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The Development Bomb
July 31st 2002, 21:29 CEST by Talion Over the years, the time required to develop an action computer game (and other types as well, but the action genre is easiest to trace back) has steadily increased. In the side-scroller days, making a game took a few months. Now it takes a few years. We all know this, but the question must be raised: how long will it take in 2005? 2010? In 1968 Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb, predicting that overpopulation would make life miserable in the 1980s and untenable in the 1990s. Well, that didn't happen. Now it serves to warn us about extrapolating from current trends. However, the book failed in its predictions not in terms of the population increases but in other areas. Ehrlich did not anticipate that agricultural advances would cause a food increase that outstripped the population increase. Enough about Ehrlich. Games take a long time to make. That's a fact we all understand. However, they have been taking longer and longer. Max Payne took four years, DNF is taking heaven knows how long, and it looks like Doom III will take four years (starting its development after Quake 3's release, though the content developers did work on Q3:TA for a while). TF2 is MIA, and if George Broussard (or was it Scott Miller, can't remember) is to be believed, Valve is secretly working on Half-Life II. Whatever they're doing, it's taking a long time. OK, so it takes 4 years to make a good action game. In the past it didn't take four years. Go back far enough and it took four months. Now go forward five or ten years. Now how long does it take? If I was actually willing to do any research for a PC topic, which I am not, I would graph the trend and use that to make a guess. Since research is out, I will pull a number of out my lazy bum and say we could be looking at 6 or 8 year development times. Could this be? Maybe, but it seems ridiculous. The economics of 4 year development cycles are bad enough. 8 years is when it becomes a philanthropic rather than capitalistic endevour. Where and how will the trend halt? According to the lovable 3DR tag team, it takes 4 years to make a Great Game, and since everyone seems to be doing it we'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Doesn't the 4 year number stem from the need to outdo the previous generation of games? How will 3DR outdo themselves for Duke 5 or whatever they end up doing? How many years will it take? Naturally there are exceptions to this rule. American McGee's Alice took about a year to develop. Development time figures are hard to get and as I said I'm busting my butt here, but I'm sure there are other quick-to-market FPS. However, they remain exceptions, and the A-list companies continue to lengthen their development cycles. Where will it end? |
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Petri, in #50 Basically, what that means is that if the publisher has already spent 4 million on the game, then it's better to spend one more million to finish the game (and hopefully recoup a lot of money), than to cut the project and record 4 million loss. What if the game is complete horseshit and you're just going to waste another million dollars? Daikatana is an easy example, but you could point the finger at every other game that looked shaky half way through development and didn't recoup its costs in the end. That would be about 80% of them though, dammit. Game publishing seems more and more like a shotgun lottery. Get enough out there, somebody will like one of them and it'll pay for the losers. All this talk of not having design docs is weird and scary. Without them, how do you agree on milestones with the publisher? And what if you start diverging from the doc in the name of the elusive 'fun'? Writing games seems like an all-round pain in the ass. |
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#92 Yes, but do they have to be? I'm not saying Valve's process or Half-Life was perfect, because neither was, but it is something to think about. The final product should be evidence enough to illustrate that the process Valve used was quite successful(for them). If you make a great game, people will come. Couple that with a great marketing strategy and even more people will come. Half Life had both. The disturbing part for me is when a great game like System Shock 2 comes out, and plainly displays a solid design process, yet still falls flat of its face in terms of sales. Maybe a large portion of these types of failures are indicative of a bad publishing deal for the developer itself, in terms of how much marketing money the publisher is willing to fork over to keep the game prominently displayed for any length of time once it's released? If Design Documents are urban legend, as has been said elsewhere, does it really surprise anyone that developement processes are yeilding ever increasing production cycles? Sorry, but I have a difficult time believing that a single player, storyline driven game, that could challenge or rival Half Life' success, cannot be made. Surely there is an ounce of creativity left somewhere in the game devlopement community. ...on the outside looking in, banned by an epiphany at an EB store....
