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Topic Starter Topic: Game Design Backlash?
Silicone_Milk
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PostPosted: 12-05-2007 08:55 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I've been thinking a lot lately about the latest games and how they're all turning out to look very similar to each other. I think that as companies push to making games as realistic as possible, the differences between the games begin to blur.

Personally I'm bored with new games. I still find myself playing Quake 1, 2, and Duke Nukem 3D more than I do with games like Gears of War, Halo, ETQW, etc...
A possible reason to this could be because of the previously mentioned push for realistic graphics. When games look too realistic they no longer feel like a game. Games no longer have the entertainment quality they had in the early to mid 90s. Games now feel like a chore to play while games then were just that - games.

So, moving on to the topic of this thread, everything I have written so far leads me to the conclusion that games will go through a backlash in design much like how "retro" fashion and fads come back then die again. As people want begin to feel like all games are the same, games will start being made like they were when it wasn't a struggle to look prettier.

I post this to hear your thoughts on this. Let's hear them.
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PostPosted: 12-05-2007 09:57 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


(Actually, been thinking about it lately too)

You can't really make games as good as they were, since focus moved from gameplay to graphics; FPS moved from PC to console; marketing got more to say than gamedesign; most really good ideas, that made it all happen, has already been done, hard to redo as good or even near - that's why most games that ships today will be forgotten and never played again in 5 years. In 5 years, I bet you there will be more people playing Quake World than Cod4, no none will even remember the first Assassins Creed, System Shock 2 will still be the remembered game, not Bio Shock, etc,



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PostPosted: 12-05-2007 10:24 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I feel that is the problem. Like said most games these days focus on the graphics side of the product, with gameplay often underdeveloped. But what mostly keeps you coming back to a game is gameplay, with looks just needing to be adequate. Sadly this prioritizing is missing since you can't really show or falsily soup up gameplay in a commercial but you can make it look really nice or prettier than it is.
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Silicone_Milk
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PostPosted: 12-05-2007 10:32 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I agree 100% on the point of all the focus being put on graphics.

I think the folks heres should get together and work on a retro style FPS ;)




Last edited by Silicone_Milk on 12-05-2007 10:34 AM, edited 1 time in total.
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obsidian
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PostPosted: 12-05-2007 10:32 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I play ETQW. Obsessively. It's like the new Quake 3 only with objectives. I pwn. :ninja:

But yes, in the half dreamy awakened state that I was in this morning I was sort of thinking the same thing. There is a lot of games that have been pushed together that makes gameplay pretty much the same, but I don't attribute that to the graphics. You're right that graphics shouldn't be the sole push in the game and that a lot more needs to be done with regards to focus on gameplay rather than a lot of the other extraneous stuff being tossed in as bullet points on the box.

I think part of the problem with recent (FPS) games is that they are being nerfed down for consoles. There aren't too many big title games released for PC only so you see a lot of games that have very similar gameplay mechanics that are targeted towards consoles. These games are then ported over to PC. Stuff that annoys me about these new games and why they've been nerfed:

  • Health Bars - where are the health bars? It used to be that you had to manage your health pickups. Take it now or save for later? Risk running back to pick up that health and face more spawning enemies or continue going with half-health? Gee, low on health, better be more sneaky and careful. Those were strategic decisions that I used to make in games of old, but in recent games they've taken out health as a gameplay mechanic and replaced it with self-recharging "health". All you have to do now is duck and cover for a few seconds to heal. Games like GoW, Halo, Jericho, MoH:Airborne, all games I've played recently that did the same thing. Even Bioshock - there was a health bar, but I never cared for health pickups since if you died, there was no penalty, you just spawn back at the nearest regen booth and you even get most of your plasmid points restored.
  • Action Buttons - I hate these. I love Guitar Hero, but only if I choose to play this kind of game. Hitting onscreen buttons at the right time has no place in an FPS. They occur during "interactive cutscenes" but they make me ignore the cutscene entirely and I'm just staring at the screen looking for the next icon to pop up. It's also a pretty big break in the immersion factor since all of a sudden, it's a different kind of game and it's quite intrusive. Jericho pissed me off to no end due to this.
  • Limited Weapon Loadout - Good in some games, terrible in others. I can see how in a game like MoH or CoD you are limited to carrying around a fixed number of guns due to some level of realism. That's okay providing that the weapons are more or less the same anyway. You get to carry around a machine gun and a rifle of different types. But games with a bigger range of weapon types and especially games with bosses, you should be able to carry all weapons. I'm stuck on GoW now because I'm at the final boss and I had the misfortune of walking in with a machine gun and a sniper rifle when explosive weapons are a necessity. The last checkpoint I'm at won't allow me to move back to swap out guns.

