Gaming Clichés That Need To Die 416
MojoKid writes "The PC and console game industry is in desperate need of an overhaul. With skyrocketing costs to develop games, consumers aren't going to accept $80-$100 game titles, especially not with mobile game prices in the 99 cent — $4.99 range. Not to mention, how games are designed these days needs some serious rethinking. This list of some of the industry's most annoying gaming clichés, from scripted sequences to impossibly incompetent NPCs, and how they might be solved, speaks to a few of the major ailments in modern gameplay with character and plot techniques that are older than dirt."
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
You want them to make games much more complex--with completely destructible environments, near limitless borders, better AI, more complex NPC's, etc.
But you also want them to be CHEAPER? Okay.
And you complain about how long it takes to develop a triple-A title, so I guess you also want them SOONER too, huh?
Perhaps you would also like to have them hand-delivered to your house by Natalie Portman in a bikini? Hell, sure, why not!
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
I think that when Natalie Portman delivers my super-cheap beyond-triple-A game to my house, she should be covered in hot grits. And naked. And petrified.
Re:So... (Score:4, Funny)
If she had to show up to your house like that, she would be petrified.
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
Hell, *I* am petrified by just reading that.
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
If they are delivered that way, I don't care what they cost. But yes, sooner, please.
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Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not an unreasonable man; you can forego the bikini if you like.
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Please.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, he's saying that instead of spending tons of money making games LOOK and SOUND better, they should spend that money on making games PLAY better.
-- 77IM
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's too hard. It's much easier to just throw another few million at the developers and tell them to make more detailed models. Major publishers are terrified of making games that don't play exactly the same as the last big hit.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Here, I always thought the spirit of Software was re-use... making iterations easier. Instead, we have people making all new engines every year, copyrighting their code so nobody else can use it, locking up their assets and IP in restrictive licenses, and generally making sure that it takes more money to make the next sequel than ever.
How many times has a game studio written inventory management code? How many have rewritten code to make an NPC follow a path? How many have remade mission trackers? How many have tossed old sound management classes because "they can do it better"?
Installation Information (Score:3)
Instead, we have people making all new engines every year, copyrighting their code so nobody else can use it, locking up their assets and IP in restrictive licenses
Part of this is that the system libraries of the video game consoles are licensed in a way that is incompatible with copyleft licenses. For example, the requirement of Installation Information in GPLv3 and the corresponding requirement of "the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable" in GPLv2 pretty much require a console to be completely open to homebrew. This issue forced a recall of Pajama Sam for Wii [slashdot.org]: Atari and Majesco apparently wanted to release the ScummVM (for Wii) sou
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Nethack (Score:5, Insightful)
Like Nethack!
Nethack is free!
Nethack will be available twenty-five years ago!
Go Nethack!
All joking aside, roguelikes exhibit this kind of complexity, yet it takes quite a bit of time for them to develop that complexity (tangent: are roguelikes gaming wine?), and that's with ascii art. Once you have graphics, you lose the justification for "use your imagination" and have to have different graphics for the 9000 different objects in the loot table, etc.
Also most people don't really have the time for that kind of game unless it's the only game they play.
That said, I wouldn't mind!
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternatively they could stop making the same tired 1st/3rd person shooters with the exact same set of escort and assault missions played out across a costly yet unimaginative set of levels, and instead come up with a new game concept that doesn't need NPC AI, complex physical simulations, and destructible environments.
Pacman has none of those things and it is still better than 99.9% of the shit that gets released these days.
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+1
Most modern games I find boring unless it has a really strong story (like the offline Final Fantasy games) to keep me involved. I grow tired of level-after-level of FPS that eventually blur together.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is not just with the games being release, but what people buy and what advertizing sells.
This is a tough problem to solve. Think about it. Long ago, you sat at your first FPS. Your heart raced as you blew things up and spent many sleepless nights beating a game.
Well, someone today will turn 13 and get a Gaming system, and for the first time ever will get that same feeling.
To you, it's an old feeling. To someone else, it's brand new. I think the popular mind set is that old gamers should go away and sit in a bar instead. To many of us, it's our hobby, we don't like to sit in bars. There needs to be a market for people that game as a hobby, something better than Warcraft at least.
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So you are saying developers might consider creating titles that are oriented towards the maturity of an audience? That young teenagers will accept the latest FPS clone because its new to them or they are less critical and more adrenaline driven, but that older gamers might want something with more plot, character development, complexity etc. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Developers will never build games for anything other than the target audience though, as designing for a niche audience won't have as
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Beat me to it..... yes all the suggestions would increase development time and cost.
