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[Neonivek]

Many RPG games are crap because they can be, just like movie sequels.  Cool graphics and leveling up through killing means people will buy it, no exceptions. 

You can sort of notice this by how many Commercials come out that show NO gameplay but try as HARD as they can to try to confuse you to associate it with gameplay

[HideousBeing]

You can sort of notice this by how many Commercials come out that show NO gameplay but try as HARD as they can to try to confuse you to associate it with gameplay

Seen the new CoD:6 commercial? All it shows are sequences that are either cutscenes or aren't typical gameplay and they describe it more like a movie than a game. "OH and the EXPLOSION scene?! Price was all like...boom!"

[moocowmoo]

To me this furthers the "games are art" argument. Just like books, movies, music... there is mainstream stuff expensively produced and widely consumed, but under the radar you still have people creating in the spirit of art. I have no do doubt that DF will be an enduring classic that will continue to inspire and entertain for a long time.

Thank you, Tarn!

[Shima]

I think, the biggest problem here with games these days, is they're making them like movies.  Loud, bombastic, pushing moral envelopes and trying to drum up graphics, shallow yes/no/whatever choices (If even included), and cutscenes.

I don't want a damn movie, dammit, I want a game, something fun to PLAY, not something to bloody WATCH.  And that doesn't even start to go into how playing a movie isn't nearly as potentially fluid as playing a game.

[Kagus]

I'm just jumping into the middle of this here, so expect my opinion to be uninformed and poorly-timed.


But it could be said that movie-style games can be enjoyable on their own merits.  For instance, I found what little I played of Max Payne and its sequel to be quite captivating.  It's just a matter of knowing what it is you're trying to make.

For instance, if you're trying to create a movie-like game, you should focus on building a compelling story with interesting characters, and to try and make the action scenes as fluid as possible to keep the flow going.  What you shouldn't be spending your time on is creating vast environments, regardless of how interesting or uninteresting they may be.

Conversely, a sandbox game should be focusing on providing you with a large plot of sand in varying colors and densities, and then dumping all sorts of toys on you with which to manipulate the sand.  You don't care about how the sand was made, who put it there, or whether or not it's going to be turned into an office building in a few weeks if you don't sign this petition.  The only thing you might care about is if the cat's pissed in it lately, but even that is secondary to all the cool things you can do with sand when it's wet.


I think the main problem is that game companies have gotten into their heads that linearity is an objectively bad thing.  It's not.  A linear game is exactly what it is, linear.  There are good linear games, and bad linear games.  Just as there are good games about Romans and bad games about Romans.  It's merely an aspect of the game as a whole.

Because of this stigma, they seem to be adding sandbox elements as a sort of blanket strategy, putting in partial exploration where it really doesn't belong.  A sandboxy linear game is generally just as bad as a linear sandbox game...  It just misses the point, and ends up half-assing the whole deal.


And, furthermore, there's the issue of taste.  Since this is a creative medium, there's really very little objective labeling about it.  There are of course people who really like the big, flashy games that will provide you with any sort of aid you might need, while still delivering tried-and-true gameplay methods that you can get right into.  Just as there are people who, like me, eagerly await the possibility of seeing a 'U', a '~', and an '@', and knowing that you've just set someone's large intestine on fire by yelling at it.


Different people will want to play different games for different reasons...  And applying objective reasoning to a subjective topic has always been a recipe for disagreement.

I like Dwarf Fortress.  I would probably not like Dragon Age.  There are plenty of people who feel exactly the opposite.


So, yeah...   In summary; Max Payne was badass, burning intestines are awesome, and people think I'm off my rocker.  Deal with it.

[Default Settings]

I would not say that games got that much worse lately, the vast majority of games has always been crap and will always be crap.

There are still some gems in that crap heap, but it becomes increasingly harder to sift through the growing crap pile while the also growing advertisement budgets do their best to distract you.

