The Gamer's Quarter

[Shapermc]

Eyes Wide Shut
Why games are devolving

There are so many things that I want to say about this article. Most things everyone has heard said from time to time, nothing is particularly new. It makes some awesome points and I wish I had time to highlight them all. Nonetheless I am kind of in a rush today and will just leave with saying I am dead serious that I would buy a new PSP rather then upgrade my firmware and loose emulation if a really excellent new game came out.

I will hopefully come back and make some points later about this and then tie it in with something I read from Ebert.

[ApM]

[SuperWes]

Why do people like Space Channel 5?

-Wes
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[ApM]

Because it's gleefully ridiculous? It has Space Michael Jackson in it, and can say things like "No one can out-dance evil!" with a straight face.

[disneyland]

I have the design doc for Origin of the Species. It's ironic to use that as an example. The core design is actually way deeper and way more intelligent and ambitious than the game is probably capable of delivering. And you can see Dirt's G-string line. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've had to wash my eyes out with a tray of holy water.

-DL

[disneyland]

[dhex]

CV2, though. seriously.
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[SuperWes]

[Mister Toups]

[JasonMoses]

[dessgeega]

so here's a(n off-topic) question. what's the deal with edge magazine? i've seen some good articles from them online (though i am a sucker for in-game graphics in page layouts). are their articles usually this good? do they more frequently talk about unimportant things like bill gates or playstation 3 controllers? what's the word?
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[dark steve]

And when will I be able to buy it in tower records?

[TOLLMASTER]

I'm going to go ahead and say that this guy is probably an old fart. I won't say that most games have been lacking in innovation and difficulty lately. I have to say, however, that I think that the author's viewpoint is only natural when you look at the industry as a whole. As gaming becomes a Big Business, there will be a trend towards the flashy, the easy-to-get-into, the just plain easy, the erotic. This is, and has been, what the majority of the people in this world want when they don't have to worry about bills or outright starvation. The fact is, though, that the gaming industry has gotten BIGGER. That means that although we now have an inundation of crap titles, there are still games on the periphery that cater to the more intellectual among the population. After all, though the demand is small, there is a demand, and no demand goes unnoticed for long under capitalism.

So, he's looking at the whole industry and once, and averaging it all out, and calling it "crap." The fact is that nowadays when we don't have the entire industry catering to us, we have to wade through the bullshit to get at what we want. There's still games like Katamari Damacy (a revolution) and Gradius V (an evolution) floating around. It's not that games have gotten worse, it's that we're no longer the only market.

Besides, even the more "popular" games are still quite good. Some people may hate Halo, but those people generally hate the FPS genre as it doesn't agree with them; Halo is a well-made game, when viewed as an evolution of the FPS. It isn't as revolutionary as Thief, but how many games, exactly, were revolutionary? And does a game have to be revolutionary to be good? Of course not! Super Metroid's concepts existed well before the game was even concieved of, and it's considered a classic. Mechassault, a game I was rather dissappointed with, is still a good game, though it has obviously been "dumbed down" from it's revolutionary ancestor, Mechwarrior.

Furthermore, he's giving the game industry of the past an unfair advantage. They were just starting out, so practically anything is going to seem "revolutionary." Meanwhile, game developers now have to think harder to come up with newer ideas instead of rehashes. Katamari Damacy, for instance, is not the kind of idea that would naturally come from previous mediums, while something like Pong is obviously influenced by things which already existed before video games were invented. As simpler ideas are taken, more complex and innovative ones must be thought up to proceed with the medium. What movies have you seen, lately, that were truly revolutionary, or even evolutionary?

So I think all this talk about games devolving is nonsense. In the general sense, you can say that, but we're still proceeding instead of receding. Perhaps if your job is to review games for the proletariat then this kind of view is natural, having to put up with the crap games every day. But as long as we have the potential for small groups of people to work without restrictions, or larger companies actively pushing growth in ideas, we'll continue to have the kind of innovation we're used to.

