Hi, I hope I'm in the right forum for this since it now looks more like a rant :/. Lately I have again been lurking around on gamedev website and forums. I'm by no means a very active player or productive programmer. I just like to start projects and abandon them ;). The games I like the most are competitive games that allow relatively short and intense online games. Before I had discovered online gaming I spent most of my gaming time with highscore games or would try to beat my own lap record in racing games for weeks. Large single player campaigns on the other hand never interested me that much and I never got into the "new" MMORPGs (I spent considerable time in MUDs though and don't really understand what's the riot now with MMO games since MUDs with exhaustive sandbox playstyle and ridiculous possibilities and sizes were around since the dawn of time). When I look at the market now, these competitive/focused games I like seem to be of no interest to the industry. In my eyes modern games "suffer" from feature overload, MMO-itis and generally being watered down. In an FPS I want to shoot stuff and not play puzzel minigames to open locks, in an RTS game I want to move masses of units around the map and not micromanage a hero unit 90% of the time like I was playing an RPG, when I play online I want an intense competitive experience while playing against other players and not collaborativ masturb... er grinding. But all the gamedev sites and big studios seem to be concerned with is this sort of forced innovation: "We are making a Game of genre X with elements of genres Y and Z and combine it into spectacular [choose two: MMO, interactive story, free roaming or ultra customizable] experience with spectacularily distracting graphics and revolutionary [cloth, aging, realistic blah] physics.". Only, studios that already have successfull franchises like starcraft seem to actually make games that are not innovative for the sake of being innovative and stick to a focused expirience that allows competitive gameplay. Why do I never see a game designer talk about refining and focusing on a certain genre instead of trying to introduce new elements into it or even reinventing the genre? Is the market for specific "e-sports" games really that small?

I basically agree with everything you said.

I read an estimation today (I think it was on the blog of a female hardcore gamer) that hardcore/competitive gamers account for at most 5-10 percent of the regular gamer crowd.

Quote:

Is the market for specific "e-sports" games really that small?

In my case, there isn't even a "market". I play RtCW: ET since 7 years and that's free. [smile]

I also agree with a lot of what you said. The thing is, for breakout companies, they need to have the gameplay be eye-grabbing and intense, because they don't have a brand. Companies like Blizzard (the makers of Starcraft) are established as game developers; they have weight in the industry. When a third party developer makes a game, they'll have a lot less time, money, and people to create the game. They have to go for the "revolutionary" new element, rather than just making a solid game of a genre.

On the other hand, some of the genre mixes can be extremely competitive. DotA, for instance, is a weird matchup of RTS and RPG, but works very well and has regular tournaments with professional players.

One reason small and independent studios focus more on new gimmicks is because it's difficult to compete with Valve of Blizzard, who control massive gaming networks and have people employed just to study usage statistics and improve balance, &c.

But they are out there. Just check out the Source mod community. Age of Chivalry, and Pirates, Vikings and Knights II are a couple good ones. It's just not common because again, most small developers can't compete.

When it comes to selling a game, brands, accessibility, and risk aversion are more important than mechanics. Also, publishers really hate to release something with fewer features than the competition, because whether or not those features are good or bad, not having them is looked upon as being inferior. Then in addition to that, as already mentioned, a hook is needed to separate them from the other releases -- it's more marketing. And to top it all off, use of established genres and conventions increases the chances of players in general liking the game; the mass market seems to really hate learning things.

In a nutshell, the industry moves mostly like a single, glacial entity, and it has moved away from the "competitive game" sphere of influence in the never-ending quest to maximize their userbase.

Though the title says competitive games, the original post is really about games being watered down in general, and is pretty much correct. I also think Aethonic's explanation is spot on. Games are watered down in an effort to protect couch potatoes from having to learn anything or seeing someone be much better at the game than they are. The watering down cuts down the distance between good and bad players. Compare and contrast a COD-type game where a quadriplegic can get frags (yes, really) on a good player by a bit of patience, simple tactics or luck, and an arena shooter where an excellent player using advanced movement techniques, game sense and tactical powerup control is like an invincible god even to decent players.

The same thing has mostly wiped out the scoring-focused games OP mentions. The very idea of scoring is that you grow better at the game. Instead of the infinitely improving "score" we today have "gamerscore", which - given the ease of so many of the so-called achievements that contribute to it - is nearly a checklist of how many easy games you have bothered to buy and rent. Show up and collect your prize!

[Edited by - Stroppy Katamari on May 11, 2010 3:53:01 AM]

Gamers don't own gaming anymore.

I'm pretty sure anybody confused about this should go and Google 'Wii'.

Hardcore gaming isn't an appealing niche anymore, developers want to aim for higher figures and that means offering less intimidating titles.
There are always going to be games with a balance between casual and hardcore gaming, or a strong learning curve.
I'm sure there are even indie developers working on hardcore games (Urban Terror).
But the majority of games aren't geared for that aspect for a reason.
Money.

