Is it me or are the established devlopment houses getting lazy? New games seem to be universally unimaginitive, totally derivative, and bolstered by marketing budgets rather than design/programming skill. Ive just downloaded a demo for a new game (at 89MB natch) and upon running it for the first time, i get performance below 1 fps, with a celeron 400 64MB of RAM and TNT2 Ultra 32MB video card. So here I am, hunting round the web for troubleshooting data and driver revisions. THIS IS NOT THE WAY IT SHOULD BE. developers - spend more time getting your games compatible with all hardware, and less time adding ''cool bump mapping'' publishers - if a game isnt finished, we dont want to buy it. comprehende? he last decent game I have seen was Shogun - Total WAr, and even that is ruined by me paying an extra £10 no doubt for lots of FMV that i just dont want. If I want to see movies Ill rent a video. ITS GAMEPLAY THAT COUNTS. ARE YOU LISTENING? Part of me dosent care, Im an indie developer, so the mroe the big publishers balls-up, the better off I will be, but sometimes it makes me go ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH http://www.positech.co.uk

I used to think that until I saw Half Life... I guess it takes from 3-4 years to something new to come out

You know, I never wanted to be a programmer...

Alexandre Moura

Hi,

i totally agree with you. Since i did games programming professionally in the mid eighties on the good old C64, i can
say there have been better times of innovation. Most today games are nothing else but a cute graphic demos with a show off factor of 100%. There is no really origin concept or idea behind it. The reason for that is that today money rules more than in the old days. Todays game developing is like most industrial processes and the people who are allowed to make decisions what game will be published or not are bussiness men and not game players. The other thing is that the teams are too big, and the members have often no real relation to the product they are working on.
This is the same thing that happened to music industry before.
Beside a few exceptions you will find no real innovators but tons of immitators.

I think what we need is to establish something like a fully accepted independent label scene, and the medium for that is the internet because it is something no one can really take control of, so that is the chance. Some new bands have proved that this a real alternative, and they even have no real publishers who take most of their money. You order the product directly and there is no one in between who takes 90% of the money for almost nothing.
The only thing that consumers, who would by those independent stuff, should be aware off is that these "indy" teams cannot afford the same "hollywood machinery" when they start. But with every unit they buy legally from those groups they give them more power. I could also think of a model where consumers could also become some sort of owner or shareholder and i think this could really work. I think if the game consumers become more concious about the fact that they are often "ripped off" by the boring, fancy looking "new stuff" they will be pleased to have a real alternative, the independence labels.
By the way, this was what happened in the eighties with the music industrie. Independce labels innovated the music market, not the majors.

What do you guys out there think about establishing an independenent game label market on the internet ?
Please let me know. If some of you are intered we may should create a new thread in the appropriate newsgroup of gamedev.net.

cu

Peter

I think the indie game thing sounds cool...

But also, I wanted to mention the fact that before, when most games coming out were conceptually new, there were less games that came before. Wolf3D was the first big first person shooter, and there can never be another first big first person shooter. Therefore it''s easy to say that all new shooters are a ripoff of Wolf3d.

Keep in mind that a whole lot more designs and concepts were unused before, when a whole lot of new designs and concepts were coming out. It''s harder to think of something new today, especially when you''re on a budget, and when new technology does take so much programming time.

I have to say that I agree with about everything said here. I think it first hit me how bad things were getting when I bought a game a while back (I don't remember wich one), and before I even installed it, I looked for a patch online.

The indie development thing is a good idea, but like indie mosvies and music, there's still a lot of work needed in order to change the consumers' minds that an indie game could offer as much as something from EA. Pessimism aside, I would like to see an indie scene emerge that could compete in the industry.

Edited by - I-Shaolin on July 30, 2000 4:29:31 AM

"I think the indie game thing sounds cool..."

Yeah, that is something i really dream of for a very long time. But i think this is something no one can do on his own, because to gain some power in this sector a lot of independent developers have to gather; may something like the GOD project is the start.
At first what we would need is to create a place on the net where we can get together and we can sort out what our goals and rules are. If you guys out there have any ideas, proposals about something like that let me know. Post it here or to my email address. I would really like to start something like that.


"But also, I wanted to mention the fact that before, when most games coming out were conceptually new, there were less games that came before. Wolf3D was the first big first person shooter, and there can never be another first big first person shooter. Therefore it''s easy to say that all new shooters are a ripoff of Wolf3d."

I agree with you about that. But what i do not like is that there are thousands of games like Wolfenstein or doom out which do not add any new idea to it. Whats the use of writing the 10,000 new game that does excactly the same like Quake. Since RTS is currently my favorite genre i think there are inspired development teams out which invent new things. But on the other side there are so many guys out who still use the origin concept of C&C and do not add anything new. That software companies produce sequals and add ons to their products is absolutely legal since they had the costs of development before. But even those should have always have a little innovation so that we don''t get bored.



"Keep in mind that a whole lot more designs and concepts were unused before, when a whole lot of new designs and concepts were coming out. It''s harder to think of something new today, especially when you''re on a budget, and when new technology does take so much programming time."