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Video games are violent because of their target audience : typically young males who want to compete with each other. Why does this keep coming up when everyone here knows the bulk of the top-sellers have nothing to do with guns and waves of bad guys spraying blood? It sure does sell, and it sure can be fun, but it's very absent from a lot of the games that do the best, yet all over the ones that do the worst. What do people like about Mario? He stomps on people with a big green shoe and flies around with a cape or a tanuki suit; he eats a flower and plinks little tiny fireballs that make cute noises. And when a solid shooter comes around that's different (NOLF or SS2), what do they get? Poor sales. That may appear on its face to be a risk. But a failed game that's different doesn't fail just because it's different. Both NOLF and SS2 were a breath of fresh air, and I love them for that, but they don't have that "best foot forward quality" that Half-Life did, and the frustration to cool stuff ratio could run pretty low at times. That really cuts into word-of-mouth. I think a "different" game can fall on its face harder if its flawed, or if too few sacrifices are made to the dark and hungry gods of marketing, but I don't think that a "different" game is a flawed design in and of itself. Plenty of clone games fall by the wayside too. I do know this though: not being different is a good way to marginalize yourself. It might be a nice big fat margin like FPS, or you might be a king, like Blizzard. But the less you set yourself apart, the more chances others have to trump you. Blizzard has been pretty damn lucky so far, but UT/Q3A is a prime example. UT2K3 is set to be the dominant deathmatch style game. Don't you think id would like to be on the shorter dev cycle that a MP only game would allow? They want to keep their small team, so they can only work on one project at a time. They don't want to compete with UT2K3; they can sell much more if they do something else. Epic's ready to rumble, so id has to go for that horror niche where there's weaker competition. Not everyone is that smart or so capable of adapting though. Current market value of the Max Payne IP according to a comparison of the market capitalization of Take Two pre- and post- sale: approx. -$185,000,000.
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Warren Marshall: Medal of Honor. Lots of scripting, great looking levels, very solid game when released, etc. What happened? It got a lot of press for a short period of time and is now off the radar. Why? Hell, it was being hailed as the next Half-Life by many reviews. I'm not sure what you mean by radar, but since its release in January, Medal of Honor has remained one of the ten best-selling games in the U.S. That's nearly seven months so far, easily making it ome of the top-selling FPS of the last few years, I'd think. It's also, according to Gamespy's stats, the second-most popular FPS online, behind the Goliath known as Counter-Strike, another position it has held consistently for some months now. As you alluded, it also got great reviews upon release, so I guess I wonder whose radar it's fallen off of. And for what it's worth, I never finished the single player game. Too much scripting, too much "rail shooter" for my taste. "I don't bemoan the great paste" - LPMiller
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And it fell off everyone's radar. They're not piss-drinking contests so much as attempts to drink as much piss as possible. There are no prizes involved, this is just a way of life for the participants.
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Where "everyone" is defined as the niche set of hardcore gamers that post here? All of Ned's statements are valid. MOH:AA is doing quite well for itself. Its not blowing the doors off of Half-Life, but it is doing quite well both in sales and in users-online. |
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Life without comprehension. They're not piss-drinking contests so much as attempts to drink as much piss as possible. There are no prizes involved, this is just a way of life for the participants.
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#102 by mrbloo What if the game is complete horseshit and you're just going to waste another million dollars? Daikatana is an easy example, but you could point the finger at every other game that looked shaky half way through development and didn't recoup its costs in the end. I guess that's one of the big issues that the publishers have to decide. Unfortunately recognizing good stuff isn't that easy. Consider for a moment... what if someone placed an 70% complete version of The Sims in front of you and you'd have to decide whether to pull the plug? That would be about 80% of them though, dammit. Game publishing seems more and more like a shotgun lottery. Get enough out there, somebody will like one of them and it'll pay for the losers. Which is the reason why we're seeing so much sequels nowadays. Betting on the safe horses and all that. All this talk of not having design docs is weird and scary. Without them, how do you agree on milestones with the publisher? And what if you start diverging from the doc in the name of the elusive 'fun'? Writing games seems like an all-round pain in the ass. Naah, working on games is mostly loads and loads of fun. Yes, it's exhausting, but the passion that is seen in development everywhere makes it all worthwhile. As to the design document stuff, the problem is that you can't just write a detailed design document and then live by it (or if you could, it would probably take as much time as writing the game since you'd have to prototype most of the stuff). More often than not, you only see the problems once you've implemented the feature... or then the hardware changes, etc. The key issue is that planning is worth gold, but plans themselves are often worthless. Managing that change is the main problem of game development. |
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#109 As to the design document stuff, the problem is that you can't just write a detailed design document and then live by it (or if you could, it would probably take as much time as writing the game since you'd have to prototype most of the stuff). It's hard to concieve the notion that design documents dont hold more weight than you seem to indicate. But, as you pointed out, the safe money is being bet on mostly sequels, which is(as you've indicated) why we are seeing the repetiton amongst the well known branded titles. I'm not trying to compare computer games to movies in this next statement, but from what little I know about the film industry, there is a script, a storyboard, and tons of other logistical items that have to be pre-planned in order to give the producer(s) any hope of sucessfully completing the project...let alone get funding approval from a major studio. Another thing that doesnt make a lot of sense, is the fact the the video game market is supposedly making money hand over fist, and damn near eclipsing the movie industry in terms of sales. Yet we continue to see developer houses shut down, and people still espouse the relative safety of sticking with sequels. Where is all of this friggin money going? The differences between the movie industry and the gaming industry aside, it just seems that with this much friggin money being made, one would think that we'd be seeing a lot more experimentation where gametypes and gameplay are concerned, or at least attempts to reproduce those things that work(Half Life). Does this all fall back to the laps of the evil publishers and marketing types? It's just hard to imagine with this much money being made that there isnt more innovation or creativity being funded that would allow someone to make that next Half Life...I dunno...meh. ...on the outside looking in, banned by an epiphany at an EB store....
