Discovery Channel's Games Documentary Impresses 87
Rock, Paper, Shotgun notes the kickoff of a new Discovery channel series called Rise of the Videogame. Blogger John Walker discusses the show, which just began last week, with an eye towards its research rigor and friendliness to the subject matter. He comes away fairly impressed, both by the topics covered and the casting. Along with games industry luminaries like Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn, they chat with folks like Steve Russell (of Spacewar! fame) and Smartbomb author Heather Chaplin. "A little visually overwrought with its montage footage of real-world conflict, it's otherwise a solid, informative and supremely well 'cast' documentary. If you've read around the subject, it won't tell you anything new. But it's fantastic to hear the stories from the people themselves. Episode 2 is very sensibly about the rise of Mario, next Wednesday."
Nice (Score:2)
Torrent of episode 1 available (Score:5, Informative)
"I, Videogames" (Score:2)
How long... (Score:1, Interesting)
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I think "Rise of Books" was pretty well covered in "Human History."
dude.
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I don't think 'main stream' has anything to do with it; it's age. "Rise of Books" books are rare because books have been around for a long time, and there's not much new in the space. As for "Rise of Pro Football" there are quite a few books on pro football history.
My humble 2 cents... (Score:5, Informative)
They're fabulous. I watch them and fondly remember the old times. I specially liked the chapter about hobbyists who made games for the Commodore 64, and I remember the Compute! and RUN magazines.
Those discovery documentaries are an eye-opener which shows you the social causes and effects of videogames (generational breachs, the influence of the WWII and the Cold war in the first videogames).
What can I say? I liked them all. From the first hobbyists and pong, to the walks of Miyamoto in the japanese forests reflected in Zelda and Mario, to the rise of FPS and games with protagonists.
I really recommend that show to everyone.
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Re:My humble 2 cents... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My humble 2 cents... (Score:5, Insightful)
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The problem the parent eludes to is that many developers think graphics are more important than the game. Graphics are nice, but if the game sucks, a polished turd is still a turd. I'd rather play a great game with decent graphics than a mediocre game that awes me with shiny for the 30 minutes I play until I decide that it sucks.
Graphics are one part of a whole. Very few successful games take the route you mentioned. Heavenly sword looks very good, but it's also a pretty decent brawler; Gears of war was gorgeous, and was a fun third person shooter; Ratchet and Clank future:TOD was really good looking, and an awesome combat platformed.
Where is this mythical "graphics before gameplay" game that sold really well? Madden 08? Lair (hahaha sells well? haha)? Halo 3 (if you call terrible normal/bump maps looking good)?
Almost any game on
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Heavenly Sword is little more than a pretty tech demo.
FYI DEFCON has sad graphics and is still being quite profitable and winning several awards.
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6 hours of game play does not make a decent brawler.
Heavenly Sword is little more than a pretty tech demo.
You obvious haven't played it. 6h was a number a reviewer threw out, but skipping every cut scene and every optional pat and playing the game perfectly to kill everything first try in the shortest time 6h might be about right. It took me personally 15h over 3 weeks, which places it with most other brawler games. It lacks that filler many games have (ala Halo, back track through the level again).
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Graphics are one part of a whole. Very few successful games take the route you mentioned. Heavenly sword looks very good, but it's also a pretty decent brawler; Gears of war was gorgeous, and was a fun third person shooter; Ratchet and Clank future:TOD was really good looking, and an awesome combat platformed.
See, I think these games actually show that graphics alone can't make a game. HS was a "decent brawler", but it was only a decent brawler, and it was over after 6 hours. It didn't really offer anything other than great graphics and incredible cut-scenes.
I'll say that GoW did combine innovation and graphics, so I won't argue with this one; but R&C? Really? In my opinion, it's not an awesome platformer. It's an average, linear shooter and a crappy platformer. Its gameplay just can't keep up with its gr
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See, I think these games actually show that graphics alone can't make a game. HS was a "decent brawler", but it was only a decent brawler, and it was over after 6 hours. It didn't really offer anything other than great graphics and incredible cut-scenes.
I'll say that GoW did combine innovation and graphics, so I won't argue with this one; but R&C? Really? In my opinion, it's not an awesome platformer. It's an average, linear shooter and a crappy platformer. Its gameplay just can't keep up with its graphics.
You really didn't play HS did you? Every who bounds about the 6h figure is actually quoting from 1 source. The game is longer then that, a bit shorter then halo 3 but much longer then 6h. R&T is extremely open. Linear shooter does not describe it. Each level is about 1/2 hidden secrets and every other level has 2 or more ways around or has goals that you can per sue as you please. Did you actually play it or did you just read a review?