IMHO if the problem is expensive artists..... just have a few on staff. True the worlds my be a little more pixelated but so what? Im not paying on hundred for a game. Heck right now I only pay nineteen typical.
On the other hand maybe Im just being too cheap.
If NES games cost fifty then todays game would natualy be ninty one through dollar devaluation.....
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
>> Perhaps you would also like to have them hand-delivered to your house by Natalie Portman in a bikini?
And tell her to bring beer.
Re:So... (Score:4, Funny)
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But just because we won't get everything we want doesn't mean we shouldn't identify common failings in games and suggest some possible solutions.
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I get your point, but TFA actually does list at least one cliche that could easily die AND not (significantly) increase cost: NPCs without self-preservation instinct.
I really can't remember how long it's been since I've actually seen an NPC run away.
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Minecraft animals do this now. The monsters just want your brainz.
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The first 2 Fallout games would do this. If an NPC got wounded, they would run away.
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The more I think about that list, the more fond I am of the Mount & Blade series.
The world needs more sandbox games. One makes the story with freedom and imagination. Create a simulation and let it run, tweak the fun/boring/grinding elements.
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if the major game publishers weren't so damn greedy, they would already be cheaper -- and still make a respectable profit (if the game was worth anything to begin with).. but no.. they just have to make their money back, and then some, the first 3 days on the market, thus the $60+ price tags
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
I've mentioned this many times before. We're going to have a bubble burst here pretty soon.
I've heard it stated the entry level for a AAA title is $15 million, with the average AAA game costing $25 million to develop. Some games like GTA IV cost north of $100 million.
Very few console games sell more than 1 million copies. For instance, only 25 titles have ever reached that mark on the PS3.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games#PlayStation_3 [wikipedia.org]
NES games cost $50 back in 1985, which is over $100 in today's dollars. We expect far more from a game now while we're willing to spend far less, and yet consumers constantly complain that games are too expensive.
Now, I hear rumors today that EA is about to be bought out. Do people realize game developers often work 80 hour weeks without paid overtime? Do they realize developers keep going bankrupt?
Sure, EA is the devil and people may relish in publishers going bankrupt, but without developers we don't have games. I'd rather not see all my favorite developers out of work.
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EA just sets the Profit margin of 75% and the deadline of "Yesterday" so devs have to cut things short.
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I stated that EA is a publisher. And as a publisher, they turn a profit currently. I stated that people see them as the devil and don't care if they might potentially fail.
The problem is that developers don't work unless a publisher funds it. Hoping that EA dies means all the developers lose their jobs first.
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Developing 3D models aren't easy. The more assets you need, and the nicer you want them to look means you need to pay more artists for their time. Having a faster processor doesn't really reduce the time it takes artists to make these models.
Making better looking games year after year with the same console hardware means paying developers to creatively eke more power out of those consoles.
And I've never seen a developer state that porting costs more than art assets. Porting can be expensive, and sometimes i
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
The cost of recording an album or printing a book hasn't risen dramatically in the past 20 years.
The cost of making a game has. Perhaps you should read the article and check the chart right up at the top. In the 16-bit era, it cost 50k-300k to make a game. This article lists $17m-$20m to produce a game. And we know certain games like Max Payne 3 and GTAIV cost north of $100m.
Record companies aren't going bankrupt left and right. Game developers are. Please read what I wrote and respond to what I actually said.
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1. FWIW, I doubt those numbers as well, but those are the numbers from the article. I tried doing research for an article I was writing to determine the budget to make Super Mario Bros. I couldn't find the numbers anywhere.
If anyone has decent documented numbers of the production costs of older games, please respond with a link.
2. There were 62 million NES consoles sold. There have been 62 million PS3s sold. I'm not seeing much of a change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles#Nint [wikipedia.org]
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They aren't pricing games at $100. New games are still $60, where as NES titles inflation adjusted would be over $100 today. We're paying less per game.
And you can't simply develop a Wii game and magically release it on all 3 consoles. There is additional cost to port. We're talking the entry level cost of development at $17-$20 million. Developers often target a single console for development. For a single platform, there are similar numbers today than the NES era.
Simply put, games cost EXPONENTIALLY more
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Average quality? well thats a shuit matrix. are you including any game that can be played on a computer? words with friends, angery birds, those game? ot are you comapring top tier games from the era to top tear games to recent top tier games.
Find me ONE 16 bit era game that has higher quality;which, btw, is another useless word without qualifiers.
