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E3

The Path to AAA Games 58

Posted by Zonk from the don't-fall-off dept.
Gamasutra has up a feature discussing an E3 discussion session haunted by some illustrious names in game design. The topic of the panel was The Path to Creating AAA Games. Hosted by Carly Staehlin, the panel featured Matt Firor, Todd Howard, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Tim Willits, and Will Wright. From the article: "'My biggest failure was Quake 3,' Willits said. 'The game offered perfect multiplayer for hardcore players. In fact, they're still playing it. But the more casual gamers, and other people who actually have money, found playing next to impossible.'"
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The Path to AAA Games More

The Path to AAA Games

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  • AAA Games (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 20, 2005 @12:25PM (#12590573)
    The first step on that path is to admit you have a problem. Oh, sorry thought you ment "AA Games"...

  • What's a AAA game? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is this like Crazy Taxi, except instead of driving a cab you drive a tow truck?

  • Where did this term come from? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lake2112 ( 748837 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @12:29PM (#12590620)
    When the latest console wars began, the term AAA games appeared as a tool of fanboys. What the heck is a AAA game? What makes it better than a AA game? or an A game? Sorry just a short rant about a term I hate.
    • Actually, I heard this term used at least 15 years ago. I believe it was in reference to several games Nintendo developed in-house. I do think it's a bit overused now, implying that any game that's not AAA is crap.

      • Re:Where did this term come from? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by RogueyWon ( 735973 ) * on Friday May 20, 2005 @01:05PM (#12591117) Journal
        I think it's more about marketing and intended sales than it is about quality these days. My understanding of an "AAA" title is one that takes centre-place on a platform's lineup, is used as a tool for pushing that platform and is expected to (and indeed does) produce vast sales.

        Examples of "AAA" titles from the last year would be:

        PC: Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Rome: Total War
        PS2: GTA San Andreas, Gran Turismo 4, Metal Gear Solid 3
        X-Box: Halo 2, Forza Motorsport, Jade Empire
        Gamecube: Metroid Prime 2, Resident Evil 4

        You've probably also got a few big cross-platform titles that qualify because they're promoted heavily for other reasons, like the (apparently dismal) Revenge of the Sith tie-in.

      • Re:Where did this term come from? (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        AAA is refererring to a game which will receive significant marketing and resources (more money to pay for development). It's not as much that non-AAA games are crap, although certainly a craptacular game will generally receive less money for marketing. But genres which are considered niche (like turn-based strategy and war) will have a harder time getting resources, as well.
      • Why do you want more cow bells?
    • What the heck is a AAA game?

      A driving game, surely?

    • Having recently worked at SCEA, the term is commonly used at Sony to indicate how many copies they sell or intend to sell. If a game sells over a million copies, it is an "A" game. If it sells two million, it's "AA" and so on. With the sales of the latest GTA, Rockstar raised the bar, so now we have "AAAA" games (over four million sold). Granted, as of March 2005, GTA: San Andreas has sold over 12 million.
    • The term AAA is mainly used by sneaky publishers to make impressionable young programmers work more hours for no additional compensation so that the marketing department can reach their goals (who, in many cases create (randomly) the advertising campaing for the game and then expect the game design to follow the marketing plan). Luckily, I haven't heard the term at work for some time now.
  • WTF is AAA you SOB?

  • Appeal (Score:3, Insightful)

    by HRbnjR ( 12398 ) <chris@hubick.com> on Friday May 20, 2005 @12:42PM (#12590817) Homepage
    I don't find most videogames appealing, but rather just frustrating.

    It's like an arbitrarily endless supply of frustration. I don't find overcoming problems fun, because I do that at *work*, and when I get home, I just want to play, stress free. Forget AAA games appealing to a broad audience including casual female gamers, I'm an active gaming 30 year old male, but not a lot of game designs appeal to me.

    I do really like multiplayer first person shooters:

    - A multiplayer FPS is something I can just pick up and put down easily.
    - If I screw up in an FPS, I may not get as good a kill ratio, but it's still fun, not like, ie, Mario Bro's, where I spend 2 hours trying to clear some section, never make it, get frustrated and just never play the game again.
    - In a single player shooter (ala HL2), your opponents skill level is totally arbitrary, it's a constant in some header file... they could all have perfect aim if they wanted, and I find overcoming this type of obstacle pointless - there is no satisfaction. Killing live opponents is not arbitrary, and much more satisfying.
    - Plus with games like Battlefield, it's like an arcade quality flight sim built in too! :)

  • Quake 3 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RogueyWon ( 735973 ) * on Friday May 20, 2005 @12:47PM (#12590888) Journal
    Quake 3 still stands out in my mind as the ultimate example of why it's a bad idea to develop any game (except possibly a MMORPG) with the hard-core in mind. I remember the consultation phase ID went through while developing it, where they talked to a lot of the "top" hardcore players from Quake and Quake 2 to get their input into game mechanics and map design. I also remember how most of these people then turned around and savaged the game after its release.