I can probably go on, but that's a small sample and I'll stop here for fear of making myself sound like a grumpy old man shaking his walking stick at those darned Xbox 360's and telling about the good ol' days... I'm probably already too late and should have stopped at the first paragraph.
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Silicone_Milk
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PostPosted: 12-05-2007 10:41 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


It's funny that everybody has been thinking the same way lately.

I wasn't joking about working on a retro-style fps btw :) Would there be any volunteers?

I know everybody is busy with their own thing and right now I have to finish up a contract BUT if you're mapping/modeling/texturing/programming/thinking in your spare time why not put it towards a just-for-fun project? :)
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PostPosted: 12-05-2007 10:53 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


i can think and test, i suck at developpy stuff since i just don't have the spirit to finish stuff it seems.
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Fjoggs
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PostPosted: 12-05-2007 11:16 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Seing how most similar projects like "Pass the map" fail, I sadly don't see such a project being realised. :(
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PostPosted: 12-05-2007 01:51 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


That one pass the map is still going though isn't it?
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Silicone_Milk
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PostPosted: 12-05-2007 02:52 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Fjoggs wrote:
Seing how most similar projects like "Pass the map" fail, I sadly don't see such a project being realised. :(


A similar thought had come to mind when I suggested this.

Regardless, this interests me so I'll be working on this in my free time even though I was already working on a rewrite of the Q3 engine (never really got anywhere).

For inspiration I'm going to play through Quake, Quake 2, Duke Nukem 3D, and Doom 1 for the single player. It's much too early to consider multiplayer beyond 4-player co-op but I think I'd been looking towards the game that perfected the MP scene - Quake 3.

I also need to come up with an over-the-top main character and a sterotypical scenario.
Crude humor, a killer soundtrack, and generally a lot of bigass guns and bigger monsters is essential to making something that can be taken purely as light-hearted entertainment instead of a serious commitment to finishing it.

Another key thing for the game would be to NOT to add a lot of stuff to it (detail, features, etc). Provide some room for the modders to hack away at the game and provide their own custom content.
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v1l3
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PostPosted: 12-05-2007 07:58 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


This is a good thread. I have pretty much the same thoughts on the majority of what's already been said, and how games have gone more visual than playable. I mean..you can only come up with so many original idea, before their all taken up and repeated by someone else.
I'm not really too needy on the whole realistic graphics, though it's really nice to look at sometimes. Computers need to be updated every 20 minutes because some guy made the smoke on the screen look more realistic, or the blood that is seeping from some dudes head has the cartilage poking out behind it.
I personally can aim my shotgun in UltimateDoom at the old school brown Imp's face and shoot it, and watch the cheapy pixels of blood take over the face and it just never gets old to me. It's not real looking at all, but back when games were like that, your imagination of the shot was the biggest part of the game.
These days everything is a freakin imitation of something already done by someone else. The only kind of game that is any good to play is one that has a replay value. That's why Q3 is still going! They came up with an engine that could be altered and the game just keeps on changing by itself by the players. Q3 is nothing like what it started as.

Someone should make a custom mission game(engine), that is of the same likeness as Q3(in concept) where it starts as something simple that people change. If that happened then game production companies wouldn't be able to make games anymore, because it would turn gaming into freeware which was made by someone for free to allow people to play their version of whatever their idea was that ran on the original engine. Kind of like a thought of Q4 without all of the damn Strogg storyline shit. Just an engine.
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Silicone_Milk
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PostPosted: 12-05-2007 08:15 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


v1l3 wrote:
Someone should make a custom mission game(engine), that is of the same likeness as Q3(in concept) where it starts as something simple that people change. If that happened then game production companies wouldn't be able to make games anymore, because it would turn gaming into freeware which was made by someone for free to allow people to play their version of whatever their idea was that ran on the original engine. Kind of like a thought of Q4 without all of the damn Strogg storyline shit. Just an engine.


That's what I thought made Quake 3 so much fun. It was "easily" modified and constantly changing.

That's why I want to make this game as a barebones stripped down fps with enough content to make it entertaining but not enough to make it feel like everythings already been done with the game so there's no point in modding it.

