I was feeling the same way the OP was when I was watching the demo of WatchDogs. It was all "Oh cool he's hacking into stuff and being mysterious!" and then "A little hand to hand combat never hurt anyone."
And then he turned off the street lights and cars started flipping over eachother and exploding, and then people with machine guns came out and I just...stopped caring.
Then again I pretty much only play games if I have friends to play with me. Single player experiences are pretty much lost on me.
I'd like to produce a video that was "what if COD was made in 93", it would involve a lot of color locked doors, silly monster closets and nonsensical map design.
So.............a video of Operation: Bodycount?
One thing i miss in games is pressing bracket keys then enter to activate some item. Raven and 3D Realms made the best out of that in the day. Jedi Outcast is the last game I can remember having such a thing.
Sorry, couldn't really bother to read the thread completely, but in my opinion games are doing quite well these days. It's a shame that a lot of focus goes towards earning money and downloadable content perhaps, but that's not without reason.
That being said, I'd still want a new baldurs gate, not a remake, a new one! And more stuff like grim fandango (Think they are making a new game, didn't they start a kickstarter funding project?)
So nvm, it's quite fine really. That being said, I don't feel like playing diablo at the moment, and I don't like origin, it wouldn't even let me buy Battlefield 3, and BF2 were one of my top games ever, so that's a shame. I'll be sticking to Skyrim! (Modded that thing to oblivion, got so buggy my character even turned into an npc with a schedule, and I couldn't control it )
Oh, and let's not forget mass effect and Bioshock Infinite!
And pandaren wow expansion.... to bring everyone back to wow and spend more money once they're done with diablo, then more expansions for diablo and so on! *cough*
I think thatgamecompany did a wonderful job of bringing us something 'new' with Journey. don't know about you, but I haven't been so into a game for a long time
I've haven't played it but i've heard good things about it.
I would recommend GOG.com for everyone who want's old games or indie titles. I basicly worship that site.
I wouldn't say games are becoming boring but I definitely don't really like much of what I've seen coming out of E3. Even series that I liked a couple of games ago I am very ambivalent towards. There's a huge amount of AAA console games that don't appeal to me at all, but I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's just annoying and disappointing that the AAA gritty shooter sequels are most emphasized because they are what's most popular and common.
There's also a ton of awesome PC and Indie games that do appeal to me. I don't feel like I am missing out on anything because of those other games. E3 isn't everything. As someone already said, right now there's more games and types of games available than ever before.
You know what makes games better and not boring? MOD support. Another reason why PC gaming will never die out. You give people tools, and they will make sure there is enough to make the game last for a long time. Portal 2 has awesome new maps, skyrim just looks better and better, and you can do all crazy of quests. Same thing with inFamous 2. I think that is the way to go. Having an easy editor to share user content makes games more fun.
You know if my teenage self looked at the huge variety of games available today he would probably have some sort of cyber-orgasm. The quality of content and design is probably the best it has ever been in this industry.
I just don't enjoy playing games as much as I used to. If I do play games it is to look at the artwork - the character artist in me wants to pick apart what other artists are doing. I'm not sure why this has happened. Perhaps in my case its just the natural process of getting older and having your priorities shift.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLVGmvmNitg"]GHOSTBUSTERS Nes Review - Angry Video Game Nerd AVGN - Cinemassacre.com - YouTube[/ame]
I remember 8bit, 16bit, 32bit, 64bit... games beeing pretty boring, and for 70$.
So, my answer is no.
People say this shit every time E3 rolls around...
When you sink yourself into E3 and 99% of the stuff you see are franchised games that haven't changed since the 90s you start thinking that's the accurate ratio of original/unoriginal content available.
But all I have to do is look at my steam library and I realize those games don't even make up half of what I play and I still own so many games that I don't have time to play them all!
It would be sick if all of us at Polycount could get together and make a game that WE think would be fun and exciting.
Not having to worry if other people will buy it or not.
We could take risks and do new things.
With the talent here,I know we could make an awesome AAA game.
yeah yeah,its very unlikely for all of us to come together and make a game.
But its fun to think about
There are very few new games I look forward to these days. I do not think it is because I am getting old - I still like to fire up Unreal Tournament 1999 or Quake III once in a while and still have just as much fun with those games as I did when they were new. And I still look forward to games such as Sim City and Civilization as I did back when I was a young kid. Any game that Valve makes is always fresh and fun. Minecraft is amazing. There are great games out there, you just have to find the ones that appeal to you.
For AAA titles at least, many are not games in the strict sense but rather interactive experiences. Things like the following video represent a low-point in game design to me.
There are many exceptional games. People just seem to be very reckless when voting with their wallets and not willing to do research.
For instance - as massive D2 fan (who wasn't one?) I monitored D3 information and reception. Thanks to being patient now I am almost sure it is not a thing I want to pay for and invest my time - at least before major update or expansion.
