And why are all PC RPG's so freaking depressing?

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Original post by Sluginator And why are all PC RPG's so freaking depressing?

Is that a rhetorical question?

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Original post by BrianL If course, it is also possible that this is a unique, unexploited market that publishers have ignored. I have a high degree of faith in publishers abilities to make money though, so I am a bit skeptical of this.

That's looking at it backwards. Consumers will settle for the best available option for certain goods/services. That doesn't mean it's everything they wanted.

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Original post by Ned_K Not one single game title captures what you want? How about past titles?

Some past titles were essentially perfect. Why? Because the limitations of technology constrained both consumer (read: my) expectations and gameplay possibilities, requiring more of an imaginative investment to "see" the game.

But that's entirely beside the point. Most contemporary games I've played have one critical flaw that seems so obvious. Project Gotham Racing 2 has no traces of AI; the other cars just drive along an approximately ideal racing line. ESPN NBA 2K5 has poor control and that stupid IsoMotion2™ crap. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time has that iffy camera behavior, and zero strategy, anyway. Splinter Cell is pretty good, but some solutions are non-intuitive and some deaths/failures are cheap (I'd consider a game like that a resounding success if a person could conceivably play straight through without a single failure/death on the first try - ie, no "cheese").

Why do games hide their play mechanics? To sell strategy guides? Have the decency to explain to me how things work (RalliSport Challenge 2 is excellent at this: the pre-race screen includes fairly detailed driving tips that actually help you improve your play; Project Gotham Racing 2 gives a few tips here and there, but not in as much detail). Make me better at the game by telling me how it works, and increase my enjoyment.

If you can't challenge me intelligently, then don't cheat. Move on. Don't make the game pointlessly longer. Respect my time and my intelligence.

I do need to get around to playing Max Payne 2, though.

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Original post by Oluseyi Essentially, the article asked why we didn't have smart, clever, strategic adult (in the sense of "not kiddie") games that also required good reflexes.

Then the writer has never played anything online, or never bothered to try and play anything well.

Many people play for fun - which is after all, the whole point of games, to be fun - but they forget that playing for fun and playing to win are not mutually exclusive. In fact, for many games, one is required for the other.

Take chess for example. No-one plays 'just for fun' - the entertainment value of moving pieces around a board is pretty low unless there's some motivation for doing so - like winning. Even in a 'friendly' game of chess, you're trying to win, otherwise there's not much point in playing.

Now of course with computer games, you have pretty graphics and animations, cool sound effects to entertain you. You can have a certain amount of fun without even trying to play well, but it's very limited. In this respect, perhaps the graphics and sound are subconsciously distracting the player from the actual game. If you discipline yourself to try playing a game well you might find there's a whole lot more to it than you thought. Of course this is best seen playing online - computer opponents are never quite as interesting as human ones - although they can still be a good challenge.

Of course, time is an issue here. Older people have less spare time to learn to play games well, so perhaps there's a natural tendency to stick to games they learnt to play well in their youth, hence the popularity of retro gaming.

That said, the PC certainly has a wealth of games that fit both those criteria, (reflexes + strategy) and I don't doubt that the consoles do too.

[Edited by - Sandman on November 8, 2004 5:10:53 AM]

Ok just throwing out random thoughts based on the responses I scanned..


a) the original article IS a shallow, generalizing diatribe with no meat. But the writer's heart is in the right place.

b) I agree that INTERACTIVITY is the key. Whether you like online games or not...the far future of gaming are virtual game worlds (god VR has so much "never-lived-up-to-the-hype" baggage) that are as immersive as possible.

It amazes me that MMOs dont even have the level of environment interactivity of today's Adventure Company mystery game. (Im working on fixing this).

c) People do play chess 'for fun' The fun is figuring out the puzzle of moves - knocking the king over at the end is a much shorter euphoria. Its about the journey not the destination.

d) I think that besides INTERACTIVITY, WRITING is the real culprit in games. And by this I mean the amount. For games to get more immersive, open-ended, and fulfilling emotionally the amount of writing for each title needs to explode exponentially.
Of course this comes down to money. Once all the old ideas get used and people cry for more, perhaps someone will break out with some exponential writing projects.

I had an idea about how to redo MMORPGs because people didnt feel like they were playing a role, nor was the story fulfilling.

Start out with 50 hero/anti-hero types...
Take 4 races of beings...
add 8 faction (read: civilization with goals and grudges)
then create 8 basic sets of skill proficiencies (read: what configuration of skills characters would have at the start)

THEN WRITE A STORY FOR ALL PERMUTATIONS! Each with a novel-like beginning, exposition, story arc and climax!

Talk about a huge undertaking...but without specific characters and a hero;s journey for each (I suggest reading Joseph Cambell's Hero of A Thousand Faces)...games will truly be boring.

I personally wouldn't want blazing action in my geeky strategy game or RPG. I'm not good at action, and forcing me to use it will mean I'll probably never get very far through the game, and thus I'll probably never see half the scenes that get advertized as being so cool.

