How to make a creative game in 2010: Ensure your CEO never hears of the game - by thiefinthedark
Melan on 29/6/2010 at 20:45
Quote Posted by Eldron
Now I could possibly be wrong and thiefinthedark is a veteran who has worked back in the 90's with the start of the games industry as it came to be and has seen it go from good to bad, that or things were actually the same back then too.
This reminds me of (
http://pc.ign.com/articles/065/065299p1.html) this interview with Robert Sirotek:
Quote:
IGNPC: When do you think the games business turned from being a relatively friendly, cottage industry to today's cutthroat marketplace?
RS: Towards the latter part of the 1980s I saw the industry getting more difficult. It was really around the time the first wave of Hollywood companies got in and, much to my satisfaction, departed.
The second time around was in the early 90s, when the same group of Hollywood companies came in with big money. This time they did far more damage; they stuck around a little bit longer, but most left as well.
There you have it, early 90s. :p
Interesting how many familiar things pop up there (even though the article is from 1998). Of course, there is also a lot of wild speculation that never went anywhere - and let's not forget this was all before Thief, Deus Ex, System Shock 2 or Morrowind, so there may be some hope after all.
Papy on 29/6/2010 at 22:29
Quote Posted by dethtoll
If you want to make
that argument you need to pick something other than Oblivion, which even I don't like. It's also hardly the "model of AAA gaming" you seem to think it is, particularly since there are a zillion and one mods that set out to improve just about any feature of the game you might find lacking.
I used Oblivion as an example because a lot of people consider it as a great game. As for mods, I'm not sure how the fact some people decided to try to fix the game can say the game, as made by the developers, is actually good.
Quote Posted by DDL
For example, I'm a research biochemist: if I want insanely fiddly tasks that require a high degree of skill and frequently fail for bullshit reasons, forcing constant repetition until I get it
perfect, then I simply GO TO FUCKING WORK.
Most of what I do for pleasure could be consider as work by someone else. In fact, right now, I'm playing with Manufacturia when I have a bit of time and finite-state machine is the kind of thing I could do as part of my job! Do you really believe that thinking is never a part of any entertainment?
Quote Posted by DDL
I get the impression that you'd prefer games to be much more of the "you fuck up, you die.
You got the wrong impression. In the case of pure action game, I certainly want to have the feeling I'm getting better at it the more I play, and that obviously implies a lot of failing and restart.
But for an RPG, I hate when I die. Of course, if I play without caring (like without reading the manual to understand the game), then I think I deserve to die. But if I pay correctly, then I believe a good game should have enough information available and give me enough room for small mistakes so I can finish the game without dying on my first playthrough. Of course I can accept dying once in a while as there are always times I play with less care, but I absolutely hate an RPG where you learn by dying.
Quote Posted by DDL
Plus, let's be honest: games where you have to make critical inventory/skill choices (take this item, succeed! Leave it? Fail!) generally tend to have less replayability than games that have less significant choices (take this item? X is easier! Leave it? Well, X is harder but still possible). I would've thought this would be right up your street, since you could then deliberately choose non-optimal paths to add 'challenge'.
I rarely voluntarily choose a non-optimal path so I can have a challenge, which, I guess, is not surprising considering I play most story based games only once. Replayability, for an RPG, has very little value to me. But even when I do replay a game, I don't like playing with toys so I always try to play my best and that include using every options I have.
Quote Posted by DDL
You seem to be simultaneously demanding challenge, and demanding that said challenge be presented in ways that, when correctly followed, make the game less challenging. Which is confusing.
What do you find confusing? The challenge I like is not to kill the monster, but to find a way to kill it in an easy way. If I find a clever way to do it, then killing the monster should be easy.
june gloom on 29/6/2010 at 23:07
A lot more people think Oblivion is somewhere between "lacking but tolerable" to "shitty." It's a poor example and you would've had a much stronger argument with, say, any Call of Duty after the 2nd one. (Or including the 2nd one, if you like.)
Eldron on 29/6/2010 at 23:35
Quote Posted by dethtoll
A lot more people think Oblivion is somewhere between "lacking but tolerable" to "shitty." It's a poor example and you would've had a much stronger argument with, say, any Call of Duty after the 2nd one. (Or including the 2nd one, if you like.)
Well, with modern warfare it could also be said in the way that modern warfare 2 was extremely good, but lacked mods, dedicated servers and lean.
But its easier for people to say "it was pure shit compared to mw1"
People tend to get very creative and dramatical when they want to paint up an image of not liking a game for some reasons.
vesuvius on 4/8/2010 at 02:36
Quote Posted by Melan
This reminds me of (
http://pc.ign.com/articles/065/065299p1.html) this interview with Robert Sirotek:
There you have it, early 90s. :p
Interesting how many familiar things pop up there (even though the article is from 1998). Of course, there is also a lot of wild speculation that never went anywhere - and let's not forget this was all before Thief, Deus Ex, System Shock 2 or Morrowind, so there may be some hope after all.
Not that much hope- that quote is talking about the establishment of the big corporate publishers like Eidos, and how things like Tomb Raider became the hot property for pretty obvious marketing reasons... and.... that directly led to the end of Looking Glass. It was Eidos's funding going to Tomb Raider instead of honoring their financial obligations to LGS that ended things there.
It was LucasArts saying they wanted to push the Star Wars franchise that led to the end of their original adventure game IPs, and it was their top-down mandate to make things into the shiny new graphic of the moment
3D that killed the last few uninspired adventure games they DID release.
Origin died because they pushed Ultima Online, while graphics requirements made them make Ultima IX in 3D, and pressure to work on UO kept them from adequate bug testing and optimizing.
Interplay killed Black Isle Studios so that they could butcher the Fallout IP by making an awful console shoot-em up as a quick cash-in, and by forcing development to focus on an MMO to rake in cash.
Original developer after original developer died in service to the whims of marketing and an assured investment.
I'm not going to argue that a game company shouldn't want to get a return on their efforts, but it's clear that showing off an exciting idea, coming up with groundbreaking new gameplay, making increasingly in-depth and open ended games, and most importantly- making games that take advantage of the unique strengths of the medium- that these all take a back seat to market share.
It's become like Hollywood, it's become development by committee, by focus group.
There's only one (big) developer around that I think is truly creative and independent still, and that's Double-Fine. Blizzard makes well-crafted but far too familiar stuff... same with Bioware. Pretty games, nice stories, polished... but we've been there before.
I would've included a second developer - Irrational- but they gave up their independence, they lost control over IPs they had before the buy-out by Take Two (now the new X-Com's been farmed out and generic)... so yeah, their autonomy is over as well.
I still feel there are good games out there, but it's a far more calculated, economics-oriented environment, and there's less freedom to make games that suck, and to make games that are brilliant and push the envelope.
CCCToad on 4/8/2010 at 02:42
Quote Posted by Eldron
Well, with modern warfare it could also be said in the way that modern warfare 2 was extremely good, but lacked mods, dedicated servers and lean.
But its easier for people to say "it was pure shit compared to mw1"
People tend to get very creative and dramatical when they want to paint up an image of not liking a game for some reasons.
MW 2 was so bad its not worth getting dramatic about. It wasn't just pure shit compared to MW1. It was pure shit.
Koki on 4/8/2010 at 05:30
Why?
Eldron on 4/8/2010 at 07:21
I eagerly await this answer too.
