One of the fundamental reasons why I hate in-game advertising, beyond the fact that I already paid for the game, is that these ads are complete and utter garbage. First of all, no effort whatsoever is put into making them attractive or interesting, and secondly they just drop them in random places on the map.
It's pathetic.
It's like the crap that passes for advertising on the internet. At some point I had hoped that internet ad design would improve. It really hasn't, primarily because the barrier for entry into web design is so low. Any inept designer can slap together a web graphic and apparently thats sufficient for the web. These guys obviously don't put any effort at all. But I'm forced to stare at this garbage, advertising products I have no interest in whatsoever.
The best part is stalking around in a terrorist hideout and finding that the interior designer of the group decided to adorn the walls with soft drink and fast food ads.
I can't help but think these numbers are inflated, much like MMO subscription figures. I'm curious to know how many of these are individual subscribers and how many haven't been purchased by internet cafes. A lot more gamers in Asia game this way than they do in the West.
China likes this kind of publicity because it makes them look credible as a burgeoning market. Developers also like it because it makes them look successful.
Granted, China has a massive number of people, but the vast majority are in no kind of financial situation to be able to afford gaming online.
These booster packs are the kind of thing that another company would offer for free. Some have said that these sorts of add-ons used to come free in BF1942, when EA had less control. Might as well download free custom mods which offer more than those booster packs.
BF2 is a fun game, but its had far too many bugs, a number of poor design choices and an awful menu design. The Special Forces expansion pack was met with a bit of disappointment. Good old EA... At least they're consistent, you can expect them to turn anything into crap. It's like the reverse of the Midas touch.
I'm all for innovation, enhanced fuel efficiency, alternative fuels and all that. However, I have a fundamental problem with hybrids. Hybrids are an overly complex method for squeezing out a little extra mileage.
There are two reasons why they've been attractive. The first is that they're fashionable, especially with the celebrities driving around in them. But even then, the Prius has been more successful than any other hybrid not because it's superior, but simply because the styling is different from most cars. It looks futuristic, it looks like a hybrid. the car is essentially a fashion statement.
The second, less perceptable reason for your average consumer, is that hybrids don't feel like they're equipped with a small gasoline engine. The fuel efficiency all comes from the fact that the engine is small, not that there's some great leap in technology in the car. The distinction is that the electric motor provides additional power preventing the car from feeling too sluggish. In some cases the electric motor can motivate the car on it's own, but that only applies to the Prius and Ford hybrids, the Civic still needs the engine to get it going. It's only under a limited set of circumstances that the engine can fully take over anyway.
Then there's the premium a hybrid commands over a normal car, and the fact that the batteries themselves are extremely expensive, and are rated for, at most, 100,000 miles only under ideal circumstances. Then there's the fact that batteries can be highly polluting, both during manufacturing and disposal.
If you wan't real fuel efficiency buy a car with a 1 liter engine like are available in Europe. The car is going to be extremely sluggish, but it will get you from point A to point B. You can drive it like a normal car and still expect the kind of mileage hybrids struggle to match. If you want to go one up on that, get a small-displacement diesel which get even better mileage. Although, those cars tend to pollute considerably.
As an interim step I think hybrids are perfectly fine. My concern is that hybrids are going to turn into cash cows for automakers and they're going to get fixated on them neglecting development of far superior technologies.
What I predict is that the American automakers will go nuts over hybrids like they did over SUVs. By the time they've saturated the market with them and have to offer massive discounts to get them off their lots the foreign automakers will already be introducing new technologies. Man, I'd like to know what kind of idiots are running those companies.
Plug-in hybrids are a lame idea, especially in the US where electricity is more expensive than gasoline. Just because someone has an idea for an alternative energy source doesn't inherently make it a good idea.
I think the problem with game magazine journalists is that they wait for everything to fall into their laps. When it comes down to it, what do they do all day? They wait for a package containing a new game to arrive. They play a while, then write what they thought about it. This is under ideal circumstances when they're not being influenced by a developer to give a positive review.
The most I've seen from these publications, both online and in print is when they interview soemone, and even then its either a phone call, an exhange of emails and a chat session. That, in my opinion, isn't journalism.
I think they've gotten too comfortable with not having to do much of anything. If they aren't seen as a credible source of information it's their own fault for not taking the initiative.
That said, it's likely that if you want that kind of news you wouldn't be going to your standard game magazines anyway. They cater to a specific segment of the game industry. All they do is inform you on what games are coming, whats available, and how good you can expect these games to be. That's basically the extent of it. For anything more in depth trade magazines are probably a better source of information.
It looks to me like Sony is up to the same old game of trying to impose their own formats on the market. They have this overwhelming desire to control markets with their formats. Who the hell wants to adopt an expensive, overly complicated format when there's a superior alternative. All they do is upset the market and make it difficult for anyone to adopt a good standard. The problem this time is that they seem to have the movie industry backing blu-ray. $1800 for a glorified DVD player... Ridiculous.
Not to be a troll, but for now it looks to me like a Doom/Unreal hybrid with a bit of fantasy thrown in for good measure. How many more games like this are we going to see? I wish there was a bit more creativity out there.
Morrowind was an excellent game, and it's particularly impressive considering when it was developed. The main problem is that it doesn't take hold of a player like many other RPGs, particularly those which are more linear. In Morrowind a player dropped in a small town with no clue as to what to do or where to go. Once you find your way things start falling into place, somewhat. Morrowind provides the closest experience to an MMO you'll find anywhere.
It's amazing how much there was to do in that game. Other than joining a guild, rising through the ranks and having your own hall, your character could actually turn into a vampire and in one of the expansions turn into a werewolf. Speaking of those expansions, they were good in their own right. The central storyline in those provided a more linear experience, especially the second expansion.
That said, the game did have a few problems. One was the lack of variety in enemies. The second problem was the aggressiveness of those enemies. You could be level 50 and a damn level 1 creature will still attack. Often it isn't possible to outrun these things, and every time you get hit your movement is interrupted. So you have to stop, turn around, and dispatch the damn things.
The second problem is that if you do enough side quests before following through on the main quest it's very easy to end up being over-powered. Given how much there is to do, it's fairly easy to end up in this situation.
Another thing I didn't like much was the fighting system. It's an interesting idea, being able to choose the kind of swing you want to use. But it didn't make a difference which swing you chose and the fighting was dry. I guess it looked better on paper than it did in practice. It looks like Oblivion retains the same system, which I don't particularly like.