There was some magic wand that got waved. People like glits, that's why the industry makes prettier games.
Portal II, TF2, Half-life, Star Craft II, GTA IV, TOurchlight. I can't think of any 16 bit game that can hold a candle to thiose games.
And before you say it, yes, in fact I do remember 16 bit games. I've played alomet every system sins there where system to take home.
I don't say that to add authority to my statement, because that would be a foolish logical fallacy. I stated that to stem off the inevitable "Well you weren't around so you don know what you are talking about' reply.
I thought the same thing from Pong, TiaPan to M&M to Mario. This is fun, I can't wait for graphic to get even better.
"3D was a step back in quality and playability."
That's complete bullshit.
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Cars get faster, safer, cheaper.
Computers as well. Even if the game stays the same on better hardware it should run better and do more with less effort.
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His point is that the vast majority of the budget on most games is spent on art and voice acting. Some of his problems could be solved with simple better writing, and that's all but free compared to a lot of what's spent on art. The rest would require a lot of coding, new algorithms, thought, etc. That does cost money, but you could skimp a little on the ultra-ultra-high-res graphics that only people with super high end systems will see and maybe drop some of that cash on programers. It just requires th
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I'd be happy if shooters stopped with the cliche of "The rest of the heavily-armed squad will stay here to guard this safe area, while you go ahead and clear out the millions of bad guys on your own." Seriously?
It's like if they made the original DOOM today [youtube.com], no one would play it. It would be kind of lame.
The article also mentioned "Conveniently Indestructable Objects", and I'm with them on that. If you don't want the glass to shatter, give me a good reason: bulletproof glass, force field, ... something. I t
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You want them to make games much more complex--with completely destructible environments, near limitless borders, better AI, more complex NPC's, etc.
But you also want them to be CHEAPER? Okay.
No problem. Just play NetHack.
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Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, you ignore PC gaming with your comment so I assume you're only considering consoles, due to them having static configurations that ease some of the development burdens.
So your view is that devs are being held back because the set hardware they develop for isn't changing to keep up with the times fast enough?
Yeah, you're right, probably should make it so consoles are easier to upgrade. Maybe standardized connectors on the main board so you just plug in a processor, ram, non-volatile storage, media reader, graphics processor, sound processor, input devices, and networking? And of course you should have the system software easily upgradable to take better advantage of advances in software technologies and driver bugfixes.
Current controllers are quite limiting too, they should definitely offer a 103-button controller for text input, and a separate motion sensing controller with a couple buttons of it's own (use an optical beam and sensor on the bottom of it to read the motion of the surface it rests on, that would fix the current motion controller issues).
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Nice sarcasm. Also I'm wondering: How have consoles fallen behind PCs? The PS3 and X360 are producing HDTV quality graphics with flawless sound. There's very little room for improvement. They are at the highest audiovisual-resolution possible.
Anyway..... consoles used to come with expansions for extra RAM or additional corprocessors, but those expansions were barely supported. The gamemakers naturally targeted their largest market (the stock console with no expansion).
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
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well.. it depends a bit what you want to display at those fullhd frames. but well, let's say unreal 2?
but remind me again.. how many truly fullhd ps3 games there are today which run at 60fps?(not upscaled).
a 1000 dollar pc on ps3 or xbox360 could easily beat the shit out of the console, that's not really even news though.
a 1000 dollar pc today kicks so much console ass that it's not even funny.
why do people think that console chips are made in magic land? is it just the marketing? you are aware that pretty
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
They are at the highest audiovisual-resolution possible.
Haha, hoho, hehe, I almost cracked a rib at that.
They aren't even close to the highest possible. Not remotely. The modern midrange PC graphics card has ~6-8 times the power of the PS3 or Xbox cards, and some games can push even those, not to mention having much newer features (like hardware tesselation). The PS3, in particular, hurts my eyes with the lack of anti-aliasing that seems to be universal to that system. The biggest problem, though, is probably RAM: the 360 only has 512 MB, and the PS3 256MB for the system, which is horribly limiting on map sizes for games (similar for their video RAM and texture sizes). Console games are incredibly limited because of that.
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Deus Ex: HR can be run at 9600x1080p (5 HD monitors) on a computer. The developers also urged people to get the PC version, since the console versions couldn't show it off in all its glory.
Consoles are nice for playing with friends, but PC's will always be better at running AAA games.