When people mod a game I feel like there's a sense of pride and a closer bond between player and game. When this happens they're more and more likely to replay the game because its something they helped create or know so in-depth that they don't want to go to other games.
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urgrund777
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PostPosted: 12-05-2007 10:06 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Maybe it wasn't mentioned... but a good reason (ie. the main reason) why games are all pretty similar is a financial reason. We (dev studios) are are dictated to by the check-writers. A lot of dev studios are just large 'outsourcing' houses for publisher owned IP (we made Viva Pinata-Party Animals, even though Rare made the original... Microsoft don't care, it's their IP and contracted us). Not too many studios have the capital to self-fund their "cool" new game ideas - and even when they do, you have to convince a publisher that it is profitable for them to press and distribute.

So, now that AAA games are hitting <>$15million to produce for these next-gen consoles, an investor is going to make the safest choice... They don't want to hear about your innovative, revolutionary new gameplay idea... they're thinking risk assessment, returns and unit sales... not game-play. So they jump on the band-wagon and keep milking the FPS's!

So,it's not really a "focus on graphics"... it's just that hardware capabilities advance more than innovation in the industry now days. :)

Where does it end? ...well, we've started a thread here showing that we're not exactly happy games are starting to stagnate a little. But the real talking power is with your money... publishers will stop investing in the FPS titles when it is shown on paper that the consumers have moved on. Unfortunately that data could take 5 years before publishers need to take a 'do or die' risk with some cool new ideas. (the Wii has at least provided a platform for this and I believe has overtaken the PS3 and X360 in sales in Japan)

my 2cc :P
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PostPosted: 12-05-2007 10:18 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


We don't need a new rendering engine.
We need a CPU-intensive client-side bot for older titles such as q3!
In that case repeatability and variety are unimaginable.

Silicone_Milk, is it theoretically possible to gather instructive data(such as way point) from a series of demo files and use it for bot AI?
Here is a rough cut.
For example we have 100 demo files of q3dm6.
Then we use an external tool extract instructive data from those files.
Extracted data is stored in DB for later random use by bots.

@urgrund777
I've never heard a story that commmon people have ever gained access to console development tools for NES, SNES, Sega Saturn, Dreamcast, Nintendo64, ps2, xbox, to say nothing of xbox360, wii, ps3, in Japan.(anyway it's a half-colony of U.S.A. ruled by pirates of the southern chinese with their full dictatorship)
I think that it explains the position of game development in imperially capitalized society.
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PostPosted: 12-05-2007 11:54 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


If any of you are seriously interested in doing an old-style FPS I'd strongly recommend you help an existing team. I have a huge vested interest in this as my team needs texture artists (Promode) but I mean all the existing DM projects such as Warsow, A-l-i-e-n (why does the forum replace the word al-ien with geoff?) Arena and some of the open source projects like Cube. I'm sure they could all use your skills and your efforts are more likely to see use in one of the existing projects than by further dividing the retro FPS communities.

If you want to do something a little different then cooperative play monster killing is underexplored as a gameplay.

On the topic - games have become exactly what movies are, they're made with huge budgets by very talented people to appeal to utter morons so, as a result, are unthreatening pap.

There are other issues too, I think the progression of technology is making mapping and modelling a little too hard to get into which is leading to a sterile, in it to become professional mod scene and reducing access to others. One thing I've been surprised by is how much a lot of people seem to dislike working with D3 engine-level technology compared with Q3, hopefully there's a lot of life in Q3 yet.

Quote:
We need a CPU-intensive client-side bot for older titles such as q3!


Or you could play actual people.
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Silicone_Milk
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PostPosted: 12-06-2007 12:53 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


a13n, I've always been fond of saying "anything is possible". However, that sounds like a major pain in the ass :D

Ix-Ir - I'm thinking more along the lines of sprite-represented monsters. As for the al-ien thing you'd have to hang out on General Discussion to understand :)

Co-op monster killing is something I would very much like to work on. I remember playing Duke Nukem 3D with my uncle on the N64 and had a great time in co-op mode. There could be some great boss fights in co-op mode... :)
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a13n
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PostPosted: 12-06-2007 02:05 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Silicone_Milk wrote:
However, that sounds like a major pain in the ass :D

Why?
Does the problem lie in demo file?

Silicone_Milk wrote:
playing Duke Nukem 3D with my uncle...

