current game design ...

[Knight Theamion]

once more .. but i've done a bit of seeking etc and found this


http://berflonet.nl/~theamion/uplink...ifestoweb.html

Does anyone agree? Because I do actually, the underground games and unknown ones are sooo much better and fun to play then another in the 'lets shoot them up' category.

[Knight Theamion]

yeah well ... just hosting something i found in a zip

(the uplink extras!)

[djbass]

I think any gamer able to think outside the box or those of us who are independant programmers will think the same thing. The games market is becoming too saturated with these million a minute technology demos they call games these days.

Gameplay however is such a hard concept to sell to the big players in the industry, and sell is the appropriate word as they think in terms of money. This is not unreasonable because you can not survive in the business world of today unless you are good at keeping a cash flow, no one runs in the green anymore any money coming into a company just gets divided back out again to all their debitors. The problem is they are running a false economy, and fail too see that by investing more time in innovative gameplay individual titles would sell a lot better meaning they wouldn't have to rely on having so many titles in production to see any benifits come back their way.

[Kurashima]

Didnt i say the exact same thing last month?

[Knight Theamion]

Could well be, but I found a cool link to come with, that there is actually a gaming company out there that thinks outside the box.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Knight Theamion

'lets shoot them up'

It's like it's 1992 all over again. Of course, with 'shoot them up', you're including things, perhaps unknowingly, like Warning Forever, which is both 'underground' and fairly unknown.

Plus, Half Life 2 is the best game ever made.

http://www18.big.or.jp/~hikoza/Archive/wf106.exe

for Warning Forever.

2D, no scrolling, all boss fights with the bosses evolving by how you kill them.

[queball]

If you argue that to make a good game these days require huge investment so small developers don't have a chance, you can't really then argue that good games don't actually require huge amounts of money to make.
The "games industry" is just a bunch of companies that have been successful, not some conspiracy controlling the gaming world.

Originally Posted by Knight Theamion

Could well be, but I found a cool link to come with, that there is actually a gaming company out there that thinks outside the box.

There is the Loser Box and the Winner Box. These people are thinking outside the Winner Box.

[MrL_JaKiri]

It's also actually technically incorrect on all points.

"Games" as collective entities may not "need" the current level of graphics we have, but many games wouldn't work as well without them.

In the 90%/10% section, they appear to have missed out that most games license their engine from other people; historically, for example, there have been really only 3 (now possibly 4 with Valve) FPS engine makers on the PC with any degree of success, and, one of those (Monolith) has the only good games on its engine being in-house. The other two, of course, are iD and Epic, with the Doom/Quake and Unreal engines respectively.

In the 'Games must be fun', thing, that just doesn't apply the way they think it does. Games must be enjoyable to play, yes. But that includes things like Planescape: Torment, possibly one of the most morally detailed games ever made. It includes things like Silent Hill, or Doom III, or Half Life 2, or Eternal Darkness, or the like, which don't deal entirely with positive emotions.

Even several years ago, when I imagine that was produced (it's from the Uplink extras after all) that just wasn't true. Look at their latest project, Darwinia; it might not have the standards of graphical design of the latest games, but it still is a mile above Uplink in the graphical chain, because it needs to be. Noone cares about the latest mass-market thing from Raven; they're not good games, and would be treated as such whenever they were made. But the ground breaking good games out there would be lacking if they didn't have the ability to do what they do.

[JetLinus]

Incoming was a great arcade shooter, but it would've sucked without its great graphics.

On the other hand I totally agree with you. I think lots of people were disappointed in Colonisation, which had considerably "bad graphics" for that time (I think improvements like a higher resolution were expected). But this was in favour of game design and gameplay, and I liked it!

[Structural Integrity]

Hmmm, I'm not sure what to think about that page. I agree partially with the first heading because I'm kind of guilty of that myself. I could have licensed an engine, but the technical challenge of writing your own is just too appealing. I am however beginning to see that it's just not possible dispite that I got quite far a few times. I'm thinking about licensing a simple engine, but not before I got some decent ideas worked out.
However, blockbuster games require heavy graphics because that is what the audience is used to. And at that point the developer faces the decision to license a great game engine a lá Valve's Source or develop its own. When you see what such an engine costs it's understandable that developers decide to make their own.

With heading two and three I disagree. The big blockbuster games, yes, they are meant for making tonnes of money, but there is a large indy game developer community that is not limited by the will of an investor. The problem is that these people also have a very limited amount of resources.
Nobody works for free, so it is not feasible to create huge games that are not intended to generate revenue.

I agree with the not needing jaw-dropping graphics part. I can still enjoy the good old games on the NES. But the graphics certainly help in bringing the game to the buyer. I also believe that better graphics aid the gameplay. Think of these tank games where you could barely make out a tank from a tree.
People also shouldn't forget that an important part of the "fun" of games is how well the player can emerge in the game. Graphics help to bring the fantasy world to life in the gamer's mind.

90% technology, 10% gameplay. Gameplay is supported by technology. In HL2 a significant portion of the gameplay is brought by the awesome physics engine. So it's not that black and white. Thereby I think that a lot of gameplay features are already explored and implemented in games. The chances of coming up with something COMPLETELY new is very slim.