From what I've read Oblivion doesn't offer any kind of significant innovation over Morrowind, other than graphics and physics. Then again, Morrowind was fairly advanced in it's own right. It was an excellent game, it just wasn't for everyone.
While I didn't much like DDO, a friend of mine, who is an avid pen and paper D&D gamer, did like the game. It provided the kind of D&D experience he's been looking for. For comparison, we both tried the World of Warcraft free trial, and while I very much liked that game he didn't care for it in the least. His main concern with DDO was the feeling that there was a lack of content especially given the low level cap.
I'm convinced DDO is going to cater to a very specific group of gamers. I don't expect many are going to be lured from WoW, perhaps more will come from EQ/EQ2. One big problem is that the game made me feel very isolated from the larger world. First of all the game is very linear, at least initially. I'm stuck in one small section of the city until I complete a number of quests. Then I can only move on by completing another set of quests or by levelling up, which takes an excruciatingly huge amount of time. The second problem is that the player teleports to every instance. There's some dungeon hundreds of miles away and the hero materializes there suddenly. It hurts immersion.
Of course, there's a more significant problem here with all the instancing. Guild Wars instances all quests just like DDO, but that game is free to play. Furthermore, there's more of a sense of location in that game because you actually travel through the lands outside towns and forts. That game also progresses a lot more quickly than DDO does, but it does provide a very different experience from DDO.
I think Neverwinter Nights provided a very similar, but more fast-paced and entertaining experience than Dungeons & Dragons Online. That's not to say DDO is necessarily a bad game, but I don't think it's going to appeal to most people and given that it's a subscription-based game it's going to be even more difficult to attract gamers, especially given the competition. I guess this game will show whether or not there's a market for a reasonably faithful D&D experience in PC gaming.
I generally agree with the article. I, myself, am disappointed by the crap available for the Xbox360, which really reflects the American gaming market in general. On the otherhand, it's not like Japan is the pinnacle of gaming variety. They've got their own generic crap, it just so happens that what is overdone there is in a different genre than what we have here. We normally get the best the Japanese market has to offer.
As for the failure of the Xbox360 in Japan, I agree that it's due to Microsoft's complete lack of understanding of that market. I really don't understand how they didn't see this coming. That said, if the Xbox360 and PS3 were released on the same day, with identical line-ups and at the same price the Xbox360 still would sell badly. Unlike Americans who generally would choose the foreign product, Japanese would overwhelmingly gravitate towards the Japanese product.
I wouldn't say it's xenophobic, necessarily. That's just how they are. They still have nationalistic pride I suppose, something Americans are sorely lacking. The foreign products that do well are generally fashionable or luxury items. European luxury cars are always popular, as are european fashions in general. Hip hop culture has certainly had a big impact, although it's been diluted and changed in a way that renders it unrecognizable.
Apple products have been successful for a few reasons. First of all, Macs have always been popular because of their ease of us. Japanese consumers are generally not inclined to deal with anything complicated. This is different from elsewhere in Asia, like Taiwan and Korea where PCs dominate the market. In those nations they want something that does it all that they can tinker with. It's why consoles are still so important in Japan and virtually no existant elsewhere in Asia.
iPods have the advantage of being easy to use and very fashionable. And given how much disposable income Japanese have, buying an iPod is nothing to them. That, however, doesn't stop Japanese companies from trying to make an iPod rival, or a rival for anything foreign. And they often try to prove that their products are superior, whether they are or not.
Again, I'm not saying this is a bad thing. It just shows that they've got pride in what they do. Not just the manager, or the engineer, but the guy working on the factory floor, when it isn't a robot doing the job also cares about his job. It isn't like the US, and most western nations where workers are out for themselves and could care less what happens to the company.
And it's not Japanese corporations that foster this attitude, it's the culture itself, because managment generally treat their workers like crap. They do so in ways that would be considered illegal in the US. Japanese managers are known to be abusive with employees. It doesn't happen everywhere, but it's common enough.
Japanese generally don't treat foreigners well. They avoid sitting next to foreigners on trains, I think mainly to avoid being stuck in some potential uncomfortable situation. For a society who's young people have been drawn to hip hop they still manage to gawk at black guys. I've had numerous friends who've been rejected apartments for no reason other than being a foreigner, and the landlord was very direct about the reason. It's common to walk into a store and have the employees stare at you. Some Japanese just think foreigners buy weird stuff and are compelled to follow them around the store. They also like making sweeping generalizations about foreigners, usually based on what they see in movies.
Then there are all the laws that generally give foreigners a hard time. And unlike the US where the government is excessively easy, even on illegal immigrants, in Japan even a minor infraction can be enough to get a foreigner deported.
It's true, you encounter this sort of thing all over the world. But the reality is that Japan is especially bad. In Taiwan, by contrast, they're far more comfortable with foreigners, being very open towards them. It may
We aren't going to see revolutionary next generation games. There's this absurd expectation that advanced hardware is somehow going to pave the way for innovation. If you're talking about technological innovation, rendering a more realistic scene, then sure, we'll see innovation. However, if you're talking about innovation in gameplay then it's not likely you'll ever see it, at least not from the major developers.
The term "next generation" applied to consoles is a bit stupid anyway. If these consoles are next generation then what does that make PCs which can already do what the Xbox360 and PS3 do and a lot more.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, there was more innovation in a year of game development on the Atari 2600 then there will be in the entire lifespan on the Xbox360, PS3 and maybe the Revolution as well. Not that those games from the Atari-era are necessarily superior, but they were innovating a hell of a lot more than anyone today. They had to, they didn't have graphics and audio to fall back on as a crutch.
I would argue that a good identity doesn't stand out like a bad one does. A good logo, one thats is well-designed and appropriate for its application just feels right. It looks natural within it's environment. The only people who will really appreciate it are designers.
A poorly designed logo, on the other hand, stands out like a sore thumb. At best, it is completely inappropriate for its application, at worst, it looks like an atrocity. There are countless examples of awful logos from the dot-com era, when everyone and their grandmother had those stupid swoops in their logos.
That said I don't really consider game titles logos. If you really want to stretch the concept of what is a logo, they qualify, but I don't see them as logos any more than the title of a comic book is a logo. Certainly there are logotypes that contain no graphical element, like Sony or Microsoft, to point out some of the more obvious examples. However, I see these simple as titles, done in an ornate style that reflects the theme of the game.
