Topic: are we going down the tubes?

[Sartonius]

I have to say the passion some people have for games like this is remarkable (myself included).  

But, sadly, it's starting to look like the gaming industry is falling apart like the music industry already has.  Here we are in an age of unprecedented digital sound fidelity and unique opportunities to use technology creatively, and what do we find?  Turn on the radio and you hear nothing but 20 channels of garbage disguised as popular music.  Here we are in an age of incredible computer gaming technology, the likes of which were never dreamed of by the guys that made adventure games for the 286 and 386, and 75% or more of the games coming out are hardly worth getting excited over.  

It seems to me that it would be less expensive and more profitable to put together software that works at 95% effeciency instead of 75% effeciency (for example) in the first place than spend lots of time with fewer people tracking down glitches that now need to fix the "hard way."  Fewer people purchase the initial release because they want to wait and see how it performs, and the longer it takes to get it to perform, fewer people still are patient enough to finally decide to buy it.  But by then, the product costs 65% of what it did on release day.  Correct me if I sound crazy, but when the numbers are all summed up doesn't it seem as though you'd probably make more money if you did more thorough testing sooner rather than later?  Why does nobody practice this philosophy in developing games?  With the talent onboard I refuse to believe that it's impossible to do!  Who's standing in the way and why don't they learn?

[Robb Stark]

Quote:
I have to say the passion some people have for games like this is remarkable (myself included).  

But, sadly, it's starting to look like the gaming industry is falling apart like the music industry already has.  Here we are in an age of unprecedented digital sound fidelity and unique opportunities to use technology creatively, and what do we find?  Turn on the radio and you hear nothing but 20 channels of garbage disguised as popular music.

The situation is not precisely analagous, as the music travesty you're talking about is largely due to the Telecom Deregulation Act of the mid '90's, which basically allows a very small number of companies to own all the radio stations.  Homogenous drivel is simply a side-effect.  

Good music is still being made.  You just have to look to someplace other than the radio to find it.

Quote:
 Here we are in an age of incredible computer gaming technology, the likes of which were never dreamed of by the guys that made adventure games for the 286 and 386, and 75% or more of the games coming out are hardly worth getting excited over.  

It seems to me that it would be less expensive and more profitable to put together software that works at 95% effeciency instead of 75% effeciency (for example) in the first place than spend lots of time with fewer people tracking down glitches that now need to fix the "hard way."  Fewer people purchase the initial release because they want to wait and see how it performs, and the longer it takes to get it to perform, fewer people still are patient enough to finally decide to buy it.  But by then, the product costs 65% of what it did on release day.  Correct me if I sound crazy, but when the numbers are all summed up doesn't it seem as though you'd probably make more money if you did more thorough testing sooner rather than later?  Why does nobody practice this philosophy in developing games?  With the talent onboard I refuse to believe that it's impossible to do!  Who's standing in the way and why don't they learn?

The intrinsic technical difficulties of programming for the PC create this situation.  I think the industry shoots itself in the foot by wanting to program for faster and more powerful machines, to technically push the envelope when there aren't that many people with the high-end computers to buy the products.  Developers end up with a zero-sum equation for how much time they need to put into a game in order to make it bug free balanced against how much money the game makes.  Super-huge hits, like the Sims and such, will still make money.  More modest efforts, like SFC3, are facing an increasingly uphill struggle.

(Piracy is also a significant part of the equation in the PC world.)

Companies are increasingly turning to console development for these reasons.  The console game industry is considerably healthier than the PC game industry, and I expect the trend to continue as consoles become even more flexible and powerful.  They will never be as impressive as the leading-edge PC's... but that's a very overrated consideration.  

Another thing you are seeing is that the increased technology has its price, and that price is the effort it takes to develop a game.  It's rather like the difference between a Shakespeare play and a modern movie.  For the Shakespeare play, you have a bare wooden stage, a minimum of props, and the audience's imagination to fill in the blanks.  The city of Verona or Prospero's island are described with words and a few suggestive bits of scenery.  For a modern movie, you'd have to build a set, make matte paintings, hire extras, go on location, and so forth and so on.

