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Add Forum to Favorites | Send Topic To a Friend | View Forum FAQ | Track this topic Page: 1 2 »» |
Last Thread Next Thread |
| What's Wrong With Modern Games? |
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Anonymous Poster |
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 Posted - 4/11/2001 5:37:04 PM |
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| LoL, I totally dissagree! Dude, you're one of those glass-half-empty people huh. How can you say that games haven't gotten better in the past 10-15 years? Today we are so much less CRUDE than the old games. Hi polygon-counts? Hi-Resolution Bitmaps? Environmental Effects? 3d sound? Intense gameplay? How can you say that ALL of this is worst than what it was 10 years ago? What's wrong with sequals? Have you thought about the fact that some people get bored of good games? If you got bored of Quake, wouldn't it be great if you could get an even BETTER version of it(NOT QUAKE III, IT SUCKS)? Command and Conquere 2 is MUCH better thank CaC1. Another thing, what if every game had NO manual? What if a newbie gamer thought the game was really cool, but he/she didn't know the controls? The person would guess, accidently screw something up, and curse the game! One thing I a gree with though. I agree that programmers should do a better job of debugging, and trying to minimize bugs. There will be bugs almost impossible to fix, but we should atleast make a good crash detection algorythm so that your arms won't punch through brick walls. This is just my opinion. I hope that I didn't offend you, I just didn't agree with you totally. -Tiller. |
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Anonymous Poster |
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 Posted - 4/11/2001 5:55:31 PM |
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Here's a topic-by-topic rebuttal from a fellow life-long game and independant game developer (at least by hobby, as I'm a not-so-independant game developer by trade  ).1) The #1 reason for large hard drive installations is, believe it or not, convenience. The fact is that because the modern game is trying to look so pretty (see topic below) the fact is there just are a lot of assets involved. Now, they could stay relegated to the cd from which they came, but given the "speed" of said media...the more polite games actually offer you this choice - but since the gaming market is constantly expanding into the realm of the computer illiterate, the less choices offered, the less CS you deal with, and the less CS you deal with, the more $$ you save. 2) As much as I hate the superfluous sexism and stereotyping in video games today, the fact is the 15 year old male IS their target audience. You and I may be well past that age, and actually have the $$ to spend on a decent game, but marketing departments everywhere see the larger market, and thus target "appropriately" (note that I'm not trying to defend this tactic - selling sexism to 15 year olds is most definately a problem...) 3) As a game developer for a large company that just released a PC game with bugs, I personally take offense to this topic. Our game shipped with bugs not because we weren't working hard or weren't paying attention - they were just situations in which test failed to come up with (and that our playing of the game ourselves didn't come across - working on a game for a year you develop expectations and patterns which mask bugs). The majority of these bugs come from hardware incompatibilites - which is why console/xbox development is such a boon. But, personal offense aside, the real reason games ship with bugs is money. Companies, in order to make a profit, often push a product out the door, ready or not. It's never a whimsical decision. In a market like, for example, baseball games, if you're not on the shelves before your 2 or 3 competitors, you *will* lose money. It doesn't matter that their game is a joke, people will see it first, and buy it first, and call it "good enough", and not even see your product hit the shelves a week later. 4) Sequels to a successfull title are not by definition bad. Even if it's "more of the same" - sometimes that's what people want? Are you making fun of kid x who loved Tomb Raider to death, so much so he bought the Gold edition for the extra level? What about the 8 year old kid who *really* loves Army Men, and begs his mom for the 15th version of it? Was Nintendo wrong in making multiple versions of Pokemon practically identical, kids buying all the different colors so they could 'collect them all'? We are in the entertainment industry - sometimes we need to give the people what they want. If they don't want any more Tomb Raider, they won't buy it, someone will get fired, and life will go on. 5) Like it or not, most people don't want a game. They want something they can ooh and ahh at. Blame Hollywood. Blame ego. Blame whatever - it's a sad fact. Games will sell on look alone. Look at World Series 2K for the Dreamcast. (hey, it's baseball season - sue me for being topical  ). Universally panned by the media and players alike for it's god-awful gameplay. (zero fielding control). But man was it pretty. And it sold. And sold.6) Personally, no, I'm not sick of hearing about a game 30 years in advance. I like games. I like the *thought* of games. Even if a game never comes to fruition, or comes out as the game it was supposed to (Dungeon Keeper anyone?) it has ideas and ideals that will possibly live on