This company did a good job of recapturing the theme of the previous games from these respective developers. Although, it's something that any sensible design company would have done. I don't think game packaging is particularly creative. Everything I've seen follows the same basic template while trying to be as flash as possible. However, in the sea of crap I see on the shelves nothing stands out. I have a hard time finding anything because all the game art melds together in one giant blur of color. It's even worse with console games considering that they're forced to stuff additional elements on the front of their packages. It also doesn't help that retailers don't bother to keep anything neat and organized.
I think packaging for applications tend to be a lot more creative than game packaging, if you discount the illustrations which don't necessarily qualify as an integral part of the design since the designers are just using art provided by the client. In most commercial applications, however, the designers are responsible for producing the artwork and photography.
On another note, I notice that guy is working 14 hour days. But thats the design world for you; designers are some of the most over-worked, under-appreciated people you'll ever meet in the corporate world. There's no reason why designers are given such ridiculous deadlines, but with desktop publishing you've got your average idiot thinking they understand design. I've dealt with people that think it takes 15 minutes to lay out a complicated design because they know how to paste text into word and insert a photograph. And then they go and second guess everything I design even though they wouldn't know good design if it punched them in the face. The worst is when someone in sales tries to sound like a designer. Even worse is when you've got a boss who's 20 years out of date trying to cram his design style down your throat.
If only people were this demanding with auto mechanics, construction workers and politicians the world would be a much better place. I got carried away with my rant there...:-o
I personally hate SUVs. I think the fundamental problem in the United States is that drivers licenses are given out too easily and the base license gives a driver access to too many different kinds of vehicles. SUVs should require special licenses with extensive driver education.
The problem comes down to driver ignorance and stupidity. This, however, isn't something unique to SUV drivers. Around where I live there have been countless idiots crashing into various objects in their beat-up, riced-up small Japanese imports. The city can't do anything to beautify the city without one of these morons coming along and destroying it. They sure do a good job of flipping those cars over too.
That said, mass is a huge factor in determining passenger safety. Of course there are situations where people in a smaller car fare better than in the larger car, but that's the exception.
We have all these crash tests which award the same high marks to a small car that they do to a large car. But these tests are performed under controlled conditions in the kinds of impacts people rarely encounter in real life. These tests are also conducted at relatively low speeds. The kinds of speeds drivers on the road are exposed will completely destroy a car regardless of all the safety features car makers install. And a driver in a large car has one simple advantage: there is more of the car to crash before the impact reaches the driver. I've heard from a few sources that a driver in a small car is up to 13 times more likely to die in a small car compared to a large one.
Of course, if you're driving something as poorly built as that Jiangling nothing will help you, but that's another story. I'm surprised that Europe, with all it's regulations even allows the thing to be sold there. Then again, considering some of the things I've seen on the road there, it's not too surprising. The US is fairly strict. The ride height for the new Golf GTI was raised.5 inches to meet US bumper height regulations. And there are countless other vehicles not allowed here because of things like lacking 5mph bumpers. I guess the US government needs to make up for the fact that Americans are generally poor, irresponsible drivers.
Well, the Coca Cola or McDonalds brands are more like the Nintendo brand than Mario or Zelda. Those are just properties like Diet Coke or Big Macs. You don't expect the corporate identity to change all that often, especially if it's a strong one.
As for the properties themselves, it really depends on the market. With foods you don't really expect something to change. Gaming properties, however, to tend to play themselves out, especially if they start appearing in all kinds of games, even those unrelated to the source material.
Nintendo has generally done a better job than most by continuing to make strong games. But it's like a pop song played 20 times a day. What people thought was catchy the first few times becomes grating after a while.
I'd argue that the golden age in gaming, comparable to the movies of the 30's, was the NES-era. The NES opened up gaming in ways that was unheard of before and Nintendo's dominance of the market remains unrivaled today. The current gaming era more closely resembles the movie industry today, with bloated budgets and the emphasis on special effects over substance and style.
It's not like you can predict a golden age anyway. You can only objectively define a golden age in hindsight long after that era is over.
Not to take anything from this, but I can't help but think that a significant part of Nintendo's success with the DS is due to the fact that the PSP turned out to be an utter failure. The expectations were a lot higher for the PSP and Sony failed to deliver. The DS struggled initially, there's wasn't much compelling for the DS at the start and I think people were still hoping for something good on the PSP. There's nothing but crap on that system while the DS has Nintendo's expertise in gaming supporting it. Nintendo made some sound decisions, going for a lower pricepoint and producing a relatively rugged system, unlike the fragile PSP. It's portability isn't hindered by slow, delicate optical media.
On the other hand, if Sony had put together a strong library of games I think the DS would have had some serious competition. Instead it looks like they considered the PSP to be nothing more than a portable PS2, so instead of producing unique titles for the console they resorted to porting games people had already played. It didn't help that EA was responsible for much of the console's library.
I certainly don't think it's the dual screen that made the DS successful. The console's success is due to Nintendo's impressive ability to know what's fun. If you want good gameplay you can't really go wrong with Nintendo. I still see the dual screen as a gimmick, but Nintendo has used it to great effect, even if many of their games aren't much more than glorified flash games, the likes of which we've played for years.
Nintendo understands that gameplay is the core of any game. Gameplay makes a game good, not ansiotropic filtered, pixel shaded, bloom-lit nonsense. I think consumers have been spoiled by developers touting cutting edge graphics in games. While there's a lot of crap out there, there are also some great games available with impressive graphics, so it isn't like people can't have both. This is going to be detrimental for the Revolution. I doubt it's unique controller, which a competitor could easily replicate, is going to provide any kind of advantage. Nintendo will likely make good use of it, but if other developers can't be bothered or have to do too much downgrading to get their games to run on the Revolution that system is likely to suffer the same fate as the Gamecube.
Within Nintendo's own sphere of games there isn't much variety, and worse yet, I think they're over-using their properties. How many more times can they reuse the Mario, Zelda and Metroid characters? They're playing it safe by sticking to characters everyone knows. It's time for the to get adventurous and come up with some new characters.
I have some satisfaction in seeing Sony get screwed, but I don't think Nintendo's success is necessarily due to some great innovation on their part.
The last thing I want to see is a remake of a game I played growing up. I don't need to see a great game reinterpreted by some hacks who will just try to make it more hardcore or destroy any sense of style by trying to make full use of pixel shaders in an attempt to make it look more realistic than real life.