One final thought: I've always hated Sony for making games mainstream (thereby displacing the geeks as the Vocal Community), and loved Nintendo for their progressive stance on games, despite their avariciousness (as seen by the Pokemon sequels, Mario Parties, etc). Do many of you feel the same way as I do? I ask only because this seems like the place to do it, and think the casting of the focus upon the general public is responsible for the idea that all games are "dumbing down."

Comments? Be as critical as you like. It's entertaining.

[dhex]

i usually like this guy's column, but i do have to take exception. shit games have always existed, and the ratio of shit to good in, for example, the atari 2600's catalogue is easily 95/5 i think falling prey to the "get your dick out of my hobby" sentiment is somewhat easy for older folks to get into because they have immersed themselves in it for so long they've forgotten that much of their love was based on not knowing any better and a simple joy for the form. things change, and sometimes we forget that.

otherwise you get around to blaming all sorts of shit on the industry; and while i'm in the minority on this i do not think the industry is any more or less full of bunk than it used to be, it's just far larger, which makes the 95/5 ratio seem so much more daunting than it is. i'm a lot harder to entertain, personally, and i don't have time for just dicking around with games. to sit and yell "damn you, industry, for not listening to my sole voice" is fucking stupid.

[puts on old fogey hat]besides i've been playing games for 24 years, longer than some of you punks have been alive! [puts hat away]

sorry, just felt like doing that.

EDIT: i think nintendo are a bunch of punks who get far too much slack for the shit they pull, fwiw.
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[ApM]

Saying that something sucks does not help much to create things that are good. Neither does saying that something is good. (EVERY GAME JOURNALIST EVER PRAISING KATAMARI DAMACY ALL THE TIME HOLY SHIT LET'S TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE NOW)

What helps to create things that are good is when designers understand their medium and use it effectively. Period. We can blame publishers or the industry or whatever, but honestly -- if game designers have the capacity to create great games, and want to do it without getting fucked by The Man, they should just go indie. (THUS, I HEREBY PROPHECY: iD will not be the last great shareware success story. Brilliant gaming will come from the garage again.)
REMEMBER WHEN I SAID JEFF TUNNELL DESERVES HIS BALLS LICKED MORE WELL NOW IS THE TIME
So, I don't know. I quickly tire of talking about The Industry. I've never found it interesting, and I've never found it useful. It's the games that are interesting.

[Shapermc]

[SuperWes]

[wourme]

[Shapermc]

[simplicio]

[dessgeega]

[Mister Toups]

[dhex]

[SuperWes]

[simplicio]

Published, not developed. The PS2's dominance in the market (Japan especially) is such that a small, more interesting but less financed developer really has no choice but to go to Sony first and Nintendo/MS second, if at all.

[SuperWes]

But should Sony and Microsoft really be held accountable for the games that third party publishers are willing to finance and put on their machines?

-Wes
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[Bai]

I'm a fan of Sakey's writing but his reasoning was a little vague on this one. He never details why games were 'better' in the past; we're supposed to accept this as self-evident. His definition of 'good' game is also left unqualified: "Innovative games don't sell...innovation has nothing to do with it. Good games, properly marketed, sell"...exactly what does Sakey mean by 'good'? Nostalgic appeals to 'the good old days' when games were 'fun' just don't cut it for me.

Sakey's conclusion that more marketing will create better reception for independent titles is obvious. What's missing is the 'why?'. Why, for example, are unusual games like Katamari Damacy so sparesely marketed even though they would benefit so much? The apparently simple answer: because it's not 'worth it', rests on a complex interplay of economics, technology and programming culture.

Fact: the videogames industry operates on supply and demand. We buy titles with high production values, cutting-edge technology and derivative play structures. Therefore, we demand them and therefore, that's what we will continue to get. Sakey suggests that gamers would accept unusual titles like Psychonauts given half the chance. But a franchise like Final Fantasy with equivalent marketing attention would sell even better. Publishers know where their priorities are. The truth is, we (the general gaming population), would probably choose Final Fantasy over Psychonauts even if the latter were marketed to the moon.

