Cheer Up! Video Games Are In Great Shape 57
simoniker writes "Tired of doom and gloom from pundits predicting the sky falling on the video game industry? Long-time Gamasutra design columnist Ernest Adams offers up a contrary view in his new column, commenting: 'The industry may be as conservative as Pat Buchanan, and it may be going through a rocky transition between consoles right now, but video games are doing very well, thank you very much.' He goes on to make points such as 'The mass market is here', 'Games are getting easier to make thanks to inexpensive tools', and 'Game development education has arrived'."
And yet (Score:5, Interesting)
The status quo is becoming established, at best.
Re:And yet (Score:1, Troll)
Re:And yet (Score:1)
When will there be some content on that site?
Re:And yet (Score:2)
He's right you know: (Score:2)
Interactive Media Studies-3 Animation and Game Design. Designed to develop a focused expertise in the theory, processes, and production skills involved in the development of 3D environments in a gaming context. Students will be able to understand the basic terminology and processes involved in 3D design, animation, and game design. Students will develop expertise in "state-of-the-art" 3D design and animation tools and be able to present and discus
Re:He's right you know: (Score:1)
Get a general degree in something like computer science, then you can specialise afterwards. I considered the same thing. I'm now taking a degree in physics, of a
Re:He's right you know: (Score:1)
Nothing has changed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nothing has changed (Score:2)
Re:Nothing has changed (Score:1)
Re:Nothing has changed (Score:1)
Tetris does not stress XT (Score:1)
back in my day, tetris stressed the hell outta those darned XT's.
What is more powerful: an IBM XT with a 4.77 MHz 8086 CPU in a 40x24 cell text mode or an NES with a 1.79 MHz 6502 CPU running in almost the same text mode? If a two-player Tetris clone [pineight.com] doesn't particularly stress the NES, then why would it stress an XT? Tetanus On Drugs [pineight.com], on the other hand...
Right... (Score:2)
The same is true of game engines, a really crappy one is really crappy.
THQ breaks Tetris (Score:1)
Tetris is much simpler then modern 3d engines but if they screwed up the technical work and it affected gameplay it wouldn't have been so fun now would it.
Did you say "Tetris Worlds" by THQ? It actually breaks Tetris [google.com]. Quite a few clones pay little attention to controls either.
Re:Nothing has changed (Score:2)
What's the state of Video Games? (Score:2)
Pat Buchanan: I'm thinking nothing, really. Maybe a little..
John McLaughlin: WRONG!
(with apologies to SNL)
At the risk of sounding like a fanboy (Score:5, Insightful)
Nintendo is trying to force development costs down, while encouraging innovation, thats 2 things necessary to grow from this status-quo we are in right now.
I love the doom and gloom. (Score:2)
Not really. When all the producers are fighting over the same customers, we consumers enjoy better product and lower prices.
Re:I love the doom and gloom. (Score:1)
Re:I love the doom and gloom. (Score:2)
The problem with PC multiplayer (Score:2)
I didn't realize anyone out there still played with consoles
Show me several good single-head real-time multiplayer [pineight.com] titles for PC, and I'll believe you. I want to plug multiple joypads into a PC and have a game recognize them all and assign one to each character on the screen, without having to buy a separate PC for each player in the same room.
Falling prices? Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or am I missing something?
Re:Falling prices? Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, lemme help you out here. Let's say the average player does a year with WoW and plays (just?) 12 hours a week. That's 12x52=624 hours or entertainment for $50+12x$10=$170, or something like $.27/hour of entertainment.
Contrast that with any 2-hour movie ($8/2hr) = $4/hr
...or, 3 hours a day (21 hours a week) of basic cable. ($50/3x30hr) = $.55/hr
So...yeah. After you do the math, video games still look pretty cheap.
Re:Falling prices? Huh? (Score:1)
Re:I love the doom and gloom. (Score:2)
Computer games becoming mainstream is about virtually everyone to an extent participating in computer gami
Oh please, the joke here are the game pundits (Score:4, Insightful)
The only people that are facing real trouble are game pundits themselves, as the gaming journalism business is more or less a big farce. Yes, some of them do a good job and take themselves seriously, but a large majority are more than willing to take a little kick-back to give a game a good rating and decieve their readers.
Re:Oh please, the joke here are the game pundits (Score:2, Insightful)
Developing Countries (Score:2)
I heard the Sega Master system used to be big in Brazil and other latin american coutries well into the 1990's (maybe still) because it was
Here's how I can see it "develop" (Score:2)
Then some studio picks it up, sends a team of graphics artists on it and we'll see the first of a line of new sequelitis games.