I think that's kind of the point: Most of these games don't sell really well, yet devs keep on making them because even though they don't sell well, it's still less risk than innovating with gameplay and risking a total bomb.
As for the "gameplay before graphics" games: Wii Sports. I think that game alone shows that games (and even consoles) can sell on gameplay alone.
Wii sports does sell wii's. To non gamers. The idea that major franchises will move there is the reason gamers go there.
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You really didn't play HS did you? Every who bounds about the 6h figure is actually quoting from 1 source.
The lacking playtime was mentioned in pretty much all reviews. And I did play it; i just didn't finish it. I don't own it (I'm not going to pay full price for a six-hours-game), a friend of mine does.
The game is longer then that, a bit shorter then halo 3 but much longer then 6h.
I also didn't buy Halo 3 (in my opinion, it's a pretty crappy FPS compared to stuff like CoD4), but in its defense, people mainly buy that for the online component, which does provide dozens of hours of entertainment, and which HS does not have.
R&T is extremely open.
I'm guessing you mean "extremely open" as in "more than one
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The lacking playtime was mentioned in pretty much all reviews. And I did play it; i just didn't finish it. I don't own it (I'm not going to pay full price for a six-hours-game), a friend of mine does.
So your speculating and spreading mis information. The game is short. But no shorter then it's peers. Many games have been getting shorter. Ala Halo 3. However this may nto be a bad thing because halo 3 and HS simply lacked the filler you find in other similar games like halo 1.
I also didn't buy Halo 3 (in my opinion, it's a pretty crappy FPS compared to stuff like CoD4), but in its defense, people mainly buy that for the online component, which does provide dozens of hours of entertainment, and which HS does not have.
It really depends if you're an online gamer or not. My GF's brother bought it and I finished it with him. He just wanted to finish the story. He never played it again.
I'm guessing you mean "extremely open" as in "more than one path," not as in "I see that sky scraper over there, so I can go there." I want the second.
Yeah, that's what I thought. But in my opinion, "more than one way around" does not a non-linear game make.
That is a silly complaint. You want a different game genre. Platformers aren't necessarily sand box games. If you played it for a few stages in you'd hit section where it almost is a sandbox games. the levels are huge. Not many platformers are as open as you implied you want. In fact off the top of my head I can't think of one. Crash bandicoot? no. Mario 64? no. Mario Galaxy? no. Sonic? no. Ico? maybe. I think you really want GTA or crackdown.
I don't quite understand the distinction between "people who play Wii sports" and "gamers." Aren't people who play Wii Sports - and even buy a console for the privilege - gamers by definition? I'm not entirely sure what your point is: Are you saying that people who previously owned other consoles can't appreciate Wii Sports?
There is a quantitative difference between gaming hobbyists. Gamers. and Casual gamers. NDP did a study, found "Gamers" still represent more money even though there are mroe casual gamers. It really comes down to how much time people play and how much money they spend. For instance my sister will play wii sports but nothing else. Not mario party not nintendogs, nothing. she is a casual gamer. Her purchases won't exceed wii sports and perhaps a sequel or a clone.
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The lacking playtime was mentioned in pretty much all reviews. And I did play it; i just didn't finish it. I don't own it (I'm not going to pay full price for a six-hours-game), a friend of mine does.
So your speculating and spreading mis information.
What part of "The lacking playtime was mentioned in pretty much all reviews." did you not understand? Maybe it took you 7 hours to finish the game. Maybe it took you 10 hours. It doesn't really matter; it's still too short a game.
The game is short. But no shorter then it's peers. Many games have been getting shorter. Ala Halo 3.
Again, people buy Halo 3 for the online component. If your girlfriend's brother bought the game for the single-player mode, whether the game is long enough or not is his judgment to make. It would be too short for me. The fact that Halo 3 has a short single-player mode in no w
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What part of "The lacking playtime was mentioned in pretty much all reviews." did you not understand? Maybe it took you 7 hours to finish the game. Maybe it took you 10 hours. It doesn't really matter; it's still too short a game.
15h two shy of how long it took me and my Gf's brother to finish Halo 3.
Have you even played Mario 64? The game is entirely open. You enter a level, and you're free to go wherever you want. The whole level is open to you. There's no comparison to something like R&C, where you follow a narrow path. None at all.
