All this detail.. to what means? - by Scott Weiland
Sulphur on 13/5/2010 at 05:29
Quote Posted by Ko0K
But to some point in the past, gameplay mechanics also enjoyed some innovations. That 'these days' comment was factoring that in, FYI.
Oh? Okay, if that's what you meant. It's strange that your post doesn't say a thing about gameplay, if that's what you were getting at.
And I suppose in the past we had gameplay innovations, unlike today. Today, we don't have things like motion sensing controls, cross- and post-genre games like Darwinia and Borderlands, indie games like Braid, The Void, and The Path which twist the core ideas of gameplay, and let's not mention the trend where workable physics simulations form a fundamental part of the game, like, for example, World of Goo and Half Life 2.
Yeah. The past was way more exciting. People in game development these days are just slacking off. :tsktsk:
Ko0K on 13/5/2010 at 06:15
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Oh? Okay, if that's what you meant. It's strange that your post doesn't say a thing about gameplay, if that's what you were getting at.
And I suppose in the past we had gameplay innovations, unlike today. Today, we don't have things like motion sensing controls, cross- and post-genre games like Darwinia and Borderlands, indie games like Braid, The Void, and The Path which twist the core ideas of gameplay, and let's not mention the trend where workable physics simulations form a fundamental part of the game, like, for example, World of Goo and Half Life 2.
Yeah. The past was way more exciting. People in game development these days are just slacking off. :tsktsk:
Fucking troll...
(edit) Listen, asshole. When someone replies courteously to you despite you being a fucking twat, have the fucking common sense to reciprocate.
Sulphur on 13/5/2010 at 06:25
We're done. I didn't know that sarcasm and logic constituted trolling these days. FYI, try making sense next time along with this supposed effort at being 'courteous'.
Ko0K on 13/5/2010 at 06:26
You try too hard.
EvaUnit02 on 13/5/2010 at 08:28
Quote Posted by Sulphur
and let's not mention the trend where workable physics simulations form a fundamental part of the game, like, for example, World of Goo and Half Life 2.
Ummm, no. Those are iterative, not innovative. Even stuff as early as Thief had rudimentary physics applied to objects.
Chade on 13/5/2010 at 08:43
Thief's use of physics is different to World of Goo's use of physics in practically every way.
In fact it's pretty damn different to Half Life 2's as well.
It doesn't make sense to say that one game mechanic stops a completely different game mechanic from being innovative just because they share one broad metaphor.
Eldron on 13/5/2010 at 09:15
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
Undying?
as I said, roughly, there's not a jump in technology in any vast sense, there's extra polygons, some better use of the colorlightmaps that unreal did well, better animations.
There's still the same amount of props, the same bsp limitations of the first unreal engine, the same focus on graphics.
The main point is, when you start using a graphical game to arguing against using graphics in game, it becomes a bit weird, since people argued about games becoming too focused on graphics even before the first unreal.
Gryzemuis on 13/5/2010 at 13:18
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Yeah. The past was way more exciting. People in game development these days are just slacking off. :tsktsk:
I think Game Developers are almost forced to try and make fancy graphics.
If you want to sell a game, it helps to differentiate it from the rest. Gameplay is one factor that could help. Story is another. Technical graphical improvements can make a game look great. And the last factor is the artwork.
Stories in games suck. They almost always do. It's easy to miss the storyline if you don't pay attention. The stories are too simple. It's just hard to differentiate yourself.
Technical graphical improvements only go so far. All engines are close in features nowadays. And more important, if you want to sell a game to a large audience, you can't really use all those new features. Because half your potential audience can't run the game on their hardware then.
So that leave artwork and gameplay. Artwork, imho, is how you use the engine. Textures, models, animations, lighting. Biosphere did a great job here, because it created that whole 50's look. I hope it has set a trend where many new games will try to create their own style. Morrowind and Oblivion are weird in this respect. I love the huge open world. But the models, textures and animations are sometimes so bad. Models and textures can be fixed by fans. But I recognized FallOut3 immediatly, because it had the same terrible animations again.
Now about the important part. Gameplay.
I think developers can't improve on gameplay. Why ? Because the gamers don't want that.
This is TTLG. Where the fans of Thief and System Shock meet. We liked those games because they were different from Doom and Quake. You had to use your brains to play. You had to have patience. You had to come up with strategies. You had to be aware of your surroundings. We all liked that.
But it seems most gamers don't like that. They like fast paced crap. They like low challenge and quick rewards. They like simplicity. They prefer repeated gameplay that they understand, over gameplay that they need to spend time to figure out.
I don't know who these gamers are. But I'm slowly accepting the fact that they are the majority. Kids with short attention spans. Grown-ups who play only a few hours per week to get away from stress. They don't want to invest time in figuring out how a game works. They want Mouse1 to shoot a heavy gun, and walk around with WASD. Maybe a jump and use key, and that's it. They don't want to do math, or use spreadsheets to figure out how to optimally play a game. At most they want to read a generic walk-through that tells them which door to take and go to the next level.
So Game Developers can not improve gameplay. Because it will be too complex for the majority of their customers. They can not add too much challenge. In fact, they need to lower challenge. Add maps to all levels. If players still can't find the exit, or the next objective, add arrows. Add loot glint. Make quests easy and quick. Add respawn chambers, quicksave, fast health regen, etc. Stuff your levels with ammo. Developers think they have to do that, or they will lose customers.
So if Game Developers can not try new gameplay mechanics, the only way they can differentiate their game is by graphics and artwork. And that is what they do today.
I have only one hope.
That game development gets cheaper and cheaper. Because of all the new tools. And leasing an engine could become cheaper. Technology that becomes a commodity always gets cheaper. If the technology gets cheap enough, smaller companies can afford it to develop games for niche areas. Like The Void. Like small independent film makers. Game developers that intentionally don't make a game for the masses, but for their own intended audience. I hope this will become the future.
Nameless Voice on 13/5/2010 at 13:29
Quote Posted by LittleFlower
Stories in games suck. They almost always do. It's easy to miss the storyline if you don't pay attention. The stories are too simple. It's just hard to differentiate yourself.
I think you're playing the wrong games.
june gloom on 13/5/2010 at 16:01
Yeah I stopped reading right around there.
