Old school
(Well this post turned out long… just skip to the last paragraph if you have A.D.D. like me.)
For a while now, I’ve been in the grips of nostalgia. Call me an old kook, but there’s something missing from today’s entertainment, especially in regards to games. Now don’t get me wrong, Ive been hooked on Fallout 3 for a while now and games like Dawn of War 2 and Left4Dead make me glad we’re in our day and age. The thing is, I don’t get the same kind of thrill I used to from trying new games.
Maybe I’m just cynical, but it feels that the love has gone out of game-making. I’m not talking about each individual’s love for their craft in the great production process, but rather the will to create something you want, rather than something that’ll make the most profit. I’m sure most everyone working on a project loves it, but the fact remains: it exist to make money.
Now I can hear the voice at the back of my head saying “Well yeah, but people wanted to make money back in the 90’s too!” It’s true, but the main difference is back then a lot of games were created by a couple of guys in a basement. Back then making a successful game was possible to almost anyone. With today’s Goliaths of game-making, two guys in a basement don’t have as big a chance as they used to. Games used to feel like an independent restaurant down the street: unique and cozy. These days, it’s like a fastfood joint: thank you, come again.
Now I’ve been talking mostly about videogames, but the same holds true to a lot of other mediums. Take Pen and Paper roleplaying games. I own Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition as well as the newest edition of World of Darkness. They’re pretty, polished and easy to understand. But that’s the thing, you can tell that a horde of people worked on it to make it this presentable and desirable. My current favourite roleplaying game is Labyrinth Lord. It’s basically a remake of the original 1970’s Dungeons&Dragons. And did I mention it’s free? I purchased a printed copy and I’m in love with it. It’s simple. Not the kind of simple where everything is explained for you so you don’t have to think. Simple in the way that there are many ommissions that will simply have to be covered by your own imagination and creativity.
I play games to let my imagination run wild. While newer games are still good, they don’t require you to imagine anything because there’s a billion polygons, rules and tutorials to do that for you. I miss games that didn’t tell you how to enjoy their game. They just showed it to you and said “Have fun!”
Stumble it!
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:58 am
There still are plenty of tiny little game companies out there (shameless plug http://www.world-domination-llc.com/ ). Actually making any money at it, that’s the tricky part, but really, there’s always been a few notable behemoths publishing everything you’ve heard of. It’s just that they cycle around every so often.
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:47 am
I have to agree with you regarding the definite change in the gaming industry. I used to play D&D back in the early 80s, loving the simplicity of the system and the general coffeehouse feel of it. Whether there were two or ten of us delving into some demon-infest dungeon, it was great fun. One of my favorite games, the Middle Earth Role-playing Game, had a couple of charts, a few spells and a great background. And yet we’d spend weekends never rolling a single dice; just RPing. I miss that these days. Now I don’t even recognize D&D. And I certainly don’t like the way it has ‘progressed.’ Miniatures, maps, and ridiculous bookkeeping just don’t seem fun to me. And the pabulum that they shovel out weekly to ‘support’ the system just makes me angry. I guess that’s why my poison of choice right now is Amber Diceless. Two books, very few rules, and a hell of a lot of fun. Even my video game choices have gone old-school, favoring SMT: Persona 4 and games like it over the new, sparkly games. I want something with soul to it, not empty glitter. Which is why I love Edemia. It has a great soul and that comes out in every strip. You two really get ‘it.’ And my thanks goes out to you both :)
March 23rd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Otterpoet:
I’ve never heard of Amber Diceless, I guess I should look it up. I still like the 4th edition D&D, but mostly from a technical standpoint. It’s a very solid system for what they aimed to do with it. The problem is that I don’t like their goal. It feels too much like the type of micro-management you’d find in MMO’s.
I’m not sure I could get into a system that uses no dice at all, though. I just love dice too much. XD
And thanks for the praise. Both June and I are very happy to know we have supportive fans like you. :)
March 24th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Heh, yeah, Amber is a fantastic game, as is Everway; another dice-less game. They provide you with an amazing flexibility, but can take a little getting used to (and are certainly not for groups with Munchkins & Rule-Lawyers). However, they’re positively great for use with PBEMs. I use a mix of both systems for my regular game : http://www.gamera.cc/wiki/index.php?n=TheDarkestHour.HomePage. Unfortunately, both systems fell victim to the RPG-crash of the 90s’.
Dice games are always fun (like the d100-based ones the best). And yet, I sometimes miss the tactile experience of having that long forgotten d4 ‘caltrop’ go through my foot ;-) Ah, good times.
You’re right though. Fourth edition is technically sound, but IMHO favors the MMO feel far too much. There are parts I really like, and others I can’t stand. I guess that’s what GM fiat is for :)
March 25th, 2009 at 8:14 am
De un: spelunky http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=4017.0
de deux: http://www.eegra.com/pages/show/title/04_03_2009_Feature__100_Hot_Titties/ un article qui dit pas mal la même affaire dans d’autres mots auquel je m’identifie bien.