I wouldn't say that hardcore gaming is dead, just you'd be hard-pressed to keep competitive AAA quality titles going.
Fury was enough to prove to this to me.

I think, piracy has a lot to do with this. It's pretty rampant on the PC and consoles aren't exactly a hardcore platform.
So I guess, there's a lot of reasons for the decline in hardcore titles.

It's not because developers hate gamers, it's just because they need to make money.
They're not going to do that from 5-10% of the people most likely to pirate their game.

Quote:

Original post by Portugal Stew One reason small and independent studios focus more on new gimmicks is because it's difficult to compete with Valve of Blizzard, who control massive gaming networks and have people employed just to study usage statistics and improve balance, &c.

Interesting topic. I always thought the reason no one makes solid, don't fix what ain't broken games because, while everyone is afraid of new ideas, they're also afraid of not being interesting. I don't agree that smaller companies make "gimmicky" games because they can't compete. The indy game market is always producing games of varying theme and gameplay mechanic and they do that on purpose. Perhaps it is not that the smaller companies need to do it, but want to, whereas the companies like Blizzard are the opposite: they can't.

This is what i see happening with Hollywood. Every movie is pretty much cliche, boring, mostly what you expect before you come in. But every movie has some sort of gimmick like being POV, being about a dead person, being about two cops who hate each other, etc. Always a no-surprises plot, but with a gimmick surrounding it.

This is probably what happens to music as well, though i can't make that argument easily.

I think this is a general trend in commercial art.

EDIT:

To back up my point: On game developer's dream could be to make a game that takes place inside an ice cream cone and is about freezer burn. If it works at an indy or starting-up commercial company, there's at least a very slim chance s/he'll be able to make this game. But i can't imagine Valve or Ubisoft trying for such a title, even if they wanted to.

EDIT2: included quote

[Edited by - Splinter of Chaos on May 11, 2010 9:08:03 AM]

Well, I guess I mixed up non-competitve and watered down. But I think those are closely linked since you need a focused "non-gimmicky" gameplay to make a game competitively playable.

What astonishes me is, that competitivity and focus seems to be so strongly associated with "hardcore gaming". I wouldn't consider myself a hardcore gamer. But apparently today everyone who is interested in developing skills in a game instead of just amassing items and achievements is "hardcore" and the casual gamers are seen as some sort of digital stamp collectors by the industry?

To shift the thread a bit more into the game design direction. As already stated in the first post I wonder why there is hardly any discussion about more focused games. I mean the industry and casual gamers are one thing. But as seen in this thread there are people interested in game design that also don't like the watering down of games. When we are coding we spend a lot of time on figuring out how to do something very specific with minimal code, time and memory usage. Why don't we design games with the same mindset?

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

In my head the holy grail of game design is to achieve maximum emergent gameplay with a "minimal amount of game".

Also when I think about how to improve games I like, I usually start out with thinking about what could be removed. As an example, I think Ground Control (which tried to be a multiplayer game back then) would have been better for multiplayer if they'd removed all the air units and most of the special weapons. Also most Single player mission were much more interesting if you didn't use the artillery (otherwise it's just scout, nuke, push, repeat).

(as always reading my own english posts makes me think they are an incoherent mess, but I hope someone finds it interesting and discusses it anyway)

[Edited by - japro on May 14, 2010 5:42:49 AM]

Quote:

Original post by japro What astonishes me is, that competitivity and focus seems to be so strongly associated with "hardcore gaming". I wouldn't consider myself a hardcore gamer. But apparently today everyone who is interested in developing skills in a game instead of just amassing items and achievements is "hardcore" and the casual gamers are seen as some sort of digital stamp collectors by the industry?

Yes. You may find this surprising, but that's how it goes. Most people treat games like TV, or a Hollywood blockbuster. They seek out streamlined content that is easy to digest and which doesn't make them feel stupid if they don't understand it at the beginning. You are hoping to make something which requires a little more investment, which a lot of people can't or won't want to put in. For this reason, such games are relatively unpopular these days.

Quote:

But as seen in this thread there are people interested in game design that also don't like the watering down of games. When we are coding we spend a lot of time on figuring out how to do something very specific with minimal code, time and memory usage. Why don't we design games with the same mindset?

Because not many people want to play 'pure' games. Those who do, are sticking to the more pure games made many years ago, eg. Starcraft. Everybody else is either looking for something similar with a shiny new feature or technology bolted onto the side, or avoiding that sort of game entirely.

To some degree the market goes where the money is, and the money is not on games that are too hard or too competitive for most people. There's certainly merit to developing a game with a single great mechanic, but that's actually very difficult since we have few tools with which to approach such a design except pure creativity, which is lacking.