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Gorgeous George: People ar sheep. Most FPS games today are real world military knock offs. People will tire of that theme someday...I hope. In much the same way as Star Wars is often blamed for the rise of the shitty summer blockbuster (and malaise of decent cinema), you could probably blame this on HalfLife as well. Instead of looking at what made HalfLife great - the scripting, the pacing, the detail, the intelligence - developers (or publishers) only saw a smaller part of the picture. Hence, we have the rise of the 'real-world' military murder simulator. OK, maybe HalfLife isn't entirely to blame for this, but I think it has played a part. I think that these military FPS' will stay in vogue for a while yet as well, given the level of interest that surrounds the US Army at the moment (for better or worse). However, I do think that this style of game will inevitably go out of fashion. It'd probably have happened a lot sooner if Halo hadn't been released exclusively on the XBox; we'd be bemoaning the amount of Halo knock-offs in circulation :) Matt Perkins: Holy shit, 1+ Million sellers all are games worthy of our time? That's a load of crap. You even mention in the post below this that people are sheep...that theory applies here. I could be wrong, but I think that George was singling these games out because they are all regarded as very important games in the history of the FPS genre, not solely because they sold well. When they come to ethnically cleanse me
Will you speak out ? Will you defend me ? Freedom of expression doesn't make it alright Trampled underfoot by the rise of the right |
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Doom, Duke 3D, Jedi Knight, Unreal, Quake, Half-Life, Halo all sold 1+ Million copies. That's 6 HL's right there. Each of those games raised the FPS genre in some way. Feel free to toss in Goldeneye too. Doom, mindless shooter 2.5d, nice atmosphere but it was all about whats next to kill Duke 3d, more detailed 2.5d shooter (with 3d movement), some decent puzzles and levels, primarily a shooter with some nice tricks, rock solid DM Jedi Knight, Star Wars is what sells this, a good game with several astonishing levels, irksome lightsaber combat and suffers from limited ai, among the first hardware accelerated games Quake, first true 3d shooter, some nice levels, very brown, single player is average and consists of run n gun Unreal, First (and only real?) competitor to Quake, lush looks, a handful of good levels, many stinky parts, severe hardware requirements Half Life, based on the quake engine heavily enhanced,, Immersion from the get go with that tram ride, you ARE Gordon, you ARE in a living working lab complex, the voice in the background, the barneys, the `oh shit its all gone to hell`, a plotline that evolved and developed rather than `demons, kill kill` or `nobody steals our chicks and lives`, consistency in level design, short level loads, variety of enemies, puzzles that were `real world` logical, many many scripted events. Why is Half Life so revered? It took all the good parts of what games did before it and did em all well, it wasnt the flashiest on the block (unreal), it didnt have the most monsters on screen (doom), it didnt have quips and one liners (duke) it didnt have the most shades of brown (quake). It played more like a sci fi/action movie rather than the other previous games which played more like the trailers to the same movie focusing on certain bits. It pulled a microsoft (unsurpring giving their background), embracing and extending their game to take everything in and creating a solid all round product, its only real flaw is the Xen levels. Halo takes everything HL did and elevates it, but since its only on the Xbox (so far) its not a fair comparison, just like comparing Midtown Madness 2 to Grand Turismo 2 isnt exactly on. System Shock three is another of those games that worked on the total package concept, a lot of people hated it for the funky `feel` of the controls and some couldnt get passed the `gummi` look of the engine. But those who got past that or never saw that got sucked into the game, Im sure there are several people reading PC who`ve played System Shock and System Shock 2 and are with me on this. Sounds, looks, shadows, lateral thinking... Hell, Half Life, System Shock 2, Thief and Deus Ex all rank up there imho on the pinacle of first person gaming when it comes to `totality`. Sure theyre not necessarily the greatest flashiest 100fps neon strobing rocket flashing hyper reality deathmatch games, but not everyone wants ANOTHER deatmatchalike... Ds Never argue with an idiot, theyll drag you down onto their level, then beat you with experience.
