughing, and was thankful I was alone in the car, because that's completely geeky to explain to someone else why it's so funny. I was also thinking how awesome it would be if the guy driving the car was actually some middle management schlub at some big, soul-sucking corporation.
Except PLEASE post the story the first time one of these arrogant, maladjusted little fuckers is caught and locked away for 10-20. I definitely want to read about that. These asinine attacks? Yeah, not so much.
This is a good move by China.
It depends on whether you define "China" as the government or those who are governed.
They are legion. They do not forgive. They do not forget. They do not plan. They do not show restraint. They do not not choose their battles. They do not help.
They are juveniles. They are irresponsible. They have social issues. They are only brave because they are anonymous. They would sob like a girl if they actually got caught and put in prison.
It was a "Windows Live" game, not a general PC title. Also was developed by Microsoft, so it's not a great case. Microsoft simply won't allow a cross-network game if part of that network involves PSN customers. At least, that's their current policy.
It's almost a law that the current console market leader is going to be really dickish toward developers. Nintendo was during it's early heyday, and so was Sony (you'd be amazed at the change of attitude when developing a PS2 vs a PSP title). MS is currently the clear leader in online offerings, so they've got a nice "you're going to play by our rules" attitude right now.
I doubt .NET is really going anywhere. There's a huge eco-system of apps written for .NET, and a number of entire languages and core libraries written on top of it. People keep talking about this nonsense of a "post PC world". Utter tripe - the kind of inane banter made by people who only care about new shiny gizmos, or those who have a vested interest in killing off the PC. The expansion of new markets doesn't necessarily guarantee the demise of the old. PCs are great at lots of things that other devices simply can't touch... you know, like doing actual work on it. Cooler and wiser heads will prevail. Either that, or MS will commit suicide in front of the entire world by throwing out a pretty amazing piece of technology they've been developing for the past decade.
Trying to force stories into games is one of the reasons why so many new games are so bad.
To me, games simply aren't as engaging or interesting unless it also tells a story. And frankly, for as many people like you who are more interested in the gameplay, there are plenty of people like me who who tend to view story-driving cutscenes as a tangible reward for gameplay progress, and look forward to them. I lost interest in pure twitch-fest gameplay quite a while ago. While the occasional arcade game is entertaining for brief periods, it just can't hold my attention for long anymore.
The inclusion of story is not a new phenomenon, nor is it a poor fit. It's just that technology allows us to present the story in a more engaging fashion nowadays. Donkey Kong was telling a story through its characters and setting, and even had a simple cutscene! Even the simplest arcade games typically provided some sort of character motivation to drive the player forward toward some ultimate goal. Actions without motivation are extremely boring to me. That being said, the overall quality of storytelling and presentation needs to be high quality, or game devs shouldn't even bother. Nor is an engaging story an excuse to neglect core gameplay elements.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go pick up my copy of LA Noir.