And i thought i was ranting alone......

One of the problems here is the publisher. Its (possibly) the publisher that decides a game needs to be 3D, then they tell a magazine they only get exclusive screenshots if they are gonna rave about the game, they give em mousemats, mugs, t shirts, buy em lunch, and persuade them the game is cool, whilst demoing it on a 1GHZ PC.
Not all developers want to use cutting edge tech, but the publishers pressure everyone to be cutting edge. I downloaded an 85MB demo of a game that ran like a dog. I go the publishers message board, its full of people complaining about low frame rates, and the response from them was
"weve added cuting edge real-time generated shadows and lip-synching"
As though we care
Given a choice of 10 FPS, shadows + lips
or 70 FPS ,no shadows, no lips
which would we all pick?

THEY ARE FOOLS I TELL YOU!!!!!!

http://www.positech.co.uk

An independant games publishing system is a fantastic idea. We need something like that out there.

I think you guys need to understand something:

We are NOT the gaming public.

Let''s face it, if you go to this site, you''re not the average consumer. The average consumer is quite frankly a fucking idiot. They think "gameplay" means "a game you can play". They buy based on graphics, fancy packaging and slick marketing. It''s just like the music industry. These new games with great graphics, no substance and massive hype are the videogame equivalent of a Brittany Spears record. Not everyone who buys games (in fact hardly any of the total market) goes to websites and reads about the product, tracks it''s development, or even knows the game exists until they see a commercial on TV. Us hardcore gamers and developers are like the indy music scene - a minority.

Sure, the Sims did well, but for every truely original game that does well, there''s 15 or so that you''ve never heard of ''cuz they didn''t get any attention.

It''s a sad fact, both in the videogame industry and the music industry, but we live in a greedy, market-driven society that rewards style over substance. I don''t see that changing any time soon, so let''s establish an indy scene for games like there already is for music. I don''t listen to Brittany Spears, and I sure as hell wish there was an indy games scene so I didn''t have to PLAY the equivalent level of crap.

Well, we don''t really get game advertisements on TV here in Australia... But I would hope that some of the ideas that we come up with here at GDNet were marketable. I have heard a lot of good ideas, and the game industry CAN benefit from it, if they actually decide to do some research into it. We do a lot of research here, and I think a lot of good efforts go unnoticed.

Just my $0.02

And... We ARE a part of the gaming public, albeit a small part

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

actually i had a theory about commericals on tv and games. if a game has been made into a tv commerical and the same goes with music then i think that the product is crappy. good stuff doesnt need a tv commercial i mean did u ever see command and conquer or diablo have there own tv commercial? no u didnt

Just something fun to think about :

Here, at Finland, we have service which is called "Jäätelöauto" (Icecream Car), and the idea is that one big icecream company sends cars to every city&town allover the Finland ONCE IN TWO WEEKS. Well, "big deal" you think, but there is something interesting going on...

Last year, game company called "Ninai" created pocket game, tetris, which is actually just a toy, really small one though, because size is about 3cm*5cm (about one inch x 1.2 inch?). They sold this game for about 8$/piece. After one year, they sold *** 50 000 *** games! This only what icecream company published in Finland, but the company originally comes from Sweden, so I assume that they sold same game over there.

Well, this year they are doing something REVOLUTIONARY (in my opinion)! They are selling Playstation game, which is made here at Finland, for 3$ !!! THREE BUCKS! Again, we are talking about puzzlegame, but not one which is made by some "amateurs". Game is actually made by professionals, and again, it''s Tetris/Columns clone. Creators have made great job with game; Graphics are great(check screenshots), Musics are great (made by Purple Motion, old Demoscene mod-musician... Second Reality, anyone?), and Gameplay is simple and so it should be well done.

Still, I believe that full game for 3$ will sell really big amount for Playstation! This is the thing that game companies should think about; how to really market games

This game is REALLY going to sell well, because:
1) It''s something different (afterall)
2) It''s REALLY cheap
3) The market is just right! Kids do like Icecream....!
4) Playstation is POP.

Just for your pleasure, here is feature list of the game:
50 Stages in Arcade Game
50 Stages in Puzzle Game
10 Different Worlds
2 Modes To Play: Arcade and Puzzle
5 Different Puzzlestation consoles
Colourful graphics and cute characters
EASY to learn, HARD to master!

And here is Ninais homepage: http://www.ninai.com/eng.htm

Yeah, I remember the Tetris game you could buy from the icecream truck. If I remember the commercials right, you could also buy "Mulle Meck Bygger Båtar" (Mulle Meck Builds Boats) or something like that. from the icecream truck a couple of years ago.