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Halo takes everything HL did and elevates it, Strongly disagree. Halo does a lot of things right, but it doesn't come close to Half-Life in terms of pacing, level design or scripting. "It's pretty common for pussies, dumbasses, and their families to blame their problems on vague influences like the media and society. The truth is, fuck you."
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I have to agree with Warren here... Halo was REALLY cool, but it wasn't as immersive, I didn't feel like I was there. I was just some guy in a battle suit. This post made sense in my head.
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I hate this notion of 'immersion' - maybe it's just me, but sitting in front of computer screen ruins any sense of immersion for me long before the game even starts. What are you even talking about when you talk about immersion in that way ? When they come to ethnically cleanse me
Will you speak out ? Will you defend me ? Freedom of expression doesn't make it alright Trampled underfoot by the rise of the right |
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Well immersion is just being so deeply engaged in a game -- not necessarily the feeling that you're in that game. Immersion is usually what drives people to keep playing a game for hours without end. |
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deadlock I hate this notion of 'immersion' - maybe it's just me, but sitting in front of computer screen ruins any sense of immersion for me long before the game even starts. What are you even talking about when you talk about immersion in that way ? So I imagine you find it impossible to get immersed in movies too, right? I mean, you're sitting in a theatre or on your couch ... no immersion possible there. And books? Please. You're holding the paper in your hand, reading ... no chance for immersion there. What it comes down to is one word : imagination. YF The main complaint I have with Halo is the level design. For all the copying/pasting that went on, I'm surprised people rave as loudly as they do. "It's pretty common for pussies, dumbasses, and their families to blame their problems on vague influences like the media and society. The truth is, fuck you."
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Warren: I wasn't talking about getting engrossed in something - I get engrossed in things all of the time, regardless of how realistic they are. Books, movies, computer games. I just hate this notion that you play Halflife, for example, and you're somehow 'there', you 'are' Gordon Freeman, especially when that's the criteria by which you judge a game's worth. 'Hmmmm, I don't *feel* as if half of my face has just been blown off, this game isn't worth shit'. Which seems to be to be what Matt was getting at (bearing in mind that he didn't like Halo because he wasn't immersed, he just felt like some guy in a battle suit. Which is what he was, so where does that leave his whole theory of immersion, huh ?). Maybe I just take people too literally ? Who knows, who cares and who'll remember anyway ? When they come to ethnically cleanse me
Will you speak out ? Will you defend me ? Freedom of expression doesn't make it alright Trampled underfoot by the rise of the right |
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I think for most people, immersed == engrossed. You're into what's happening, you're feeling fear, etc. "It's pretty common for pussies, dumbasses, and their families to blame their problems on vague influences like the media and society. The truth is, fuck you."
