…comes in at number 3 in the Gamespy Dumbest Moments in Games Industry:
http://www.gamespy.com/articles/june03/dumbestmoments/index4.shtml
http://www.gamespy.com/articles/june03/dumbestmoments/
FOr those interested, Sun Microsystems is now an IGDA partner. Check the website here:
-SG
Dude you get Java onto the PSP and PS3 and I will run naked through the streets of Atlanta - guaranteed 
[quote]Dude you get Java onto the PSP and PS3 and I will run naked through the streets of Atlanta - guaranteed
[/quote]
Yikes, with an incentive like that it will never happen!
/me shudders
Okay, how about this - I will pay a model to run naked through the streets of Atlanta - guaranteed ;D
[quote] Today’s games usually are made by managers with Excel sheets next to team, not my game enthusiasts anymore.
[/quote]
Much of the criticism against the game industry is based on the notion that the narrow market for games (Windows Solitaire excluded) is a result of games being made mainly by typical white male game enthusiast in their late 20s/early 30s.
…and yes, I fit nicely into that group myself.
[quote]Okay, how about this - I will pay a model to run naked through the streets of Atlanta - guaranteed ;D
[/quote]
A female model let’s hope. I don’t want to see a Gregory Pierce butt double
And you have to webcast it American Pie style Atlanta is a long way away.
[quote]Dude you get Java onto the PSP and PS3 and I will run naked through the streets of Atlanta - guaranteed
[/quote]
Oh god please don’t. Please! (blarg)
Didn’t they anounce like 3 years ago that they were going to put Java into the PS2
So my 2 cents on the industry.
As Chris mentions my background is the games industry (most recently Crystal Dynamics and TEN). My college training is comp sci and film production.
The game industry has, not so surprisingly, matured into an industry rather similar to the film industry.
In the beginning, basically every game developer was an “indie”. Budgets were relatively low (maybe a few tens of thousands to make a game) and thus risk was low and it was a lot easier to make risky projects.
What we have now is an industry awash in high production value “studio productions.” These costs tens of millions of dollars to make and thus have much greater risk associated with them. For that reason you see two effects:
(1) “money men” need to be satisfied in order to get funding who may not be game enthusiasts.
(2) Everyone involved, realizing what is at stake, is more risk adverse.
Both these effects tend to stifle wild creativity.
Where we still see such creativity is mostly in relatively small independent efforts that do one thing and do it different and new. (Take a look at Doom again sometime, its basically a one-trick pony but a very GOOD one-trick pony. All it really had to do was deliver the full walk/run around 3D experience. Now compare that to a modern RPG that has to do that PLUS all the RPG stuff…)
I fully expect the really new design ideas to come from the same place new film ideas do-- low budget productions. Every so often one of those will “hit” a new concept so squarely that it will make a ton of money (like Doom did.) The creators will get treated like rock-stars, offered big budgets, and disappear into the mill of studio productions where they will be expected to do the same thing over and over again… until the NEXT great garage guys come along.
Anyway thats my 2 cents on it.
YMMV
JK
[quote]So my 2 cents on the industry.
[/quote]
Hi there.
I think you hit the nail on its head.
Like many people, I’m starting to get pretty hacked off with that comparison. There are strong superficial similarities, but it’s like saying that apples and oranges are both fruit - it’s still trying to compare apples & oranges ;).
It would be OK if everyone were really smart and remembered that an analogy is never perfect, nor necessarily even accurate. Unfortunately, lots of gross generalizations keep being made (not that I’m saying J is doing this here) based on the assumption that the industries are much more similar than they really are.
Beg to differ. There’s some pretty amazing stuff coming out of large and/or in-house groups these days. They tend to be better funded, better supported (they are understood and looked-after by their publisher, because of their size and/or track-record), have the best people (indies can rarely attract top talent for anything but a few key positions).
Sure, there are plenty like I’ve just described that are too cozy, and have no “hunger” left to be really creative or exciting. But AFAICS most people in this industry are always “hungry” because of their own obsessions with building games.
You must be kidding! If Doom were just a one-trick pony, Id wouldn’t be still trumpeting the sales figures for Doom, whilst keeping quiet about the sales figures for every id-game since!