I'd like to see developers inspired by the great games of the past. More important than remaking games is to actually be creative, emphasize gameplay, focus on a unique experience or develop story that is truly different.
How many times do we need to see Tolkien-influenced fantasy games? How more times are we going to be sent through some dark, dreary complex infested by demons? How many ways can we experience soldiers in a firefight?
Something new is long overdue... In the very least a unique twist on an established theme would be very welcome.
The gaming industry is already bad enough as it is with its sequels. We dont need developers learning from Hollywood's lazy habit of producing crappy, uninspired remakes.
People didn't start calling them Chinese farmers for no reason. This all began because of the evidence that the most prolific farmers were Chinese. Not only that, but these people set up a businesses in farming. Without a doubt there are farmers from countless other countries around the world, but the Chinese happened to be the most organized in this effort. If it had been German farmers doing this we'd be calling them German farmers right now.
To claim that there's a racist underpinning here is absurd. I mean, if they're Chinese, they're Chinese. Are we going to deny reality now for fear of offending someone? If it's established the majority of farmers are no longer from China, then it's time to drop the term. But while the majority of farmers are based in China the term is still justified.
This guy should be complaining about the scumbags making money off this and the deplorable working conditions their employees are subjected to.
I agree that in the long run the first company to enter the market ends up losing out, especially in the console market. You'd think companies today would be going out of their way to let someone go first.
Rushing out to get the first release of any console is pointless. They almost always come with problems and the launch titles are almost never compelling. Unfortunately, someone always has to be an early adopter so that there's a chance to identify and resolve any significant problems.
That said, I don't think Sony is going to offer anything significant. They have a habit of delaying excessively and then putting out a product that doesn't justify all the waiting.
Both the Xbox360 and PS3 are more of the same. The Revolution isn't going to be much different either, expect for the controller, which may offer a unique experience, but I highly doubt it will provide for revolutionary gameplay and will probably just be problematic with many genres. The fact that it isn't quite as powerful as the other consoles will likely ensure it alienates developers even more than the Gamecube has.
I never cared much for consoles and these "next-generation" consoles don't change that. All the good games available for consoles are, in my opinion, wasted on the consoles and would have been much better served being developed for the PC.
It could also be poor quality control on the discs themselves. Perhaps they aren't properly balanced, or they're slightly warped. At the speed these drives spin a small defect can translate into a more significant problem.
In fact, I had a similar experience on my PC a few weeks ago. I got a new game, loaded the first CD into the drive, and it started making quite a racket. It sounded like the disc was sliding against components in there. I've had this drive for well over a year and it's never had a problem. I eject the disc and inspect it. The surface wasn't scratched, but I had noticed even before I loaded the disc in that the inner opening had a bit excess plastic. I cleaned that up, put the disc back in the drive and it was fine.
I don't really know if that was the culprit. Nevertheless, I expect game developers try to cut corners wherever they can, and given that the quality of CDs feels like it's going downhill, I wouldn't be surprised that it's giving rise to defects.
I think there are several problems with wheels. The first being that it's far more difficult to traverse rough terrain with wheels than it would be with legs.
There are also significant technical problems. One problem is that there's no real way to deliver power to wheels in a biological organism. Not only that, it would require a complex system which includes a suspension and a method for turning those wheels. The wheels would also have to be a seperate organic mass which has grown out of, but remains attached to the body of the organism. Then there's the problem of friction and wear. An injured animal may still be able to move itself around, but an animal who loses one or more of it's wheels, something which would probably happen easily, would almost certainly die on the spot.
Interestingly enough, while a wheel is a simple concept, legs are a far easier to implement in nature. That's not to say that on some other planet the conditions aren't ideal for animals with wheels.
Not necessarily. Intelligent Design supporters would argue that this is further evidence that there is a creator behind everything. Their argument is that everything fits together so perfectly and logically that there must have been a creator.
Not that I'm supporting intelligent design, I'm just clarifying things a bit.
What I want to see are simple but elegant, compact phones. I want something with the bare necessities but with an eye for design. I'm tired of all the silver crap we see in the United States. And I'm tired of phones with all kinds of useless functions, several-megapixel cameras and all the other features that most people tinker with for about a week and never touch again. And above all, I'd like these damn phones to stop being so expensive, at least not without having to sign my life away to these scam-artist service providers.
Hulk Smash was a weak game, not because it lacked subtlety, but because it wasn't sufficiently fun. Like most games derived from movies it's just an attempt to cash in on the movie's success, and developers rarely seem to put much effort into these sorts of games.
As for the movie itself, I see no justifiable reason to compare The Hulk to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Those are entirely different movies. And while I enjoyed Crouching Tiger very much, I don't think it's the be all and end all of action movies. In fact, I can't think of a single friend in Taiwan who liked that movie; Ang Lee is Taiwanese himself and that genre comes from Asia. But the movies of that genre produced in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan are far more cartoony, and have generally weaker storylines. They're much closer to what you'd expect from a comic book. But the point is they're fun in their own right and melodramatic.
Ang Lee tried to inject too much substance into The Hulk, but probably was hindered by the need to still make the movie work with it's comic book roots. The movie would have fared a lot better if it had been more like Spider Man.
I don't think games need to provide some kind of dramatic cinematic experience. When I play a game I'm not looking for a movie-like experience. Most game developers are nothing but hacks when it comes to story. They take a contrived theme and stuff it into a generic world. Hollywood has quite a production line going for this sort of drivel and the game industry is already bad enough, we don't need it to get any worse by merging the two.
The people in the game industry who truly innovatived for the most part did so because they provided a particularly compelling gameplay experience. Absolutely there were those who pushed the limits of story-telling in games, but that in itself didn't define those games, and it certainly didn't define an entire genre.
We have the next-generation console developers spewing marketing crap that hardware advancements are going to open up new vistas in gaming. A more realistic rendering doesn't necessarily make for better gameplay, nor does it inherently create a more immersive experience. I've felt more for 16-color pixelated characters at 320x200 than I have for any pixel shaded, bloom lit 1280x1024 character.
I mean, by the reasoning of these developers books are complete crap because they provide nothing more than text on a page and you actually have to visualize everything in your own mind!
Developers were more innovative when they were stuck with bricks for graphics on the Atari 2600. Perhaps not innovative in terms of graphics or content, but in terms of sheer gameplay absolutely they were pushing the envelope.