Similarly, with old games, a simple 2D piece of 8-bit artwork can represent a vast castle.  Your hero is a little ball of pixels with a few animations.  In the case of some of the brilliant Infocom games of the 80's, we had NO graphics at all!  But today, everything has to be rendered in detailed 3D, modeled and textured, animated and shaded.  The effort to create the same castle is now much, much greater.  You need more people, more money, and more time.

So while advanced technology is supposed to "set the creators free" to paint visions and wonders for us, in its own way it is actually more limiting.  To realize a grand and strange vision requires a great deal more work.  If you don't have the budget and manpower and technical resources to create your world as you envision it, you need to scale back your ambitions and make a smaller game.  

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter.  I don't think games are "going down the tubes," but their nature is changing, and there is a tradeoff for any step forward.  

[Krusaderr]

Games need to concentrate more on gameplay and less on graphics, more on mechanics and less on storyline, and kill the marketing department. Marketing has no idea what the people want. I would give my ideas for what a good game should include; but you know what...gone are the days of free giving of ideas. Information like everything else costs money. You want my ideas? Send money to the following paypal  

[Alexander1701]

   Remember Quest 64. Best graphics in an RPG of its time, one of the worst RPGs of all time.

Alexander  

[Akhilles]

Quote:
Games need to concentrate more on gameplay and less on graphics, more on mechanics and less on storyline, and kill the marketing department. Marketing has no idea what the people want. I would give my ideas for what a good game should include; but you know what...gone are the days of free giving of ideas. Information like everything else costs money. You want my ideas? Send money to the following paypal    

It doesn't take that much to turn out a good game. Its disturbing the game companies that take shortcuts, their game falls short, and they wonder why.

Example: Jowood turns out a game: Gothic

Story, graphics, all are really well done, great game. Except for.. the controls. No mouse control, all keyboard. Every facet of the game: keyboard.

It's a Quake-like game (first or third person) yet they forgo two BASIC gameplay mechanics players are familiar with:

1) Customizable controls
2) Mouse control (or maybe even joystick)

Not all bungle's are the developer. Look at "Pool of Radiance". The management pushed the game til it was out long before it was ready. Took them nearly 6 months to patch it. Althrough the menu system in it was crappy, it was a decent game (for the few minutes I could play it without it crashing).

Consoles. Not a real good place for RTS games, but more and more companies are seeing the consoles becoming a huge force (namely Microsoft's entry and Nintendo's decent attempt). Even I picked up an XBOX.. never liking console games.. but shooters are nice when you can sit in the living room, 1-4 people playing at the same time. Same goes for an RPG, etc.

 

[DonKarnage]

the big problem in game is the patch, when a game have a good 10 patch well it suck verry much, look at sfc1 the mod are verry basic so fan make mod to make it bether, sfc2 same problem and the put sfc2/op with more stuff but still basic mod, again fan make bether mod for the game and more choise of ship, how much for each game well a little too much, i dont know how good are the mod in sfc3 and if the will make like an expanded game like for op, but those who did copy and sell games is because of the prices of the games, 45$ us for a game (not all have a playable demo) is a lot great or not is still a lot, look at microsoft software windows 95,98,2000 ect when the realese it the price was big so some user get a copy, well the should lower the price a little and make a good playable demo so user can get the demo and if the like it buy the game for a faire price, sfc games seem to have around 2 to 3 patch, not bad but the shoul make more mod for the prices the sell it and peraps a little more stuff like you can be a rebel ,( quit the fed and join the pirates or romuland with your ship).

[NannerSlug]

i agree that things are looking more toward consoles (although at present many console games lack depth that pc games do).. but then again, really console gaming is in its infancy as sorta that goes. competition is good!

