Discovery Channel's Games Documentary Impresses

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."

Re:My humble 2 cents...

[StopKoolaidPoliticsT]

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.

Re:My humble 2 cents...

[king-manic]

Good times when the hardware was limited and the focus was in the game itself, not only in the graphics as we see in lots of games nowadays.

I find the trend towards minimalist nostalgia a bit too rampant on games.slashdot. The old games were sometimes fun but were more frequently exercises in repetitive game play. Pac man was interesting for it's time but boring as all hell now. Super Mario brothers was fun for it's time but highly repetitive. Back then the focus was on making a buck and you've neatly forgotten the 80% of the games in the bad old days that were just pure unadultered dreck. These days it's still 80% dreck but the EA factory produced dreck still has better basic playability then some of the gems of yore. It's sort of like music, so many older people remember fondly how great music was back in 1960 and gee how bad and crappy music is now. But really there was dreck and one hit pop wonders back int he 60's too and it was also 80% dreck. You've just forgotten all the dreck, summed up a decades worth of music in 40 good songs and compared it to whats on the top 40 now which represents only the preceding month. Similarly the "gameplay" folk take all the games they liked in their youth (10-20 years) and compared it to the last month of releases. No wonder it compares poorly, because you are comparing all the gems from 10-20 years to whats just got released and your nostalgic memory taints the whole endevour.

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.

Re:My humble 2 cents...

[Tyler Durden]

It's sort of like music, so many older people remember fondly how great music was back in 1960 and gee how bad and crappy music is now. But really there was dreck and one hit pop wonders back int he 60's too and it was also 80% dreck. You've just forgotten all the dreck, summed up a decades worth of music in 40 good songs and compared it to whats on the top 40 now which represents only the preceding month.

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.

Re:My humble 2 cents...

[nschubach]

My question to you... Why do "Mario-like platformers" fail in today's market then? I mean, if it was so awesome then, why wouldn't a direct clone with more levels/power-ups sell better today if you didn't change the graphics one bit? Even Nintendo improves the graphics and adds more content. If they released Ultra Mega Mario X today with the same graphics as Super Mario World and only added content to the game, it would flop. Or maybe you prefer to look at Asteroids? If you were to release an epic 300 hour game today with line graphic ships and flat 2D asteroids, stations, whatever else you'd add to the game people wouldn't play past the first level before they thought it was absolute crap. Sure, a minor few might look past the graphics, but on a whole, the video game industry relies on that one word. Video. It's 50% of the "Video Game" title.

I'd argue that Katamari Damacy (one of the few unique games) wouldn't be possible if it weren't for advanced in graphics technology. Sure, it's up to the developer to balance polygons with gameplay, but you simply can't say "the graphics are good enough" and expect the game to sell. Hell, look at DirectX and even OpenGL. Constantly adding new effects and features because that's the presentation layer. That's how people judge the scope and power of a game. Screen shots. If a PS3 game came out tomorrow with PS2 quality graphics, it and it's publisher would be laughed off the stage.

Frankly, I've gone back and played several of the games I thought were fun and I've come to the conclusion that they were only fun because they were awesome looking for the time. I go back now and have a hard time playing with restricted movement, 4-way direction pads vs. 8-way or analog movement and low res images. Wolfenstein (sp?) and Doom were miraculous games, but playing one level today makes me want to throw them aside and load up anything besides that. I truly think that only thing that made those games fun was that they were unique, graphically. There were plenty of "dungeon" games out but being able to spin around "freely" and with enhanced graphics made the game a whole lot funner, even though you had fewer options for character building and arsenal.

Really though, there's only so much you can do without making the game a chore to the player. Take Masters of Orion 2 vs Galactic Civilization. I can get my friend to play MOO2 for days, but GalCiv went too extreme and pushed him from the genre saying that it's become to cluttered with too many options only to find out that all those options are pointless because above all, carriers/fighters will win that game easily. The learning curve is there though. You can't quickly get into the game, it's too complex.

So what do you have?

A simple game, that's a remake of a classic with better graphics? People complain that the graphics are too prevalent, nothing more was added?

A complex game that's an extension of an old game with decent graphics? People that prefer a nice simple game will never learn it.

A totally unique/fun game... good luck finding that one. There's only so many movements and actions you can do before the game becomes a clone of something else or a meshing of two different games making both more complex than they need to be. Face facts here. It's either been done, or it's been redone. The game you want it going to come along once every 5-10 years, and it's not going to take you that long to complete it (figure out the pattern) and it becomes boring. Just like sitcoms, movies, and comedy acts. There are only so many jokes you can tell before it starts getting old.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I think you might be expecting too much.