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One of the fundamental reasons why I hate in-game advertising, beyond the fact that I already paid for the game, is that these ads are complete and utter garbage. First of all, no effort whatsoever is put into making them attractive or interesting, and secondly they just drop them in random places on the map.
It's pathetic.
It's like the crap that passes for advertising on the internet. At some point I had hoped that internet ad design would improve. It really hasn't, primarily because the barrier for entry into web design is so low. Any inept designer can slap together a web graphic and apparently thats sufficient for the web. These guys obviously don't put any effort at all. But I'm forced to stare at this garbage, advertising products I have no interest in whatsoever.
The best part is stalking around in a terrorist hideout and finding that the interior designer of the group decided to adorn the walls with soft drink and fast food ads.
I can't help but think these numbers are inflated, much like MMO subscription figures. I'm curious to know how many of these are individual subscribers and how many haven't been purchased by internet cafes. A lot more gamers in Asia game this way than they do in the West.
China likes this kind of publicity because it makes them look credible as a burgeoning market. Developers also like it because it makes them look successful.
Granted, China has a massive number of people, but the vast majority are in no kind of financial situation to be able to afford gaming online.
These booster packs are the kind of thing that another company would offer for free. Some have said that these sorts of add-ons used to come free in BF1942, when EA had less control. Might as well download free custom mods which offer more than those booster packs.
BF2 is a fun game, but its had far too many bugs, a number of poor design choices and an awful menu design. The Special Forces expansion pack was met with a bit of disappointment. Good old EA... At least they're consistent, you can expect them to turn anything into crap. It's like the reverse of the Midas touch.
I'm all for innovation, enhanced fuel efficiency, alternative fuels and all that. However, I have a fundamental problem with hybrids. Hybrids are an overly complex method for squeezing out a little extra mileage.
There are two reasons why they've been attractive. The first is that they're fashionable, especially with the celebrities driving around in them. But even then, the Prius has been more successful than any other hybrid not because it's superior, but simply because the styling is different from most cars. It looks futuristic, it looks like a hybrid. the car is essentially a fashion statement.
The second, less perceptable reason for your average consumer, is that hybrids don't feel like they're equipped with a small gasoline engine. The fuel efficiency all comes from the fact that the engine is small, not that there's some great leap in technology in the car. The distinction is that the electric motor provides additional power preventing the car from feeling too sluggish. In some cases the electric motor can motivate the car on it's own, but that only applies to the Prius and Ford hybrids, the Civic still needs the engine to get it going. It's only under a limited set of circumstances that the engine can fully take over anyway.
Then there's the premium a hybrid commands over a normal car, and the fact that the batteries themselves are extremely expensive, and are rated for, at most, 100,000 miles only under ideal circumstances. Then there's the fact that batteries can be highly polluting, both during manufacturing and disposal.
If you wan't real fuel efficiency buy a car with a 1 liter engine like are available in Europe. The car is going to be extremely sluggish, but it will get you from point A to point B. You can drive it like a normal car and still expect the kind of mileage hybrids struggle to match. If you want to go one up on that, get a small-displacement diesel which get even better mileage. Although, those cars tend to pollute considerably.
As an interim step I think hybrids are perfectly fine. My concern is that hybrids are going to turn into cash cows for automakers and they're going to get fixated on them neglecting development of far superior technologies.
What I predict is that the American automakers will go nuts over hybrids like they did over SUVs. By the time they've saturated the market with them and have to offer massive discounts to get them off their lots the foreign automakers will already be introducing new technologies. Man, I'd like to know what kind of idiots are running those companies.
Plug-in hybrids are a lame idea, especially in the US where electricity is more expensive than gasoline. Just because someone has an idea for an alternative energy source doesn't inherently make it a good idea.
I think the problem with game magazine journalists is that they wait for everything to fall into their laps. When it comes down to it, what do they do all day? They wait for a package containing a new game to arrive. They play a while, then write what they thought about it. This is under ideal circumstances when they're not being influenced by a developer to give a positive review.
The most I've seen from these publications, both online and in print is when they interview soemone, and even then its either a phone call, an exhange of emails and a chat session. That, in my opinion, isn't journalism.
I think they've gotten too comfortable with not having to do much of anything. If they aren't seen as a credible source of information it's their own fault for not taking the initiative.
That said, it's likely that if you want that kind of news you wouldn't be going to your standard game magazines anyway. They cater to a specific segment of the game industry. All they do is inform you on what games are coming, whats available, and how good you can expect these games to be. That's basically the extent of it. For anything more in depth trade magazines are probably a better source of information.
It looks to me like Sony is up to the same old game of trying to impose their own formats on the market. They have this overwhelming desire to control markets with their formats. Who the hell wants to adopt an expensive, overly complicated format when there's a superior alternative. All they do is upset the market and make it difficult for anyone to adopt a good standard. The problem this time is that they seem to have the movie industry backing blu-ray. $1800 for a glorified DVD player... Ridiculous.
Not to be a troll, but for now it looks to me like a Doom/Unreal hybrid with a bit of fantasy thrown in for good measure. How many more games like this are we going to see? I wish there was a bit more creativity out there.
Morrowind was an excellent game, and it's particularly impressive considering when it was developed. The main problem is that it doesn't take hold of a player like many other RPGs, particularly those which are more linear. In Morrowind a player dropped in a small town with no clue as to what to do or where to go. Once you find your way things start falling into place, somewhat. Morrowind provides the closest experience to an MMO you'll find anywhere.
It's amazing how much there was to do in that game. Other than joining a guild, rising through the ranks and having your own hall, your character could actually turn into a vampire and in one of the expansions turn into a werewolf. Speaking of those expansions, they were good in their own right. The central storyline in those provided a more linear experience, especially the second expansion.
That said, the game did have a few problems. One was the lack of variety in enemies. The second problem was the aggressiveness of those enemies. You could be level 50 and a damn level 1 creature will still attack. Often it isn't possible to outrun these things, and every time you get hit your movement is interrupted. So you have to stop, turn around, and dispatch the damn things.
The second problem is that if you do enough side quests before following through on the main quest it's very easy to end up being over-powered. Given how much there is to do, it's fairly easy to end up in this situation.
Another thing I didn't like much was the fighting system. It's an interesting idea, being able to choose the kind of swing you want to use. But it didn't make a difference which swing you chose and the fighting was dry. I guess it looked better on paper than it did in practice. It looks like Oblivion retains the same system, which I don't particularly like.