    There's simply no gain to be had in pitching your product at this market.

    First, Compared to the "casual" market (which includes a lot of people who definitely count as gamers, but don't focus on one title or genre exclusively), the number of potential buyers is tiny. They're also extremely vocal, on forums, message boards, IRC and at industry events. This can give the impression that they're a larger group than they are.

    Second, this group knows no gratitude. I've never seen a developer go as far as ID did during the Quake 3 development process and I've never seen a developer take such (unwarrented) flak after release for dumbing-down, selling-out, or whatever the term of the day at the time was. Everything about the game was slated; the physics, the maps, even the fact that it had pretty graphics.

    Third, this group is insanely conservative in terms of its gaming habits. I was part of the "hardcore" fps gaming scene for a while and one of the most disgusting thing about it was the palpable fear with which the people at the top of the game would approach anything that proposed even mild changes to the game as they knew it. This was extremely noticable every time Counter-Strike approached a new version release. With new iterations of the Quake and Unreal Tournament series, it was even worse. The top players were petrified that any changes to the game might diminish the little tricks they were using to stay on top and force them to adapt or even, god forbid, lose their place and the reputation that went with it. When Quake 3 came out, I remember how terrified a lot of the top Quake/Quake 2 players were of the prospect that they might have to fight to regain their prestige. The result was a lot of trash-talk about the game and a very slow adoption rate.

    Finally, this group of players is the most insular and cliquey around. I've lost count of the number of times that I've seen newbies in hardcore games (both MMORPGs and fpses) subjected to a barrage of obscenities within moments of connecting. With a primarily online game, a developer is investing a lot of their reputation in the behaviour of their players. What I saw in Quake 3 was a long way from being impressive.
    • What about X-Plane? It's pitched to the MOST hardcore group of flight sim people, who tend to be pretty hardcore anyway. And even after version 8, it's still loved.

      • Re:Quake 3 (Score:3, Insightful)

        by justforaday ( 560408 )
        Just a hunch, but I'm guessing that the types of people drawn to fragging vs flying have very different personalities.
      • Is the community around X-Plane ruthlessly competitive with each other? I think what the parent poster was saying was that top players were afraid of anything that worked against their own personal playing style, since there are hundreds of other players to compete against and even slight changes could upset their own precarious hold on the leader board.

        Come to think of it... I've never heard of X-Plane. Is it any good?

        • Re:Quake 3 (Score:2, Informative)

          by Profane MuthaFucka ( 574406 ) *
          Yes, it's extremely good. Imagine Microsoft Flight simulator. Now, add a bunch of features that airplane geeks like.

          examples:
          -Interfaces to a commercial full-motion simulator, in that configuration is FAA approved for instrument training. i.e. the hours flying X-Plane count for training hours.
          -Plane models are not table driven like MS flight sim, but use finite blade element analysis to compute the aerodynamics in real time. This leads to:
          -A library of thousands and thousands of planes, both real and imagi
    • That's what killed any interest I had in PC gaming a few years back. The single player games just aren't there for PCs and the multiplayer games are full of the crap you mentioned.

      I currently get my online gaming fix with Xbox Live, and while there are still the jerks and griefers, there's a lot less of them, and the ways they have to grief and be assholes are significantly reduced -- much harder to cheat, easy to get games going without searching forever, etc.

      I really enjoy Halo 2 because I've got a

    • I donno what folks are talking about re: Q3 being geared towards elite folks. It was about the same as UT. Please explain?
  • I hear there are 12 steps [oc-aa.org].

  • Anything reliant on multiplayer doomed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hirschma ( 187820 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @01:38PM (#12591591)
    The sad truth is that any game that relies on multiplayer is going to have a limited audience.

    Take you average RTS game. Don't even try to find a game with strangers - you'll end up dealing with rude, cheating juveniles that think it's fun to join your team to make you lose to their friends.

    FPS games are worse. Near the top of some ranking? Expect kiddies on your team to frag you or throw flash grenades in your face... simply so that you'll lose your ranking.

    The truth is that multiplayer games depend upon some semblance of good sportsmanship, but are typically diminished by mean-spirited assholes. There's a reason why Spore won't have actual multiplayer functionality - too much concern that someone would just come along and snuff you.

    jh
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • FPS games are worse. Near the top of some ranking? Expect kiddies on your team to frag you or throw flash grenades in your face... simply so that you'll lose your ranking.

      Quake: Team Fortress included an option that mirrors damage that registered on teammates (regardless of the normal FF setting.)

      Because of this, there is absolutly no reason stat tracking servers should keep track of death caused by habitual team-killers.

      The situation becomes harder with Team-Harmers, but any decent stat tracker can

    • This is of course why Unreal Tournament failed so dismally.