You have a good uncle! :D (j/k)
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PostPosted: 12-06-2007 02:52 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Silicone_Milk wrote:
a13n, I've always been fond of saying "anything is possible". However, that sounds like a major pain in the ass :D


I don't think that we need better bots, but I doubt that generating paths from demos is much harder than having the bots roam freely. There's quite a few bots that use user-defined paths. An example is the eraser bot for Quake II that actually generates it's path information by letting you run around the map and pick up all items a single time if you run it on a map that doesn't have waypoints yet. I gave it a try on my quake2 map and it works pretty good. Don't know where I got it from, but there's a copy here if you, a13n or anyone else wants to give it a try.

I also doubt that trying to create a whole new engine and game isn't worth it. You'd need a good number of players (and some cool tools) before people would even think about mapping for it. And that would take quite a while if you want to start from scratch...

Silicone_Milk wrote:
Co-op monster killing is something I would very much like to work on. I remember playing Duke Nukem 3D with my uncle on the N64 and had a great time in co-op mode. There could be some great boss fights in co-op mode... :)


Yeah, coop monster killing is great. I regularly play Quake II in coop mode with a friend, and I even compiled some doom port (zdoom?) on linux lately and had tons of fun. That port even supported TCP/IP, so no fiddling around with those serial cables anymore.



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PostPosted: 12-06-2007 05:49 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


One thing that annoys me about video games when they must write shit across the middle of the screen.
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PostPosted: 12-06-2007 09:54 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


a13n wrote:
(anyway it's a half-colony of U.S.A. ruled by pirates of the southern chinese with their full dictatorship) I think that it explains the position of game development in imperially capitalized society.

The rest of it I'm okay with but keep this in the Void please, it certainly doesn't have a place here.

ix-ir wrote:
why does the forum replace the word al-ien with geoff?

:olo: scared (aka Geoff) is Q3W's resident stay-at-home, dishwashing a1ien conspiracist. I'd love to lock a13n and scared in a room together to see what happens, they seem to have a lot in common to talk about.


I think game developers are aware of the gameplay issue and have been unsuccessfully trying to combat a way around it. I remember reading developer interviews about Medal of Honor: Airborne, they mentioned that you can parachute anywhere in the map and how the AI dynamically responds to you flanking and your movement around the map. Those are okay gameplay additions, but it still isn't as much fun as the classic Allied Assault. Gameplay in AA was far from realistic, you are a single soldier against the whole German army. As much as people have been asking for something "different", and I believe game studios are trying to respond by adding things that are different, but as a result we're going "different" in the wrong direction.

Games should be foremost, a fun representation of life. There's nothing fun about being in a realistic war where people get killed, but if you make it a fun simulation - looks like a war, but behaves differently from a real war - then it might be fun to play Rambo for a day. I think that's why arcade style games like Guitar Hero are such a big hit. It takes a real life instrument and dumbs it down into a simplified interface that anyone can do. So even if you happen to be completely tone deaf, you can still pretend that you know how to play guitar. Would Guitar Hero be as much fun if it actually came with 6 strings and a full set of frets?
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urgrund777
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PostPosted: 12-06-2007 04:56 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


a13n wrote:
@urgrund777
I've never heard a story that commmon people have ever gained access to console development tools for NES, SNES, Sega Saturn, Dreamcast, Nintendo64, ps2, xbox, to say nothing of xbox360, wii, ps3, in Japan.(anyway it's a half-colony of U.S.A. ruled by pirates of the southern chinese with their full dictatorship)
I think that it explains the position of game development in imperially capitalized society.

What the fuck... ? :dork:
:D
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Silicone_Milk
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PostPosted: 12-06-2007 09:41 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Hmm so based on current suggestions the idea is to add single-player style gameplay to Quake 3 and rework the netcode so single-player can have an option to connect to the internet and start up the co-op "single player" battles.

I think the physics would have to be edited too to make it feel less like a frantic multiplayer giblet-filled fragfest. New players probably would be intimidated by Q3 style gameplay :)
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a13n
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PostPosted: 12-07-2007 12:21 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


That's great, Silicone!
If such a project came true w/o any kind of additional unnecessary price tag attached, q3 community would be revived again including mapping/modding.
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PostPosted: 12-07-2007 07:45 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Quake 3 has hardly died in the first place for a need to be "revived". Besides, Quake Zero will be out in a couple of years or so, and I don't think it will involve too much work to port maps over and if you're editing for Q3, QZ will be a snap.
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v1l3
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PostPosted: 12-07-2007 11:59 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


obsidian wrote:
Would Guitar Hero be as much fun if it actually came with 6 strings and a full set of frets?