From what I've read Oblivion doesn't offer any kind of significant innovation over Morrowind, other than graphics and physics. Then again, Morrowind was fairly advanced in it's own right. It was an excellent game, it just wasn't for everyone.
While I didn't much like DDO, a friend of mine, who is an avid pen and paper D&D gamer, did like the game. It provided the kind of D&D experience he's been looking for. For comparison, we both tried the World of Warcraft free trial, and while I very much liked that game he didn't care for it in the least. His main concern with DDO was the feeling that there was a lack of content especially given the low level cap.
I'm convinced DDO is going to cater to a very specific group of gamers. I don't expect many are going to be lured from WoW, perhaps more will come from EQ/EQ2. One big problem is that the game made me feel very isolated from the larger world. First of all the game is very linear, at least initially. I'm stuck in one small section of the city until I complete a number of quests. Then I can only move on by completing another set of quests or by levelling up, which takes an excruciatingly huge amount of time. The second problem is that the player teleports to every instance. There's some dungeon hundreds of miles away and the hero materializes there suddenly. It hurts immersion.
Of course, there's a more significant problem here with all the instancing. Guild Wars instances all quests just like DDO, but that game is free to play. Furthermore, there's more of a sense of location in that game because you actually travel through the lands outside towns and forts. That game also progresses a lot more quickly than DDO does, but it does provide a very different experience from DDO.
I think Neverwinter Nights provided a very similar, but more fast-paced and entertaining experience than Dungeons & Dragons Online. That's not to say DDO is necessarily a bad game, but I don't think it's going to appeal to most people and given that it's a subscription-based game it's going to be even more difficult to attract gamers, especially given the competition. I guess this game will show whether or not there's a market for a reasonably faithful D&D experience in PC gaming.
I generally agree with the article. I, myself, am disappointed by the crap available for the Xbox360, which really reflects the American gaming market in general. On the otherhand, it's not like Japan is the pinnacle of gaming variety. They've got their own generic crap, it just so happens that what is overdone there is in a different genre than what we have here. We normally get the best the Japanese market has to offer.
As for the failure of the Xbox360 in Japan, I agree that it's due to Microsoft's complete lack of understanding of that market. I really don't understand how they didn't see this coming. That said, if the Xbox360 and PS3 were released on the same day, with identical line-ups and at the same price the Xbox360 still would sell badly. Unlike Americans who generally would choose the foreign product, Japanese would overwhelmingly gravitate towards the Japanese product.
I wouldn't say it's xenophobic, necessarily. That's just how they are. They still have nationalistic pride I suppose, something Americans are sorely lacking. The foreign products that do well are generally fashionable or luxury items. European luxury cars are always popular, as are european fashions in general. Hip hop culture has certainly had a big impact, although it's been diluted and changed in a way that renders it unrecognizable.
Apple products have been successful for a few reasons. First of all, Macs have always been popular because of their ease of us. Japanese consumers are generally not inclined to deal with anything complicated. This is different from elsewhere in Asia, like Taiwan and Korea where PCs dominate the market. In those nations they want something that does it all that they can tinker with. It's why consoles are still so important in Japan and virtually no existant elsewhere in Asia.
iPods have the advantage of being easy to use and very fashionable. And given how much disposable income Japanese have, buying an iPod is nothing to them. That, however, doesn't stop Japanese companies from trying to make an iPod rival, or a rival for anything foreign. And they often try to prove that their products are superior, whether they are or not.
Again, I'm not saying this is a bad thing. It just shows that they've got pride in what they do. Not just the manager, or the engineer, but the guy working on the factory floor, when it isn't a robot doing the job also cares about his job. It isn't like the US, and most western nations where workers are out for themselves and could care less what happens to the company.
And it's not Japanese corporations that foster this attitude, it's the culture itself, because managment generally treat their workers like crap. They do so in ways that would be considered illegal in the US. Japanese managers are known to be abusive with employees. It doesn't happen everywhere, but it's common enough.
Japanese generally don't treat foreigners well. They avoid sitting next to foreigners on trains, I think mainly to avoid being stuck in some potential uncomfortable situation. For a society who's young people have been drawn to hip hop they still manage to gawk at black guys. I've had numerous friends who've been rejected apartments for no reason other than being a foreigner, and the landlord was very direct about the reason. It's common to walk into a store and have the employees stare at you. Some Japanese just think foreigners buy weird stuff and are compelled to follow them around the store. They also like making sweeping generalizations about foreigners, usually based on what they see in movies.
Then there are all the laws that generally give foreigners a hard time. And unlike the US where the government is excessively easy, even on illegal immigrants, in Japan even a minor infraction can be enough to get a foreigner deported.
It's true, you encounter this sort of thing all over the world. But the reality is that Japan is especially bad. In Taiwan, by contrast, they're far more comfortable with foreigners, being very open towards them. It may
We aren't going to see revolutionary next generation games. There's this absurd expectation that advanced hardware is somehow going to pave the way for innovation. If you're talking about technological innovation, rendering a more realistic scene, then sure, we'll see innovation. However, if you're talking about innovation in gameplay then it's not likely you'll ever see it, at least not from the major developers.
The term "next generation" applied to consoles is a bit stupid anyway. If these consoles are next generation then what does that make PCs which can already do what the Xbox360 and PS3 do and a lot more.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, there was more innovation in a year of game development on the Atari 2600 then there will be in the entire lifespan on the Xbox360, PS3 and maybe the Revolution as well. Not that those games from the Atari-era are necessarily superior, but they were innovating a hell of a lot more than anyone today. They had to, they didn't have graphics and audio to fall back on as a crutch.
I would argue that a good identity doesn't stand out like a bad one does. A good logo, one thats is well-designed and appropriate for its application just feels right. It looks natural within it's environment. The only people who will really appreciate it are designers.
:-o
A poorly designed logo, on the other hand, stands out like a sore thumb. At best, it is completely inappropriate for its application, at worst, it looks like an atrocity. There are countless examples of awful logos from the dot-com era, when everyone and their grandmother had those stupid swoops in their logos.
That said I don't really consider game titles logos. If you really want to stretch the concept of what is a logo, they qualify, but I don't see them as logos any more than the title of a comic book is a logo. Certainly there are logotypes that contain no graphical element, like Sony or Microsoft, to point out some of the more obvious examples. However, I see these simple as titles, done in an ornate style that reflects the theme of the game.