Quite serious, if you want to have a great game with a new i
Hey now... (Score:1)
Dude, I would so totally play that. Just imagine, jet-powered hockey skates, on-ice obstacles, shifting play field, multi-layered rink...
Re:Hey now... (Score:2)
Re:Hey now... (Score:1)
Re:Here's how I can see it "develop" (Score:1)
*= Bad as in "b
Lockout chip business model (Score:1)
if you want to have a great game with a new idea, do it yourself.
So once my team has a prototype working on the PC, how do we get it ported to and distributed on a handheld system?
Re:Lockout chip business model (Score:2)
If you mean gaming consoles, who does NOT have them chipped yet?
Re:Lockout chip business model (Score:1)
Write it in J2ME and distribute it for cellphones.
Unfortunately, too many phones in North America are locked to run only midlets that have been signed by the cellphone carrier. CDMA phones are even worse, generally using the BREW system that charges the developer every time he runs the linker. Even otherwise, how does a developer who happened to have been born in North America target people who don't want to pay $720 for a cellphone and its 24-month contract just to play a game?
If you mean gaming con
Re:Lockout chip business model (Score:2)
More civilized areas use the GSM system. As the subscriber identity is locate
Localization and payment methods? (Score:1)
More civilized areas use the GSM system.
"More civilized areas" (i.e. continental Europe, Japan, and Korea) tend not to speak a lot of English or use payment methods that interact well with developers based in the United States.
Re:Lockout chip business model (Score:2)
The language problem is not as bad. You have the entire UK/Ireland area, which is only couple milliseconds roundtrip away from you. Also, many people speak English in other areas. You can also write the code in a way that makes it easy to translate to other languages.
I am not familiar with the payment issues, but as downloads are commonly paid via the recipient's phone bill, you should be able to make
"Easier to make" (Score:5, Insightful)
This doens't take into account the ever-increasing cost of game production. How can it be getting both easier and more expensive to produce games?
Surely if this were the case, we'd be seeing an exponential increase in quality? If we are, it's going right over my head (with a beautifully rendered motion blur, I might add).
Re:"Easier to make" (Score:2)
It gets easier and easier to use photoshop/3DSMaX after each iteration (ha, as if), but the current "demand" requires creating highly detailed artwork (which still takes a lot of time.)
Re:"Easier to make" (Score:3, Insightful)
You're missing the point. To make an AAA list super title is getting more expensive. Much more expensive- you need teams of 100 people for four years to write something like Oblivion.
But not all games are AAA list super titles. You can make fun, enjoyable games much more easily than you used to. Flash gets crapped on all the time here, but it's a wonderful tool for writing games- it handles audio and video easily, can animate hund
Single-head PC games? (Score:1)
Flash gets crapped on all the time here
Largely because there's no Free, free, or even affordable equivalent of Flash available to the general public, is there?
Games like Half-Life, NWN and Oblivion ship with serious content creation tools, so powerful that you can rewrite virtually the entire scenario.
Are they powerful enough that I can put four players on a single machine, as seen in Bomberman or Smash Bros.? Or will single-head multiplayer gaming be forever the exclusive domain of lockout chip b
Articles like this are red flags. (Score:5, Interesting)
The joke is, of course, that the only time someone feels the need to say, "Don't worry; everything's okay!" is when there really is something to worry about. Or, when someone is trying to pull your leg.
Shortly after Wal-Mart's RFID trials were aborted, scrapped, and otherwise sent to the wastebin, I began receiving RFID e-zine articles all with titles similar to this: "Problem? What problem! Why, RFID is as big as it ever was!" Sure enough, the big RFID revolution is dead before it even got started.
The signs have been there for a while that history is repeating itself. The big studios of gaming are reliving what the big studios of cinema lived in the 1960s: "The people say that they want more from the moviegoing experience? Oh my, we need a bigger budget! Ten times the cast! Bigger sets! And a costume change for Liz Taylor in every scene!" Of course, the people didn't want more sets. They wanted more variety, more stories, new ways of telling stories -- not just the same thing with more baubles. Oh, you had some new ideas like Easy Rider which were nifty, until the studios churned out 10,000 Easy Rider knock-offs. It wasn't until the 1970s when upstarts Lucas, Spielberg, Coppolla and Scorsese came to town and the old guard died off that the studios' fortunes changed.
What's gonna happen? Things are gonna get worse before they get better. Some of the old guard will get so decrepit that they'll have to take risks. And that's where we'll end up with the next Godfather, Jaws or Star Wars for video gaming.
Re:Articles like this are red flags. (Score:1)
Re:Articles like this are red flags. (Score:2)
Which leaves Kojima. But I'm not sure I want to buy another game that makes me watch a 2-minute cutscene for every 20 seconds of gameplay.
Education (Score:2)
I'm screwed.