PyroBoy,

I think you really hit the nail on the head. We are not average game players. The average game player doesn''t follow the development of games, nor do they really care about original gameplay. I think the average game player just wants more of the same old crap, otherwise they wouldn''t buy the same old stuff. They prefer an upgrade to Quake with newer graphics and whatnot rather than an original title.

The problem is that original games are ''risky'' to the big developers, and they have seen that they can make just as much, if not more by making another cookie-cutter-quake-ripoff. Why bother taking the risk?

On the other hand, if any indy developer makes an original, great game, but has no access to advertising and publishing, then the only praise they get is from the hard-core gamers/developers (like the people here).

I guess the only way originality would find its way back into games is if there was an easier way to publish/get your game known. Plus you would have to get the average gamer to "take a chance" buying original stuff.

Im not sure if i agree. Part of the reason people buy this stuff is coz its on the shelf, esp in small stores (not hardcore GAME stores, but music shops where people who are casual gamers browse the 10 or 20 titles on display) You will be amazed how much stuff is bought just coz its for sale. If its your boyfriends/brothers/sons brithday, you go into a store and buy what is there, also if you are a casual gamer you see hundreds of copies of Quake3/UT/Soldier of Fortune, AND YOU ASSUME THAT IS WHAT GAMES ARE LIKE.
Personally I think a LOT of people would enjoy a game like THIEF II, but because their local store has more copies of Q3, it gets noticed more, and bought by the casual gamer. If everyone played the more ''serious'' efforts like Thief2 or Starfleet command whatever, then the next time they found the stores full of Tomb Raider IX, they would probably be as wound up as we are.
I think its easy to dismiss the casual gamer as being stoopid and happy to play crap, but I think they play crap because they know no better, not because they prefer it that way.
I hope I am right ;-)

http://www.positech.co.uk

Really good thread, it would be hard to disagree with most of it.

I read about halfway down to a post by phemmer and while I don''t disagree with him about everything else, this comment seemed strange:

till there is not a single 3D RTS which was really as comercially successfull as AOE, C&C or Starcraft ...

I don''t know how commercially successful Total Annihilation was, but it was a RTS and believe it or not 3D (at least the units, I think the maps were). You wouldn''t know it by looking at it though! That''s one thing that I thought was great about it... and I''d be suprised to hear that it wasn''t at least as successful as the three above mentioned games, if not moreso.

I''m just as sick of "C&C clones" as the rest of you... I''m sure that there''s literally dozens of them that are virtually the same.

===========================================

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

-Albert Einstein

I think an indy gaming scene would be awesome. It would have my full support.

I''m not thinking of a site where Joe Bloggs can download 144 versions of tetris, but somewhere where the Bloggs family can browse a store full of ''original'' games.

The biggest problem I can see is that of copyrights and patents. Firstly, if I make an ''orignal'' game (yes, I know ''original'' is a very tenuous term, but I don''t want to argue over it now), an indy scene will need some good backing to ensure a big company doesn''t go and make a hi-tech rip-off. If Hasbro *spit* can have rights over some 12year-olds space invaders clone, we would need the same strength in reverse.

Now, some of the sentiments here are strongly based on success - and probably the financial rewards - of making a new and orignal game. Here I can see parallels to the music industry. If you want to make $millions, you HAVE to be a Brittany Spears PERIOD. Look at many older artists who find success later in life, they stop doing it for the money, but for the creative freedom and pure pleasure. Every now and again, one of these artists will find main-stream popularity and make some of the money that Miss Spears takes for granted. If you stick at independant game development this is the best you can hope for AS LONG AS THE INDY SCENE REMAINS AS IT IS.

But if we can build a strong indie scene for gamers, it could eventually become a strong force in the gaming world. Take for example rave (or more recently, garage) music. These forms of music developed underground for the hardcore fans (or in places where the punters were no more than guinea pigs for the musicians and DJ''s), but because they were good (to the people that cared) their popularity was enevitable, they were taken on-board by the big record companies and touted as the ''next big thing''. They weren''t products of the record companies - just ''lucky finds''. Again, it is all down to the constraints of art - tastes, trends and the satisfaction (or lack of) of the paying public.

The top man of an indy site will need to do several things including; enticing new groups to submit their work and provide technical and emotional support.

This site does a great job of providing technical support, but emotional support will probably make the difference when it comes to seeing great projects completed and submitted. Someone needs to coordinate play-testing of the work-to-date of any team, point them in the right direction and continue to encourage them to the end. If any team here thinks they have enough resources to accomplish all this themselves - congratulations! Chances are, you can only work within your current environment and it will be hard work all the way, when, with the right guidance and support the up-hill struggle could of been levelled - just that little bit.

I''ll stop typing now and wait for the flames .

Matt



Check out my project at:www.btinternet.com/~Matthew.Bennett