Fact: the need to incorporate high production values and cutting-edge technology has increased the cost of games development, averaging $1 million over two years. Games development has become the exclusive work of wealthy corporations with large studios.

Fact: Corporations have more to lose and less to gain, therefore they will take fewer creative chances. Videogames become more 'commodified' and are perceived primarily as retail products and investment opportunities rather than artistic statements. Over time, the corporate mentality becomes the dominant mentality which brings us to the current situation. If you doubt this, try mentioning 'art' and 'videogames' in a conversation and see how many people dismiss your ideas as pretentious, 'nerdy' and ridiculous!

Fact: modern computer programming is hard. 'Old-school' games like Super Metroid were a lot easier to program, freed from the mathematical complexities of real-time physics, floating point processing, 3D graphics and sound. Programming's increasing complexity has resulted in specialisation. One person will do graphics, another will handle physics, sound, etc. Until videogame programming simplifies or practical middleware solutions emerge, videogame development will favour large, factory-like (usually corporation-based) studios. Less individual input = less wholistic, creative 'vision' or auteur effect. Yes, there are exceptions (Miyamoto, Kojima) but they are exceptions and not the norm.

Solution:
1. Educate the public (through publications like Games Quarter, Edge, etc.), stimulate their play tastes and habits beyond stealing stuff and blowing shit up.
2. Greater development efficiency = smaller teams, game design becomes a more intimate process.
3. Alternative distribution channels.
4. Speak with your wallet. Don't buy games until they start making 'good' ones! I haven't bought a game in years!

[Shapermc]

[Shapermc]

[dhex]

does anyone really think games started as an "artistic statement?"

love capitalism, for it loves you despite slapping its dick in your hobby's porridge.
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[SuperWes]

[ee_emm_ecks]

Dhex - I sure don't. Though I fail to see how that has much to do with people wanting games that are like that. Then again, it's more about how someone views the game than the intent behind it, eh?

[Shapermc]

[SuperWes]

1) Not sure if I agree with this. It seems like the most revolutionary ideas come out during the early middle of a system's lifespan, when designers have figured out what the system can do and are experimenting with what they know to figure out exactly what they can do to push the system. It's when they've figured things out that things start to get samey. The DS is really good right now because it's just reached the point where people have figured out how the system works and now they're trying to use that to its full advantage.

Also, just because you consider a game ignorable doesn't make it bad. I consider all sports games to be ignorable every year, but apparently they're actually pretty good lately.

2) But they ARE pretty good right now. Name off some truly terrible games during this generation. I can't think of many. Games that don't suit my tastes? Many. Games that are really bad? Few.

I'll put Enter the Matrix up there as a game that's just good enough not to be bad. What's worse than Enter the Matrix?

-Wes
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[disneyland]

Looking at the desktop here of my PC as an example...

I have start-up icons for: Far Cry, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Painkiller, Tribes Vengeance, Riddick, Battlefield 2, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Freedom Force vs. 3rd Reich, and GTA: SA.

A few of you are no doubt cringing at a couple of these titles for whatever reason, but the bottomline here is that yes, they are all absolutely competent games. Excellent production values, highly playable and entertaining. They are great examples of their respective genre. See, you could decide that you despise a Doom 3 or a GTA based-on whatever personal issue you might have, but the overriding fact of the matter is that both of those games, compared to many, many other games out there, are extremely competent.

Really though, I'd have to agree that we aren't lacking for basic quality these days in games. Fundamentally new and creative designs? Yeah, ok sure. But our mid-to-top games of this era are pretty damn competent in terms of presentation and gameplay, and that wasn't really the case in previous generations. Certainly, as mentioned, shit like movie license games--where the quality used to be abysmal--have improved.

[dark steve]

Fight Club's worse than just about anything.

But a mediocre, boring game is more terrible than a "bad" one.

