Niphty... on the ''originality'' argument... it has been claimed that there are only 36 different basic plotlines for stories. That implies that all new stories are just retellings of old ones. I think the same goes for games... there can be no true originality past a certain point.

And simply having ideas that relate to multiple genres doesn''t make someone ''more'' of a game designer or a ''better'' game designer than someone who has great ideas relating to one genre.

Anyway, on with the useless debating once again...

quote: Original post by AngelStar

If Game Designers were taken seriously then there wouldnt be so much garbage, and American game companies wouldnt be considered the bottom of the barrel in the game industry compared to anyone else.

There is a lot of ''garbage'' for two reasons:
(a) garbage sells, and (b) everyone has a different idea of what makes a good game. For example - I actually like playing some of these sports and movie games you talk about, and I don''t like playing all those Japanese RPGs you obviously admire.

It''s nothing to do with designers not being taken seriously. I don''t know where you get this idea from. For example, Lands of Lore 3 had more designers on the team than programmers. Plus 3 ''design consultants'', and a dedicated writer. Yet you''d be hard pressed to find a good review of it, despite the fact that they took design ''seriously''.

Sorry if I make any sweeping generalisations here, but it only seems to be Americans who consider American game companies to be the bottom of the barrel. More specifically, in the UK and Europe we don''t idolise the Japanese companies the way you do. As an example, we get an American gaming magazine in a local store, and for each of the last 4 months running, the cover has featured some manga-style Japanese artwork from some Japanese game. But, that''s just you guys. Over here, we''re more interested in American and British games. When in the US, people were obsessed with Final Fantasy, over here we were more interested in the Ultima series.

So any judgements such as ''US companies are behind Japanese companies'' are all just down to one''s own cultural bias.

quote:
From the immortal words from a friend who was once at Electronic Arts, "I work at the largest games publisher in the world, making billions annually and all we can still be courageous enough to make is overhyped (sports/movie/media) translations, we should be trying to make Japanese companies like Square and Nintendo sweat icicles in the morning, trying to really show what we can do, but because our investors dont understand a damn thing about this business, nor care to we continue to release dogshit in a box"

Ah.... and of course, it''s more ''courageous'' to release Manga/Anime RPG By Numbers over and over again than to release sports franchises? Or Yet Another Platform Game? Just seems like the same thing to me... spot a market, and exploit it.

You don''t get to be a big games publisher by taking big risks. Eidos took a big risk on Daikatana (because it had a legendary designer heading the team... go figure) and it contributed to nearly putting them out of business. You get to be rich (which is what the shareholders care about) by capitalising on your steady and guaranteed sources of income. That''s why the Japanese companies keep making the same kinds of games, just like the American companies do. It just seems like you have a personal preference for those games produced by Japanese companies, and that is up to you.

quote: but I know I am a five star designer, and I want to be under a publisher that will allow me to do that (in realistic terms no doubt), any suggestions on who that publisher could be folks?

Your arrogance will be your undoing. What makes you think you are ''five-star''? Where are your published games or ideas? (And let''s not have the old ''people have stolen my ideas since I was 3'' argument from yet another person, please.) By what objective measure are you so good, and the designers who worked hard on games that you call ''garbage'' so bad?

AngelStar: Either change your email address to something valid, or stop clicking to be notified when your post receives replies. I''m tired of getting failure notifications every time someone responds to your posts.

Rhino, sorry about that, my email address is madnon@hotmail.com or Gamer Spirit at aol.com. It has always worked in other postings, and I havent changed it. Now back to the other postings, first of all John Romero in my eyes is not a legendary designer, he is a guy with one good idea, Wolfenstein, which was recycled into Doom, into Quake, then Daikatana, then so on, different day same bullshit. Now, what I was talking about in reference to the Japanese companies, take Square for example, their main bread and butter is Final Fantasy, they rely on that game to feed them. A company always needs things like this, there is nothing wrong with putting out commerical titles for purely benefit of primarily making money. Again I am not a fool, stop thinking I dont understand anything about this buisiness, and please read everything I say, not just snippets and answer to those. Now, what I was talking about with American companies, is that there is nothing wrong with putting out money titles, nothing at all, but you still have your titles that you are trying to do something new with. Electronic Arts for example has its sports titles, aka its money titles, John Madden Football will forever be its money title as well as its other sports titles, first and foremost, but there is nothing wrong with backing it up trying to take a chance with something different, otherwise youre just pumping out just one type of specific title. I do not idolize any company, I idolize comapanies that are willing to take chances, but again BE REALISTIC ABOUT IT (how many times must I say this?), a company that doesnt have its bread and butter title is a fool, plain and simple.

quote: Original post by AngelStar

Now back to the other postings, first of all John Romero in my eyes is not a legendary designer, he is a guy with one good idea, Wolfenstein, which was recycled into Doom, into Quake, then Daikatana, then so on, different day same bullshit.

