Megatrends In Game Development 93
Gamasutra has a feature discussing some of the extremely common trends in current game design. Many publishers are looking at multi-player content and downloadable additions as necessities, rather than luxuries, for modern titles. Also on the rise is a focus on micro-payments; offering small-scale games, updates, and add-ons for a smaller fee than a full game. Similar to these is the subscription-based model, which Scott Jennings of NCSoft recently called "an arms race that few can even hope to compete in, much less win." From Gamasutra:
"Games relying on micropayments are founded on a somewhat different logic. Like fast gaming, these games are conceived to be immediate hands-on experiences, but are also designed to entice the players to deepen their experience of the game by purchasing affordable additional components. This economic model is fast-growing in Asia, and we can expect to witness an important impact on the west — perhaps even a major one. The design for such games will have to be thoroughly adapted, even for established genres such as racing games or shooters."
Uh, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, not intereseted in micropayment-based games.
Find another sucker.
Re:Uh, no. (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think that's exactly what they are talking about. I'm thinking more of games like Hellgate or that asian MMORPG / Shooter GUN, where you have to pay to get better gear than the *normal* players.
PA says it all.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/3/26/ [penny-arcade.com]
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Levelling twice as fast doesn't alter the balance of the game?
I don't know what you're smoking, but you need to cut back.
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What's stopping Mr. 120 Hours from using the same potion? Anyway, a game should not even try to take into account how much time some players have to play and how little time others have.
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What's stopping Mr. 120 Hours from using the same potion?
Where would a person playing an MMORPG 24/7 get money from? :P
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If they have no money they can't play a MMORPG.
Maybe. (Score:3, Interesting)
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The Puzzle Pirates model actually works beautifully. You *CAN* get anything in the game without ever having to pay any real money...if you want to spend that much time in the game. You also *COULD* get anything in the game by just shelling out (a fairly large amount of) real dollars. It is up to you to find a happy medium for yourself.
Principle is simple: to buy in-game stuff you spend in-game money and real money. Then they have a auction block where players can trade real money for in-game money (importan
You voted with your wallet. Industry did, too. (Score:2)
Every time you hear "Its not piracy, its copyright infringement", industry hears "We should be putting this content on our servers, behind a pay-wall, where the folks who consume what we make will have to pay for it".
Its not industry's fault if your business model is broken.
Steam as a new game payment platform (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Steam / XBOX Live / Wii Ware / etc. have already started this "less than the price of a full game" model with quite a lot of success. I am often willing to pay $5-$10 to try something I am not willing to pay $40-$60 on.
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Micropayments aren't about cheap games or trying something. If you want to try something, demos have been available for free for as long as computer gaming has existed. Cheap games have also been available online for a long time, neither Steam nor any other service is bringing anything new in this respect.
Micropayments is generally the idea of providing a central game at a regular(ish) price, and then providing each individual add-on separately to be bought at a small price. It can be thought of as a more g
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Assuming the game is free to play (up until "x") I would be willing to pay for extra x features or "pay per item" on what I think the game is worth. If the game lacks support or frequent updates, I will not be paying, but if it's an indie developer or some kid in his basement, I would be willing to support with buying items I may or may not use. I consider it more of a donation system.
Whereas if it's a game where you get 2x bet
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Kingdom of Loathing is a lot like this - I've donated to support the game, but I know a lot of people who've not donated anything, and one of the nicer things is that we don't notice a difference in the game experience when I show them what I've got or they show me theirs. I figure my occasional donation is worth enough of the developers' time to keep them around, since I've been playing for a couple years.
Of course, it helps that it's playable (easily) as a semi-single-player game. I don't bother turning o
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ily
Um, you are very, very mistaken about FFXI. I'm curious, though. How do you figure you have griefers in a game with no PvP whatsoever outside of a heavily controlled (and seldom used) pair of arena-type contests?
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"Griefers" can also do the following things:
- Deliberately train/lure high-level mobs onto someone /ignore over 500 accounts while still trying to play a game and tell me it doesn't imp
- "Hypercamp" areas (gold farmer bots/groups usually sit in known spawn spots for days at time, preventing real players from enjoying the area)
- Message-spam people (either people they think they can get a sale from, or people they are trying to drive out of a region; and before you say "but you have an ignore option", try to
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Almost impossible to do since the MPK updates were put in.