and inspire someone to create. Sure, a game can by over-hyped (Daikatana) but blame that on an insecure marketing department. As for the pushing out of the little guy in coverage - media is a business too. They publish what people expect to see. How many copies of PC Gamer would sell if they had "the hottest shareware game" gracing the cover each month. (note: not how much SHOULD it sell)7) Games, as a wide and varied form entertainment, should not require a degree in brain surgery. Here's a couple of my current favorite games, as examples: Serious Sam (PC) - Monsters come. I hold down the fire button. Monsters blow up. I look over and see my coworker get tossed around by one of the bull things. I giggle. An hour later, we quit, a nice break from work. Sam is a natural extension of the old school scrolling shooters, equally mindless, equally rewarding. Guitar Freaks 3rd Mix (PS2) - With the special guitar controller, this Japanese game is pure brilliance. The whole point is to hold down one of three colored buttons on the neck of the guitar and hit the strum lever when the equally colored bar gets to a line on the screen. Time it right and you are rewarded with the proper note played and a "good" or "cool" (depending on your accuracy), get a sour note and a "bad". I could play that game until my finger bleed (and often do). And Konami has a whole line of music/rhythm games to satiate me. 8) Multiple death animations add variety and spice to a game where death happens. It's either that or remove the death from the game (which I think you're implying). Tribes is a plenty nice example where "death" happens in a non-gratuitous way (it's an extension of "removing another player from the game" - no attempt is made at associating it with humanity or the moral or ethical issues associated with 'real' death - nor should it be. Death in games needs to be 100% separated from real death. Weak minds and poor education lead to over-association between fanstasy and reality (in all forms of entertainment) and cause over-stigmatization of concepts...whoops, I'm ranting...where was I..oh yeah, Tribes). Having the character slump to the ground, spin around then slump, and slump and keep firing adds a little eye-candy to what would otherwise be a Star Trek-ish "beam up". Both serve the same purpose. One looks better. 9) Uh, because of the mass market intended for games these days, and that markets insistance on products they buy looking nice instead of playing well, development budgets are huge. How many hours do you think it takes to develop a realistic human model for a baseball game? How much does that artist require for salary, especially here in the Bay Area? Now add licensing fees. Does the game need licensed music? Need, no, but will it be that much more appealing to Joe Consumer if it has his favorite song playing during the opening movie? Oh, and how much will the MLBPA be charging for the players license this year? Wait, how many magazines do we want to be in? TV? And your beloved QA department...gotta make sure we get all those hours in. Whoa, wait, PS2 version? Sony wants how much per dev station? And how are we going to migrate our code base with only 3 engineers? ...and the list doesn't stop there. Yes we could try to build an industry around two-man teams like it used to be. But how many programmers do you know that can score music and model 6000 square miles of terrain in addition to getting game physics, realistic ai, and an engine that can push those assets around? Or are you arguing that that stuff is 'crap' and has no point in a game anyways? (Note, I love to death old games - old arcade games especially (I have over 50 boardsets of classics I can swap into the arcade cabinet that sits next to my kitchen) - but does that mean I can't like Tribes 2 for it's pretty graphics and insane online gameplay? Should I feel guilty for getting a rush from seeing the rolling landscapes fly along beneath me as I skip merrily across, flag in hand, dodging the incoming discs, hearing them whiz by me in 3d audio? Progress does bring good things. 10) Finally, one I can take little issue with. The industry is full of people that shouldn't be here. From the top down. I get physically ill if I hear a coworker complain about their job here because our stock is down or because they're working too many hours. I am here because I love the game I work on. I love making games. I could've got twice my salary at some boring 9-5 job. Instead, I took a pay cut to come work here, not to mention moved from reasonable Portland, OR to out-of-control Bay Area. (I pay more in rent than some people make a year - for a 1 bedroom no frills apartment. how sick is that?) But I will take issue with your Deer Hunter remark. That sold soley because it was budget and hit a target market. It's far less a game than the FPSs you bash on. 11/12) are just rehashes of the above, and besids, I'm still at work and've got work to do. In conclusion, I think you'll find that the games industry really is in a state of rechecking itself already. Too many companies have lost too much money to keep dumping in tons of $$. The problem is, the same level of quality is expected for less $$ (and therefore, less time and less manpower). With the increased power of hardware, games are more and more going to be expected to take advantage of it. So, point your finger at Sony and Nintendo and nVidia and Intel and AMD and all the people who buy their products and expect the 'next best thing' from them. Get them to realize that Space Empires IV is a much better 4X than the rehashed Reach for the Stars will ever be, or that Bubble Bobble is more fun than all the copies of Deer Hunter put together....and while you're at it, also mention that there's a whole movie industry that actually makes quality film outside Hollywood, and the best literature often doesn't find it's way into Oprah's book club, and that Budweiser is not a real pilsner, and.... Cheers, -scott (even though I didn't mention the name of my employer, all opinions are mine, not theirs, and I'd like to keep it that way) |
