Game Design Backlash?

[obsidian]

Read:

http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingrevie ... tiers_0128

[pjw]

Interesting article.

When 50 people all make slightly different decisions about what a game is going to be like, it shows. Entropy takes over. The marbles scatter randomly across the living-room floor. You wind up with those drab, anonymous dungeon-crawlers and first-person-shooters and puzzlers. Turn the game off, and you can't remember anything about it. It's much like the drabness of big-budget movies and pop albums that have been surgically drained by corporate committees.

I think that's overstating it a bit, but the points are all valid to some extent. Games need someone at the helm, and while that person needs to be able to listen to ideas, and separate the wheat from the chaff, they also need to be able to say "We're not doing that. I don't care if it's a 'good idea'--it pulls this game off focus. Shut up." and say it firmly and often.

I liked seremtan's comment re: imaginative space too. Many developers seem to think that making a game intuitive and avoiding confusion somehow equates to explaining everything and making the game world completely transparent. Unfortunately, intuitive fun gameplay has pretty much nothing to do with either realism, or laboriously filling in all the gaps in your game world. It's like comparing apple and hubcaps.

[Silicone_Milk]

Indeed. I'm quite happy to see that so many people feel the same as I do.

And, I agree. Interesting article.

[Infernis]

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.

Explosive weapons are not a necessity in that situation. However, a sniper is!

[MKJ]

also not true, you can use either
also, the closest checkpoint is 1 cart back, where all weapons are available.

so. noob

[Grudge]

Trying to get 20+ headshots in a row while being simultaneously shot at as you ride on a moving railway cart using a hand controller is a excerise in futility though.

Fuck Epic and their shitty gameplay decisions.

[o'dium]

lol, that mine car level on hardest was a fucking bitch...

[Infernis]

also not true, you can use either
also, the closest checkpoint is 1 cart back, where all weapons are available.

so. noob

How about I get you a spoon so you can eat my ass out?

For me, the quickest, easiest and most effective way was a combination of the machinegun and sniper. Period!

[MKJ]

sounds like someone's upset

[Silicone_Milk]

Holy hijack batman.

What's GD talk doing in LEM

And GoW talk in a Quake forum?? Now its personal.

I like emoticons.

[obsidian]

Quite a lot of buds being passed around recently. Easy boys, easy.

@MKJ, quit it or I'll start posting level editing related topics in the void to get even with the OT chatter you're starting up here.

[Infernis]

Sorry for hijacking your thread. Just wanted to give a general tip for the endboss of GoW. Unfortunately not everyone possess the capability of suggesting a different method in a polite manner. Which is all too common here in the GD section. Didn't mean to look upset though, just giving back what's handed to me. Because I too, can play that game

For further derailing you can pm me. Back to topic!

[wattro]

wait, got any tips for dealing with the GD endboss? all kidding aside, i love this topic... i feel the game design backlash on my very own team...not in a hardcore manner, but in terms that as we increase team size it's impossible to get the same bang for each buck that's added... 120 people cannot do 1.5x what 80 people can do...

[pjw]

Wow, this thread did sorta get that vinegar and water vibe going on there for a bit didn't it?
Yeah, let's not do that here.

120 people cannot do 1.5x what 80 people can do...

Amen.

As the overall size of any system increases, so does complexity, and as complexity increases, it becomes more and more difficult to keep communication clear and efficient, and as communication becomes more murky and unwieldy, cooperation tends to break down.

Your best tools are planning, documentation, and a strong hand at the rudder.

[MKJ]

Quite a lot of buds being passed around recently. Easy boys, easy.

@MKJ, quit it or I'll start posting level editing related topics in the void to get even with the OT chatter you're starting up here.

please reread the thread and weigh my participance in the matter. tia

[Castle]

9 woman cannot have a baby in 1 month is also a pretty funny thing I heard a few times back when I was working at Ritual.

by the way I have a UT3 CTF map in with a complete layout ready for play. I did the level using lower res textures that have a more stylized look.

the goal is to capture a combination of WOW and Quake combined so the textures ARE more cartoony but are still fairly detailed.

The level lacks a final art pass however right now where I would do "sky box" details and add some more final touches to the areas themselves such as candles and trims and ornate details ect. Otherwise the level is pretty much done..

I would be working on the level right now except well.. COD4 has editing tools now and I have been distracted with making a level for that game instead lol....

[Silicone_Milk]

hehe I'm messing around with CoD 4 editing tools as well.

I'm compiling a prefab test right now for a map I'm making

[Silicone_Milk]

Dumped CoD 4 work after Infinity Ward screwed around with their forums and deleted all posts (including my own) that were originally there.

Anyways, in a thread I wrote in the Programming section of Quake3World I mentioned I'm also dumping work on rewriting the Quake 3 source in C++ because it's a huge waste of time.

I'm focusing on this thread now.
I have two things in mind. These are:
-The Retro FPS: using one of the improved versions of either the Doom or Quake engines to go back to basics. Don't stress over your next move in the game, just play.
- Multiplayer Gameplay: I want to work on something similar in play style to Phantasy Star Online in terms of the Lobby and different ships as well as teams that port into the game world to fight. However, I want it to be more frantic like Quake 3.