[Innominate]

Dwarf Fortress is a diamond in the rough. I read through the dwarf raws for the next version Toady posted a while ago. The sheer amount of customisable detail is mind-boggling. I think I can some it up like this: the eyebrows are fricking entities in their own right. If you wanted to you could create a caste of albino, hairless dwarves subservient to your other dwarves and use them exclusively for hauling. The fingernails can be used for attacks. Not the hands, but the actual fingernails. This is unprecedentedly awesome. Thank you, Tarn!

As people have said in this thread, freedom and non-linearity are not recipes for instant fun. Many classic games do not let you fly to some uninhabited planet and live in a swamp while learning from a fuzzy green puppet, yet KOTOR was brilliant nonetheless. Games are intended to entertain. If you can make a game about watching paint dry and people have fun playing it, that's a success. If you make a game about an epic journey to save society from some generic evil and nobody likes it, it's a failure.

I don't presume to speak for Toady, but in my mind the destiny of Dwarf Fortress is emergent narrative. That is, stories which arise as a result of smaller elements interacting in an unpredictable way. You could make an entire game about 7 dwarves stranded on a tundra as a blizzard howls outside, but for DF this is just one of innumerable possibilities. I can't wait until the later arcs, when we get to direct the future of our dwarven civilisation at large, when you have to balance the competing loyalties and interests of dozens of factions. Basically copy and paste the DF Talk transcripts to fill out the rest of what I want to see. I find myself pulled to DF again and again, an unassuming game populated by ASCII creatures with more history than most RPG characters. That's what I call a game.

[Neonivek]

I would not say that games got that much worse lately

Actually on the contrary in terms of average quality games have been going up. That is because in the advent of the internet you can't get away with horrible games anywhere close to as much as before. (This isn't oppinion)

In terms of the number of great games however, I personally think the number is going down. (This is oppinion)

So yes we are getting less bad games now. We arn't getting as many great games either.

[Draco18s]

While I have nothing against "games as art" I have issues with "art-games that aren't games."  Games have a few basic requirements in order to be considered "games," one of which is interactivity (and "press X to not die" doesn't fulfill that).  Games also need rules and challenges.  Beating up monsters might involve both ("casting spells uses mana" and "you lose if you die") but rarely a game that has that as its meaningful interaction is considered a game (Epic Fantasy Battle is, but in a different way, its actually a puzzle game: you don't rest and heal after every fight and "level ups" happen when the game says they happen; the puzzle is figuring out how to proceed through each section while taking the least damage, then fighting the boss (more life left: easier fight, but still another puzzle), and while not completely deterministic, there's a very small random element).

Eventually a game that has no challenge (or has too much challenge) or has no meaningful interaction ceases to be "fun."  And while "fun" is hard to define or quantify, everyone knows when they're not having it.

This sort of thinking once almost destroyed gaming, and it does seem to be resurfacing, though in a lesser form... for now. Now all we need is another ET...

Its coming.  Don't worry about it.  We're nearing the tipping point where the gaming industry is spending all of their time and money developing the graphics/voices/music without spending much time on game play and story.  It has to do with how powerful our computers are with rending highly detailed 3D graphics, at some point games will be devoting 99% of their energy on this factor so that it's "the best ever" and end up with not-a-game, like ET.

Unfortunately this wasn't the only factor at work back in the 80s.  For the industry to collapse again, the same studio will have to produce numerous Not-A-Games, and every other studio will have to do the same.  After about 2 years of there being no "game" content to our professional games your average gamer will have caught on and will stop buying big title games.  A year later the studios will bankrupt themselves trying to figure out what's wrong (having released several more Not-A-Game titles trying to entice their sheep).

[Neonivek]

Well I do admit there is all the parts available for another crash: Console Wars, Bad BAD games, Saturated market

Though for some reason I don't see that happening. It would be like having a movie crash.

[Protactinium]

I stand by my statement that parts of DA:O are absolute crap and the developer(s) who spent the time making believable camel toe for the female characters and authorized the shallow dating-sim aspect of the game which involved giving crap to someone until they love you is 1. retarded, and 2. breeding another generation of kids with no imagination and will continue to bitch about how they are nice people giving tons of shit to girls/boys without actually putting in emotional involvement because much like their lack of emotional involvement with their DA:O characters, they are not emotionally involved with girls/boys/life in general.