However, I think there's a point here. Most of the action games I hear about (FPS's mainly) seem to be about "if it moves, kill it". If all I wanna do is shoot stuff, I can go play Space Invaders or something. Why don't we have more games of this type with more of a story than "Aliens landed and they wanna kill us"? Why do people spend millions of dollars each year making bigger and better graphics for things to shoot at, without really adding anything new to the genre? Why doesn't everyone just go play Space Invaders or something?

As for "mature" games...well, I think my mom embodies a large portion of the mature gamer market. She's in her upper 40's and usually prefers games that don't require a whole lot of thinking, because if it gets too intricate chances are she won't remember what she was supposed to be doing, heh. If a game has a whole bunch of special moves that you have to push specific buttons in a certain order for, she'll usually just use the default attack due to not remembering the button combos, or because she thinks games shouldn't be made in such a way that you have to use outlandish button combos to complete them. She used to love RPG's, but I haven't seen her finish a single one for a few years now, mostly because she's too tired to bother exerting that much effort on a video game. Plus, if it's a game I haven't played before, she can't ask me where the Uber Sword of Smiting is, so she has to spend hours exploring and getting annoyed by random combat encounters, heh.

I think for a lot of people, the conception is "mature=boobs and butts". This isn't mature, this is teenage hormone overdrive. There could be all kinds of games that make you think about important subjects like why politics sucks, why do people misuse power, how does accidentally causing a friend's death affect you, and if humans have such a great capacity to do amazing things, why are there so many mean people in the world who only enjoy knocking others down a rung so they can be on top of the ladder. I think that our society as a whole isn't very mature. Most of us follow the instant gratification process, and the "mine mine mine" method. When our society seems to have the average age values of a 3 year old, how are we supposed to produce truly mature games very often?

OrangyTang has said it in a nutshell basically. It's all about the demand for such games... there just isn't much for one which considers both worlds.

Most adults are also too busy to get involved in games, that's why it makes more sense to appeal to teenagers and young people of the generation.

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Original post by PointSoft OrangyTang has said it in a nutshell basically. It's all about the demand for such games... there just isn't much for one which considers both worlds.

How do you determine the demand for a product that doesn't exist? It's not like anybody ran focus group tests to determine the viability of such games. No, it comes down to what the developers and designers and publishers think should be made. It has nothing to do with what consumers want.

(How many FPSes do you think consumers really need? And since they're all so fundamentally similar, why don't they use successive iterations of the same tech, saving time and money for other projects? There's nothing rational about the game development business, so enough with the shallow economic analysis.)

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Most adults are also too busy to get involved in games, that's why it makes more sense to appeal to teenagers and young people of the generation.

All the data contra-indicates your assertion. Adults have more money. The explosion of T- and M-rated games isn't because the "average gamer" is a 15-year old kid. Try looking up some of the facts one of these days. It'll prove quite illuminating.

[Note: I haven't read the article because from all the posts it seems pointless to do so]

Summary: Bad games result in optimal profit.

I think the reason we don't have many good(IMO) games (on the PC anyways, as I have no consoles) is because quality takes creativity, hard work, and lots of other things that would cost game studios more money. Since the goal is money (be it the studio's goal or the goal of their publisher etc), they want to optimize the amount of profit, which means making cost low and profit high. Since most people seem to buy into bad games (take CS:Source as a good example IMO, and CS before that), and bad games cost less money (no time 'wasted' on creativity, just take the old technology and design it over again with a few new features), making bad games is an obvious win for studios/publishers/etc.

Of course, if they would cut back on the technical specs of the game they could spend more time on everything else, but it should be obvious that eyecandy sells to 99% of the world (or at least the US). Listen to the radio, look on TV, or even on gamedev.net and you'll be bombarded by advertisement that essentially shows/takls about 'eyecandy'. "OMG ITS NEW AND IMPROVED WITH LEMON SCENT!" And people buy it, making the rest of us suffer through it all =-/
If they cut back on eyecandy for gameplay, there is no guarantee they'd make any sales at all, while with good eyecandy they're practically guaranteed to make millions.

Games for adults? Define that term first. Do we mean games for hardcore gamer adults? There are tons - the RTS and FPS industry are full of them.

Games for adults who're working stiffs? Most of those are intelligent kids games or sports games - sports games appeal to manly men who need everything to tie into golf, football, and nascar; while kids games appeal to girls and guys who can look past a game's studliness in favour of gameplay.

For example, my jock friends play Wrestlemania and NHL200X etc. My geek friends play UT2004. My girl friends play Chu Chu Rocket, Tetris, and Bomberman.

The remaining games are aimed at harcore games for whom gaming is a time-absorbing hobby.

What do we play when we get together? Chu Chu Rocket, Tetris, and Bomberman. So adults play the kids games, because the kids games are actually designed not for kids, but for _everybody_. Why? Because only the hardcores can play the harcore games, often enough only the ones who're into that particular genre - not even all the hardcore players. Nobody likes the jock games - they're dull, sacrificing fun in favour of accuracy. So we play the games that are designed to be fun and easy to jump into.