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Anonymous Poster |
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Posted - 4/11/2001 7:36:58 PM |
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| "The obsession with butch chiselled American marine figures is almost (but not quite) as embarrassing as the blatant sexism in the characters in Tomb Raider and Sin." Funny how I never gave Lara Croft's breasts a single thought until every Joe and his mother started ranting about it. Such criticism is quite boring and unoriginal. "What is so entertaining about death?" That's like asking what is so entertaining about boxing. If it's fun, it's fun. First person shooters are very unoriginal, but for the kind of person who likes such games they can be quite fun. Non-violence may work for Theif, but Quake without death is just a rat in a maze. Command and conquer without death is just a game of tag. |
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benjamin bunny GDNet+ Member since: 11/26/1999 From: Norwich, England |
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Posted - 4/11/2001 7:51:36 PM |
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| I thought the article raised a lot of valid points. The games industry is definitely going the way of the music industry, and it's very sad. The sheer amount of badly implemented clone games given multi-mullion dollar budgets whilst more original games are ignored demonstrates this. Not too many years ago, a game game could succeed on the talent and originality of its creators, and now it just requires money. This is all very well for the companies that made it back then (id software, raven, etc), but it doesn't bode well for present (and even less so, future) independent developers. http://www.geocities.com/ben32768 |
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Shannon Barber Moderator Member since: 6/23/2000 From: Westland, MI, United States |
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Posted - 4/11/2001 7:57:16 PM |
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| Progress: Don't mistake technical achievement for progress. Sure it's nice to have and tons of colors, 3D graphics, and now RT lighting with the GeForce3 - but all the graphics in the world do not make a better game, actually they don't make a game at all. I won't say that games have not progressed; games exist today with advanced levels of game-play that were not possible in pac-man days. Sexism: How is the character Lara Croft sexist? What does she DO that implies her sex is somehow inferior!? Large virtual breast & virtual jiggling asses is not sexism. "I'm just a girl, I won't worry my pretty little head about it because I should be making cookies." is sexism. An intelligent, wealthy, pistol packing, sexy Aussie is not. You have equivicated sexuality with sexism! A lack of realism does not transmutate sexuality into sexism. Your gripe is with unrealistic and perhaps trite sexuality. I assume you deplore 'glamour' magazines as much as I do Tomb Raider is hailed as barrier-breaker in that it featured a female character as the primary role in an action game. Female roles have been around for some time in adventure games, but not so for action games (unless you count Mrs. Pacman, which I might...). Interactivity: I don't think most people want a game either - I think they want a toy, like SimCity or Creatures. The problem with the gaming industry is that the games cost so damn much. At $50 a pop, they will never reach the guilded 'mass market' that the publishers want. Now that everyone & thier brother has a computer, games need to come down in cost. Right now it's too expensive buy a new game every week or every month; unlike buying a new album. Magmai Kai Holmlor - The disgruntled & disillusioned |
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scaught Member since: 4/11/2001 From: Vancouver, Canada |
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Posted - 4/11/2001 8:55:15 PM |
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| re: Progress But, um, technical achievment *is* progress. :D And, depending on the game, improved graphics can make a better game. The spookiness of undying, the realism in any stealth-based FPS, heck, the realism in in reality-based game, all contribute to the "betterness" of the game. Does that mean Gran Turismo 3 is somehow "overall better" than Night Driver? Of course not - it's a different experience entirely. But it does get points for sucking me in more than Night Driver ever could. re: Sexism How is Lara Croft sexist? It's the implication that an intelligent, wealthy, pistol packing, sexy Aussie requires really short shorts, bikini underwear, and overly large breasts, and that this will somehow appeal to the game player. Sexism is not the portrayal of women as inferior, but the portrayal of women as stereotypes. Why did she need large breasts? I mean, if she was really an intrepid explorer, you'd think they get in the way...and all that running! (and don't you go claiming she's a good role model for big breasted women, because that's not the point.  )re: Games costing too much The reason they cost so much is they're not as socially acceptable a media as music or movies, and therefore don't sell as many, and in order to recoup costs, the price has to be higher per unit. (For console games, some of the price is actually licensing fee - Sony pulls a hefty sum off of each game sold...and also enforces price - it was considered a major breakthrough with Take2 got them to agree (at the end of the PS1 lifecycle) to allowing them to release $9.99 "budget" titles...) The plus side to this is games that actually do sell well at the higher price (Blizzard's games, for example) get mega-profit. The downside is people do buy less, and therefore will usually only pick up the games with the more exposure (they don't know any better). End result, good games sometimes get passed up. |
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Anonymous Poster |
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Posted - 4/11/2001 9:11:03 PM |
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| ello I love this article, it exactly express what i feel! In my eyes games did really lose a lot in last few years. There are fewer great titles and tons of expensive games with ql graphic, sound and so on... but weak gameplay  and to the guy who loves 3d effects, hey, grab some demos and watch them over and over again, 3dmark2001 should be fine, good luck pal! cool effects are just a bonus in games. guess what are the last 3 games i played? I will help you: Master of Orion 1, Stunts, Colin McRae 2 How is it, that 2 of those games are some years old?!? feel free to send flames to mirekcz@kris.top.pl |
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Ness01 Member since: 4/11/2001 From: USA |
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Posted - 4/11/2001 9:11:19 PM |
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| I agree with the part about games becoming more of a "product" then a game. When you have a brand new RPG made with the latest SGI equipment with over 10 hours of CGI rendered movies, but the game its self doesn’t play for more then 5 hours there is something wrong. I played Final Fantasy 12345678 and enjoyed all of them. Although as I got to the end of the series, namely 7 and 8, I found that the games were easy and did not have much to them. It took me 2 years to finally beat Final Fantasy 6. It took me a month to beat Final Fantasy 8. I've seen shots of Final Fantasy 10 but I'm not really interested, maybe because my favorite videogame company is just rehashing, maybe It's because the main character looks a hell of a lot like the main character from 8, or maybe I'm just getting to old for videogames and the like. I'm not saying that games should go back to resolutions locked at 320X200X8, but I shouldn't be paying $50 for another quake that can run in the next highest resolution with an additional 5 fps over Doom 2. I also should not have to pay $50 for a "Tournament" or "Arena" game that can be played best online. Yes broadband connections are getting more and more popular, but at the moment, I can't afford to shell out $50 to the phone company or the cable company every month so I can get killed by a cheater. Right now I'll just have to stick with my 56K modem. I don't think the game industry is completely lost yet, there are still companies out there that are not just living off their popularity. Blizzard is a prime example, every game that they made was very different from their other games. Starcraft for example had an extremely serious story line, 30 single player missions, and full Ipx/Spx, Modem, Serial, Internet multiplayer support. All in all it had about 10 minutes of FMV. I've played the game for a few years now, through the entire single player missions, with out cheating, and played online. Not a single bug did I find. Game developers have so many resources at their disposal, games should be more then a reason to go out and buy a $500 piece of silicon bigger then my mother board, with more combined processor power then my actual computer, and enough heat to cook dinner over. |
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scaught Member since: 4/11/2001 From: Vancouver, Canada |
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Posted - 4/12/2001 12:40:38 AM |
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| Ness01: Who's forcing you buy games? No one is going to make you pay that $50 for UT/Tribes2/Whathaveyou because it's online only. Don't play online? Great. But don't start ruining it for the rest of us by complaning that companies are releasing online-only games. (and, btw, make some friends in the online community of one of those games and your playing experience will multiply 10 fold - and easily be worth more than $50/mo) Also, Blizzard is a pretty poor example at the current moment. Yes, their games are great, and have less than the industry standard amount of bugs (but they've all had multiple rounds of patching), but what have they done recently? Diablo 2. Brood War before that. What's up next? Diablo 2 expansion. Warcraft III - a title which has changed direction back towards "old school RTS". And how much you wanna bet Star Craft 2 is in the pipeline somewhere? All told, they are putting out "the same old stuff" the difference being a lot more polish than, say, a Deer Hunter 4. But, direct rebuffing aside, the point is gameplay *has* become the lowest thing on the rung in a typical game company. The reliance on the 'tried and true' is the only "surefire" way to make money in this crazy industry. Trying to kick this trend either nets you a "big" success, or a total failure. Add to the mix the fact the PC market is shrinking so vastly, we'll be lucky if we have anyone left producing current market quality games at all, good gameplay or otherwise. And while you and I will still have our fun with these machines, millions of the uninitiated never will, and that really is too bad. -scott |