When new Humble Bundle was out I checked it, gave it a shot and it was pure gold.
I can't tell if there's less games I love coming out simply because of a change of direction with the industry or if my tastes have finally gotten so refined that there's only 1 or 2 games a year that come out for me.
But it does seem like there's less uniqueness with games, everything is blending together.
Personally I love the current popular games like Battlefield 3, the only thing I hate about is is how they force you to always appear online to your friends list. Its a game breaker for me as I need to freedom to play solo or with friends.
I don't think games in general are getting boring though when you compare the games of today to 6 years ago when every game was about WW2. Now there are more MMO games and of the war games there are more diverse themes.
Boobs physics, butt physics, ball physics, nose physics, and while it, I would also like car physics where if they bounce left and right, they blow and Micheal Bay comes on screen shouting "Explosion".
There are more games coming out nowadays on every possible piece of technology. The games are cheaper, sometimes free, and awesome. They consume every genre possible and are wildly different. Often times mixing genres and styles and mechanics. If you think games are boring now. Then games have always been boring to you.
There are very few new games I look forward to these days. I do not think it is because I am getting old - I still like to fire up Unreal Tournament 1999 or Quake III once in a while and still have just as much fun with those games as I did when they were new. And I still look forward to games such as Sim City and Civilization as I did back when I was a young kid.
Couldn't agree more,UT99,Quake3,SimCity and addition to that,Freelancer,Freespace and so on..Those are my all-time favorites.UT99 and Simcity4 are still fresh as it's first days.I may want new versions of those games with my full heard(there's in development new simcity potentially spiritual successor of simcity4)but I know no any remake shall surpass our memories with original ones.I'm sure after 10 years from now,today's kid will ask same question and they mention today's games.
But it does seem like there's less uniqueness with games, everything is blending together.
yeah, i agree. It also is how people vote with their dollars. But, when what people want is violence... how far are we going to take this?
will character artists have to create full anatomical models so that, when i shoot off a 12 gauge point-blank... i see half the character's lung pop off? how far is too far?
like for example, the last part of THE LAST OF US, when he shot the dude in the face. I fucking grimaced (because it looked too brutal) but people fucking cheered?! isn't that a bit desensitized?
I love the game and the plot explains the extreme violence, but when every other game is violent because it SELLS? that's concerning...
Maybe some of us are just getting old and games don't have that same freshness when we were younger.
I was mentioning to a coworker the other day that the feeling I got the first time I saw Orcarina of Time, a 3D Zelda, I haven't felt anything that fresh and new and at the same time lost and not sure how to control it, since than.
There are so many new games with a ton of variety, it's definitely exciting, but maybe some of us expect something more that we may not be able to get again.
The thing is, I still playing Ocarina of Time recently, and still having a blast! So i don't think it awesome because we were younger, not because nostalgic effect either. Maybe because Zelda are actually better then today so called next-gen games? well for me it is..
Also it's not because i'm biased toward japanese games either, i'm playing x-com : ufo defense and it's awesome :P
to sum it up IMHO :
are today games boring ? not all of them, if normal maps are involved then very likely it will be a boring game.
are games becomes boring : yes.
It only applies to SP games though i found it hard for MP game to be boring as long you play it with your close friend.
To everyone quoting age as a cause for lacking enjoyment, ponder this: it's not age, it's experience and knowledge. The human brain thrives on learning, on figuring out patterns, on how to be as efficient as possible. Once it's done learning, it gets bored.
We've been playing shooters for fifteen years now. (full on 3D, that is) It's said that you need to spend 10.000 hours on a topic to become an expert. Spread over the course of those 16 years, that's less than 2 hours a day. I have no doubt that some people on the forum have played this much, and while others might have not played as much, they still played a lot.
Add to that the fact that we don't just play games - we make them as well. This means we're not only spending more time, but we spend focused time on analyzing them [as an aside: analyzing a game while playing it also makes it less fun than just playing it, due to multitasking/attention issues] so we learn even faster how they work. A player learns the rules of a game by reverse-engineering the results of those rules. We learn of those rules by talking to a colleague.
What this all boils down to is that games are more boring faster to us, because we understand them faster and deeper. We already know how most of games work before we play them, and that hurts the joy of learning.
note: this is not the only reason games might feel boring, but it's an important one.
Edit: also, guys. We have the power to change this feeling, right? By making games that are not as standard, for instance?
I find that, when this sort of topic comes up, it's important to remind everyone that people have been saying the exact same thing about movies and especially music for as long as those things have been around.
The prevalence of the thread topic has more to do with human nature than the actual state of the industry, regardless of whatever problems it's currently facing.
There are more games coming out nowadays on every possible piece of technology. The games are cheaper, sometimes free, and awesome. They consume every genre possible and are wildly different. Often times mixing genres and styles and mechanics. If you think games are boring now. Then games have always been boring to you.
