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Original post by Stroppy Katamari Quote: Original post by Kylotan Quote: Original post by Stroppy Katamari It's not creativity that's lacking. It's the will and ability to actually focus on something - whether new and original, or a basic thing like how exactly should jumping behave in a platformer - and polish the hell out of it. To do the job of game design. Hmm, I can't say I agree with that. To some degree all this is subjective and there's only so far you can push 1 idea. There's also a massive problem of diminishing returns - what kind of team and budget would you need to get a platformer that handled better than every Mario game ever? It makes more sense to strike out on completely new designs, but they are hard to create. I did not say anyone must exceed Mario. I said it's of utmost importance for developers of a platformer to make sure jumping works well in it.

Well no, you didn't actually say that (see quote), though you may have meant it. You said will and ability to do this is lacking. I don't think it's lacking. I just think people are more focused on the wider picture. And generally speaking, this is a strawman argument, because I've not seen any evidence yet that this is an actual problem. It's quite possible to take a system that was polished in a previous game and add extras to it - the 'watering down' of the original post - without that core mechanic being altered, never mind harmed.

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It is of utmost importance for developers of a FPS to make sure moving around and shooting works well in it. If you can't get the essentials right, the game will suck regardless of the amount of ludo-socio-cinematic horseshit or achievements or tacked-on multiplayer or bad story or voice acting by famous actors or minigames or pixel shaders that went into it.

This is all incredibly subjective. Lots of people like achievements, multiplayer, stories, and voice acting. You prefer a purer game experience. That's fine, but don't act like you are the sole arbiter of what sucks and what doesn't. These things are added because they sell, and they sell because people want them.

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Quote: Back in the day people were able to make masterpieces like R-Type at minuscule budgets, staff etc when the only meaning of "game design tools" was pen and paper. Now that is definitely subjective. :) I love retro games as much as the next person, having grown up with the 64K 8-bits, and some of those games definitely had amazing gameplay, but the vast majority of them were utterly unforgiving and repetitive.

I said nothing at all about retro games, and this is not a new vs old issue either.
R-Type is a retro game, you brought it up, therefore you said something about retro games. You also claimed it was a masterpiece, which I disagree with, because I don't think the design would stand up today for modern audiences.

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The Japanese continue to make excellent shoot'em up games (easy modes, too) to this day because they actually do the work and accumulate the understanding it takes to make an excellent shoot'em up game.

Or maybe simply because the Japanese market supports such games whereas Western markets do not. I certainly don't see many people on here clamouring to make or to buy them. It's very easy to get good at something if you can afford to do it for 20 years. That doesn't mean everybody else suffers from "ignorance, laziness, hubris". Personally I think churning out formulaic Final Fantasy games is "laziness", but some call that "actually focusing on something and polishing the hell out of it". Generally it comes down to whether you like it or not, and the rest is just justification for your opinion.

I think you just have strong opinions about which cultures produce good games and which ones do not, and therefore ascribe negative values to the designers of the games you don't like. Personally I don't agree with that.