That''s true. But on the other hand we have technologies now that are quite better than 10 years ago. But somehow there are majorly the same concepts but only with better grafx and sound.


cu

Peter

ya ive noticed the same thing. you know about 5 or 6 years ago you could buy just about anygame and it would work on any computer from the top of the line to the pentium pro 90mhz now its like if u dont have a nvidia chip graphics board that was made in the last 5 months then the new game at compusa will not run on you machine and its sad really. i mean im still fortunate i can still play games with my riva tnt1 and my k6-2 333mhz
the other thing i noticed is that when someone tries to clone like c&c or doom and u read the developers vision of there clone its like well um i loved c&c and so i wanted to make a game in honor and that was better and had bla bla bla. and the game turns out to be so horribly bad that the ui sucks the ai sucks and you are stuck with one minor improvement on one minor item in the original and the rest of the game is shitty

All of the games do have the "been there and done that" feel to them. They develop a game to match the demand of the consumers.
Unfortunately, there is a itch to follow what was already produced like Final Fantasy 7 and 8. I cannot count how many posts I have read on this message board asking for help on their "FF7 clone" game. (No put downs for the people that are).

I guess I'll say this... "There goes the bandwagon and either catch it or make one with small alterations and enhancements to catch up and pass the one you missed"

Here are perfect examples such as the endless amounts of pac man games, 3d shooters, chess games, and mario games that are out there. I even believe that sonic the hedgehog is a mario clone =)

It's like soccer and hockey.. they are based on hitting something into a goal on the opposite ends of the playing field with a defense and an offense.. one is on ice and the other is on turf grass.. one has a ball to kick and the other has a hockey puck.

Ok enough rambling.. I'm talking in circles and I have to pick up my wife.








Edited by - GoofProg on July 30, 2000 12:33:24 AM

In my opinion gamedevelopers should spent much more time on developement state. Why do they even bother working with games that THEY DON''T WANT TO PLAY?

Actually most of the games that are making good money, are those ones like Parappa The Rapper, Samba De Amigo, Space Channel 5, Chu Chu''s Rocket, and so on... Ofcourse Quake IV makes money also, but how long? It''s getting old to pump money from sequels. People actually do buy games which are different, The Sims for an example. I believe that if someone would have created sequel to Skooldaze (actually there is Klass 99, but it''s not "professional" because of controls and so on...) , it would create LOTS of money

Chu chu''s rocket is unbelieveble example of creativity, I would call it "Blair Witch of Dreamcast". Sonic Team created it in short time, and sega released it with half prize. Game is 2D, doesn''t have any "amazing technology", and is simple after all, but people want to buy it, and I believe that Chu Chu''s did pretty nice on markets.

The Sims was long-time shot from Maxis, and actually it doesn''t have any cunning edge features, not even 3D-card support! Still, maxis put lots of time for creating deep game, and they did well; 1.9 million games sold!

Same thing with Half Life; It didn''t use anything REALLY REALLY NEW (except nice lightning, probably better than in Quake 2?), but Valve used lots of time to create "real" gameworld, good graphics, and great levels.

I believe that TF2 is going to sell really well, because it''s doing absolutely same thing as Half Life and Counter Strike; No cunning edge "Transform & Lightning / motion blur", but great gameplay... And people will love it

-Paladin

quote: Original post by Paladin

In my opinion gamedevelopers should spent much more time on developement state. Why do they even bother working with games that THEY DON''T WANT TO PLAY?

Actually most of the games that are making good money, are those ones like Parappa The Rapper, Samba De Amigo, Space Channel 5, Chu Chu''s Rocket, and so on... Ofcourse Quake IV makes money also, but how long? It''s getting old to pump money from sequels. People actually do buy games which are different, The Sims for an example. I believe that if someone would have created sequel to Skooldaze (actually there is Klass 99, but it''s not "professional" because of controls and so on...) , it would create LOTS of money

Chu chu''s rocket is unbelieveble example of creativity, I would call it "Blair Witch of Dreamcast". Sonic Team created it in short time, and sega released it with half prize. Game is 2D, doesn''t have any "amazing technology", and is simple after all, but people want to buy it, and I believe that Chu Chu''s did pretty nice on markets.

The Sims was long-time shot from Maxis, and actually it doesn''t have any cunning edge features, not even 3D-card support! Still, maxis put lots of time for creating deep game, and they did well; 1.9 million games sold!

Same thing with Half Life; It didn''t use anything REALLY REALLY NEW (except nice lightning, probably better than in Quake 2?), but Valve used lots of time to create "real" gameworld, good graphics, and great levels.

I believe that TF2 is going to sell really well, because it''s doing absolutely same thing as Half Life and Counter Strike; No cunning edge "Transform & Lightning / motion blur", but great gameplay... And people will love it

-Paladin

Hi Paladin,

i absolutely agree with you. I hate nothing more than all these new 3D RTS games which only confuse the user. But here in Germany we have a problem with that. All games magazines try to tell their readers that everything needs to have all this useless fancy stuff, even in cases where it is only nice to have. In an RTS i need a good overview and tools to plan my actions, but this is not 3D. It''s may nice when you can in between have a look at the ongoing action in 3d, but in most cases you will use the birds eye perspective.
But the magazines look at the game and if it''s not 3D with all the needless stuff in they call the graphics outdated. I think they now try for the third year to tell the readers that there is a 3D revolution going on in the RTS market. But every year at christmas they get bashed by the users poll''s game of the year.
Still there is not a single 3D RTS which was really as comercially successfull as AOE, C&C or Starcraft ...
But writing their articles that way the mags put the developers under pressure to care about all these useless bullshit and when the game is published they then complain about the lack of originality. I think it''s time to create a world wide poll for the games magazines, so that we can fight back their nonsense.

cu

Peter