The media and art we watch and look at and read and play shape our cultures, our personalities, our social values.
But they are hardly the only things that do. It's cool if you design a game that makes you consider things, like Metal Solid 2 does at the end, and it's an awesome way to spread ideas and teach people those things. But the primary places for people to learn about emotions and love and how to treat others are not video games (hint: it's parents/guardians/caretakers).

My mom had no problem buying me my first console video game, Grand Theft Auto 3, yet I was at the time and still am a pacifist. I had the capacity to understand when I was 10 that just because it's fun to shoot random people in trenchcoats saying "My mother's my sister!" in the game, it's a wholly wrong thing to do in real life.

If the kids nowadays have learned that relationships are only about physical and material matters, it's not DA:O's fault. They didn't help the situation, but they're not responsible for making misguided kids into good people. They did not "breed" the generation of kids with no imaginations.

[Draco18s]

It'll happen, I can see it slowly progressing.  It'll probably take another 10 years or more, but its there.

In fact, a good example is Left 4 Dead 2.  One of the things that was promised with it (which was promised for L4D1) was the concept of varying paths from safe room to safe room that were random on map-load (that is, every game would have a semi-unique path).  L4D1 obviously didn't have it, though it does have a few subtle random elements (I know of a room that is either accessible or not, via garage door on...NM3, I became aware of it after managing to end up inside after a failed hunter pounce and was unable to leave).

So far I have not found a single instance of this in any of the official Valve maps for Left 4 Dead 2.  In fact, I can't even find any of the subtle changes either (in fact, it appears as if weapons/health aren't random any more either...).

And while I still think that L4D2 is worth buying, the more I play the more I am aware that the major difference between the two is a graphical upgrade.  The new SI are neat, but they fill a niche that needed to be filled (anti-corner camping).  The new dynamic weather effects I love (and find it a shame that only Hard Rain takes advantage of it).  The new crescendo events are also well created, but I'm almost certain that they are doable in L4D1 without any major code rewrites.

I am happy to pay Valve for what was given, but I am disappointed that I still don't have what I really want.

Basically I'm at the point which I won't be pre-ordering games anymore.  I will still buy some, sure, but I will wait to find out the difference between what was promised and the reality.

Oh, on the topic of DA:O, if you're not playing as a mage, you're doing it wrong (mages are the most powerful player class, archer the weakest).

[Neonivek]

Ohh yeah I forgot all about the fact that game releases and sequels are going closer together.

If that trend continues I can entirely see burnt out market.

[Kagus]

Actually, I noticed the path changes even in the L4D2 demo.  There will indeed be slight changes now and again.

However they aren't particularly noticeable.  For instance, in the first level of the Parish, you have three different paths after the cafe.  One goes through the back of the cafe itself, the other two need to be accessed down the street.  These entrances will either be open or blocked (by a brick wall, no less) every round.

I'm not saying that these are significant changes, absolutely not.  You're basically just offered a couple different choices for getting past the same building.  But the concept is still there, and it is implemented.  Not very well, and not in any sense where you'd be able to easily look up from your zombie-smashing and say "oh, hey, we can't go that way", but it's still there.

The tricky part is just that...  It's exceptionally difficult to notice small changes when you're being hounded by a pack of rabid zombies.


It also has loot locations with semi-randomized pickups, but that was probably in the original as well.

[Shima]

It'll happen, I can see it slowly progressing.  It'll probably take another 10 years or more, but its there.

In fact, a good example is Left 4 Dead 2.  One of the things that was promised with it (which was promised for L4D1) was the concept of varying paths from safe room to safe room that were random on map-load (that is, every game would have a semi-unique path).  L4D1 obviously didn't have it, though it does have a few subtle random elements (I know of a room that is either accessible or not, via garage door on...NM3, I became aware of it after managing to end up inside after a failed hunter pounce and was unable to leave).

Makes me glad to see others share the want and vision of a new crash.  BUT I do feel I need to correct something here... I know that garage, and it's not actually randomly open, it's a spawn point for hordes; when any zombie spawns in there, the door magically disappears.