Yes indeed i have. The levels are 1 way to a first goal and multiple ways to extra goals. Ratchet and blank is similar. However it doesn't seem you've played much of R&T or at all. Exploration is a large part of the game. The number of levels in mario 64 is greater, the size of the levels in R&T f is generally greater.
I'm not sure if you're lying or if you're not remembering this correctly. Here's a link to an article about the study. To quote:
"Heavy gamers make up only 3% of the gaming population"
Obviously each "heavy gamer" buys way more games than the other market segments, but even taking this into account, heavy gamers are a small part of the market in terms of total money spent.
here [npd.com] is the press release for the actual report. That ~2% out spends other market segments. 7:1 to "avid gam
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Have you even played Mario 64? The game is entirely open. You enter a level, and you're free to go wherever you want. The whole level is open to you. There's no comparison to something like R&C, where you follow a narrow path. None at all.
Yes indeed i have. The levels are 1 way to a first goal and multiple ways to extra goals.
That is actually not true. You can get to the first star however you want, too. There's no path in any of the levels (apart from very few, like the sledding levels). For some obstacles, there's only one way to negotiate them, but most of the time, you can find your own path to the star.
I'm not sure if you're lying or if you're not remembering this correctly. Here's a link to an article about the study. To quote: "Heavy gamers make up only 3% of the gaming population" Obviously each "heavy gamer" buys way more games than the other market segments, but even taking this into account, heavy gamers are a small part of the market in terms of total money spent.
here [npd.com] is the press release for the actual report. That ~2% out spends other market segments. 7:1 to "avid gamers". they did not list a stat in the free release about "casual" gamers. It's safe to assume it is less then avid gamers.
That evaluates to 14% of the actual money spent. As I've said, heavy gamers are a small part of the market in terms of total money spent. Comparing the "Mass Market Gamers" (which I guess is NPD's term for casual gamers)
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There is a quantitative difference between gaming hobbyists. Gamers. and Casual gamers. NDP did a study, found "Gamers" still represent more money even though there are more casual gamers.
That evaluates to 14% of the actual money spent. As I've said, heavy gamers are a small part of the market in terms of total money spent. Comparing the "Mass Market Gamers" (which I guess is NPD's term for casual gamers) to the heavies gives the following picture: 2%x13 games = 26 for the heavies (I'm not going to normalize this); 15%x2 games = 30 for the casuals. So the casuals buy more games than the heavies according to this study; and that doesn't even include "casual kids."
Actually heavy gamers, avid gamers and "mass market gamers" would be the gaming hobbyists I was refering to. The casual ones are the secondary gamers and casual kids. which are abotu 30% numerically but far lower economically. If you was you who singled out "heavy gamers" to represent hobbyists, not I nor NDP.
Secondary gamers make up 22% and casual kids 8%. Anyone who spends ~10 hours a week on something can be reasonably be called a hobbyist in that something. But we're diving into meaning sema
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But they don't fail (Score:2)
They don't. New Super Mario Bros is one of the best-selling Mario titles of all times.
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I gotta agree. I know I am an old timer, especially with respect to video games, but, I go 100% with you on the importance of game play. To this day, I still think the best and
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Happens to this very day, too. sometimes you wonder what in the world you just looted off a mob in Wow, and think "why am I looting a slushy pancreas?"
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The problem the parent eludes to is that many developers think graphics are more important than the game. Graphics are nice, but if the game sucks, a polished turd is still a turd. I'd rather play a great game with decent graphics than a mediocre game that awes me with shiny for the 30 minutes I play until I decide that it sucks.
I agree with that statement. Its why things like XBox Live Arcade and the Wii's Virtual Console exist. The game you get on those - developed over a decade ago or more - are for the most part still playable because the gameplay stands the test of time, even if the graphics don't. MegaMan games were a true test to good gameplay. Not the new ones that come out like MegaMan Battle Network or Advent, I mean the originals, MegaMan X and MegaMan Legends. Those were games that had an excellent structure to support
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Graphics aren't inherently bad, but... (Score:2)
Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction
This game looks awesome. It also plays well, don't get me wrong, but it's very obvious that the team spent most of their resources improving the graphics. The gameplay is virtually unchanged from the PS2 days: It's a
Re:My humble 2 cents... (Score:4, Insightful)
Go back and play galaga then play another shooter like Raiden 3, play X-men:the arcade game and compare it to X-men legends II, play Hogans Alley and compare it to Time crisis 4, play pitfall and compare it to Ratchet and Clank future:TOD, or play donkey kong and compare it to Mario Galaxy.