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http://techreport.com/discussions.x/22366 [techreport.com]
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it's more a combination:
#1 - trying to make games run at OMG FUCKING HUGE RESOLUTION and OMG FRAMERATE are big ones. You want 120 FPS at 1600x1200 or higher? Well shit, there went a ton of calculating power. Even if your video board is handling the rendering, you still have to calculate collisions and other factors on CPU.
#2 - trying to make AI work is fucking HARD. Sure, you can code it to be perfect, and constantly win because it never misses, but then you're just replicating the kind of shitty experience you get on the Call of Duty and Halo servers full of aimbots and lag-hack cheaters. Make the AI miss too often, or make too many obvious mistakes, and it looks bad. The sweet spot is hard because inevitably, players figure out how to "trigger" the mistakes of the AI and then the game seems easy. And that's just FPS AI. RTS AI and anything involving team dynamics (like CTF), it gets even harder.
#3 - programming and dumbing it down for consoles. Compare: Deus Ex, Deus EX: Invisible War, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The first, on PC, programmed for gameplay over graphics = phenomenal. The second, programmed for the console and graphics over gameplay, = a steam pile of shit. The third, programmed for console but for later gen consoles and with an eye towards trying to redeem the franchise's gameplay? Somewhere in the middle, good game, but still not up to the gameplay quality of the first.
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
You know, calculating collisions is independent of resolution.
Not really, no. Calculating the aim direction and collisions of a firing arc is very dependent on resolution. Compare the firing arc jumpiness of Wolfenstein 3D to Doom; one of the big things you'll start to notice is that Wolfenstein isn't truly a "360 degree" turning radius, but instead moves a few degrees at a time for each keyboard tap. If you want to hit a bad guy, and he's in between arcs, you learn to aim consistently to one side (IIRC the right side) because the collision detection is programmed to compensate inward from your aim to that side.
Now with a mouse, you have to calculate where the crosshairs are pointing. Have a game rendering internally at 640x480, but visually at 1600x1200, and players are going to complain about a "jumpy" mouse and aiming system. So the programmers overcorrect instead - they render INTERNALLY as high as possible and allow the player to turn the resolution down for visual rendering... and it eats up a shit-ton of processing power no matter what.
And then there's "auto-aim correction" calculations for consoles...
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Neither of your examples are remotely similar to modern games.
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The collision calculations do not become heavier in higher video resolutions, they become havier on more detailed 3d models. The GP is correct that collision detection is independent of video resolution.
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are you trolling or not? I can't tell.
but go take a look about typical game engine programming...
the "rendering internally" depends on precision of the numbers involved(if you wondered why your laser sight on tf1 was shit like it was).
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Not quite.
I'd sooner blame shit tools. I think game houses are working hard but not working smart. If the industry had true rapid-design tools integrated with an open-source, generic, modular, scriptable 3D engine, not only would the development process be shortened, but they'd have access to a much larger pool of skilled developers and artists.
Instead, we have single-use engines with in-house tools that never quite reach maturity, or expensive proprietary middleware that also lack polish. They lock you
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
They still make PC-only titles?
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There are some multi-platform games that aren't given the shit treatment on the PC.
Battlefield three has an elevated experience compared to the console versions.
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Yet DICE still can't conjure up a functional, good-looking user interface for all of their PC prowess. I still can't believe you don't have the option to cancel out from a server before the game loads in; you have to fully wait for the map to load, hope you haven't gotten in right as the map is ch
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
This depressing discussion makes me want to dust off the "PC" known as the commodore amiga (or Sega genesis; very similar hardware), and play some games that were actually FUN to play. And now thanks to the internet: free! (No wait; they were always free.) Screw spending $70 for modern crap. Besides I've only played about 20% of the amiga library.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
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So, how much luck have you had playing Starcraft II on your PS3?
Graphics and sound are now a cliche (Score:5, Funny)
I'd say that burning too much time and money on graphics, sound, FMV, and voice acting at the expense of mechanics, plot and bug-freeness has become a cliche in and of itself.
Obviously the solution is to go back to text-based gaming. OK, fine, EGA and the PC speaker.