[FatherTed]

 

Quote:
Similarly, with old games, a simple 2D piece of 8-bit artwork can represent a vast castle. Your hero is a little ball of pixels with a few animations. In the case of some of the brilliant Infocom games of the 80's, we had NO graphics at all! But today, everything has to be rendered in detailed 3D, modeled and textured, animated and shaded. The effort to create the same castle is now much, much greater. You need more people, more money, and more time.  

And usually the game itself takes a backseat to the glitz. To me, computer gaming reached it's apex in the early and mid-90's. SFC1 and 2 were the exception in that I've been disappointed with just about every game I've bought since Civ2 came out(if I had a machine capable of running DOS, I'd still have Civ1 and Panzer General on the hard drive). They weren't flashy, but they had one helluva good engine under the hood. I still play Civ2(approaching 7 years on the various hard drives I've gone through), simply because with literally hundreds of player mods, you never have to worry about fighting the same campaign twice. It's always different. That is usually the bane of any game, in that most people never bother to play online. They get through the campaign, or life, or whatever a few times, and it loses its appeal.

For example, I would have forgotten about SFC over a year ago if I hadn't discovered the D2. I'd fought every campaign on EAW for every race, from Captain to Admiral level. There were no surprises left. I knew exactly where my opponent would enter the map, what I had to do to get the victory in the mission, and could do it without even thinking. If it weren't for the challenge of taking on a human player(and usually getting blown away ), and the fact that Evil Dave inflicted his missions on us, I wouldn't be here typing this right now.

Are the games better today than they were 10 years ago? Not really. But one thing the PC will always have over a console is that the great games will always have people like Evil Dave who can inject new life into them, and besides, where else can you find the "J'inn, You Bastard!" thread?    

[SPQR Renegade001]

Quote:
Games need to concentrate more on gameplay and less on graphics, more on mechanics and less on storyline, and kill the marketing department. Marketing has no idea what the people want.

Hear! Hear!

It's a sad testament for the gaming industry as a whole, when a vidio game junkie like me can walk into a software store that has literaly 100s of game titles, and see nothing of interest aside from the handfull of games I've picked up over the last year. Hell, things are so dry, the Diablo II & StarCraft battle chests are still being sold at a premium price.
What happened to game depth? A good twitch game is nice once in a while (pokes Nanner ), but I'd much rather a game I need to think about. Sim City's not bad and neither is Civ, WCIII, EE, IC..., but I really miss the games where you'd take time and PLAN your next move. Many of todays "strategy" games have little more real depth than Raid Over Bungling Bay did on the C64; they just look better now.

Did anyone here ever give Carnage Heart a look? Now that was a game you could think about.

[Belchfire]

Informatiom is a powerful tool and amazing to what insight you can gain into the gaming industry and their products. With all hobbies I have been involved with I always sought out the most reputable and knowlegable sources for info. Considering the daunting task of choosing a game to buy I found myself lost since I had little information on the products in front of me. The first game I ever bought was liked by everyone I spoke with and had also been game of the year. This was a no brainer. After that I realized that some publication would be needed to sort out the trash from the treasure. There are many great games out there as there are many that would serve better as a coaster. My point is that after buying an outside magazine to sort out and narrow down what is worth my time, many games that would not normally interest me gave me many hours of pleasure, even this one.

Be Well

Belch  

[Mavolic]

Quote:

Quote:


Did anyone here ever give Carnage Heart a look? Now that was a game you could think about.  

Carnage Heart is probably my all time favorite stratagy/tatic game.

That was a brilliantly designed game.  I would KILL to have that transported to the PC as a series of games.

Graphic/sound/music wise, it was sub-par, but you forgot all that while you were busy designing and programming your OKE's for hours on end, trying to create the perfect mech.

If they had a Noble Prize for game design, the guys who built Carnage Heart deserve it hands down.  

[Alexander1701]

   It's sad but true that most high-selling games have shinyness and only shinyness going for them. Tomb raider, for example, is not a particularly well written game. Really, its only well-drawn. As another example, take the old descent series. Descents 2-4 were Descent 1 with better graphics. It IS what sells, because people assume bad graphics means old means not much effort.