Again, this is just your opinion that someone has to come up with lots of different types of game to be a great designer. Whether you are right or not isn''t really relevant: the point is, Eidos invested a lot of money in a development team because they were serious about someone they considered to be a good designer. Contrary to your opinions.

quote: Now, what I was talking about in reference to the Japanese companies, take Square for example, their main bread and butter is Final Fantasy, they rely on that game to feed them. A company always needs things like this, there is nothing wrong with putting out commerical titles for purely benefit of primarily making money. Again I am not a fool, stop thinking I dont understand anything about this buisiness, and please read everything I say, not just snippets and answer to those. Now, what I was talking about with American companies, is that there is nothing wrong with putting out money titles, nothing at all, but you still have your titles that you are trying to do something new with. Electronic Arts for example has its sports titles, aka its money titles, John Madden Football will forever be its money title as well as its other sports titles, first and foremost, but there is nothing wrong with backing it up trying to take a chance with something different, otherwise youre just pumping out just one type of specific title.

Electronic Arts do try some different things. Ever heard of Maxis (SimCity etc), or Bullfrog (Syndicate etc), or Origin (Ultima)? (Bullfrog may be called EA Europe now or something.) All Electronic Arts companies, both making fairly innovative and different games. Please check your own facts before making claims...

To sum up: these companies do take game designers seriously, and they do invest considerable amounts of money in developer teams that do more than just churn out sports and movie games.

Yes and when was their last ground breaking world beater? The only ones I can think of is Ultima Online and the Sims, and ahem, you arent gambling much with PC games (the Sims), (Cept for Ultima Online 2, which needed to be made since the original is getting smoked by Everquest) they dont really gamble much on consoles, which was one of my original points in the first place.

I think its an unwise move to include Electronic Arts in this rant. They''ve got to long and broad a history full of all sorts of little suprises from Dpaint and Archon i believe to Lapd Future Cop and then we''re looking at sport titles.

The big question is not why game designers are or are not taken seriously enought but why do so many people want to be game designer today and nearly no one was interested in this when all we had was board and card games. These meduims too have a lot of potential remember.

A designer doesnt need to know everything about code, they just have to have an appreciation for its limitations and how those limitations affect features they may wish to include in their design. - Drew

Have you ever played the LAPD game? Now if you consider that to be quality gaming, boy are our expectations low. Point, aside from Ultima Online when was the last time the company created an epic? Again im not talking about pc''s here, (Which aside from a very small number of exceptions, Planet Moon, Shiny, and about one or too others, which in total don''t equal more than the amount of fingers I have) who here, (Or in Britain for that matter) is known for their epics on consoles and known for their originality, like I said in my first statement Crystal Dynamics are pretty consistent, but how long has it taken for Eidos to try something new with Core instead of just pumping out its yearly fix of Tomb Raider (which usually are of low quality) Capcom pumps out some version of Street Fighter usually every year, they may be typical, but the gameplay is always good if not great, same thing for Squaresoft who also always pumps out a Final Fantasy practically every year, typical stories aside they are good games, I didnt hear too much raving about Ultima IX and what boundaries did it push?, in any fashion? Lets place some bets on how many years we will see Half Life and its variations.