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#110 by Mank It's hard to concieve the notion that design documents dont hold more weight than you seem to indicate. Just to be clear on this, IMO planning is worth it's weight in gold. But I see the actual process of planning (thinking everything through) as more valuable than the plan itself. Things change and you simply can't anticipate every contingency and see every dependency, so it's better to try to adapt and control that change instead of closing your eyes and plowing into the wrong direction since "this was what we wrote down into the plan 2 years ago". And there's loads of must have design documents that are extremely useful, good examples would be all the mapping bible stuff, where people agree on the rules on how everyone is making the game and document things like doorway widths, target room heights, texture usage per map etc. Stuff like that rarely undergoes massive changes. However, I don't believe that you could have a single document that outlines the game so throughly and with such detail, that then any team could just execute it. Another thing that doesnt make a lot of sense, is the fact the the video game market is supposedly making money hand over fist, and damn near eclipsing the movie industry in terms of sales. Yet we continue to see developer houses shut down, and people still espouse the relative safety of sticking with sequels. Where is all of this friggin money going? The differences between the movie industry and the gaming industry aside, it just seems that with this much friggin money being made, one would think that we'd be seeing a lot more experimentation where gametypes and gameplay are concerned, or at least attempts to reproduce those things that work(Half Life). I think nowadays 10% of the games get 90% of the profits, and 50% of the games never break even. So if you don't get to the top-ten, then the chances are that your dev studio will be hurting. If you consider what a game costs to make, and then consider that it's a one out of ten chance to get a good return of investment, it's no wonder that publishers want to play it safe. I'd want to do that too if it was my money riding on the game :-) Does this all fall back to the laps of the evil publishers and marketing types? It's just hard to imagine with this much money being made that there isnt more innovation or creativity being funded that would allow someone to make that next Half Life...I dunno...meh. I'd like to get back to the "People are sheep" thing... someone out there is buying these top ten games. People vote with their money, and it looks like there's a lot of people voting for more sequels. Also, when talking about "next Half-Life" I think pretty much every developer is trying to be the next HL. It's just that making games is hard :-) |
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Darkseid, Hell, Half Life, System Shock 2, Thief and Deus Ex all rank up there imho on the pinacle of first person gaming when it comes to `totality`. I didn't think Hell was that good of a game, actually. Certainly not among that company to be sure. I beat the internet. The end guy is hard.
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It's interesting how some developers take Petri's perspective "planning is good" and others adopt the "don't bother planning too far ahead, as it'll get all hacked up and redesigned by the second month in". Mind you, I've never bothered keeping track of which developer makes more successful game, but I bet it'd be enlightening. They're not piss-drinking contests so much as attempts to drink as much piss as possible. There are no prizes involved, this is just a way of life for the participants.
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Would you rather have an FPS where everyone stood still with said guns on said maps trying to kill each other? Yay, first person Scorched Earth! That would rock! (Okay, not really). I'm not sure Half-Life would get all the credit it does if it weren't for Counterstrike. Basically they managed, through no work on their part, to get the most popular multi-player FPS ever to go along with their already successful single player game. It's kept the original on the shelves a lot longer than it would've been otherwise. |
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I don't even take CS into account when talking about Half-Life. If I *were* to consider it, it would be as a blight on the game's otherwise stellar reputation. -chris |
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Stick your nose any higher and it's likely to get clipped by a passing jetliner. Current market value of the Max Payne IP according to a comparison of the market capitalization of Take Two pre- and post- sale: approx. -$185,000,000.
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You know, I've never played a second of Counterstrike. Haven't wanted to, for that matter. Arizona Diamondbacks 2001 World Series Champions
"It's all about positioning! So assume the position!" JMCDaveL |
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Matthew - I don't think there's any arrogance in that statement... I just hate the mod, and the 400 billion clones it inspired. :P I respect abilities of the folks behind it, and obviously they hit on something that the mass market likes. And for that: more power to 'em. I'd have gone ahead with it, too. But as a side effect, they've filled gaming up for the past two years with tactical military sims, and that's very annoying. -chris |
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I lost a lot of respect for the folks behind it when they started handing out unblockable wall hacks to their buddies in high-profile clans. My name is Don Don
I am pretty Elephant Love me well! |
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Warren Marshall: I think for most people, immersed == engrossed. You're into what's happening, you're feeling fear, etc. Ohm I understand the link between immesed and engrossed and that they are sometimes the same thing (or at least, used interchangeably, even though they aren't the same thing). Like I said, I'm probably just taking Matt too literally. But that said, I do find it odd that he finds it hard to get engrossed in a game that he can't 'relate' to. As for Counterstrike keeping HalfLife alive... I don't know about that. Sure, it's popular, possibly the most popular mod ever, but I don't think it's singlehandedly kept Half Life on the shelves. Not everyone plays multiplayer - the majority of gamers don't. When they come to ethnically cleanse me