April 5th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
thats what flash games are for
April 14th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
I agree with you on some points, but you have to think about the environment in which games are being developed nowadays. Games in an earlier era, yeah, could be put through by a few guys working in their basements and turn a profit. Nowadays, though, they go up as indie titles and are nowhere near as likely to get spotted and picked up, even if they’re quality titles like Cave Story (http://www.miraigamer.net/cavestory/), Spelunky (see earlier link), or Iji (http://www.remar.se/daniel/iji.php) (all freeware in this case, but you can still drum up a few good sold ones here and there).
This is partly due to the fact that if you want to put out a game with visual complexity–a high-poly 3D game, which is the vast majority of the market nowadays–it’s exponentially more work than putting out a 2D one. And a lot more work goes into high budget titles in general nowadays than was necessary in earlier generations of hardware and software. Since it’s exponentially more work, it’s an exponentially larger investment on the part of, well, everybody involved–financially and otherwise. And since it’s an exponentially larger investment, you’re more likely to see people playing it safe with games than in earlier days, which means sticking closer to formula. It’s simply not prudent business management to do otherwise too much. All it takes is one bad big title nowadays to sink a middling company.
This, by the way, is one of the reason I like to keep my eyes on the portables market. They have much shorter dev cycles and much smaller budgets, so the developers are given more wiggling room to try out different things. My DS has gotten more play than anything else I own, including my PC.
You can also, as I mentioned, hunt for developers who try to keep things in the older styles while still employing new technologies (or just put out really good stuff). I recently read an interview with somebody over at Stardock explaining their design philosophy behind Sins of a Solar Empire, an excellent space RTS. They kept their budget low by keeping their necessary resources low, both on the processor end and on the art end, which meant they didn’t need to be quite as cautious in the development of the game (or defend it as rabidly as some other companies defend their titles from piracy). The end result is a game that, while not technically or visually stunning, is a very solid play and just plain good fun.
The thing is, though, that philosophy isn’t going to catch on while we’ve got this polygon count arms race going on–nor would it work everywhere due to the aforementioned graphical arms race. Once we hit the point where photorealism is basically accomplished, just like what happened in classical painting, we’ll see a push for greater levels of abstraction and more focus on what the content IS (the gameplay) rather than what the content REPRESENTS (people or objects), since it won’t be really really impressive that your character’s nose hairs wave with the same breeze that’s pushing the tree limbs in the background–everybody’ll be able to do that. And everybody’ll be able to do that with relative ease, meaning less time will be spent animating and coding said nose hairs, and more will be spent on, say, writing, or level design.
I’ve heard two separate lectures on the evolving games industry from my professors here at college along these lines–more about the budget sizes and development cycles than the predicted abstraction revolution (that I picked up somewhere on these here interwebs). It’s relevant stuff, seeing as I’m gonna need to be getting a co-op in the field sometime soon…
As for the tabletop industry… well, that’s under a whole different set of pressures I’m not all that familiar with. As I understand it, though, 4.0 is a lot more streamlined from 3.5 so that it’s easier to use. That, to me, makes sense–not just in the sense of, ‘we need a broader market and our current system requires a Mathematics minor’, but also in the sense of making it easier for a DM to focus on the content of their own campaigns and worry less about the aforementioned bookkeeping. I mean, I completely wing it with my campaign group (running 3.5 basically just from the SRD and homebrew), but it’s definitely not easy–and probably not as satisfying for the players. In that sense, I can see how having a simpler basic system (and therefore not requiring as much winging it) would be appealing.
As for fake’s comment about Flash games–hey, there’s a reason Kongregate gets such ridiculous hit counts, and has such a huge number of users. ‘S a network of people making games… to make games. Or to get themselves known, in which case–still has to be fun, or at least pretty or logically impressive.
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Heh. Wow. Either there wasn’t much conversation here in the first place, or I just torped it with that giant post. That’s too bad.
April 24th, 2009 at 8:39 am
Sildraug,
Sorry for not replying to your megapost. I was planning too, but I really didn’t know what to add. You make a lot of very good points.
You’re right about the heavy costs of blockbuster games and the need for prudence over innovation. My main problem is that as games “evolve” in that direction, they are becoming empty (although very pretty) shells. I just miss games that left some of it’s content to the gamer’s imagination. I don’t need every single detail explained to me.
For example, I recently purchashed the indie game Zeno Clash. It’s not the best game I ever played, but it’s so imaginative and original that I just keep coming back for more. The main story is intriguing and surreal. Not all the details are given, and that’s what I love about it.
Now take very old games like the original Legend of Zelda. You are thrown into this magical realm with little-to-no explanation. Yet the world was so rich with life that the gamer would imagine the world as something much bigger than a bunch of low-res pixels.
Maybe I’m just not playing the right recent games, but I simply feel that having an active imagination simply doesn’t matter anymore when you’re gaming.