Games and the 'Geek Stereotype'

ChinoH81 writes "Video games are never going to be as popular as films or music unless the people who make them concentrate on making them fun, says a leading game expert."

I think the big hold back is the media.

[pecosdave]

How is a game going to become a long lasting classic if the hardware meant to run it stopped being manufactured 20+ years ago and the publishers were pricks about their property and wouldn't release it into the public domain or allow it to be ported? Emulators may take up some of the slack but don't count on those doing the job.

Game play

[ScrewMaster]

And this is a surprise? Cripes. In 1986 I worked for some of the (then) major PC and arcade game companies. Even then, the focus was always on making the game as visually impressive as possible. That's fine, but somehow another important aspect of any game, playability, was lost in the shuffle. The programmers (I was one) and designers would complain about this regularly, but the response was usually something to the effect, "You can work on that while the game is in QC" or "Don't worry, you'll have a whole week before we ship to add playability." Utter cluelessness. And I see it in the current crop of video products: games using OpenGL and DirectX can be visually stunning, it's true, but most are simply not interesting to play after the first hour or two. Not a good return on your fifty dollar investment. Some of the older DOS-based texture-mapped products, such as Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood and others written using Ken Silverman's BUILD engine had more emphasis on game play. While those games didn't have the graphic quality of modern products rendered using 3D chipsets, they were just phenomenally fun to play. So I agree ... game makes have pretty much exhausted the sex appeal of the fancy graphical environment, now they better start focusing on why people play games: for FUN!

Re:Duped?

[festers]

Someone didn't bother to read the article. (Surprise, surprise)It wasn't a man who gave this speech and the article acknowledges that games cost more than TV/movies.

Article is wrong about sales figures

[tomhudson]

Video games are already MORE popular than movies, and neck-and-neck w. music. For the last couple of years, video-game sales has beaten movie box-office totals and are competing dollar-for-dollar with music sales

figures for 2002 (US)

• US games revenue: $10.3 billion [gamemarketwatch.com] video game hardware & software
• Movie boxoffice: $9.135 billion [boxofficemojo.com]
• Music sales - all forms: $12.6 billion, [com.com]

huh, I thought they already were?

[wjeff]

It was last year that USNews [usnews.com] reported that Video Games had surpassed movies in popularity.

Re:Myst With Action

[Bullet-Dodger]

Just gimme a game with the backstory of Myst and the graphics and interactivity of Quake/Doom/Unreal. I want to explore, not pile up bodies.

Give Real Myst [realmyst.com] a look (ok, that site kinda sucks). It's the original Myst redone in an actual 3D engine. Sound just like what you're talking about.

Re:They've got it backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the other advantage of games like Settlers of Catan and Puerto Rico. The games don't last more than 2 or 3 hours.

On the subject of Monopoly, the reason people don't play the game to completion is because almost nobody plays "by the book". All of the house rules (like putting money on free parking and not holding an auction on properties) add to the length of the game.

For other fun games for 3-5 players, try:

Ra
Princes of Florence
Wyatt Earp

Puerto Rico is my favorite, though.

Re:Popularity

[scot4875]

This is just wrong. Lots of articles have mentioned how games make more money than Hollywood, but usually they're talking about a) the worldwide video game industry vs b) US box office sales. So we've got the entire video game industry vs one part of one market of the entire movie industry.

Yeah, the video game industry has grown, but it's still nowhere near the size of the motion picture industry.

--Jeremy