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scaught Member since: 4/11/2001 From: Vancouver, Canada |
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Posted - 4/12/2001 12:42:07 AM |
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quote: "lowest thing on the rung" - oh man I must be tired... -scott |
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Anonymous Poster |
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Posted - 4/12/2001 4:00:15 AM |
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| The goal of the article is not correct. There are indie developers who develops 3d games. Like fps. |
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Anonymous Poster |
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 Posted - 4/12/2001 6:59:00 AM |
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| I agree completely with this article, and I think that the emulators are our scape from the actual way to make games. Where is the spitit of the 80's and early 90's? What is about 'the gameplay is the most important thing in a game'?... I see games that are really one remaked 1.000.000 times, using the same engines, the same '100% full violence-death-destruction and your brain is not necessary' clones, the same all... but the thing that I don't see, is new game concepts like 'Tetris', 'Head over Heels' or 'Arkanoid' was... I'm sure that the people would be enjoy with games like 'Hopping Mad', 'HyperSports' or 'Impossible Mission', games that don't need stupid open scenes or blood to enjoy... and I don't thing that games can't be violent, but I don't understand that the violence must be a feature. Really I was surprised by the programmers with my Commodore 64, Atari ST or the Scrum system for my 386, but I never will be surpriser now, because the actual games are really maked by Microsoft and nvidia... the programmers are only 'assemblers' of DirectX routines and the really hard part is made by my 3d chip (GeForce2), all graphics are captured so paint artist are not necessary, and a lots of 'Junior Visual Basic programmers' can make games, so great C++ programmers don't make games, and about the music... I think that better I dont say nothing about it. I need to see a effort of the developers to be sure that they try to do it better, because the game davelopment was an art, but now is only a marketing product. Where is Rob Hubbart? Where is John Ritman? Regards Manuel C PD: Sorry about my english... it is not good at all and it would be in some kind of 'spanish format' ;-) |
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cliffski Member since: 10/14/1999 From: UK |
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Posted - 4/12/2001 7:56:08 AM |
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| Just to make a few points to put my article in context 1)This was written a few months ago. Coworkers assure me that Max Payne has not been canned, although that was rumoured at the time 2)I am fully aware of what goes into making a big budget game. I currently work for a big name developer who are doing an astronomically ambitious (and probably damn expensive) title. Positech was my last job, not my current one. I am not saying games like Tribes, Halo, etc shouldnt be made with big budgets etc. I am just saying that the market needs balancing with some smaller indie games as well. Has anyone played bridge builder? That was freeware, but could easily have been shareware. That game got everyone in our office addicted to it, even though its a tiny retro style game. We could be playing Quake III, but instead we played this bridge builder game on 800MHZ PCs. Gameplay IS the most importanat thing in the long run, its what determines whether a game still gets played after the initial rush of seeing even prettier pictures quickly fades. As the guy said earlier, these are my personal views , not my employers, yada yada... http://www.positech.co.uk |
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grahamr Member since: 12/13/2000 From: Middlesbrough, United Kingdom |
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Posted - 4/12/2001 8:41:11 AM |
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| Also Babylon 5 Combat Simulator did actually debut at ECTS in 2000 (iirc). It was on the balcony of the main hall, at the far left end. However for it's troubles there were several other games that outshone it and had bigger and louder stands. Stay Lucky, Graham "Mournblade" Reeds, ICQ: 30514803 http://homepage.dtn.ntl.com/grahamr |
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draqza Member since: 7/5/2000 From: Richmond, Virginia |
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Posted - 4/12/2001 9:37:05 AM |