Don’t you remember that:
- networked Doom was the first time Deathmatch REALLY got going on a massive scale (Wolf3D deathmatch, and the unix-deathmatch games like tanks etc only ever had tiny numbers of people able to play them - even Doom DM was damn hard to get setup in the first couple of versions)…even as far as being the first game to start widespread crashes of corporate networks (too much traffic!), according to news articles at the time
- W3D was banned in Germany because of the Nazi element, Doom was banned in Germany because it was just too damn violent (IIRC - apologies if these are wrong, it’s hard to find articles about this stuff to confirm nowadays!). Doom really was a hard-core game content-wise
- …Doom was very much a non-Politically Correct “blow everything to smithereens” game. There were very few of those around at the time (W3D was a big-girl’s-blouse by comparison)
- It was the scariest game around until the release of things like Resident Evil. Monsters patrolled the levels giving random growls and roars from behind walls and doors, in a most disturbing manner. Talk about “immersion”.
I very very much doubt Doom would have had much success if the content had been more normal, for instance family-friendly (think pokemon, think disney) graphics, plot, and gameplay.
Maybe we could - in another thread please which is linked from here - list the (few) most impressive (and/or successfully) computer games of the last 10-15 years (or so) and try to figure out who actually “invented” them.
Ok, list them may be difficult because many people won’t agree what’s “most impressive”…
Homeworld comes to mind for me - tiny studio put that one together and it was exceedingly cool. Risk stiffles creativity - that much is a given, but a lot of it has more to do with gme designers themselves. There are plenty of indies with little/no risk who put out cookie cutter games or games that suck. Being on a budget will irritate that situation, but if you start with crap - all the money in the world won’t help you end up with something that isn’t crap. It all goes back to the design.
Sounds reasonable to me.
I’ve startet a new thread for that kind of discussion. Please see http://www.java-gaming.org/cgi-bin/JGNetForums/YaBB.cgi?board=GameDesign;action=display;num=1060365678
[quote]I fully expect the really new design ideas to come from the same place new film ideas do-- low budget productions. Every so often one of those will “hit” a new concept so squarely that it will make a ton of money (like Doom did.) The creators will get treated like rock-stars, offered big budgets, and disappear into the mill of studio productions where they will be expected to do the same thing over and over again… until the NEXT great garage guys come along.
[/quote]
It really is just like the movies ;D
I think in talking about DOOM you need to seperate what was far-reachign technically from what was far-reaching production-wise.
Eithre way though I’ll stick with my statement that its a one trick pony, about one trick in each place., The tech trick was the free mvoement around an environment that wasn’t a grid. The production trick was to make eerything very dark and make extensive use of sound-- which is all basiuc horror stuff-- for mood.
At thee nd of the day though tehr really ISN’t a whoel lot of game play there. Sneak around, fire at things, be fiored at, die or sneaka round some more.
Compare that to, say, Earthwrom Jim where every few levels had to be seperately coded because it was effectively a different game.
As I said its a very GOOD one-trick pony, so good that it defiend a new category, but I still contend its a one trick pony.
I take issue with the lack of gameplay in Doom!
Too much gameplay makes for an exasperating, overcomplex experience which provides no clear reward feedback to the player. (“Black & White” anyone?)
To little gameplay and you don’t get much good feedback (“Space Invaders”).
Doom’s real coup d’etat was having perfect gameplay as well as fantastic 3d worlds, tons of content in the form of huge levels, and the best sound effects in a game ever. The gameplay’s not quite as simple as it looks: you’ve got fast action reflex shooting; you’ve got powerups; you’ve got maze-solving and pathfinding; you’ve got some simple puzzle-solving; you’ve got bosses to kill; you’ve got deathmatch. It’s really got a lot more depth than it first appears! In fact nearly every other 3D FPS game hasn’t actually managed to change the formula significantly. Thief and Deus Ex/SS2 manage to deviate somewhat in a pleasing way.
Cas
And lets not forget - it had kickass coop (though you took damage from your partners shots) online gameplay.
Doom was an awful single player game. I would take Black & White over it any day. The only good thing about doom was the deathmatch team play… and that was only good for the time. Now it would never be able to compete. It was fairly revolutionary with respect to team play though. Even if the rockets could only face 8 directions so they looked like they were missing and then suddenly turned towards you