This company did a good job of recapturing the theme of the previous games from these respective developers. Although, it's something that any sensible design company would have done. I don't think game packaging is particularly creative. Everything I've seen follows the same basic template while trying to be as flash as possible. However, in the sea of crap I see on the shelves nothing stands out. I have a hard time finding anything because all the game art melds together in one giant blur of color. It's even worse with console games considering that they're forced to stuff additional elements on the front of their packages. It also doesn't help that retailers don't bother to keep anything neat and organized.
I think packaging for applications tend to be a lot more creative than game packaging, if you discount the illustrations which don't necessarily qualify as an integral part of the design since the designers are just using art provided by the client. In most commercial applications, however, the designers are responsible for producing the artwork and photography.
On another note, I notice that guy is working 14 hour days. But thats the design world for you; designers are some of the most over-worked, under-appreciated people you'll ever meet in the corporate world. There's no reason why designers are given such ridiculous deadlines, but with desktop publishing you've got your average idiot thinking they understand design. I've dealt with people that think it takes 15 minutes to lay out a complicated design because they know how to paste text into word and insert a photograph. And then they go and second guess everything I design even though they wouldn't know good design if it punched them in the face. The worst is when someone in sales tries to sound like a designer. Even worse is when you've got a boss who's 20 years out of date trying to cram his design style down your throat.
If only people were this demanding with auto mechanics, construction workers and politicians the world would be a much better place. I got carried away with my rant there...
I personally hate SUVs. I think the fundamental problem in the United States is that drivers licenses are given out too easily and the base license gives a driver access to too many different kinds of vehicles. SUVs should require special licenses with extensive driver education.
.5 inches to meet US bumper height regulations. And there are countless other vehicles not allowed here because of things like lacking 5mph bumpers. I guess the US government needs to make up for the fact that Americans are generally poor, irresponsible drivers.
The problem comes down to driver ignorance and stupidity. This, however, isn't something unique to SUV drivers. Around where I live there have been countless idiots crashing into various objects in their beat-up, riced-up small Japanese imports. The city can't do anything to beautify the city without one of these morons coming along and destroying it. They sure do a good job of flipping those cars over too.
That said, mass is a huge factor in determining passenger safety. Of course there are situations where people in a smaller car fare better than in the larger car, but that's the exception.
We have all these crash tests which award the same high marks to a small car that they do to a large car. But these tests are performed under controlled conditions in the kinds of impacts people rarely encounter in real life. These tests are also conducted at relatively low speeds. The kinds of speeds drivers on the road are exposed will completely destroy a car regardless of all the safety features car makers install. And a driver in a large car has one simple advantage: there is more of the car to crash before the impact reaches the driver. I've heard from a few sources that a driver in a small car is up to 13 times more likely to die in a small car compared to a large one.
Of course, if you're driving something as poorly built as that Jiangling nothing will help you, but that's another story. I'm surprised that Europe, with all it's regulations even allows the thing to be sold there. Then again, considering some of the things I've seen on the road there, it's not too surprising. The US is fairly strict. The ride height for the new Golf GTI was raised
Well, the Coca Cola or McDonalds brands are more like the Nintendo brand than Mario or Zelda. Those are just properties like Diet Coke or Big Macs. You don't expect the corporate identity to change all that often, especially if it's a strong one.
As for the properties themselves, it really depends on the market. With foods you don't really expect something to change. Gaming properties, however, to tend to play themselves out, especially if they start appearing in all kinds of games, even those unrelated to the source material.
Nintendo has generally done a better job than most by continuing to make strong games. But it's like a pop song played 20 times a day. What people thought was catchy the first few times becomes grating after a while.
I'd argue that the golden age in gaming, comparable to the movies of the 30's, was the NES-era. The NES opened up gaming in ways that was unheard of before and Nintendo's dominance of the market remains unrivaled today. The current gaming era more closely resembles the movie industry today, with bloated budgets and the emphasis on special effects over substance and style.
It's not like you can predict a golden age anyway. You can only objectively define a golden age in hindsight long after that era is over.
Not to take anything from this, but I can't help but think that a significant part of Nintendo's success with the DS is due to the fact that the PSP turned out to be an utter failure. The expectations were a lot higher for the PSP and Sony failed to deliver. The DS struggled initially, there's wasn't much compelling for the DS at the start and I think people were still hoping for something good on the PSP. There's nothing but crap on that system while the DS has Nintendo's expertise in gaming supporting it. Nintendo made some sound decisions, going for a lower pricepoint and producing a relatively rugged system, unlike the fragile PSP. It's portability isn't hindered by slow, delicate optical media.
On the other hand, if Sony had put together a strong library of games I think the DS would have had some serious competition. Instead it looks like they considered the PSP to be nothing more than a portable PS2, so instead of producing unique titles for the console they resorted to porting games people had already played. It didn't help that EA was responsible for much of the console's library.
I certainly don't think it's the dual screen that made the DS successful. The console's success is due to Nintendo's impressive ability to know what's fun. If you want good gameplay you can't really go wrong with Nintendo. I still see the dual screen as a gimmick, but Nintendo has used it to great effect, even if many of their games aren't much more than glorified flash games, the likes of which we've played for years.
Nintendo understands that gameplay is the core of any game. Gameplay makes a game good, not ansiotropic filtered, pixel shaded, bloom-lit nonsense. I think consumers have been spoiled by developers touting cutting edge graphics in games. While there's a lot of crap out there, there are also some great games available with impressive graphics, so it isn't like people can't have both. This is going to be detrimental for the Revolution. I doubt it's unique controller, which a competitor could easily replicate, is going to provide any kind of advantage. Nintendo will likely make good use of it, but if other developers can't be bothered or have to do too much downgrading to get their games to run on the Revolution that system is likely to suffer the same fate as the Gamecube.
Within Nintendo's own sphere of games there isn't much variety, and worse yet, I think they're over-using their properties. How many more times can they reuse the Mario, Zelda and Metroid characters? They're playing it safe by sticking to characters everyone knows. It's time for the to get adventurous and come up with some new characters.
I have some satisfaction in seeing Sony get screwed, but I don't think Nintendo's success is necessarily due to some great innovation on their part.
The last thing I want to see is a remake of a game I played growing up. I don't need to see a great game reinterpreted by some hacks who will just try to make it more hardcore or destroy any sense of style by trying to make full use of pixel shaders in an attempt to make it look more realistic than real life.