Square-Enix has been very aggressively prosecuting gil farming for about the past year. Gilseller camping still exists, but it's way down. They've also put in other methods, like creating "Goblin Bounty Hunters"
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"like creating "Goblin Bounty Hunters"."
For a Second there i read that as creating gold farmer bounties. Ruthlessly slay all gold farmers you come across and Square-Enix will reward you with loot hehe hell i might have signed up.
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I have never played FFXI but am interested in how this Goblin Bounty Hunter system works. I have seen plenty of games try this "random event" (Runescape, Silkroad where players summoned fake monsters) but bots always get around it and are able to figure it out.
FFXI has remained more or less steady at 500,000 players for the past few years, only slightly off its peak.
Potentially means nothing, 500,000 could mean that 99% of them are just bots now. But since you say the bot commu
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I think I gave you an over-inflated idea of what they do. There's nothing overly special about them and they don't try to detect bots as such. They're just Goblin mobs put in that patrol the water's edge. Like any other Goblin mob, they aggro; thus they tend to kill low-level unarmed fish bots. They're generally low enough level that they aren't a major problem for exp parties in the area (although they are usually
Megatrends? (Score:4, Insightful)
The only trend I've surely noticed is there's a lot more games coming out that always need more everything and deliver a lot less (unless you go by the face counts and seizure inducing flashes).
I don't know, I'm really just starting to lose interest in games in general, it's hard to find good stories in games compared to how damn many are coming out now.
Re:Megatrends? (Score:4, Insightful)
Welcome to the phenomenon we like to call "nostalgia."
I can guarantee that games today have a hell of a lot fewer seizure-inducing flashes than the games on my Commodore 64, for example. Or virtually anything in the top-down shooter genre that used to populate arcades.
Or maybe it's not nostalgia, and you're just really, really bad at picking out games. But either way, I don't think the industry is to blame.
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5-8 hours may be long or short depending on the kind of game, I'd certainly not want to play an arcade game for 8 hours straight. Of course it works better when the game is actually difficult and to progress you must improve yourself, not just your character. Then the length becomes almost unimportant as the time you need to finish the game depends on your growth speed, not the actual length of the game.
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A top-down shooter requires good reflexes, but it has nowhere near as many seizure-inducing flashing going on as todays FPS games. There simply is a big difference between a 32x32 sprite going 'bum' and your whole screen going all blurry and shacky because a grenade exploded near by, not even counting the dozen of particle effect right near by.
Or maybe it's not nostalgia, and you're just really, really bad at picking out games.
Or maybe the games he liked are simply no longer being made. There are certainly a lot of genre and game concept that I haven't seen being used in a long long while.
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A top-down shooter requires good reflexes, but it has nowhere near as many seizure-inducing flashing going on as todays FPS games.
Which ones have you played? Given, 1942 is pretty tame, but it's also running on the wimpiest hardware. Most games of that genre have hundreds of projectiles on screen at once, frequent full-screen flashes, all kinds of craziness. In comparison, FPS games generally only have full-screen effects when you're injured in some way.
Or maybe the games he liked are simply no longer being
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Which ones have you played?
Plenty, and I couldn't name one that has the unpredictable flashiness of a Call of Duty 4. Even a bullet hell shooter is pretty damn in that aspect, you have plenty of objects for sure, but they are moving in nice smooth patters. The only games that come close to the flashiness of a CoD4 are the new 2D shooter on XboxLive or PSN, which overdo it with particle effects a lot, kind of in the same way a CoD4 does. A lot of the problem is of course the camera too, in a top-down shooter its moving at constant spe
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And how many of those games are actually good? Not much. How many of those go to LucasArts quality? None.
How many have you played?
Do you genuinely know that none of them are "LucasArts quality"? Or are you just putting LucasArts on a pedestal due to your nostalgia? (Back to the theme here.)
Honestly, though, I can't speak for the quality of those games. The last adventure I played was Syberia, which was excellent. Before that, I played The Longest Journey, which was also excellent. I would personally say bot
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How many have you played? Do you genuinely know that none of them are "LucasArts quality"?