I'm just jotting this crap down with no formatting in mind. I don't want to forget what I'm thinking.

[ix-ir]

Also already been done: http://www.challenge-tv.com/index.php?m ... l&file=190

[fKd]

i always liked the idea of a bomberman type game in the q3 engine

[Silicone_Milk]

Also already been done: http://www.challenge-tv.com/index.php?m ... l&file=190

What has already been done?

ChallengeQ3, from what I've read, is simply an "improved" exe to run CPMA.

What I'm thinking about doing is ignore adding features and focus on design.

I think a player should be able to just pick up a game and have fun learning how to play it and have even more fun actually playing.

Games like Duke Nukem 3D and even Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time come to mind. These games didn't leave you guessing on where you needed to be. They suggested to you (and sometimes even forced) you in a direction while still keeping you going. They were simple to learn yet had neat things going for them.

For instance, in OOT, there's a part where you have to shoot the sun with an arrow standing in a certain spot to recieve a special weapon used later on. That left me going "well that's cool!" because I appreciated the sense of design there. The designers could just have easily put it in a chest or forced the player to have the weapon after a boss encounter.

In Duke Nukem 3D the environment really helped make it stand out. The Sushi Bar is one of my favorite areas and the design decisions here, I believe, made this game successful. My favorite parts of the game are the strippers, the geisha, and more importantly, the cheesy-ness and simplicity of the game.

Art direction in both games also helped make these games stand above the rest. The art made these games memorable. I can STILL, after over a decade, recall the layout and remember the landmarks in both games. STILL! I was doing the beta testing for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and I can't remember the layout of any of the levels. It all looked the same to me.

This new trend of "realism" and push for "next-gen" rendering engines disgusts me. Games are games are games. They should play, look, smell, taste, feel like games. If you're more stressed playing a game than dealing with your job/family/shitty car/neighbors then the game is a failure. Games are here to bring joy, entertainment, and most importantly RELIEF from the everyday. Games should bring people together and give a sense of satisfaction. Games should NOT make you bald, increase your risk for heart disease, and drive familes apart (yes, people have been divorced over games).
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Disclaimer: Duke Nukem 3D is not for all ages nor is it a family-friendly game. Killing cops represented by pigs and paying strippers to dance should only be done by people 8 years of age or older.

[ix-ir]

"rewriting the Quake 3 source in C++": this has already been done in CNQ3.

[WHAT!!]

Milk, I couldn't agree more. I don't find any games of the current generation to be all that entertaining. I thought Bioshock was the best FPS I've played in a while, but even then it got pretty old pretty quick.

[a13n]

"rewriting the Quake 3 source in C++": this has already been done in CNQ3.

Does this happen to mean that the whole code is now cleaner and easier to be understood and to be modified as long as one has learnt C++?
And,
could you explain the benefit of the q3 code written in C++ if you don't mind to ?

[Castle]

Milk, I couldn't agree more. I don't find any games of the current generation to be all that entertaining. I thought Bioshock was the best FPS I've played in a while, but even then it got pretty old pretty quick.

I often ask myself if this is just because of how most modern FPS games are made or is it simply that I have been playing them for so long that its harder for me to want to keep playing.

I know that if UT3 came out in 1998 and we all had machines that could run the game I would have played the hell out of the damn thing. but now its just another FPS in the huge pile of FPS games available.

What I do know is that most first person shooter follow more in the footsteps of how a movie is done where you have a large number of one shot sequences that play out. Typically I am less likely to replay a movie than I am to replay something like Oblivion or world of warcraft or pacman or chess.

Is it the fault of the design methods that so happen to be the current flavor, or is it because I am much harder to please or that I am jaded?

Am I simply waiting dormant for that next great game to basically base my life around for 5+ years or am I simply unable to keep my attention on a single game for too long. I have been sucked into FFXI for about 5 years now so I tend to think that the latter is not the case however I am still for some reason just not sure what the deal is when it comes to the FPS market.

What I can say is that it is pretty obvious that the half life formula is not the only formula that can work. Fallout 3 will be an example of doing things in an entirely different way. However I also think that even within the half life formula there are fairly small things we can do to change how the experience feels to the player.

A long time ago we had to "spawn" monsters to create the illusion of having more monsters than there really are in the world. Yet today in spite of the fact that our machines are perfectly powerful enough to handle having exactly 100 bad guys in a map we still bore the player to death by spawning more bad guys around every corner out of sight. Anyone with a brain knows that this is exactly what is happening in pretty much every game they play. It has even got to a point where you often know not to touch a mounted turret because it will result in spawning waves of bad guys for you to shoot.

its perfectly feasible that instead of simply always coping out and doing the
if player touches trigger
{
spawn 4 dudes around the corner
Make each dude run to node
play sound or play animation
make 4 dudes angry at player
}
How many times have YOU guys scripted the exact same sequence above?

Now really in this day and age we can do better than that.. yet I see it still happen all over the place.

Oh and back on topic
Bionic commando sold really well!
If that's not a sign of game design backlash I don't know what is!