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It always surprises me how big budgets are for "AAA" titles when those budgets involve huge outlays for things like licensing technology (the notoriously bad Havok physics engine, graphics engines like Unreal, or audio engines like FMOD... Hell, there are even engines for MENUS... and guess who owns Scaleform? Autodesk! Enjoy haggling licensing terms with those sharks). Frequently all these huge cash expenditures look like checking items off a list without even questioning whether or not it would be cheaper
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Physics engines. I've seen too many otherwise excellent games absolutely crippled by their lazy reliance on a physics engine for things that don't actually work well that way. Watching enemy corpse ragdolls fly across the room is hilarious. Watching your valuable health, ammo, XP pickups sail over impassable barriers because some retarded dev decided that it would be "so super cool if those things had physics" is much less awesome. It's so easy to just click the "apply physics" check box without even th
Right, that'll work. (Score:5, Interesting)
Show me a $5 mobile game with the depth and length of a good AAA title, and I'll agree there's no point in spending $60 for games (where did the $80-$100 figure come from? Only collectors' editions cost that much, and even they are often less). Also, it has to have good controls. Not "well, this is pretty good for a mobile game", but actually good. I've bought all of five games on my iPhone. Two were terrible (Scribblenauts, Angry Birds), two were ports (Chrono Trigger and Vay), and one was a decent time-waster (7 Words). Certain types of games can work pretty well on a phone or tablet, but it's a small subset of what works on PCs or consoles. And, unfortunately, the games that work well on mobile devices don't seem to be the same games as the ones I actually want to play.
The first poster did a good job pointing out that the added complexity the article wants will cost more, not less. I would like to point out that these cliches aren't universal, but there are problems with trying to "solve" them. I'll use "mandatory missions" for my example, alongside the article's example of Wing Commander.
Wing Commander allowed you to progress through the story while failing every mission. Your ending would suck, but that should be expected. It was a neat idea. There were a two major problems with that, though. Orion discovered that most people never saw the "failed" paths, because people would restart missions until they succeeded. People want a sense of accomplishment, and failing a mission doesn't give that. The other big problem was the added complexity. When they set out to make Wing Commander II, they wanted a much larger, more expansive plot. It became much too difficult and costly to create all the possible branching paths, cutscenes, and script if they followed the same formula as Wing Commander. So they cheated. There are less branching paths than in the first one, but the result is a game with a better-structured story.
There's also a side issue with allowing players to fail missions: You can game the system. If you just want to see the good ending of Wing Commander, all you have to do, IIRC, is play four missions. For every other mission, just eject as soon as you have control of your ship. Want to see the bad ending? Just eject on every mission! You can finish the game in just a few minutes, this way.
I also feel like allowing a failed mission takes something away from the experience. It's more realistic, but what's the point of beating that really hard level if you can just fail it and move on to the next one?
In the end, as I mentioned earlier, and as others have as well--I'm not sure how adding complexity is going to somehow magically drop down the price of games, or make them shorter to develop. I would also like to point out that games right now are cheaper than the SNES or N64 days. Heck, even NES games retailed at $50, and that's before you take inflation into account. I'm not sure where this "gaming is too expensive these days!" myth came from.
Re:Right, that'll work. (Score:5, Insightful)
what's the point of beating that really hard level if you can just fail it and move on to the next one?
Some missions may be too tough for some players. People are different. For example, I couldn't figure out the dance mission in GTA Vice City. There was no way to bypass. I seriously considered soldering wires to the controller so that the mission can be played automatically, by a timer.
As another example, the RC helicopter mission in the same Vice City is needlessly long and complicated. There are many complaints that the game is unplayable just because of that mission (there are no save points during the mission.) Rockstar ensured the "game time" by forcing you to repeat missions over and over and over again until you really learn to operate ... what? A fictional RC helicopter that you will never meet IRL?
The same can be said about flight training in GTA San Andreas. There are many complaints. In essence, you'd be better off trying the actual two airplane missions and learning to fly that way.
Same can be said about the driving school. But, interestingly enough, it was optional. I could not progress past a certain point. Generally all GTA games are timed so that if you do everything flawlessly you maybe have three to five seconds left. There was zero value in the driving school. I haven't finished it and still I was able to complete the game just fine. I suspect that Rockstar just decided to add play time by reusing existing assets in a way that is easy for them to code but nearly impossible for you to pass.
To summarize, it is very important to be able to skip some missions. Perhaps a certain boss fight that requires agility and reaction time of a teenager can be replaced with an alternative fight that requires planning skills and patience and stealth of a 40 y/o professional sniper. But most games just blindly assume that everyone can do *this* chord on the controller. Assassin's Creed II comes to mind where you need to jump at the wall and at the same time move to the side. This is an essential skill to proceed, mind you! This sequence is pretty hard to do because when you do it it doesn't f. work! The reason is that you need to push the controller's joystick just right and not in any other way. But why not, you have plenty of time, like 20 milliseconds, to do that - time after time after time. I wish I had an alternative path where I'd have to fight 100 guards and solve puzzles but skip this jumping business.