Quite a few. When it comes to "LucasArts quality" it not just the quality of the game itself, but also the humor, most adventure games these days are rather serious, which by itself is not an issue, since there is nothing wrong with serious games, but it shows a lack in variety.
The last adventure I played was Syberia, which was excellent.
I considered Syberia incredible boring, never finished it, the story simply never really clicked for me. Now TLJ, thats different, I consider that to be one of the finest pieces of gaming every created, but that game is nearing its t
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I considered Syberia incredible boring, never finished it, the story simply never really clicked for me. Now TLJ, thats different, I consider that to be one of the finest pieces of gaming every created, but that game is nearing its tenth(!) anniversary, so its not exactly a good representative for gaming today, in fact its quite the opposite, since I consider it to be released close to the end of when gaming was good.
Yes, well, I never claimed that *I* particularly like adventure games. I'm just annoyed at
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So in reality all their games sucked ass but people just remember differently because of nostalgia? Uh, I don't think so.
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Adventure gaming has become a small niche market of mostly low or average quality releases. Not exactly like it was back in the days of Sierra, Lucasarts and Infocom.
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Adventure gaming has become a small niche market of mostly low or average quality releases. Not exactly like it was back in the days of Sierra, Lucasarts and Infocom.
That's fine, if you say that. My annoyance is with people who literally say that the adventure genre "no longer exist", which bothers me because it makes it obvious they're not even bothering to look for adventure games. You see "adventure games no longer exist" all the time on this board.
Considering that several genres have pretty much died ou
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For all intents and purposes it does not exist.
They're not weasel words. What are y
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For all intents and purposes it does not exist.
Ok, so if I log on to Steam, and I purchase and download "Sam and Max" which is a recently-released adventure game done *exactly in LucasArts style* (and as a sequel to a LucasArts adventure game), you're saying that it doesn't exist?
They're not weasel words. What are you talking about?
You said genres have died out. Name one.
Saying something like "genres have died out" is the equivalent to a geezer saying, "all kids do today is steal and swear!" It's just a nos
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You are apparently incapable of perceiving anything in shades of grey.
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Wow. What a content-less reply.
The problem isn't that I can't name genres, the problem is that your brain will only accept ones and zeros.
So you admit that no genres have disappeared, and that "pretty much" in this case were in fact weasel words.
Uh... er... where did I mention difficulty?
You said you didn't want games to be "dumbed down." I don't know what that means, so I assumed you meant difficulty. If you don't mean difficulty, what exactly did you mean?
I don't remember claiming to represent anyone.
If y
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I've never admitted such things, and no weasel words have been used. You're making shit up.
I have a feeling you won't understand.
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I've never admitted such things, and no weasel words have been used. You're making shit up.
Then stop the bullshit and name a genre that disappeared. I'm waiting, as I've been all morning, for you to tell me which genres have disappeared.
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There is no "bullshit," you're just incapable of understanding very simple things, like the fact that not everything in life is either 1 or 0.
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If genres have actually died out, you'd be able to name one. So name one.
Of course no genre will have ever completly died out, because you can always find a crappy unfinished homebrew game that rides the nostalgia train and tries to recreate the past. That still doesn't change the fact that a lot of genres are commercially pretty much dead.
Just look at The Longest Journey, that game got released a whole year late in the US. Why? Because they couldn't find a publisher for a game that was already 100% finished and already selling plenty in Europe. Today things are a little more re
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it's hard to find good stories in games compared to how damn many are coming out now.
Watch the first five minutes [purepwnage.com], and that sums up the quality of games and the quality of critics on games, and how I feel - I agree with this about 99%. When people keep crying about how there's no stories, I've been using this to make my counter example.
Quick summary: if you want a story, go read a book or a watch a movie, but a game is meant to be played. You didn't need a story line to go defeat Bowser in Mario. You didn't need to know the Princess' life story when rescuing her from Donkey Kong, you simp
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God forbid video games try to be more than just plain games.
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You didn't need a story line to go defeat Bowser in Mario.
Well, yeah, different games have different requirements. I certainly enjoyed the stories in Monkey Island, The Dig, The Longest Journey and a dozen of other games.
if you want a story, go read a book or a watch a movie, but a game is meant to be played.
Todays movies are really no better then todays games and even if their are, they still have the problem of just having 120minutes to get it done while games can have 20 hours, books simply lack the graphics and sound aspect, which I kind of like.