I enjoy playing my real guitar on a stage quite a bit more :smirk: I guess that's why I like Q3, because if I really shot this many people in real life, they would put me in a gas chamber. When I respawn they'd keep throwing me in the gas chamber over and over. Then I'd have to deal with what God wanted to do with me after I got up to killing a million people! >:D Do you go to hell for killing stroggs, chitinids, sorgs, Gargoyles, Ninjas, and Cybronic Humans? :paranoid:
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PostPosted: 12-07-2007 06:10 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Mind if I chime in on this topic?

I have spoke with my coworkers MANY times about the idea of doing a retro style FPS and bring back the good old days. Its a topic that I believe pops up far too often to be ignored and I would surely jump in on the chance to do something like that.

Problem is with the idea is that I feel the concept is fairly simple but it might be too short sighted in a lot of respects. If I had the ability to read the future I would already have my own company by now lol...

In a Retro style FPS Single player would most likely go back to the find key open door style of game play which I think could easily work if done well enough and it has been a long time since that has been done in such a direct manor.

Success seemed to be most prevalent when Half Life made the find key open door game mechanic more lucid. It was still find key open door but now the key could be anything and the game had a ongoing story that made the tasks less monotonous.

We live in a new age of games where I seem to feel that MMOs are what has attracted and captured the majority of the hardcore players. In that respect I feel that WOW has taken the grind mechanic that was used in most other MMO games and made that one aspect more lucid. Questing for XP so now your goal and it involves story based tasks rather than "Find key and open door" game play so to speak. Sound familiar?

The problem is as with most things is that a retro style FPS would not be enough to appease the masses. In fact It might not be enough to appease even us, the very people who speak of working on such a project so often. I just cannot get into doom 1 or quake 3 in the same ways that I used to anymore.

this tells me that the past is not where the true answer can be found. A retro shooter is not the answer. Something far more grand and out of the box is possibly the answer. A game that looks really good but doesn't practically need a team of 80 people just to populate a level with static meshes might be a start. A first person shooter that has the depth and intricacy's of an MMO but with out actually being an MMO.. A game that takes the weakest points of previous tittles and makes them more lucid in some way.

Perhaps one of the things I am doing wrong right now with my UT3 level is that I am not trying harder to try something new..... But like I said if this was that easy... well it will never be easy right :smirk:



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wattro
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PostPosted: 12-07-2007 06:58 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


If I had a $ for every FPS out there...

I interview aspiring or experienced designers from time to time. It's interesting to reflect on that as I read through this thread. A lot of the new guys don't have a clue what it makes to be a game, even though they just came from game design school. The experienced designers are usually pretty good. It's amazing what a difference actual experience makes. I think someone tried to list off the 14 principles of fun to me the other day...

My one piece of advice to anyone looking to do something new or retro. Keep things simple - it lets you experiment, throw things out, and start over easily. Get good at one thing and build off it.

(World of Warcraft has a story??? Maybe only in so far as social networking goes... yes yes, I know, Azeroth and all that - most people who play the game don't know/care shit about that).
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PostPosted: 12-07-2007 09:13 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


An interesting design concept that could work for you guys (as I said I am interested in the project but too busy to help) that maximizes asset use for play time is an RTS/FPS combination.

One player controls the aliens/monsters/whatever from an isometric 3rd person view in a standard RTS manner, you click, monsters go there, attack whatever and have simple AI of their own. The other team has players as a team of marines to beat the monsters and complete an objective or objectives. Basically it's cooperative monster bashing with the monsters under human control, adding considerably to the replay value and more easily supporting varied player numbers and skill levels as you can scale the reinforcement rate of the monster controller's forces (rather than constructing a set of repetitive scenarios by hand).

Edit: and for the love of god DON'T fuck over the interesting Q3 physics, if you don't force players to need it then it doesn't matter if newbies don't know about it. This kind of dumbing down is why games have become so shit. Don't.
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Silicone_Milk
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PostPosted: 12-07-2007 09:49 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I've actually been seeing a lot of RTS/FPS combo games lately. Check out http://www.isotx.com

As for the Quake 3 physics, I wouldn't be "fucking them over" but replacing them with Quake 2 physics. The reason is this: I feel the Quake 2 physics were much more suited for single player gameplay. Q3 is much too fast for it in my opinion.

Hmm, nothing is set in stone. I still have my own stuff to take care of before I can even begin to get started doing anything on this "project".
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a13n
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PostPosted: 12-08-2007 07:49 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Silicone_Milk wrote:
As for the Quake 3 physics, I wouldn't be "fucking them over" but replacing them with Quake 2 physics.