Will you speak out ? Will you defend me ? Freedom of expression doesn't make it alright Trampled underfoot by the rise of the right |
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Not everyone plays multiplayer True, but I bet by now it would've been a bargain-bin game, instead of still getting premier shelf space. Thanks to CS they cleaned up the multiplayer crowd after they'd already gone through the single-player market like a money-Hoover. |
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#123 by Shadarr Basically they managed, through no work on their part, to get the most popular multi-player FPS ever to go along with their already successful single player game. As far as I know, Valve has put loads and loads of effort into making sure the game is easy to mod, as well as supporting the user community, releasing updates, patching issues and helping people out. |
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Halo is my favorite FPS because I enjoyed the combat so much. The recharging shield, weapon limits, and the AI combined to make it a great experience for me. The music was also excellent. However, and it pains me to say it as a Bungie fan, they dropped the ball on the level design, maybe because of the X-box launch deadline. Whatever the reason, I personally may like playing Halo better but I consider Half-Life the superior game because it delivered rock solid level design, combat, AI, and scripting. System Shock 2 is a great game, but I admire it more than I enjoy playing it. The atmosphere was incredible and the story very effective, but the style of gameplay wasn't really up my alley. The stats and everything were fine. It was the extreme ammunition limitations that I found annoying. I think ultimately SS2 and its spiritual sequel, Deus Ex didn't sell well (admittedly my figures on Deus Ex come from a half-remembered conversation with G.B. or Scott Miller...one of them showed up on #planetcrap ages ago and tossed around some PC Data figures) because the gameplay is slow. Neither are action games. Half-Life, Halo, and what we conventionally think of when we say "FPS" are action games. SS2 and DX have trouble with sales because people expect to be getting a fast-paced FPS and instead find a slow, RPGish sort of game. |
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I have to agree with Petri and disagree with Shadarr. Valve put a HUGE amount of effort into the mod community in terms of their SDK, various mod-team gatherings, pretty decent unofficial support, helping to publicize mods, and so on. Almost every FPS maker throws some mod-ability over the fence these days but Valve put tons more effort than is usual, which partially explains why people are still writing Half-Life mods despite the fact that the engine is really showing its age. Also, Half-Life was hugely successful and influential long before CS was released. Yes, there's some truth to the fact that it would have disappeared sales-wise by now, and there wouldn't be approximately a billion servers listed as 'half-life' servers on GameSpy's master list, but none of that changes what Half-Life accomplished on its own. Having said all that, I have to agree with chris. I hate CounterStrike (I do like SOF2 though, go figure). The only thing I've ever liked about CS, either before or after Valve acquired it was the sound effects. Nice sound effects! Halo does have some unfortunate level design and repetition of levels. |
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Am I the only one who is surprised that Darkseid has played System Shock 3? So there.
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Talion did a wonderful job of explaining how I also feel about System Shock 2. There's a lot to love in that game, but it didn't come together as a great experience for me when playing it. It is a far better game in theory than it is to actually sit down and play it in practice. |
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I imagine you are Bob I just want someone to take the Doom 3 engine and MAKE System Shock 3, preferably Warren Spectors ION team... Ds Never argue with an idiot, theyll drag you down onto their level, then beat you with experience.
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*shrug* I thought halo sort of beat into you a sense of helplessness, as your marines kept getting slaughtered, and you had to inch your way through a planet full of hostile enemy forces, who could actually get backup. The first few missions give you hope, but when everyone is slaughtered at the central control room, and THEN the flood come out, it's doom doom doom all over. heh. You only live by killing everyone else, and end up alone, very far from home. 2 armadas, long forgotten artifact, unstoppable plague, all dead and gone at the end. Or perhaps that's just me. And MattG, when someone asks "why are video games are so violent?" my answer is not going to be a response about non-violent video games... That's just dodging the question. iamelectro
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#136 Darkseid-D I just want someone to take the Doom 3 engine and MAKE System Shock 3, preferably Warren Spectors ION team... Me too, but give me some ammunition this time for heaven's sake. lots of people: Why are video games so violent? Why are little boys so violent? I know someone who works at a day care center where of course they have no politically incorrect toys like GI Joes or toy guns, but she said a little boy's imagination can make a Barbie doll into a gun, so it hardly matters. |
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So then the obvious next step for game developers is to make a game for girls where you defeat your enemies (called "friends") with passive-aggressiveness, backstabbing, ostracism, and good old fashioned embarassment. |
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There are over 500 player-made modules available for NWN! http://www.bioware.com/bioware_info/press_releases/nwn500mods/ Woohooo! I can't wait to play them ALL!!!!! |