I'd like to see developers inspired by the great games of the past. More important than remaking games is to actually be creative, emphasize gameplay, focus on a unique experience or develop story that is truly different.
How many times do we need to see Tolkien-influenced fantasy games? How more times are we going to be sent through some dark, dreary complex infested by demons? How many ways can we experience soldiers in a firefight?
Something new is long overdue... In the very least a unique twist on an established theme would be very welcome.
The gaming industry is already bad enough as it is with its sequels. We dont need developers learning from Hollywood's lazy habit of producing crappy, uninspired remakes.
People didn't start calling them Chinese farmers for no reason. This all began because of the evidence that the most prolific farmers were Chinese. Not only that, but these people set up a businesses in farming. Without a doubt there are farmers from countless other countries around the world, but the Chinese happened to be the most organized in this effort. If it had been German farmers doing this we'd be calling them German farmers right now.
To claim that there's a racist underpinning here is absurd. I mean, if they're Chinese, they're Chinese. Are we going to deny reality now for fear of offending someone? If it's established the majority of farmers are no longer from China, then it's time to drop the term. But while the majority of farmers are based in China the term is still justified.
This guy should be complaining about the scumbags making money off this and the deplorable working conditions their employees are subjected to.
I agree that in the long run the first company to enter the market ends up losing out, especially in the console market. You'd think companies today would be going out of their way to let someone go first.
Rushing out to get the first release of any console is pointless. They almost always come with problems and the launch titles are almost never compelling. Unfortunately, someone always has to be an early adopter so that there's a chance to identify and resolve any significant problems.
That said, I don't think Sony is going to offer anything significant. They have a habit of delaying excessively and then putting out a product that doesn't justify all the waiting.
Both the Xbox360 and PS3 are more of the same. The Revolution isn't going to be much different either, expect for the controller, which may offer a unique experience, but I highly doubt it will provide for revolutionary gameplay and will probably just be problematic with many genres. The fact that it isn't quite as powerful as the other consoles will likely ensure it alienates developers even more than the Gamecube has.
I never cared much for consoles and these "next-generation" consoles don't change that. All the good games available for consoles are, in my opinion, wasted on the consoles and would have been much better served being developed for the PC.
It could also be poor quality control on the discs themselves. Perhaps they aren't properly balanced, or they're slightly warped. At the speed these drives spin a small defect can translate into a more significant problem.
In fact, I had a similar experience on my PC a few weeks ago. I got a new game, loaded the first CD into the drive, and it started making quite a racket. It sounded like the disc was sliding against components in there. I've had this drive for well over a year and it's never had a problem. I eject the disc and inspect it. The surface wasn't scratched, but I had noticed even before I loaded the disc in that the inner opening had a bit excess plastic. I cleaned that up, put the disc back in the drive and it was fine.
I don't really know if that was the culprit. Nevertheless, I expect game developers try to cut corners wherever they can, and given that the quality of CDs feels like it's going downhill, I wouldn't be surprised that it's giving rise to defects.
I think there are several problems with wheels. The first being that it's far more difficult to traverse rough terrain with wheels than it would be with legs.
There are also significant technical problems. One problem is that there's no real way to deliver power to wheels in a biological organism. Not only that, it would require a complex system which includes a suspension and a method for turning those wheels. The wheels would also have to be a seperate organic mass which has grown out of, but remains attached to the body of the organism. Then there's the problem of friction and wear. An injured animal may still be able to move itself around, but an animal who loses one or more of it's wheels, something which would probably happen easily, would almost certainly die on the spot.
Interestingly enough, while a wheel is a simple concept, legs are a far easier to implement in nature. That's not to say that on some other planet the conditions aren't ideal for animals with wheels.
Not necessarily. Intelligent Design supporters would argue that this is further evidence that there is a creator behind everything. Their argument is that everything fits together so perfectly and logically that there must have been a creator. Not that I'm supporting intelligent design, I'm just clarifying things a bit.
What I want to see are simple but elegant, compact phones. I want something with the bare necessities but with an eye for design. I'm tired of all the silver crap we see in the United States. And I'm tired of phones with all kinds of useless functions, several-megapixel cameras and all the other features that most people tinker with for about a week and never touch again. And above all, I'd like these damn phones to stop being so expensive, at least not without having to sign my life away to these scam-artist service providers.
Hulk Smash was a weak game, not because it lacked subtlety, but because it wasn't sufficiently fun. Like most games derived from movies it's just an attempt to cash in on the movie's success, and developers rarely seem to put much effort into these sorts of games.
As for the movie itself, I see no justifiable reason to compare The Hulk to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Those are entirely different movies. And while I enjoyed Crouching Tiger very much, I don't think it's the be all and end all of action movies. In fact, I can't think of a single friend in Taiwan who liked that movie; Ang Lee is Taiwanese himself and that genre comes from Asia. But the movies of that genre produced in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan are far more cartoony, and have generally weaker storylines. They're much closer to what you'd expect from a comic book. But the point is they're fun in their own right and melodramatic.
Ang Lee tried to inject too much substance into The Hulk, but probably was hindered by the need to still make the movie work with it's comic book roots. The movie would have fared a lot better if it had been more like Spider Man.
I don't think games need to provide some kind of dramatic cinematic experience. When I play a game I'm not looking for a movie-like experience. Most game developers are nothing but hacks when it comes to story. They take a contrived theme and stuff it into a generic world. Hollywood has quite a production line going for this sort of drivel and the game industry is already bad enough, we don't need it to get any worse by merging the two.
The people in the game industry who truly innovatived for the most part did so because they provided a particularly compelling gameplay experience. Absolutely there were those who pushed the limits of story-telling in games, but that in itself didn't define those games, and it certainly didn't define an entire genre.
We have the next-generation console developers spewing marketing crap that hardware advancements are going to open up new vistas in gaming. A more realistic rendering doesn't necessarily make for better gameplay, nor does it inherently create a more immersive experience. I've felt more for 16-color pixelated characters at 320x200 than I have for any pixel shaded, bloom lit 1280x1024 character.
I mean, by the reasoning of these developers books are complete crap because they provide nothing more than text on a page and you actually have to visualize everything in your own mind!
Developers were more innovative when they were stuck with bricks for graphics on the Atari 2600. Perhaps not innovative in terms of graphics or content, but in terms of sheer gameplay absolutely they were pushing the envelope.