In reality, learning to play the game is pointless. The skill of pushing on joysticks is not translating into anything usable in real life. Limitations of the controller force developers to invent more and more chords. In that Assassin's Creed there are so many control sequences that nobody but the developer himself, on a good day, can voluntarily execute one sword move or another. I could only randomly mash buttons and hope for the best. Any attempt to stop and think - or, even worse, try to execute the combo per instructions - will only get you wounded.
Timer missions are another bane of many games. I'd like to replay Assassin's Creed II, but there are so many timed missions smack-dab in the middle of the story that I fear them. What's the point of chasing a thief across rooftops? IRL there are very few timed missions; maybe if you are a doctor or a CIA agent you need to be able to act quick. But in most cases speed is not as essential as quality. I suspect that game developers just use timers as yet another FAIL criterion, so that you are stuck for hours replaying the same mission again and again and again. In case of that thief (the 1st timed mission of the game) you have to literally study every step of your path, or else you will fail. What is the point of that act, other than to annoy the player? If you want to make it into a decent intro to roof-hopping, get rid of the timer and make the thief wait for you whenever you fall or get delayed. But make the route 100 times as long. It would be actually educational, since the leading thief could show you some tricks.
Original NES (Score:5, Insightful)
from scripted sequences to impossibly incompetent NPCs, and how they might be solved
You must be under the age of 30 to say that. The original NES, the first major standard ever created, thrived on making games that were cheap, painfully difficult (Battletoads, anyone?), and wasn't advertisement supported. The reason the industry is suffering is the same reason everything turns to crap: Money.
Producers have gotten the notion in their head that they don't just expect profit, that it's an inalienable right. Take linux for example; There are hundreds of command-line based programs that are there, for free, that can be combined and manipulated to perform almost any basic function. In the windows world, I'm expected to pay $30 for an application that can rename multiple files at once. It gets worse when they see dollar signs in advertising revenue.
Imagine Super Mario Brothers if it were made today; The entire first level would be a tutorial where it cheers everytime you press 'A', gives you an 'achievement unlocked' after you stomp 10 goombas, and at the end of the level asks you to 'upgrade' to a Premium Mario that would start every level in 'fireball mario' mode for only $9.99. Especially in MMOs -- microtransactions now mean you can buy levels, gears, whatever you want. Some guy who slaved through all the levels gets no respect when some 14 year old with daddy's credit card comes in, curb stomps him, and then steals all his hard-earned equipment, which he just drags to the trash anyway, because hey, I can just buy it with real money. ha ha!
Good games are about personal achievement, and being difficult enough to be a challenge without becoming tedious. Good games are intuitive and don't require a three hour introduction, and they are immersive experiences; You're thinking about your next move, not wondering if there's any way to unlock that next level without spending a weeks' worth of groceries on upgrades.
No... Money is what ruined games; Businesses don't look at it as providing entertainment anymore, it's revenue, it's eyeballs for advertisers.. they aren't selling a product anymore: You are the product of the modern game. And it shows: The quality of modern games is shit.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Ah yes, New Super Mario Bros. Nintendo really fucked up on that one. It's a game for a portable device, but allowing you to save after completing a single level is unlocked after defeating the end boss.
Also, 6 buttons available... but only 2 used and you have to use the touch screen to deploy your saved powerup.
Re: (Score:3)
Producers have gotten the notion in their head that they don't just expect profit, that it's an inalienable right.
The video game industry has always been about maximizing profits. Nintendo games weren't that cheap back in the day and people would waste money on crap all the time.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Those NES games had their origins in painfully difficult arcade games that rewarded memorization and pattern recognition. Why did they do this? So they could suck down quarters faster. Your specific example, Battletoads, was patterned after the TMNT arcade games which were notorious quarter-munchers.
It's always been about the money.
Re: (Score:3)
Imagine Super Mario Brothers if it were made today; The entire first level would be a tutorial where it cheers everytime you press 'A', gives you an 'achievement unlocked' after you stomp 10 goombas, and at the end of the level asks you to 'upgrade' to a Premium Mario that would start every level in 'fireball mario' mode for only $9.99. Especially in MMOs -- microtransactions now mean you can buy levels, gears, whatever you want. Some guy who slaved through all the levels gets no respect when some 14 year old with daddy's credit card comes in, curb stomps him, and then steals all his hard-earned equipment, which he just drags to the trash anyway, because hey, I can just buy it with real money. ha ha!