  • Distinctions between AAA and "lesser" games. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by syrion ( 744778 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @02:24PM (#12592135)
    I've actually had more fun recently with games that aren't AAA titles than I have with the Latest and Greatest. Sure, I loved HL2, but that's basically the only one. La Pucelle and Disgaea have been some of the best games I've played recently, and the three Ratchet & Clank games were excellent. Last year's Chris Sawyer's Locomotion was flawed, but fun. Depending on how you differentiate between the "top tier" and other games, the Silent Hill series might also count. I think these games succeed by worrying more about the game mechanics and storyline than the graphics and "innovations" like physics. Those are basically black holes for money and development time, and I think designers need to remember that more people play chess, go, and checkers/draughts than any video game...
    • Rise of Nations and Rome Total War were great on the RTS side. I don't know if they classify as AAA games.
      Personally I think the term "AAA" is just marketing bullshit for a game the company wants to hype through the wazoo because they need to recoup the fuckwad of cash they dumped to make it - whether it's actually good or not is irrelevant.

  • Killing Like a Girl (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MiceHead ( 723398 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @02:28PM (#12592182) Homepage
    To me, the most interesting tidbits in this article are about women in gaming, and the implication that their influence on design will bring about new styles of gameplay. There's some interesting literature out there about how women play games:

    Killing Like a Girl (PDF) [digiplay.org.uk]
    The Norrathian Scrolls: A Study of Everquest (PDF) [nickyee.com]

    I get the impression that this is one area where independent studios really have a chance to innovate. But given how conservative we can be, maybe the larger studios will figure it out first.
    ___________________________________________
    Epidemic Groove [dejobaan.com] - Our casual/action/real-time strategy hybrid about curing a worldwide epidemic by constructing nanomechanical defenses. You know, the usual stuff.

  • Its all about escape!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by slithytove ( 73811 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @02:59PM (#12592599) Homepage
    The hardcore gamer doesn't think of gaming as a relaxing activity, but as an outlet for their egomania; its often the one thing they're really good at.

    For a game to be wildly successful, it helps to have the hype-machine that is the hardcore gamer croud, but the game has to be something you can escape into.

    MMOs are the wave of the future as far as this goes, because there are many interesting activities incorporating other human beings (usually more fun to interact with) in cooperative ways rather than in pure back-stabbing competition.

    My favorite right now is http://vendetta-online.com/ [vendetta-online.com] , not because it has every feature I could want, but because it is developer-owned and they just want to keep getting paid to make the game better. It has changed more since release last Nov. than most games change with an expansion pack they charge extra for.

  • FPS rant (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by FriedTurkey ( 761642 ) *
    Quake 3 in my opinion is the best FPS ever. I am one person whole likes thing simple. I still play Quake 3 and find that playing Q3 is a lot more fun now than at the height of it's popularity. Annoying people moved on to other games.

    Here are things I DO NOT want:

    1. Tranporting device - I can Translocate across a map but it doesn't make it fun.

    2. Voice chat - I don't want to hear 13 year olds scream. Let them type their crap out. I rarely hear anything useful on team based FPS voice chat.

    3. Stat T
    • Wow. That's a heaping lot o' requests.... lemme break this one down, in UT2k4 style:

      1. Game servers have the options of having the translocator on or off for that specific instance of the server. From what I've seen, most online games on 2k4 are "off".

      2. You can get out of all chat channels in 2k4. As well, you can turn on or turn off text-to-speech for the typed messages (which is actually more handy than you might think...)

      3. People are always going to check their stats. People want to beat othe

    • 1. Tranporting device - I can Translocate across a map but it doesn't make it fun.

      That's why it's an option in UT2K4. It's left on by default, but it's an option.

      FYI, I wouldn't risk turning it off, since maps are balanced to require it. (They are playable without, but I wouldn't take that chance.)

      The real fun comes with tactical use of the translocator - place it at a guard location, watch a person walk by and teleport in behind him. It also gets fun when you realize that the beacon was damaged.

  • WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Frodo Crockett ( 861942 ) on Saturday May 21, 2005 @01:14AM (#12597033)
    'The game offered perfect multiplayer for hardcore players. In fact, they're still playing it. But the more casual gamers, and other people who actually have money, found playing next to impossible.'

    Quake 3 was a mistake? There goes your credibility. Your idea that games need only be good enough to enterain casual gamers has financial merit, though.

  • Quake 3 not accessible? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MattW ( 97290 ) <matt@ender.com> on Saturday May 21, 2005 @12:14PM (#12599274) Homepage
    I don't really get it. I hadn't played an FPS since the original duke nukem. I sat down to play Q3, and I quickly found myself laughing out loud it was so fun. I played for more than 2 years, and even hit quakecon in 2002 to meet up with people I'd met playing the game. I went from clueless to just shy of pro level, and found lots of friendly, helpful people along the way who helped me with settings, strategy, etc. Sure, there were some rivalries - mostly good-natured - but by far the common theme was friendly but fierce play. The only people *I* ever saw getting called newbs as they walked in the door are the ones who immediately started accusing people of cheating.

    • I'd say that most anyone who goes to Quakecon would be considered a fairly 'hardcore' gamer, wouldn't you?

      Except maybe that old lady who accidently wandered in looking for Knit-and-tell-old-storiescon.

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