Games SHOULD be fun. The statement is not fundamentally flawed. It's the people who tell us that games are childish who are being silly. I think a change of name from "game" to "interactive media" would do the industry a lot of good, no?

[JammyJim]

Originally Posted by Knight Theamion

yeah well ... just hosting something i found in a zip

(the uplink extras!)

i hope you know how to get a shit load of cash early on in the game mofo.

heres a hint : "hack teh banks"

(its tricky and your racing against time but its so much fun its untrue)


and yes your right. uplink is one of the best games ever made yet its not one from a giant software firm bent on world gaming domination.
surely the games industry is much like the movie industry...

most big budget games are brilliant but lack a certain 'something' but then very few 'non major budget' games are ever any good really.

when you consider how many games are made very few really 'cut it' like uplink can.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by JammyJim

most big budget games are brilliant but lack a certain 'something'

Most big budget games lack this.

Frankly, the only games that are designed to just be straight 'fun' any more are, by and large, Nintendo games (Super Smash Brothers, Pikmin, Paper Mario), but these, by and large, also don't care so much about pushing the graphical envolope. Outside Nintendo, something like Disgaea also comes under this heading. Animal Crossing as well.

If you look towards the 'bleeding edge' graphics, you don't look for things as 'pure fun'; GTA San Andreas could not be described as 'pure fun' (it has lots of negative emotions: rage being the most obvious. THEY JUST CAN'T DESIGN MISSIONS). Neither could Halo 2, Doom 3 or Metroid Prime 2. Hey, aren't these all the big name releases this quarter? Wowzah!

[djbass]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

http://www18.big.or.jp/~hikoza/Archive/wf106.exe

for Warning Forever.

2D, no scrolling, all boss fights with the bosses evolving by how you kill them.

not strictly 2d, it's more a top down view using a 3d engine. nice game though, it's very much like Every Extend (also by a crazy japanese developer)

http://my.vector.co.jp/servlet/Syste...e/shoot/e2.lzh

[acropolis]

eh.

I agree with them sort of. I don't care about graphics. I care about gameplay. Game makers seem to be the other way around. But their reasoning...

The music industry has the same issue of mass producing the same crap. Why? Because that's what sells. Not because they are devoting their time and effort to their engineer's crappy ideas on how to get the best acoustics out of the CD format.

For games, the big 'pop' lines are sports and fps. And the fanbases of those two genres like graphics graphics graphics.

[djbass]

Originally Posted by acropolis

For games, the big 'pop' lines are sports and fps. And the fanbases of those two genres like graphics graphics graphics.

maybe where you are it is, here it's more strategy & fps


Also I believe the driving force for all this at the moment is more technology and marketing than just because it 'sells'.

Hardware manufacturers are investing a lot of money in researching & designing the next big thing. They want people to buy their stuff so they go on a marketing blitz to show just how great their hardware is. This excites the consumer and suddenly they want the product and they want the technology behind it. Game developers realise this and that if they want their game to sell it's going to have to run on all the latest and greatest hardware and take advantage of the new technology and so that's what their primary focus becomes. The company that makes the best use of the new technology in the most innovative way will gain the best market share. So begins the push for flashy game engines and somewhere in the process gameplay innovation gets left in the dust.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by djbass

So begins the push for flashy game engines and somewhere in the process gameplay innovation gets left in the dust.

That's not quite true. We're still seeing as much innovation now as we were 10, 15 years ago, it's just more subtle now. We can't have the amazing switch to 3D, as that's already happened, for example.

[Leshy]

I reckon the main problems in game design are the fast advancements of hardware on the PC platform, and the franchising of certain game genres and/or titles.

Even in the 'old days', quick and easy games popped up now and then, but they have quickly been forgotten. The true stars came out because designers were pushing the limits on the available hardware and/or technology, being forced to advance games on a different level, instead of pure graphical quality. Compare, for example, a game like Thief: The Dark Project with Doom 3.

The first was born because a team had the idea of creating a new game with gameplay elements that had not been used, or not fully explored before. They created an engine that met the requirements for the game and worked, but was technically fully obsolete by the time the game was released. Because the game had been built around a concept that the creators had faith in, however, the game worked and was great.

The latter was created because John Romero felt the need to create a new graphics engine that has the best graphics ever shown in a computer game, and it seems like he randomly chose Doom to figure as the game of choice for the engine. The result was a game that was visually stunning, yet it's gameplay was still at exactly the same level as it was in 1995, leading to a game that grows horribly old horribly quick.

Many games were from a technical standpoint obsolete upon release, but were great games nevertheless. Grand Theft Auto didn't have great graphics. Thief's engine was pretty outdated. Half-Life's engine was horribly old when it came out. These games were built from a gameplay point of view and included things because they were necessary - not just because they could.

And of course the second great bane is the franchising of games. Releasing a Tomb Raider XIV, FIFA 2015, Quake IX: The struggle for fps, because you have to release a new game in the series that year doesn't lead to creativity - it leads to having to come up with ridiculous stuff just to fill a CD or DVD with.