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| First AP: He didn't necessarily say that games have gotten worse in the last 10-15 years. He just said that due to some trends, the innovation pace is slowing somewhat. Remember waaay back when, when games first started coming out, and there were all kinds of off the wall game ideas that *gasp* were fun, but weren't rehashed from something else? Now, that happens too often. And certainly, some games do innovate; in fact, some do a fairly good job of revamping the genre. The sad fact is that those are the minority. Indie game developers are needed , IMHO, to help put the industry back on track. However, there is that tendency for indie games to not get recognized as much as they should, which means we may be stuck on a wobbly yet downward spiral. It may kick up every once in a while when a great new game is put out, but then that great new game will spawn a million half-@$$ed clones that drag the spiral down again. I applaud the article--now, if only it will have an effect... -- WNDCLASSEX Reality; ... ... Reality.lpfnWndProc=ComputerGames; ... ... RegisterClassEx(&Reality); Unable to register Reality...what's wrong? --------- Dan Upton Lead Designer WolfHeart Software |
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Anonymous Poster |
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Posted - 4/12/2001 11:57:47 AM |
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| First, the person who wrote this article had way too many incorrect facts, if it's taken months to write this then why does it take you that long to write a 2 page list of your personal bitches? second, broadband is here to stay. I have broadband, and I'd like to announce to everyone on 56K, that it's impossible to play online games with it. There's too many hangups and lag. I mean, you just can't play an FPS with a ping of 300, it's simple |
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Oniera Member since: 4/6/2000 From: Calgary, Canada |
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 Posted - 4/12/2001 12:50:48 PM |
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| I think the article was fantastic except for one issue: video games and movies. Why shouldn't video games go after the movie market? (And I'm not talking about FMV games either) Who doesn't want to be in a movie? Demetrios Georgeadis Director/Programmer Oniera Software Artists |
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eng3d Member since: 5/18/2000 From: Santiago, Chile |
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Posted - 4/12/2001 2:21:00 PM |
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| Of course.. he forget the main a very problematic point : -COPY OF COPY OF COPY OF GAME (GAME CLONE) In fact, Wolfenstein is good, then copy into Doom very cool, then copy in doom2, quake, unreal, heretic, hexen... this is don't good at all. Tombraider 1 is good, 2 is good too.. but now is copy of tombraider.. even, there are many tombraiders clone. There not are much original and good games.. The Sims for example. In fact Need For Speed 5 is booooooring (same as NFS4,3,2,1), FIFA 2001 is even more booooring (same as fifa 2000,1999..), Command&Conquest is a clone of Dune 2 and very boooring. For ONIERA :Videogames is even better that plain movies.. so who cares about movie market. For Anonym :You have broadband.. but many people have 56k modem, for sample Dreamcast. Even, you broadband may have 64k or 128k, and some games may run better with 512k or 1m band.. Nope, game don't need to req. many internet-band.. slow req. = better online game. Anyways, is the same of big-movies-company (in comparation with game-company).. They don't want to experiment with new project, they want want without risk. For this, there are a little movies about SCI-FI and a much about very copied topics.. even when SCI-FI may give more $$$$ that bullchyt love-movies. |
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patrickselley Member since: 4/10/2001 From: USA |
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Posted - 4/12/2001 7:52:11 PM |
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| I agree completely with this article. The video game industry hsa become innundated with cookie cutter "3D r0x0r j00" games. Once you've played one FPS, you've played them all. Once you play one strategy game, you've played them all. I haven't bought a game since UO (but I have rented them). Why? Because I have yet to find a game that I can fall in love with. This is very true for the console games too. EVERY game that comes out now is 3D. Most of the time they have no reason at all to be 3D. They could have been just as good or much better if they had used 2D. Final Fantasy 8 was a major let down, and so have a lot of other games. But since the only way to sell games is to make them pretty, or at least attempt to make them pretty, well drawn sprites are being scrapped in favor of 10,000 polygon huge breasted big sword carrying rehashed superhero. |
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Anonymous Poster |
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 Posted - 4/13/2001 4:09:38 PM |
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| the author is just trying to justify and defend his games on his website I presume... |
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BrotherRaven Member since: 4/13/2001 |
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 Posted - 4/14/2001 12:29:39 AM |