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I can't wait till they drop the price to something people with only one job can afford. |
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By then there will probably be about 2 million player-made modules!!! Woohoo!!! Each one better than the last, I'm sure !!!! |
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Gotta delete 'em all! My name is Don Don
I am pretty Elephant Love me well! |
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#120 Petri wrote: I'd like to get back to the "People are sheep" thing... someone out there is buying these top ten games. People vote with their money, and it looks like there's a lot of people voting for more sequels. What really sucks is having to be careful when I bitch about sequels, and at the same time finding myself getting all giddy at the thought of a System Shock 3 being done on the Doom3 engine as DS posted above...gah...hypocrites R me I guess? Bah, either way, I feel pretty comfortable in my hyprocrisy, seeing as how sequels are pretty much the only thing coming out as of late. I also know that if Half Life 2 was announced tomorrow, I'd ...be "so there" in a heartbeat....or sumthin...meh..:/ I just wonder if I'll still be a sheep in George's eyes if I decide to buy DNF once it comes out?...:P Honestly, in my attempts to unjade myself, I've all but quit reading previews, reviews and the like. And buying a game based on the feeling I get as I'm holding the box in my hands is what I used to do prior to becoming involved with Q2. After Quake2, I found myself making comparisons between games that I prolly shouldnt have, rather than judging the game based on its own merits. And yet I still fall into the same trap when I espose the want for a game to rival or match Half Life. I dont know if I've somehow been conditioned to think of games based on comparisons, but judging games based upon thier individual merits has been an uphill battle recently...but I think I'm slowly becoming a better(less jaded) gamer by doing this. ...on the outside looking in, banned by an epiphany at an EB store....
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deadlock What I meant by my comments was that in Halo, I didn't feel as immersed, involved, part of the world, caring about what happens, etc... By the some guy in a battle suit comment, I meant I had no background, no real character to play, it was the same as every other FPS out there immersion wise...I start with a small gun/knife, something happens, I must go kill the something and find bigger guns to kill the bigger somethings... What I liked about HL is I felt I knew Gordon, I knew where he was coming from, I knew who he was by how the scientist reacted to him, what if felt like to be a nameless cog in the scientist empire there. I felt like I was a person in an actual place...not many games can do that. I was highly engrossed in the game, I did feel the fear when I was supposed, jumped and hollered a few times at points... As Warren mentioned, it's a good part imagination. There was not a huge amount of story, but they covered the points that let my brain fill in the rest and everything worked. At least for me. But that said, I do find it odd that he finds it hard to get engrossed in a game that he can't 'relate' to. For me to become engrossed/immersed in a single player game where I play one person, I have to feel I know where that person is coming from, I have to feel I know that person. Then I can understand why certain things happen, why people treat him one way or another, etc. If I'm nameless joe gun fighter, I don't have anything to go off of. With Gordon I knew what he was and where he was coming from, with Sin, for instance, I played a some guy who was a badass...wee. That's the start, then once the character is filled out, I have to understand the environment I'm in. That's why RL type of games work better for me, because I see a building or a gun shoot and I know that's how it's supposed to work. In a fantasy game, I would need those things explained, not just be able to pick up a staff and it shoot magical whatever and know that was right. .......I need to feel at home in the environment to become immersed in said environment. Not to say I can't be taught to feel at home in an abnormal place, just harder for the designers then. This post made sense in my head.
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As per halo you get to hear the marines and whatnot comment you.. "whoah, it's the new mark II" "He's taller than I thought" But they all talk about you like a cyborg, and not a human. iamelectro
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Chris they've filled gaming up for the past two years with tactical military sims, and that's very annoying No, they only did Counterstrike. The me-too developers were responsible for the rest. Do you blame Westwood for every mediocre RTS title? Gonna blame Jet Grind Radio for the upcoming deluge of cel-shaded poop? Shame on you. Current market value of the Max Payne IP according to a comparison of the market capitalization of Take Two pre- and post- sale: approx. -$213,000,000.
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Yes. Shame on me indeed! Making an offhand comment on a message board related to a mod for a four year old game. Next thing you know I'll be eating babies. =) You're right, of course. But I am filled with hate, and Counter-Strike is just such an easy target for my hate... -chris |
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Next thing you know I'll be eating babies. =) With that bitter, jade colored sauce. "It's pretty common for pussies, dumbasses, and their families to blame their problems on vague influences like the media and society. The truth is, fuck you."
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It's magically delicious! My name is Don Don
I am pretty Elephant Love me well! |
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You feel shame, but then you go free. Current market value of the Max Payne IP according to a comparison of the market capitalization of Take Two pre- and post- sale: approx. -$213,000,000.
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