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I certainly enjoyed the stories in Monkey Island, The Dig, The Longest Journey and a dozen of other games.
All games I vaguely heard of and never played.
Todays movies are really no better then todays games and even if their are, they still have the problem of just having 120minutes to get it done while games can have 20 hours, books simply lack the graphics and sound aspect, which I kind of like.
Sounds more like a problem with the movie industry than games. Unless you are requesting a 20 hour movie, in which case - find a trilogy or tv show series. Either way, a game is meant to be played, most games with stories nowadays are boring because they decide to force you to watch cinematics, and if you don't watch them, then you won't know your objectives and what you should do next.
Games should primarily be played, and a story should be an added benefit (
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All games I vaguely heard of and never played.
Ignorance isn't an especially good argument.
Games should primarily be played, and a story should be an added benefit
Story should be an integral part of gameplay, if you go the "added benefit" route you end up with games that have cutscenes on one side and gameplay on the other, which feels incredible disconnected and unsatisfying.
Either way, a game is meant to be played,
Sure, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't have a story that gives your character motivation and a background.
I'm sure you and everyone else enjoyed games like; pong, asteroids, pac-man
I actually never enjoyed them, since they where just to simplistic. A SuperMarioBros might not have an interesting story, but it still ha
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Sounds more like a problem with the movie industry than games. Unless you are requesting a 20 hour movie, in which case - find a trilogy or tv show series. Either way, a game is meant to be played, most games with stories nowadays are boring because they decide to force you to watch cinematics, and if you don't watch them, then you won't know your objectives and what you should do next.
That's the expectation that's really messing things up. Half Life 2 wasn't really story immerse, but the way it told the story it did was remarkable, you didn't really get forced to sit back and watch the cinematic, you got swept up into it. That's the kind of story interaction I'd like to see more of.
It's cut scenes and narrations that just don't belong that drives me crazy, it's like you could have made the game any which way and bullshit some story alongside it.
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Well actually HL2 forces you to watch cutscenes too, and you certainly can't skip them. When people are talking you have to stand there and listen. HL2's method of storytelling doesn't work in most cases because it's very limited and difficult to do.
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Half Life 2 wasn't really story immerse, but the way it told the story it did was remarkable, you didn't really get forced to sit back and watch the cinematic, you got swept up into it.
I.e. you stand in the center of it instead of in front of it, having to work the camera yourself to see the cutscene and hear the dialogue. It's kinda like those talking puppets in theme parks where you push a button and they do their dance.
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Allow me to reply with a quote from Ernest Adams "The Designer's Notebook: Where's Our Merchant Ivory?" while talking about serious games and censorship of games
"Now I know from long experience that a certain percentage of you are making derisive snorts of contempt because you personally care nothing for high culture and see no reason why anyone else would either. But even if you don't like it, you still need it. And before yet another idiot pipes up with Standard Asinine Comment #1 ("but FUN is the only th
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Am I the only one who read that and didn't even see a counter debate? It sounded like he was saying:
"FUN"? Shutup! Fun isn't important!
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Oh I see. Some random douche bags web video is a bastion of wisdom but a respected member of the video game industry is silly. Got it.
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You quoted a guy who "develops" games. Really simple, obvious games, that came from SPORTS, if you don't see why this was a bad idea, then you may never understand the actual gaming community. He took already developed "fun" and just made it into a "video game". Nothing intuitive, then he wrote some books about making games? You consider him respected, that's your perspective.
I quoted a guy who "plays" the games. The "random douche bag" comment is irrelevant (again depending on your
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Fun? High art? This is a business! The only thing it needs are high sales and as it happens "high art" doesn't sell. What do we need it for? So we can stroke our egos for sitting in front of "art" instead of toys?
Besides, the kind of "art" people try to put into videogames is usually stupid anyway, they try to duct tape great stories or graphics or sound onto a regular old game but spraying deodorant on something doesn't make it a flower. They glue art to their game and then wonder why people tell them they
I disagree with the term "megatrends." (Score:1)
megatrends hm? (Score:4, Funny)
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Nice.
I won't be playing those games (Score:5, Insightful)
The micropayment scheme is probably a fine system for a culture with vast differences in income. You get those who can only pay a little playing and get more income from those who are willing to pay a lot. Sort of a self adjusting price scheme to maximize profit.