Of course that's just my oppinion, I could be wrong.

SFC3 still rules

Alexander    

[Rod O'neal]

<in a nutshell>
Too many "suits" listenning to too many accountants because of the pressure of having shareholders.  

[Sartonius]

I have to say the passion some people have for games like this is remarkable (myself included).  

But, sadly, it's starting to look like the gaming industry is falling apart like the music industry already has.  Here we are in an age of unprecedented digital sound fidelity and unique opportunities to use technology creatively, and what do we find?  Turn on the radio and you hear nothing but 20 channels of garbage disguised as popular music.  Here we are in an age of incredible computer gaming technology, the likes of which were never dreamed of by the guys that made adventure games for the 286 and 386, and 75% or more of the games coming out are hardly worth getting excited over.  

It seems to me that it would be less expensive and more profitable to put together software that works at 95% effeciency instead of 75% effeciency (for example) in the first place than spend lots of time with fewer people tracking down glitches that now need to fix the "hard way."  Fewer people purchase the initial release because they want to wait and see how it performs, and the longer it takes to get it to perform, fewer people still are patient enough to finally decide to buy it.  But by then, the product costs 65% of what it did on release day.  Correct me if I sound crazy, but when the numbers are all summed up doesn't it seem as though you'd probably make more money if you did more thorough testing sooner rather than later?  Why does nobody practice this philosophy in developing games?  With the talent onboard I refuse to believe that it's impossible to do!  Who's standing in the way and why don't they learn?

[Robb Stark]

Quote:
I have to say the passion some people have for games like this is remarkable (myself included).  

But, sadly, it's starting to look like the gaming industry is falling apart like the music industry already has.  Here we are in an age of unprecedented digital sound fidelity and unique opportunities to use technology creatively, and what do we find?  Turn on the radio and you hear nothing but 20 channels of garbage disguised as popular music.

The situation is not precisely analagous, as the music travesty you're talking about is largely due to the Telecom Deregulation Act of the mid '90's, which basically allows a very small number of companies to own all the radio stations.  Homogenous drivel is simply a side-effect.  

Good music is still being made.  You just have to look to someplace other than the radio to find it.

Quote:
 Here we are in an age of incredible computer gaming technology, the likes of which were never dreamed of by the guys that made adventure games for the 286 and 386, and 75% or more of the games coming out are hardly worth getting excited over.  

It seems to me that it would be less expensive and more profitable to put together software that works at 95% effeciency instead of 75% effeciency (for example) in the first place than spend lots of time with fewer people tracking down glitches that now need to fix the "hard way."  Fewer people purchase the initial release because they want to wait and see how it performs, and the longer it takes to get it to perform, fewer people still are patient enough to finally decide to buy it.  But by then, the product costs 65% of what it did on release day.  Correct me if I sound crazy, but when the numbers are all summed up doesn't it seem as though you'd probably make more money if you did more thorough testing sooner rather than later?  Why does nobody practice this philosophy in developing games?  With the talent onboard I refuse to believe that it's impossible to do!  Who's standing in the way and why don't they learn?

The intrinsic technical difficulties of programming for the PC create this situation.  I think the industry shoots itself in the foot by wanting to program for faster and more powerful machines, to technically push the envelope when there aren't that many people with the high-end computers to buy the products.  Developers end up with a zero-sum equation for how much time they need to put into a game in order to make it bug free balanced against how much money the game makes.  Super-huge hits, like the Sims and such, will still make money.  More modest efforts, like SFC3, are facing an increasingly uphill struggle.

(Piracy is also a significant part of the equation in the PC world.)

Companies are increasingly turning to console development for these reasons.  The console game industry is considerably healthier than the PC game industry, and I expect the trend to continue as consoles become even more flexible and powerful.  They will never be as impressive as the leading-edge PC's... but that's a very overrated consideration.  