My point again is we are used to mediocrity and the saddest thing about it is that we accept it wholeheartedly because we are always chasing some bottom line which is money, yes money is important, most definitely, but when your company can honestly approve something like Michael Jordan and the Windy City, or to present day bug plagued Ultima IX, or buying yearly installments of the same game which doesnt improve, just pretty much stays the same its pretty sad when you look around at this lovely industry of ours. Where are the ethics? where are the strives for perfection, there arent any because everybody is too worried about their investors pulling out. Now I know not every publisher has that luxury, but oh I don''t know when youre company is pulling a billion a year annually I dont think your investors would have any problem with you taking chances (ONCE AGAIN IN REALISTIC TERMS), Im sure that as long as youre bringing out your bread and butter then they dont have a problem
with you taking out some money to try something new (and im not talking about on the PC either) if these guys are all that innovative and original and willing to take chances, then I await to see what comes on Microsoft''s Xbox.
What defines your company? What legacy do you hold? What makes you so different? When your customers speak about you do they speak about you with a tear in their eye as passionately as one speaks about Nintendo because of the experiences you have given them?, Or do they speak about you with indifference?. Tell me, how many "Western" companies can say this? Nobody cares who makes their football game(ahem NFL 2K/ The Gameday series have proven this at one time or another)if there is quality, but no football game will ever carry the legacy of a Zelda game, Final Fantasy or even soon to be a Shenmue or even a Everquest. When GenXers speak about thier childhood gaming experiences who do they speak about, and why is it that they are speaking about usually only Japanese companies the majority of the time when videogames were invented in the United States?

I find it funny that the inspiration for alot of games these days from certain PC companies are always inspired by their past experiences on console (Drakan and Anachronox anyone?). What "Western" company (on console) inspires game companies of today to say "Man, remember that game such and such, that game was so great when I was younger, lets make a remake of that"

quote: Point, aside from Ultima Online when was the last time the company created an epic?

Ultima IX was an epic. Sure, it wasn''t programmed very well, but I thought you were complaining about lack of designer input, not poor programming.

And why should a game have to be ''epic'' to be an example of good design? Most people don''t have the time to play so-called epics. And a lot just aren''t interested.

quote: I didnt hear too much raving about Ultima IX and what boundaries did it push?

Well, it had a world that was massively more detailed than the hideously overrated Zelda 64, for starters. There were a lot of advances made in Ultima IX, which were let down by poor programming and the high expectations created by the fact that Ultima 7 was probably the best PC RPG of all time.

quote: My point again is we are used to mediocrity and the saddest thing about it is that we accept it wholeheartedly because we are always chasing some bottom line which is money.

Finally, something you say that makes sense I agree that the computer game industry produces some poor products that should never have made it to market. Games as hideously bugged as Sin or Ultima 9, for instance. I agree with the point that this is often down to financial pressures. I disagree with the earlier point you seemed to be making that it comes from lack of investment and backing given to designers.

quote: When GenXers speak about thier childhood gaming experiences who do they speak about, and why is it that they are speaking about usually only Japanese companies the majority of the time when videogames were invented in the United States?

Again, this is just your cultural bias. Over here in the UK and in Europe, we look back on the Commodore 64, the Sinclair Spectrum, the Amstrad/Schneider CPC range, and the thousands of games that were released for them. After those computers, the Atari ST (ok, so they''re Japanese, but the games were not) and the Commodore Amiga were popular. Few people really cared about Sega or Nintendo until relatively recently (ie. when PCs made Amigas and STs redundant, but cost too much for the casual gamer).

If you stopped someone in the streets of Britain who''d been into computer games during the 80s or early 90s, chances are they''d talk about Barbarian, or Laser Squad, or Dungeon Master, or The Bard''s Tale, or Zork, or Lemmings, or Worms, or Sensible Soccer, etc etc. I could go on, and the list would consist of no more than maybe 10% of Japanese games.

Now, if you believe that American companies aren''t very innovative, then fair enough. I don''t believe that American companies lack innovation compared to British, European or Japanese companies, just that, with the larger sums of money being spent, there are a lot more of the ''bread and butter'' products being released too, that''s all.

If you''re trying to say "why don''t Western companies make such great games for consoles as Japanese ones", then that''s like saying "why don''t Japanese companies make such great games for the PC as Western companies". It just happens to be the way the 2 cultures are biased. People stick to what they do best, and I don''t see a problem with that. There are also technical limitations (the main one being ram, but the speed of the CD is another, limited persistent storage being a third) and contractual limitations (the agreements you have to make with a console owner to release games for the platform) when working with consoles that mean simply porting an RPG from the PC to a console is not as trivial as you would think. These are programming issues, not designer issues, and perhaps you overlook them...

quote: Lets place some bets on how many years we will see Half Life and its variations.

Let''s place yet more bets on for how long the console companies are going to keep re-releasing the platform game or the anime RPG. Or Yet Another Snowboarding Sim