I play for enjoyment and while I can afford to pay a fair bit would prefer not to. I will not enjoy encountering others who have payed more for flashy more powerful gear.
I will not be playing those games. So while the system might work for some it will fail for others.
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One Size Fits All (Score:2)
" The design for such games will have to be thoroughly adapted, even for established genres such as racing games or shooters."
Of course, because, what works for MMO's must be successful in FPS's or Racing games... right?
Not Micro, Small (Score:5, Interesting)
Micropayments are not becoming more popular. Smaller payments are. The best example of a game based on the smaller payments model is WarHawk for the PS3. The game itself is reasonably cheap, and the expansions are all less then 10 euros. There is little reason NOT to buy them.
When a game, or an expansion is cheaper, it's less of a risk, and people will buy more. The idea of asking people to fork over 60 or 70 euros for a title which because of its industry has a relatively high probability of being mediocre is asking too much. People are less satisfied with their purchases, and will be more adverse to buying new games. Hence less games will be purchased.
Developers and publishers may finally have realized this. From my own experience, there are a lot of very reasonably priced titles ( 10 euros) coming out on the playstation network. Pixel Junk titles are so cheap at this price that there is practically no risk at all in purchasing them. "Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty" was only 4-5 levels long, but as it was priced at 16 euros, I can't say that that bothered me too much. I got my money's worth.
The problem here stems from fixed prices on games. Why are games like GTA4 and Motorstorm are both in and around the same price? It does not make sense, and all the games industry is doing is creating a market for lemons.
borrow from the pencil and paper rpg world (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider collectible card games like Magic. It could cost you hundreds of dollars to build an effective deck. Consider getting into D&D where you have to pay for rulebooks, dice, etc. Consider something insane like Warhammer (straight or 40k) where building an effective army will cost hundreds of dollars and starting an army from a different faction costs just as much. Let alone the time sink of painting everything, just think of the money!
What I'm surprised about is that nobody has ever considered trying the same sort of thing with online gaming. For example, let's look at the Warhammer 40k game that came out, Dawn of War. It started out with what, three playable armies? Then they came out with an expansion that had a crappy campaign and two new armies, and now I think they have another one out now. From what I saw of the first game, the multiplayer is pretty primitive but I can just imagine how they could progress it in the future. The price points on those expansions were pretty hefty.
With online distribution available for both computers and consoles, they could do something more along these lines. You get the initial game for $15, two races to choose from, standard units available. Continued gameplay will allow you to build points that unlock the advanced units. A mechanic like this was in use on Navy Field, the Korean WWII naval combat game. The more you played, the better the ship you could earn. The only problem is that the game had a tremendous grind component requiring way too much dedicated gaming to work up to serious capital ships. But keep the grind elements minimized and gameplay will be rewarded. Now six months after release, a new race is ready and their army can be deployed in the game. The army update can be downloaded by everyone so they can play against people using that army but if you want to use it yourself, you pay $10 to unlock that race.
The biggest thing I see lacking right now in these games is auto-ranking to pit gamers of equal skill against each other. I've played several games on Xbox Live and the general conclusion I've come up with is that either I just suck or those other people have way too much time on their hands for playing games. Given that the system is recording the player's performance, auto-ranking should be trivial, and you can always choose a non-auto-ranked host if you feel masochistic.
Now I know the first complaint everyone would have, this sounds like asking the publisher to nickel and dime you to death. Yeah, $5 horse armor in oblivion was stupid. What I'm talking about is paying a reasonable price to get into a game and then helping to fund continued development by giving the publisher a dependable revenue stream. Instead of gambling on continued interest in a sequel to a top-performing title from three years ago, the publisher is dropping content every three to six months, has a finger right on the pulse of the community and can gauge the level of interest. This should benefit everyone, just so long as the publisher doesn't get bought by EA. Then they'll just make a minor tweak to Whatever 2008 and call it Whatever 2009 for $60 MSRP.
Re:borrow from the pencil and paper rpg world (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike D&D and Magic and such, Warhammer and 40K are a 3 part hobby - modelling, painting, and playing. Each player puts a different amount of emphasis on each. Some love painting most and don't play all that much, so this is not much different than buying and painting regular plastic kits. For me, modelling comes first, then playing, finally painting.