Look harder.
Problem is, we only have 365 days a year, in the US alone, you get about 750+ movies in a year, that's twice the number of days, lets not even talk international numbers.
In the game industry it's much, MUCH worse, we get at least 4x the numbers we have in a year, and a good chunk of them are a copy of another game.
So there is a good chance, based upon all the FPS games alone, free or not, if we played them back to back, we wouldn't have time to eat.
I guess what I'm saying is while there is no lack of original games out there, it going to take a while for me to find good content that has not been advertised vs. the big company next door who released 12 FPS games which certifiably can be called "Generic Mediocre Drivel" in a single year, with a 40M Ad campaign on each one.
It would be sick if all of us at Polycount could get together and make a game that WE think would be fun and exciting.
Not having to worry if other people will buy it or not.
We could take risks and do new things.
With the talent here,I know we could make an awesome AAA game.
yeah yeah,its very unlikely for all of us to come together and make a game.
But its fun to think about
Im sure it would be the best looking game ever. Whether or not it would actually be fun is a different story : p
But seriously though. To me, the turning point for what developers would create in terms of what is fun vs what is beautiful/technically sound/boring is the comparison of ut99 vs q3. I remember getting q3 because it was the defacto way to determine "who got skill" or not, but i put that shit down after i realized ut99 was "hella fun"
Games more or less veered in the direction ID took, even Epic. I guess it helps give us art types more work but it certainly isnt driving the consumer or publishers to fan out and take chances, what with the giant pricepoint and all. At the same time free app-like titles and social games in general are trivializing our efforts in the short term. Im just glad the tech is again catching up to allow us to make prettier murder simulators on tablets
To everyone quoting age as a cause for lacking enjoyment, ponder this: it's not age, it's experience and knowledge.
Well, that's pretty much a given considering I'm only 24 . But in my case, liking video games less coincided with finding a taste for Baroque music and entering a field of study (history) that I really enjoy, so it feels like part of a greater maturation process to me.
Sometimes I wonder if I've ever really liked the game aspect and not the juicy sense of achievement and bad stories attached to them. After all, I can't be bothered with chess, even though that's one of the best games out there. Would I have liked my favourite games if they had no sound or advanced graphics, no more information than absolutely necessary? Shouldn't I be playing board games, which are generally much more clever, instead, if it was the game aspect I'm interested in?
If you're looking for games as games, yes. But video games don't have to be just that. Video games are, essentially, all other media wrapped in one. Film, music, story, gameplay, and so on. And don't forget that games have even -more- to offer than just that. Portal offers gameplay mechanics that are in no way possible on a boardgame.
Personally, I think there's a lot of possibilities with the medium, even though not much has been explored yet. In short, that there are no games yet we consider art, does not mean the medium cannot make art - it just means we have not yet done so.
That and an understanding of gameplay mechanics, less circlejerk threads when someones game comes out with decent environments, games are played so if its shit to play then its a bit of a failure... being content because the art came out looking good irritates me no end.
Snader > Most people here dont make games, they make assets for games.
If you're looking for games as games, yes. But video games don't have to be just that. Video games are, essentially, all other media wrapped in one. Film, music, story, gameplay, and so on
Is that because they're so versatile or because gameplay alone can't hold up? If I want film, I'll watch a real film, if I want music I'll listen to real music, if I want a story I'll read a book and if I want gameplay I'll dig up a board game. Why would I ever want to play a video game?
I mean, sure, Portal's neat and all, but it's still just a set of puzzles. Isn't an on-the-fly multiplayer puzzle creator like chess be much more interesting in gameplay terms?
Is that because they're so versatile or because gameplay alone can't hold up? If I want film, I'll watch a real film, if I want music I'll listen to real music, if I want a story I'll read a book and if I want gameplay I'll dig up a board game. Why would I ever want to play a video game?
I mean, sure, Portal's neat and all, but it's still just a set of puzzles. Isn't an on-the-fly multiplayer puzzle creator like chess be much more interesting in gameplay terms?
Games are well and above a different type of medium for experiencing anything. That may sound like hyperbole, but considering the relative youth of games as a defining text for human expression and records, and the fact that we simply don't know much about them as a construct.
Interaction and the concept of play are so involved, important and poorly understood that they can't be ignored. You could watch a movie, receive an interesting story as can be mimed by its creators but you can't play with it. You can listen to stage music but you have may have no context. You could play a completely ludic game but you would have no story.
To add any elements that belong to other mediums is already creating the cross-media present in video games: The Overall Experience. The combined aesthetics employed by a game create a completely new experience.
Portal may be a group of puzzles, but the format in which they are contained plays outside of currently possible physics; in a humorous world that tells a story. Most importantly, it involves its audience.
Games, and as extension, play doesn't exist without a player.