You'll find the "Good times" weren't so great and we are likely in the midst of a gaming renaissances but you're too caught up in nostalgia to notice.
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Wow, what nonsense. While it's true that nostalgia plays a part, it is also true that some decades j
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Wow, what nonsense. While it's true that nostalgia plays a part, it is also true that some decades just create better music than others. Don't believe me? Try comparing the good music produced in the 60s to the good music produced in the 80s. Both are old enough to have the nostlgia effect, but you'll find that there is far more quality music from the 60s than the 80s, and the cream-of-the-crop of the 60s is also of higher quality than the cream-of-the-crop from the 80s. This decade so far is another dry spell all-in-all, even though there is some decent stuff out there.
The 80's did have U2, Depeche mode, Good Metallica, Duran Duran, Cyndi Lauper, Blondie, Guns and roses, Prince, good Micheal Jackson, the Beastie Boys, run DMC etc... There was good music as well. Compared to the 60's? It's more a different flavor then any drastic change in quality. People who like depech mode may not enjoy the Jimmy Hendrix, people who like the Doors may not be a fan of Cyndi Lauper but they each wrote some good songs.
What do you define as quality music? Music that endures? Music with som
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Except for being luke-warm on Depechme Mode and Duran Duran I agree with all of your choices as examples of good music. (Loved the Cyndi Lauper reference BTW. She's pretty underrated.) I agree there was some great stuff in the 80s. But the 60s were amazin
Re:My humble 2 cents... (Score:4, Informative)
Numerically it's difficult to tell. You need to pick a criteria, then you need to evaluate the all songs. The ones a person remembers is tainted by personal musical tastes and sales as a benchmark is extremely relative But there was good music in even the generally underrated 80's. i personally assert that it's about a 80% rule. 80% dreck to 20% good stuff, in almost every age, for almost any medium.
In my play list is about 100 songs from 1960's, about 80 from the 70's, about 100 form the 80's, about 200 form the 90's, and about 100 from the 00's. I don't claim the 90's had a drastic increase in song quality but I was a teen in the 90's and that music shaped my musical tastes. I no longer have time to consume music like i did before so it's fewer songs in the 00's.
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It was the era of the emergence of indie rock and grunge, and the "mainstreaming" of punk rock.
I agree. You can find great popular music being made in any decade or century. The inability to do so likely suggests you're looking for a specific style
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So, I'm not saying that graphics sux but, again, that SOME game houses forget the game play/histories/etc and only focus on graphics. I'm not generalizing.
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When I say 'lots' I'm not saying 'all', and as we can see you're not the first one to misread my post. I love game with cool graphics and I'm always looking forward to change my video card to support the new features as the games are released.
So, I'm not saying that graphics sux but, again, that SOME game houses forget the game play/histories/etc and only focus on graphics. I'm not generalizing.
Aside form the obvious tech demoes which ones do you mean? Got an example? I can't think of a best seller which fits this criteria although some people point to DEFCON. I think it's a minority. Almost any best seller has gameplay and graphics.
"Lots" implies numerically significant or a majority.
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Back in the 80s, if you decide your character should have a spinning kick instead of his current attack, sure that takes an hour or two at most. Nowadays if you decide your character should have a spinning kick, often you're throwing out a few weeks of work. Iteration time is just plain faster with low graphics situations. You might claim that developers should do a low-graphic version of their game first, iterate on it, and then put in the graphic
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Back in the 80s, if you decide your character should have a spinning kick instead of his current attack, sure that takes an hour or two at most. Nowadays if you decide your character should have a spinning kick, often you're throwing out a few weeks of work. Iteration time is just plain faster with low graphics situations. You might claim that developers should do a low-graphic version of their game first, iterate on it, and then put in the graphics, but that's not always an option. First of all, most publishers have deliverables, most game media want screenshots, and what are you going to do with all your artists in the mean time--fire them? Secondly, design and art need to work together; you'll see a lot of talks at GDC about using lighting cues to indicate to players what direction they need to go. There are some things you can design without art, and some things you can't.
Redoing a kick would be a matter of repositioning the wire frame movement associated with that attack. so it was annoying to do before (redo 14 frames of character animation) and just as annoying now now (adjust 14 movements on the wire frame, recheck for clipping). More often gameplay adjustments are done to values not animations. So the same adjustment wouldn't be "straight kick to spinning kick" but "straight kick animation, single target for 100 dmg" to "straight kick animation, 10 unit AOE, 50 dmg". S
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Why are there fewer "classics" these days?
Logically there should be more.
(though I accept there are probably reasons why this is not the case.)