Agreed.
Plus q2 bob & pitch?
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Silicone_Milk
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PostPosted: 12-09-2007 05:17 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Another thing I would like to make note of is a graphics related one:
"realism" adds too much visual clutter on the screen.
In the old games there was very plain areas then places that stood out with different geometry, odd textures, or more detail (like a reactor room or something).
This gave the game "landmarks" that were easily found.

Keeping general environment simple would help to add more umph to those unique rooms that have a higher visual interest. With newer games there doesnt seem to be any "background environment". When I say this think of ambient sound. It's just there. You shouldn't really notice it stick out but it should alter the feeling the area has when you're in it. The same goes for the actual environment itself. Things like buildings off to the side that don't have anything worth checking out should blend into the background.

So in a nutshell:
Background Environent -
Simple geometry. Simple textures.

Visual Focal Points -
A unique piece of geometry w/ unique textures or
simple geometry with unique textures or
unique geometry with simple textures.

Traps also help make a particular area stand out. Lava in only one or two rooms in the entire level, ceiling that comes down to squash everybody in the room, etc...

I will be scribbling stuff down over the next few weeks. I may actually start something over the holiday.
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wattro
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PostPosted: 12-09-2007 08:39 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


all good points. that's one of the things that stands out about TF2 - all the characters are unique looking. makes it easy to identify what is happening and also makes it easier for new gamers to get involved.

also, apparently blue sky makes a game sell better and/or be more well received by the masses.
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zZCastleZz
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PostPosted: 12-10-2007 07:43 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Mistake post :olo:



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Last edited by zZCastleZz on 12-10-2007 07:53 AM, edited 1 time in total.
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Castle
Will map for food.
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PostPosted: 12-10-2007 07:52 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


hehe...
for some reason force of habbit I suppose.. I posted this in my other account..

I am going to experiment this week with the idea of making a UT3 level that goes more along the lines of Team fortress or WOW.

Something stylized that looks good and is easy to look at, isn't over a gig, and last but not least doesn't make me feel like I have to have a small army of artists just to populate a level lol...

Maybe a start to this whole backlash to modern gaming starts with the community. As standards continue to increase a lot of people will still desire something that looks good but doesn't require a huge amount of developer bandwidth just to work on it. After all what is a community if nobody can do anything with it?

I have slowly become more and more distraught at the idea of the ever increasing standards that are part of video games these days. Sure I like new technology to appear I like to read about the ever changing art of game design. But I feel it is starting to reach a point where it is too expensive to keep up and the community is suffering too much as a result.

Think about it like this... If you are going to spend 12 million bucks to do something don't you think it makes sense that the 12 million is spent on something that is NOT subjective in the end? However isn't it always in the end that art in a game is subjective? If something looks good it looks good damn it. And everyone and their grandmother will have something different to say either way.

The idea of constantly keeping up with the curve or staying with todays standards as being a normal thing doesn't it strike anyone else as gross masochism? And in the end, all of that extra work, all of that extra money spent by companies both large and small, are competing with each other for what? Subjective results? Thats a huge amount of money for some emperors new cloths don't you think?

Does UT3 REALLY look better than UT2004?
I mean really. Movement is the same, game play is, but what about public opinion?
Better screen shots == better end result? Possibly, but does UT3 really look better than WOW? Does it look better than Team fortress 2 or Half life 2? One could EASILY have an opinion either way... Does it justify spending about 2 or 3 grand to upgrade your computer to be able to really work on levels for the game? This bothers me deeply... Doesn't it bother you too?

When Dinner dash out sells every game known to man... Does it make sense for us to kill ourselves with higher standards that produce subjective results in the end? I think not, I think our standards should reflect our resources and strategy only. It should be situational. Small teams should not be trying to match EA's standards...

Ok I know I am preaching to the quire right..

So I am going to discontinue my current UT3 level and change my strategy. I am not going to let my personal projects carry the burden of the technology and engines arms race that started so many years ago. Its silly and its masochistic and in the end only subjective what ends up looking the best Like art should be...

Hey its been awhile since the castle has ranted huh? :paranoid:



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Silicone_Milk
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PostPosted: 12-10-2007 11:49 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Awesome. One of my threads got Castle to rant :D

What you have to say has actually changed the way I'm thinking about things a little bit.

Perhaps, instead of focusing on using old engine technology I should focus on newer technology using the KISS way of working.
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