The models, assembled or not, can often be resold for 75% or more of their purchase price. If well painted, they can be sold for more than purchased.
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I guess you never heard of Second Life.
This is why Second Life is successful.
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Consider collectible card games like Magic. It could cost you hundreds of dollars to build an effective deck.
What I'm surprised about is that nobody has ever considered trying the same sort of thing with online gaming.
Never heard of Magic Online? [wizards.com]. All the cards from real Magic (the last couple years of sets anyways)...for exactly the same prices. Yes, it's really $4 for a virtual pack of 15 random cards.
Megatrends (Score:5, Funny)
co-op (Score:2)
I'm interested in multi-player, but I want the co-op to be in the same room.
I really don't like playing on the Internet because that usually means my wife and I are looking at different screens.
I want another Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance or other SnowBlind engine games.
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I have a different experience. My wife and I play WOW together. We always stick together, so we're always looking at pretty much the same thing (although from different angles).
Sort of a Diablo multiplayer experience in a different world.
Cure to Piracy? (Score:1)
Sounds like the beginning of a crack addiction. (Score:1)
Just sayin' the parallels are there.
Forced subscriptions (Score:2)
Similar to these is the subscription-based model
I've recently found a very nice tool for things like warcraft, which I'm only a casual player of, that require subscriptions: virtual debit card. I pay for the month I want to play with a single use card, and play for a while when I have the chance. As is often the case, when I don't have time to play for a while, I don't have to keep paying for something I'm not using.
PC gamers don't put up with this shit. (Score:2)
PC gamers expect their mods to be free and their addons to be high quality.
We don't want to pay for a mod unless it's a polished product.
We certainly don't want to pay for content that was pulled from the product to sell as DLC.
Battlefield: Bad Company is doing this now. PC Gamers don't want to be nickel and dimed to death with the cost of these addons.
In a few cases, the costs of the DLC adds up to twice the cost of the original game. All of this would be free on PC unless it were a separate addon produc
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How does Battlefield Bad Company affect PC gamers? its a 360/PS3 games. I believe you're thinking about Battlefield: Heroes
EA bought a big share in a Korean company called NeoWiz a few years ago. NeoWiz has built an entire business out of microtransaction games. The games are free, and you can play them for free with no problem (competitively too). I've been playing the Unreal 3 engine shooter AVA for several months without paying a dime and can win maps. The microtransactions in these games are often linke
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I know that bad company is a console game. That's my point. They couldn't get away with microtransactions for PC gamers like they can for console gamers. That's the point. Sorry I didn't post it in neon!
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uhm.. Battlefield Heroes will have microtransactions as a PC game.. it just won't have microtransactions for guns.. that was last I read unless they've drastically changed things. They already get away with it for dozens of PC games in Asia.
Plus: You pay for what you play... (Score:5, Insightful)
A game where you are charged a minimal fee for the 'basic' game, and optional additional charges for more 'hardcore' content would be fine by me.
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I just didn't have the time to play anymore. I have a house that constantly needs repair, and a wife that I want to spend time with. At some point, you have to look at how you spend your free time, and I had to cut back on the games. So my $ per hour of
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Well then I have good news! You only need 24 friends now!
On a side note, there are pick-up groups that do 25 person raid content on a regular basis. Also, I'm sure you could fine one four-hour block if you were really interested in seeing the "end of the movie". If you aren't going to put up with the uncomfortable seats and can't fit the "full movie" into your busy schedule, it's not the game's fault.
Further, in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, they are attempting to reduce the "movie length" to allow
Won't fly in USA (Score:1)
I know this won't fly in USA. Despite the underground economy of most MMOs, where player trade real life cash for items, anything official endorsement of such practice in form of item mall would turn large crowds away.
Besides considering the steep price of MMO subscriptions in USA, $15 a month, I doubt they they can make more money any other way. Most hardcore players already have more than one account, if you want to target them, you will lose money in the long run.
My Problem with Micropayments (Score:1)
Is that in this industry at least (im sure it goes on elsewhere) regards a Micropayment as a 'MULTIpayment', theres nothing micro about 6-8 quid sterling and when you've done that a couple of times it really adds up.