« Robert Anton Wilson R.I.P | Main | What happens when the U.S. Empire collapses? »
March 3, 2007
Gaming Industry v.s. gameplay
The games industry is in a weird space right now.
At first glance it would seem to be healthy, profitable, on top of its 'game'.
There is a problem though. The point has been made before that modern games, while they look great, can be frustrating, pointless or even boring to play.
On reason for this is that so much resources go into making sure the game looks great. Game companies even go as far as releasing pre-rendered movies claiming that they are the actual in-game experience.
Lies!
The funny thing is that rendering engines have come a long way. For example there is a rendering engine that is offered to independent developers and studios (ie. thos with no major distribution contracts) for $200. The C4 game engine looks pretty good.
There may be a lot wrong with it for the fussy fan boys of full-screen anit-aliasing or 12 pass poly-shading or whatever.
All that shit doesn't matter. If the gameplay is poor then all the rest is just turd polishing.
The point is that there are game engines out there that are cheap and do all the necessary basics.
Why aren't there more games with great gameplay?
Years ago there was a game called Deus Ex. This game responded to the way you played by changing the way people interacted with you. In other words your actions had consequence.
When I downloaded the demo and played as I would normally play in a first person shooter my colleagues in the game (your colleagues are all A.I.) treated me like a pariah. It was great!
OK, the graphics left a lot ot be desired and the actual way you interacted with the world was quite clunky, but the gameplay shone through despite that.
Most game companies now spend all those years of development work in writing a new game engine. You've got to ask yourslef that after a certain level are they game companies or game engine development companies?
The distinction is huge.
Back in the day, you would send a game company your money, money order, cheque in the post and they would post you back anything from a box full of cut-up bits of cardboard and bits of plastic to a spiral bound book explaining how to play their particular brand of soldiers.
They were real game companies. Most of their time was spent worrying about how the game would work and then they polished the game pieces for distribution.
Nowadays, that is all turned on its head. All the bits are polised first and then they sit around wondering how to create a compelling game.
bleh.
People still play chess, draughts, snakes and ladders, dice games, card games and will continue to do so for many hundreds of more years because the game is stripped down to its bare essentials.
I'd love to spend some time writing a game using the C4 game engine and I might even download the demo to see what it can do.
Meanwhile for your delectation some alternate game developers:
My favourite - Experimental Gameplay Project
IGDA - Independent Game Developers Association
Posted by dottie at March 3, 2007 1:26 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.5thpercentile.com/blog/mt-tb.cgi/24