[Shapermc]

Hmm, I don't disagree with any of these things, but look at it in a different way. 30 years from now only the creame of the crop will be left and talked about, and the other 98% will be all but forgotten. When you take that creame of the crop I prefer playing the older creame then the newer for replay value (oh shit, I did just use that term!).

I am not looking at how entertaining a game is for a weekend, I am looking at a much larger picture here. Disneyland, your Doom 3 example: Doom/2 will be more widely looked back upon and remembered then Doom 3 ever will. This is not saying it is a sub-par product in anyway (although I don't have much desire to play it).

[dhex]

[ApM]

dhex, if you want me to start giving long-winded speeches about the birth of hacker culture, you just have to ask. If you don't think Spacewar was written for the sole purpose of capturing some sci-fi wonder, you're kidding yourself.

I mean, really. Videogames were born in academia, by some kids fucking around with ludicrously expensive equipment.

Of course, this is all irrelevant to anything. What I want to know is, why is it so easy to think of The Publishers as some monolithic entity? Where are the indie record labels of videogaming? Surely there's opportunity here.

[disneyland]

I still see a company like Valve as strong indie. They'll be officially indie in August when the contract with Vivendi ends. I don't think there's a better distribution model out there than Steam. See what Ritual just announced? They'll be releasing the sequel to SiN exclusively through Steam, and it will continue in episodic story content every couple of months.

Gabe Newell: "One of our goals for Steam and Source is to provide a viable platform for independent developers who would rather be working on original IP."

BioWare is also trying to make it really comfy for indies with their official Neverwinter Nights modules. Something similar is being planned for Dragon Age.

Digital distro. is the direction for indies. Works on PC now, should mature on next-gen consoles with the storage options and on-chip security.

[dhex]

[Mister Toups]

"Extremely competent" is about the worst insult I could give a game.
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where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?

[TOLLMASTER]

[Mister Toups]

The competency is exactly why they are devolving. We've gotten to where we can consistenly make a game engine that isn't fundamentally flawed in any way, and we rarely go further than that because we can slap fancy production values on it and people will eat it up anyway.

The question is, will they continue to eat it up?
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where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?

[dhex]

bah! you are wrong sir, and a liar!

[ratatatatatatat]

seriously though, better tools leads to better horizons. more competition will help. there's far too many people pursuing game design for some shit not to go down.
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[wourme]

I like some games that are kind of rough around the edges. In the commercial world, I mean things like Irem's Disaster Report and some of those budget PS1 games that small companies suddenly started pouring out (that is, localizing) a year or two ago.

I think the king of flawed commercial games is SNK's Athena for NES. I first learned of it because it was the only NES game a friend of mine could not beat on demand. He was very good at video games. I later got a copy of the game myself. I was amused to see some of the sprites that were later used in Crystalis (possibly my single favorite video game if I had to choose just one), and to see how absurd the game's bugs were. I set out to beat the game with Game Genie after giving up on a legitimate victory. I found that the programming bugs became so intense later that the levels were scrambled and it was still impossible. No, the game wasn't particularly fun, but the poor programming made it so random and interesting that I guess I liked it in the end, and I certainly have fun memories of it.

Another thing I've come to really enjoy in recent years is amateurish homebrew games found within game creation program communities. The kind that is very original and that the creator put his or her heart into, but that seriously lacks polish and that you don't really know what to expect from. I have more fun with these than with a lot of commercial games. Even really good commercial games are very predictable in some ways. Too safe, somehow. Not sure what it is, exactly.

I guess this might all be kind of off topic. Sorry about that.

[disneyland]

In Eyes Wide Shut: Why games are devolving - Matt Sakey wrote:

[Mr. Mechanical]

I've heard Mount and Blade is only really good if you're willing to build up your character. I started a game myself a few weeks ago but haven't touched it since.

[disneyland]

I'll keep plugging away at it then. Starts out very rough.

[TOLLMASTER]