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March 15, 2005
Video Games
Video games used to be developed by mavericks. People who had a vision and the tenacity of a badger; they never let go.
This brought about great innovation - table tennis (pong!), maze games (pac man), platform games (donkey kong, frak...), punch ups (Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat..), graphic / text adventures (Zork, myst, Elder Scrolls...), simulators (Tank Battle, F16, MS Flight Simulator...), first person combat (Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament, Rune...).
All other games are variations on a theme or interesting combinations of themes. Grand Theft auto could be thought of as a cross between an adventure game, simulator and first person combat.
The game industry is reaching a crisis point - are there any more genre to develop? What will drive all future game development? Better graphics? Fuck that.
Like they say you can't polish a turd.
Gameplay is king. The depth of the non-player characters, the storyline, the difficulty of the puzzles (which can include interactions with the NPC's) the texture and descriptiveness of the world where it all happens. These are the things that matter, not the fact that they use phong shading instead of trilinear whatever when they render the world in graphics. It could all happen through text and still be compelling (difficult to do, but not impossible!) The point is that we are humans and since time immemorial we have gathered together around fires and passed on stories, fables, myths and legends. What games shuold be doing is creating new stories.
Doom did it, but is now falling foul of its own success, its still playing the same tune. It may be on a gold-plated, highly decorative instrument but the tune is the same.
The problem with Game companies nowadays is that they are becoming monolithic. It is getting ever more expensive to develop games. HIgh definition computer graphics cost money to program. Realistic physics engines take money to buy and time for programmers to master. Marketing (by far the most expensive part) is all encompassing and must bow down before that great god of commerce everywhere - the lowest common denominator.
Game companies dont want to take risks any more. Game companies (or rather 'studios' now...) are created for one reason - to make money. Anything that imperils this is hunted down and killed and has its head put on a spike. Which makes sense - people work long and hard to become as talented as they are in order to develop such visually spectacular games, I for one dont want to see them on the streets with a begging bowl.
Something needs to be done and the rallying cry is being made. Check out these appeals made to an auditorium full of game developers by established game developers - from Greg Costikyan:
Stirring stuff - and who said Video games didnt incite violence? ;)
Posted by dottie at March 15, 2005 10:15 AM