Quote:
|
Originally Posted by JinnKai
Man I'm a gamer at heart and anything that improves the industry is definitely in my best interests. This guy sure has a lot of BAD arguments, though.
|
Sure he's jumps to some conclusions, but he also has good points.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by JinnKai
It really doesn't sound like this guy has tried to program AI or even studied game theory very much. There's entire research fields devoted to the study of games and their overall "funativity". One of the more important discussions is precisely this. It's actually EASIER to develop ungodly AI than stupid AI. Give the NPC's knowledge of everything.. every entity, it's viewport, its movement, its size, etc. They'll never miss, because they have 100% perfect aim. Anyone who has played against expert Counter-Strike bots has seen this.. they know where you are long before you even know they exist, and they one shot-kill every time. As soon as you start to do REALISTIC AI, you have to start calculating what it should know when, how accurate it should be, etc.. etc.. Furthermore, you ALWAYS want AI to be "challenging, but beatable." Otherwise, no one would play. Remember, people play games to have fun, and part of having fun is winning at least SOME of the time. Introduce other game design concepts like convexities, and you can interest the gamer even more.
EXACTLY. I think this is a very important point, and I think it defeats his whole argument. I'd MUCH rather have game developers focus on MULTIPLAYER than Artificial Intelligence design. Why? Becuase humans are fare more confusing, diverse, and challenging than any computer-generated human can ever be. I rarely play single-player games anymore, because no matter how intelligent the AI is, it doesn't compare to a well-trained and practiced human.
|
I think his desire is that if a game is 'next generation' then it should be next generation in more than just a graphical aspect. I agree with you that a human player is infinitely more interesting to play against than an AI. (Although, in many RTSes I play, many people are trying to emulate a computer with perfect build orders.)
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by JinnKai
This one is just entirely silly.. there are clearly defined sets of genres, and there are games for all of them. The fact that they're not available on the new consoles is a twofold nonpoint: these games are still under development, as not every game releases with the console. Furthermore, popular games are determined by the MARKET. I don't think I'd be that interested in playing the "spy game" he's talking about. And I tell you what -- the hundreds of marketing and game-interests surveys that major producers do every year tell a different story about what people in general think is a good game. If these small genres he described were popular, there would be more games developed for them. Look at Katamari Damacy, for example.
|
I disagree here. Marketing and game interest surveys cause publishers to avoid innovation and become risk adverse. Publishers want to cater to the money, err people, but even the people can't imagine what's over the horizon. That's why even though something as interesting as the GBA link up to the Gamecube was interesting, only 3 or so games took advantage of it. And I fear that the same thing will happen with the Revolution. It's quite a catch-22. Publishers are unwilling to adopt a new technology until gamers show a willingness to use it, and gamers are unwilling to use it until they see a publisher create a game that takes full advantage of it.
I'm reading 'Ten Faces of Innovation' by Tom Kelley from IDEO. His opinion is that most consumers can state that they want something faster, prettier, better, but that for true innovation, you have to get away from them.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by JinnKai
WTF? I'll take my car-stealing, cop killing, prostitute smashing gang member game over that ANY day.
|
Fair enough, but someone out there likes Dr. House and wouldn't mind playing him. The game industry can touch on any number of subjects and can fill any sort of niche. How else do you explain Michelle Kwan's Skating? Lego Adventure Island? Redneck Rampage? Nancy Drew Mysteries? There exists a game out there for everyone. Publishers willing to seep into those niches have the potential to tap into some markets.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by JinnKai
And I call BULLSHIT on this statistic. I've seen tons of demographic studies in my Game Design classes, and none of them even come near his overzealous approximation. Without a source, this is like saying that 3/4 of all statistics are made up.
|
I agree here. Statistics need references.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by JinnKai
This point is spot on, and I'll leave it. However, he shot himself in the foot later with..
He's obviously never studied advertising or marketing. People don't want teeny little pictures of what's going on in the game. That's what the BACK of the box is for. The front has to catch your eye and trigger a name-response. "Hey, I recognize that eye.. that's PERFECT DARK!" *flips box over*.. "Oh whoa, it looks neat.." My own personal first law of advertising is that you have got to grab their attention immediately, and game-scenes cropped to a 5 x 6 or smaller size to fit the front of a DVD/CD box isn't going to cut it.
|
I agree with your point, but having had to make marketing and advertising screenshots, I have to state that I hate marketing and advertising for the bullshit they ask us to generate.