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| Hello all. The arguments given so far seem to go along a similar argument about movies and art. Making money vs doing what you enjoy. It seems as if in this day and time, it is very difficult to make money making computer games. I am not saying that this is the rule for everybody, but that in most cases this might be the case. In fact, I would claim that there isn't a said formula to determine if a game will make it or not. Sequel or not, FPS, RTS, 3D, 2D, Multiplayer, Coop; it is really about simply how fun the game is and not what the game is. For example, Serious Sam, very fun to play. No plot,no strategy, uses 2% of my brain cpu, but it has that feeling similar to Doom of 1 vs All mentality. Black & White: very fun, very different, insane AI, complex game for most people. Counter-Strike: horrbile inbalances, bugs, errors, cheats, hacks. Yet all three games were quite sucessful. Alot of people here are quite sickened by the Game Publishers; by the very game industry itself. Yet somehow, they are making money. How many people read gamedev? I dont think we should consider us the "majority" of computer players. It is perhaps the reason why we are so critical about every game we see. I think Diablo 2 is the most unbalanced game ever created or ever going to be created. But it sold millions. Because the mass of players don't critically break down a game like most people here do. And they are the ones that give more money to publishers. So Publishers will pay more attention to what they want. Not that our little minority isn't wrong about what we think or say or complain about. I haven't had a game that has drawn me in to play continuously for a long time. In fact it is quite ironic, but i am looking for the "Hacker" game that the author spoke of. If anybody knows or has it please email me. hdracer@ghiocel.com. What I really would like to know though is that is developers really wish to make better games for the market, why don't they choose people similar to us to beta test their games. It is for this reason that I am angry at game developers. While computer development will only raise to the level of a hobby for me most likely [ ], I think people that would be on these forums and read these sort of sites would provide more quality feedback then any number of the typical population.Sorry going on the little rant. It is just that these seems to be quite a few people who actually can provide feedback on this subject without reverting to flames. D. Patrick Ghiocel hdracer@ghiocel.com |
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Anonymous Poster |
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Posted - 4/14/2001 2:58:14 AM |
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| This article raises some solid points. I believe it is easier to program games now than it was 10 years ago (namely because of the universal use of directx and opengl). Then again, I was 9 yrs old 10 years ago so I’m not quite an authority. I think the perceived increase in difficulty/complexity is probably more a decrease in talent on development teams. Or maybe talent is not the right word – I mean the kind of talent that derives from passion. I think its obvious money is now the prime motivation for the games industry, and this shows in most games. I don’t like to generalize too much however. I have played some great “modern” games. For example, Deus Ex, Homeworld, Planescape Torment, Starcraft – all these raised the bar for their respective genres. One thing I don’t agree with in this article is the point about install size. 16/32 bit graphics can greatly enhance realism in games, but they take up more disk space (much more). For instance, the Infinity Engine (BG, icewind dale, planescape). This engine uses huge bitmaps for area maps (opposed to tiles) and it greatly enhanced the game atmosphere. At first they did not use any compression on the maps (newer infinity engine does), but this meant maps loaded faster. These days speed is more important than space. |
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Anonymous Poster |
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 Posted - 4/15/2001 12:24:51 AM |
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| 1) Get With The Program 2) Get With The Program 3) I Agree 4) Get With The Program 5) Get With The Program 6) Get With The Program 7) I Agree 8) Get With The Program 9) Get With The Program 10) Get With The Program 11) Get With The Program 12) Get With The Program |
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TaintedFire Member since: 12/8/2000 From: A place far from Civilization |
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Posted - 4/16/2001 6:42:48 PM |
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| I would agree with most of the points raised in the article. I, having played games for a very long time, would like to say some of my feelings. As mentioned, graphics has overtaken gameplay in priority. The majority of people are impressed by the graphics, not the gameplay. I remember the days when 2D graphics ruled, and simple "sprites" representing a map, with numbers and letters making the majority of informing the user of something, and they were the games which entertain me (and sustained my interest) much more than some games now. Sure, I love to see a game with top graphics (that's what my GeForce is for ), but underlying, I would more like to see better gameplay, in the form of many of the points raised in the article. There are definitely games which are indeed very good, one being Deus Ex. I think I see the reactions before I further post the rest of my thoughts -TF |
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