Well now, let's take a look at that. Last Mario game I played was Galaxy - since then, there's been Galaxy 2, and maybe 3D Land, in the main series, but I haven't played them. The first level was indeed primarily a tutorial and story introduction, but there was no cheering or achievements. Next level was essentially the same as any level of Super Mario 64, save for the whole "walking on spherical surfaces" thing, which mainly boiled down to the camera.
There are no microtransactions, although you can spend i
Re:Original NES (Score:5, Insightful)
NES games were modelled on the arcade experience, where the games were designed to be endorphin-fueled quarter-suckers. Ultimate success was having a crowd gather around as you mastered the game, publicly acknowledging your superiority.
Game developer eventually figured out this approach doesn't work when the customer was sitting home alone in their basement. There was no great penalty for failure, nor reward for success beyond personal satisfaction. So modern games usually are not very much of a skills test, and (as the article noted) more of an interactive movie where the player is 'rewarded' with plot-points and virtual trophies.
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I, however, dislike the very difficult games If I play a single-player game, I want to see the ending, to get the full story. This is why I listen to all the audio logs I can find. If I have to redo a sequence more than 10 times I get a bit frustrated. If it's 50 or more times the probability that I'll drop the game starts approaching "1". Especially if I can only save at checkpoints or the reloads take a long time. I dislike repetition and while you can say that, say, a shooter is repetitive in that most
SMB1 for the Facebook generation (Score:3)
Imagine Super Mario Brothers if it were made today; The entire first level would be a tutorial where it cheers everytime you press 'A', gives you an 'achievement unlocked' after you stomp 10 goombas
Let me guess: you saw that on Zack Hiwiller's site [hiwiller.com].
DLC is a new cliche that needs to die. (Score:5, Insightful)
DLC is fast becoming a gaming cliche and needs to die off. Everytime you buy DLC you tell developers.....
I want to pay more than 60 dollars for my game.
I want to buy something that I will never own. I will pay for content I cant trade, sell, or give away.
I want my games chopped into small pieces and sold me to seperately over the MSRP price of the main game.
I am fine with paying for a inferior product because DLC is never as good as the original.
I want to pay for something that more than likely wont be availible to me in 5 or 10 years if I want to go back and play it.
I want features sold as dlc. Like how tecmo is selling a difficulty setting for ninja gaiden 3 as dlc.
I want endings sold as dlc. Like how square is selling the ending for final fantasy 13-2 as dlc.
I want content on my game disc I paid for to cost me extra. Like how capcom sells on disc dlc as extra.
I want content on day 1 that should be a part of my game I bought. Like how bioware put content out on mass effect 3's first day.
Every single time you buy DLC you are telling developers and publishers that. Now DLC is almost expected for everything and becoming its own cliche.
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Preorder bonuses and special editions
Everyone knows there will be plenty of copies available on release day, so there's no reason to preorder. But Gamestop needs to lock people in (and collect a bit of cash early) so they get the developers to add special preorder bonuses. Preorder today or you won't have all the shiny gear to show off in multiplayer. While you're at it, why don't you pay an extra $50 for a poster, and some dogtags and a cheap statue, all in a bigger box with foil highlights.
incredibly dumb article. (Score:2)
leaving aside the fact that it argues for more realism and complexity that consumes less resources and costs less (i.e. MAGIC), it also rails against a lot of the elements that make games, games. be careful what you wish for.
do you really want open-ended plotlines where the player truly controls the direction of the plot? there are real problems to that approach. dramatic fiction (which is a huge element to the appeal of, say, RPGs) depends on a cogent story being told. one thing must logically lead to
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"incredibly dumb article"
^ This is the most accurate thing that can be said. The article was the dumbest thing I've read about gaming in a long, long time. The thesis: "Games are too expensive so you should add exponentially more complexity to make them cheaper" is obviously a non-starter. And yes, the indestructible objects item was a low point:
"Ideally, let's just get rid of invulnerable structures, period... Giving players the freedom to re-shape terrain does create certain challenges, but not as many as
Video Games Have Crashed Before (Score:5, Insightful)
People seem to forget, or never learned, that the gaming market has crashed before; in the 1980s, to be precise. And why? Because loads of shovelware titles were being released to capitalize on gamers' increasing willingness to buy them, while development costs were skyrocketing, and every other game was a ripoff of another title that came before it. Sound familiar?
Eventually all the bloat collapsed in on itself and the market for video games nearly died.