The other point to consider is that most marketing and advertising is created 6 months before the release of a console game, because that's how long it takes to run it through the process of approvals and whatnot. You're lucky if you have an alpha build and can get images that don't suck at that point.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by JinnKai
This argument doesn't even follow. Having strict game rating systems does not prevent any type of game from being created. It only ensures a game is correctly labelled based on its' content. It doesn't *PREVENT* anything above PG-13 from being made, it just makes it less likely to be produced. Just like movies, there is LESS of a market for hardcore adult games, and so market forces drive this, not game design companies or ratings administrations. The "emotional plea" at the end to make you feel this is worthless, because having an AO rating has nothing to do with banning movies above PG-13.
|
You're right about market forces. And that his statement is very much a play to emotion. His prior statement is accurate, but is a disjointed thought. And his conclusion about Wal-mart brings up a point that is more widespread than just ESRB ratings. It's the fact that Wal-mart has a lot of power because of its extensive distribution scheme.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by JinnKai
Solid point. Nothing to say here.
|
Ditto. He should look at companies like Limelife, which is focusing on females.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by JinnKai
This argument, again, reeks of no education into true game design. This is part of a "convexity" of difficulty. "Save-anywhere" savegames make the game MUCH easier than it could be otherwise. Imagine, if you will, that you can save at any given microsecond of the game. You know that a hard boss is coming up, so you save every second into the battle until you make a bad move. You just restore the save from a second ago, and try again until you get it right. This defeats the entire challenge of the boss, as you can break it down into scripted "one button combos" instead of the seven-move combo toss that you were supposed to be able to use. The further apart you make the saves, the more challenging you can make a game. This, coming from the guy who wanted more challenge in his games. Obviously, this has to be tempered with realism (two saves throughout the entire game), but making MORE savepoints just dices an otherwise enthralling, challenging game into "who can restore saves more quickly.."
|
You're right that quicksaving marginalizes boss battles (lord knows I used it many a time), but there's also a point to be made that a good game designer place the save points at GOOD locations. Some of those designers out there, I swear, are just throwing feces at a wall and seeing what sticks.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by JinnKai
This is absolutely garbage, and reeks to me AGAIN of an uneducated bafoon. Show me ANY modern hardware that can dynamically create and store game entities without any preloading, and I'll be amazed. When you're dealing with hundreds of megs of sprites, meshes, animations, AI every second, you need to have some of it in quickaccess RAM, not stored on some slow-accessing CD-ROM. His "solution" would be to make video games like a buffering WMV. Ever tried to buffer an WMV over the internet on 56k? It doesn't really preload anything, and tries to load as it plays. What this results in is a bandwidth chokepoint.. you watch about 6 seconds of the movie and then it stutters and tries to buffer some more. If you let the movie buffer BEFORE you watch it, it's decidely smooth and uninterrupted. I'd much rather wait 30 seconds for a load screen than have to watch my game stutter for 5 seconds everytime it needs to reload some entities.
|
Right, he's neglecting to note that NES was a solid state storage device as opposed to the optical media that everyone adopted in the PS2 generation.
But, then again, the quality of your coders can drastically affect your load times. Some games have badly placed load screens, extremely long load times and frequent load times. Many engineers these days are spoiled by the gigs of space that they are privy to on next gen machines and abuse that space with abandon. GTA has a long load at the beginning, but you never see another loading screen for a long time, if ever. In contrast, Stuntman has redundant loading screens that appear every time you start a level, even if you're just replaying the level you just attempted. I'm not really arguing his point here, maybe just blindsiding his point.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by JinnKai
Does he want speed or quality? This man just can't decide. Especially if you somehow expect the game to not load ANYTHING, you're not going to get quality sound assets. The more of these "different" sound clip assets that you add to a game like Madden, the bigger the game and the more you need to preload to ensure continuity. The re-used soundclips are annoying, sure.. but programming dynamic ones? ENORMOUS in complexity and resources. Until we master real-time sound generation from text (with something other than a robotic voice) this is a pipe dream. We have to stick with pre-generated audio, just as we stick with pre-animated graphics.
|
Agreed, but I do also agree that it's incredibly annoying.
Whew, I'm tired. JinnKai, you type too much.
I'm not trying to argue with you directly. It's just that it seemed like you were saying, "the emporer has no clothes," and I just wanted to say, "well, I think he's wearing a loin cloth."
I'll continue on the other points later.