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Donkey Kong had a great spinoff in the '94 SGB version. That had a sequel in Mario vs Donkey Kong for the GBA which IMO didn't live up entirely to the standard of its predecessor since the way switches worked in it kinda limited what was possible in the level design compared to DK '94. The new switches were a nice idea but should have been in addition to the old system instead of replacing it. Also I think MvDK was missing the placeable elements (in DK'94 ther
Video Game Award (Score:1)
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Reasonably Happy (Score:1)
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A good argument can be made that, while Ralph Baer deserves an absolute mountain of credit, he wasn't the one who invented video games. As part of his dissertation on human-computer interaction, A.S. Douglas created a video game called naughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe) in 1952 on the EDSAC computer at Cambridge, producing the earliest video game of which I've been able to find a photograph/working (emulated) model. http://www.pong-st [pong-story.com]
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"Spaceware"? (Score:1)
Museum exhibit on history of video games (Score:3, Interesting)
Five years ago or so there was a traveling exhibit that came through Dallas called Videotopia. It showed up at The Science Place (Dallas's science museum) and took up the vast majority of available floor space. It was amazing. Basically it had every video game. (Note the period at the end of the previous sentence; I'm exaggerating only slightly.) They were arranged chronologically, starting with Pong and moving onward to Space Invaders and so forth. This was all in one place and every game was a quarter. It was amazing. They even had a sit-down version of Sinistar, one of my all time faves.
What excited me greatly was that they had working versions of all the "vector" games: Asteroids, BattleZone, Tempest, Star Wars. It also had all the laser disk games: Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, etc. All the games were in *great* shape.
Anyway, this is only borderline on-topic, but I wanted to share anyway. I'd be surprised if these guys weren't consulted for the documentary. A brief search shows that the name of the exhibit was Videotopia, but it doesn't look like it's touring anymore, which is really, really too bad.
BREAKING!!! (Score:5, Funny)
"Video game" is two words, editors (Score:3, Informative)
Where's the marketing? (Score:1)
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I enjoyed the first ep too, though as with all of these banner ads/bugs/etc., I would prefer the screen to be clear to show the *currently* airing show... even if it would mean missing this show until I saw it on slashdot!
I can't believe... (Score:1)
Pong 6.1
How the heck did that happen? Pong is more of a classic then Mario ever will be.
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No. They're both classics in their own right, but it's very obvious that Super Mario Bros (not Mario per se, but the specific game) was way more influential in modern games than Pong.
I videogame you rise... (Score:2)
Tonight Starz is also showing a show called, "Hollywood Goes Gaming [starz.com]."
However the blurb for it implies that the movie 300 was based on the videogame so I'm not too optimistic about its quality...
Tetris Documentary (Score:2)
Impressions. (Score:2)
In general I found the documentary to be quite interesting. However, I couldn't help but come away with the feeling that the writers were desperate to make gaming culturally relevant. All the profound statements really got an
E.T. (Score:1)
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I think the real reason it got a bad rap was because anyone beyond the "kid" mentality saw it for what it really was. A poor movie cash in.
Those were some of the best days ever.
Yes, a little _too_ overwrought! (Score:3, Interesting)
A little? I would say a LOT. There were at times I thought, "aren't they going to talk about video games?" If I had this show recorded, I would have fast forwarded through half of this show.
As far as the core information was concerned, the show was great. However, the "linkage" video to events at the time was, IMHO, way too emphasized. The show gave me the impression that the producers / director of the show was more enamored with the era than with video games.
OK, I can see the space race tying into games due to the push for integrated circuits, but at first it seemed like the show was about the space race and not about video games. It got way worse when the show was tying in 60s-70s cultural events (hippies, feminism) to video games. No no no, I'm sorry, but neither I nor my kids watching the show got that at all. From what I remember, it was more of a bunch of geeks just "fooling around with the technology to see what it could do" more than what cultural dynamics was happening at the time (and one of the people interviewed pretty much said the same thing).
If there are future parts of this show, I hope they have more video game history and less non-relevant cultural crap...
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Not so good. (Score:1)
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E.T. history (Score:1)
I missed the subtext (Score:1)
They didn't even mention text! Remember the original Lunar Lander, Star Trek, Eliza? What "history of gaming" doco is complete without referencing the huge influence of text games? Or the ground-breaking interpretive text parser used in The Hobbit, that let us speak to characters in normal language? That has never been duplicated again, afaik.
Instead, they made every reference to war, rockets to the moon, anything that flashes or goes "p