Personally, I'm of the opinion another video gaming crash may not be such a bad thing. The price of games is already many times over that of other forms of media (would you buy a typical book or movie for $60?), while development costs are starting to outpace even most big studio movie productions. Ingenuity and creativity are among the casualties, while developers and publishers are trying every way under the Sun to extract as much money as possible from customers, from activation limits, to invasive DRM, to serious considerations to kill used game sales (a first sale right that extends to every other product on the market, yet gaming companies seem to think they, somehow, should be a special exception). Financially, the market is booming, while creatively, it is dying.
Without the gaming crash of the 1980s, we never would have had Nintendo. I'd like to see what major boons would come out of another crash.
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$100 game with MIT certificate (Score:2)
Something that's escaped all of the online courses is learning through gamification [wikipedia.org].
In real life, learning is growth - we learn something, it's useful, then we incrementally learn something more useful. There's a reward at every stage.
In online courses, there is no reward - instead of pursuit of goals it's a continuous escape from penalties. It's the exact opposite of what makes a game fun. The MITx "Circuits and Electronics" course is exactly this way: it's a continuous stick instead of a carrot. Get the h
Speaking of game clichés (Score:2)
cliché [] (1) - I used to be a game developer like you, then I took an arrow in the knee
Speaking of Cliches... (Score:5, Insightful)
How about overly short paragraphs interspersed with lots of pictures spread over an unholy amount of pages, simple to get more pageviews for ad driven revenue.
List missing clichès here (Score:5, Insightful)
Game clichès that need to die that are not mentioned in the article:
- The US are the good. The <insert other nation here> are the evil.
The linked article misidentifies the problem (Score:3)
The linked article misidentifies the problem. If you look at the greatest games of all time (e.g. Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger) they often use the "cliches" mentioned in the article. That is because these cliches are a necessary part of a well-designed game, especially if it is an action adventure or a JRPG.
The problem is a monoculture of game genres. Just as hip-hop has pretty much taken over music to the exclusion of everything else, so have two specific game genres (FPS and MMORPG) basically colonized the entire PC/console gaming industry. These were never very good genres to begin with, and they're totally overdone and worn-out now. I, personally, will not play any game that has a first-person perspective because I simply can't feel comfortable or get used to it. Good 3D games need to have a third-person camera angle.
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Of the top 10 selling US games for March 2012, there are 4 sports games, 3 fighters, a horror game, a single-player RPG (with FPS elements), and a FPS. http://www.videogamesblogger.com/2012/04/12/top-10-best-selling-games-of-march-2012-usa.htm [videogamesblogger.com]
Prices (Score:5, Interesting)
Does anyone actually believe this? It gets repeated over and over, but it makes zero sense. There isn't a single gamer that can't recognize the difference between the complexity of a mobile game and something like Skyrim. I get the feeling that this statement is just being repeated over and over in a lame attempt to brainwash people into believing it.
Re:And I'd like a pony (Score:5, Insightful)
It costs money to avoid unskippable cut scenes?
How about this, let me skip all the bullshit logos at the beginning of the game and we can call that already a huge win. Then you go look at halflife and see how you can not have cutscenes. The Portal series would also be good for you to check out.
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It costs money to avoid unskippable cut scenes?
We paid Famous Hollywood Actor X $20,000,000 to record that inane and repetitive dialog explaining things you don't care about and you are damn well going to get our money's worth!
To paraphrase Aliens, when I'm playing an FPS the only thing I want to know is where's the next thing to shoot. I don't give a damn about the silly story the game company made up to explain why I'm shooting them and I certainly don't want to be forced to listen to a twenty minute history of the war between the H'azafa and T'fasdga
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For the record, people who play games the way you described shouldn't get a say in how AAA titles are made. Shooting random stuff for no reason is called space invaders. Its fun, go play it a while.
The only reason I play most video games is for the story and progress through an actual plot. When the game becomes a fragfest, its just silly and no different from going back to Quake 2.
If you reduced any modern RPG to "kill those things, stand here. Now stand there. Now shoot those things, now stand here"
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If you are allowed to skip the crap at the beginning of the game, it'll make the game less cinimatic.
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Nice to look at once, maybe twice, but not every time I load the game. I'd rather look at a progress bar.
Re:And I'd like a pony (Score:5, Insightful)
From my experience, the unskippable logos at the beginning are actually there because the game is loading and they're nicer to look at than a progress bar.
That'll be why the disk light stops flashing while it's playing the 'We paid megabucks to license the Whatsit Engine' video and why the game loads much faster when I can skip through those videos.
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You could just click on the print version [hothardware.com].
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Having a bunch of games that look the same sounds awful to me.