Another thing you are seeing is that the increased technology has its price, and that price is the effort it takes to develop a game.  It's rather like the difference between a Shakespeare play and a modern movie.  For the Shakespeare play, you have a bare wooden stage, a minimum of props, and the audience's imagination to fill in the blanks.  The city of Verona or Prospero's island are described with words and a few suggestive bits of scenery.  For a modern movie, you'd have to build a set, make matte paintings, hire extras, go on location, and so forth and so on.

Similarly, with old games, a simple 2D piece of 8-bit artwork can represent a vast castle.  Your hero is a little ball of pixels with a few animations.  In the case of some of the brilliant Infocom games of the 80's, we had NO graphics at all!  But today, everything has to be rendered in detailed 3D, modeled and textured, animated and shaded.  The effort to create the same castle is now much, much greater.  You need more people, more money, and more time.

So while advanced technology is supposed to "set the creators free" to paint visions and wonders for us, in its own way it is actually more limiting.  To realize a grand and strange vision requires a great deal more work.  If you don't have the budget and manpower and technical resources to create your world as you envision it, you need to scale back your ambitions and make a smaller game.  

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter.  I don't think games are "going down the tubes," but their nature is changing, and there is a tradeoff for any step forward.  

[Krusaderr]

Games need to concentrate more on gameplay and less on graphics, more on mechanics and less on storyline, and kill the marketing department. Marketing has no idea what the people want. I would give my ideas for what a good game should include; but you know what...gone are the days of free giving of ideas. Information like everything else costs money. You want my ideas? Send money to the following paypal  

[Alexander1701]

   Remember Quest 64. Best graphics in an RPG of its time, one of the worst RPGs of all time.

Alexander  

[Akhilles]

Quote:
Games need to concentrate more on gameplay and less on graphics, more on mechanics and less on storyline, and kill the marketing department. Marketing has no idea what the people want. I would give my ideas for what a good game should include; but you know what...gone are the days of free giving of ideas. Information like everything else costs money. You want my ideas? Send money to the following paypal    

It doesn't take that much to turn out a good game. Its disturbing the game companies that take shortcuts, their game falls short, and they wonder why.

Example: Jowood turns out a game: Gothic

Story, graphics, all are really well done, great game. Except for.. the controls. No mouse control, all keyboard. Every facet of the game: keyboard.

It's a Quake-like game (first or third person) yet they forgo two BASIC gameplay mechanics players are familiar with:

1) Customizable controls
2) Mouse control (or maybe even joystick)

Not all bungle's are the developer. Look at "Pool of Radiance". The management pushed the game til it was out long before it was ready. Took them nearly 6 months to patch it. Althrough the menu system in it was crappy, it was a decent game (for the few minutes I could play it without it crashing).

Consoles. Not a real good place for RTS games, but more and more companies are seeing the consoles becoming a huge force (namely Microsoft's entry and Nintendo's decent attempt). Even I picked up an XBOX.. never liking console games.. but shooters are nice when you can sit in the living room, 1-4 people playing at the same time. Same goes for an RPG, etc.

 

[DonKarnage]

the big problem in game is the patch, when a game have a good 10 patch well it suck verry much, look at sfc1 the mod are verry basic so fan make mod to make it bether, sfc2 same problem and the put sfc2/op with more stuff but still basic mod, again fan make bether mod for the game and more choise of ship, how much for each game well a little too much, i dont know how good are the mod in sfc3 and if the will make like an expanded game like for op, but those who did copy and sell games is because of the prices of the games, 45$ us for a game (not all have a playable demo) is a lot great or not is still a lot, look at microsoft software windows 95,98,2000 ect when the realese it the price was big so some user get a copy, well the should lower the price a little and make a good playable demo so user can get the demo and if the like it buy the game for a faire price, sfc games seem to have around 2 to 3 patch, not bad but the shoul make more mod for the prices the sell it and peraps a little more stuff like you can be a rebel ,( quit the fed and join the pirates or romuland with your ship).

[NannerSlug]

i agree that things are looking more toward consoles (although at present many console games lack depth that pc games do).. but then again, really console gaming is in its infancy as sorta that goes. competition is good!