Are games boring? No, they're not boring because most games create a great experience.
But yes, they're boring because I've played that experience too many times to give a shit any more.
Games have two components for me, to greatly summarize: Presentation and gameplay. Presentation is story, music, art, and all of the bells and whistles that overlay gameplay, which is the core mechanics. Good core mechanics can make pixels interesting (dwarf fortress, for example). Excellent presentation can elevate a played out turd-burger of gameplay into a AAA title (most shooters). Modern games go heavy on presentation while skimping on gameplay, and thus they have shit for replay value. Or even play value to begin with.
The only games that have interested me lately are genuinely good RPGs where the story can shoulder the burden of a shit play experience (Mass Effect), open world games that can craft a powerful mood despite story and gameplay flaws (Skyrim) or games of skill where the presentation really doesn't matter much (MOBAs/D3).
dfacto, ive thought about that a bit and id say its closer to 3
> systems
> mechanics
> art
Systems would be more about how the game will act i guess, i think the best examples would be things like Skyrim/GTA/Dwarf fortress
I'd say that mechanics are more closely related to how you interact with the world, how responsive controls are etc
If you look at a game like dwarf fortress id say that its mostly system of things acting out certain things in given situations, i cant think of a better way to word it. Then you can have games which are mostly focused on mechanics (stepmania/rockband/fighting games).
Industry is also still young (especially with 3d games) and hasn't had enough time to explore or discover different possibilities yet. When a game is starting production, it usually won't be seen for a couple of years. So that one idea is baking the whole time. Same goes with film. You'd be surprised at how few films some elite directors have done in their lives. Some game devs are starting to feel that as well. Some might spend 10 years in the industry and only make 3-4 games in that time span, some even fewer. That's very few opportunities to explore and expand upon theories. Doesn't help that the industry is so sequel centric too.
My point is, there hasn't been a lot of time yet to go deeper, not to mention the demand for more mature and intellectually stimulating games has only been a trend for awhile now. We're also in the first generations of the medium. Many people who run the industry never grew up with the same admiration for games the way we younger devs do.
Think of where film was in it's first 30 years after the invention of the moving camera. Films we're basically all shot the same way for decades before more people decided to start moving the camera around and setting up shots like photographers do. And even that idea was expanded upon for decades.
It's a lot of factors as to why games haven't evolved quicker, but really, like a lot of mediums before it, it's taking baby steps. And maybe once in awhile a game comes along that makes it take a bigger step.
By the way I really love reading this thread and the different thoughts people have on the OP.
Games are well and above a different type of medium for experiencing anything. That may sound like hyperbole, but considering the relative youth of games as a defining text for human expression and records, and the fact that we simply don't know much about them as a construct.
Once games can provide a musical experience that lives up to, say, Bach's violin concertos, be sure to notify me; until that time, I'm going to hold the opinion that distractions by video and interactivity, and the necessity to loop aren't doing musical aspects any favours. Similarly with its other elements.
Do you think there's any video game out there that will outlive chess? I'm not sure if adding stuff is the way forward.
Games, and as extension, play doesn't exist without a player.
Plenty of things have interaction. Like this conversation! I like conversations better than games, because they're not about winning and they don't have to be understood by computers.
Industry is also still young (especially with 3d games) and hasn't had enough time to explore or discover different possibilities yet. [...] Same goes with film.
That idea gets sillier every year. When movies were as old as video games are now, they already had Metropolis, All quiet on the Western front, Double indemnity, Casablanca, the Wizard of Oz, and their Citizen Kane, Citizen Kane.
It has not so much to do with "the games" or the "creators" than the expansion of the market to your average piece of shit consumer who also likes jersey shore, affliction clothing, and anything else that will help them blend into the mass consumer culture. When I was younger it was the kids that got beat up in high school, that played d&d and read comics that we're gamers. They had the majority voice of where games were going and what games were made because they were the target demographic, they were the focus test group. Now since gaming has risen to a billion dollar industry the target demographic is the vast majority of consumers, who are generally boring, uninteresting, people with shallow personalities. The games will directly reflect who the consumers are. This is also apparent with pop music, the majority of music is about fucking, or getting fucked up, or going to a club to get fucked up and maybe fuck later. Those same douchebags that blast that shitty music in their car are the same ones who are buying the majority of games. I think indie games are the place to find anything truly new, the best that can happen is you will see things from indie games slowly trickle into mainstream games.
That idea gets sillier every year. When movies were as old as video games are now, they already had Metropolis, All quiet on the Western front, Double indemnity, Casablanca, the Wizard of Oz, and their Citizen Kane, Citizen Kane.
Actually, seeing as how people didn't start making films until the 1870's and all those films you listed were made after 1920.....
If anything we're closer to Birth of a Nation and Intolerance.
It's premature to say games are dead or something like that. When you think about all the roads interactive media can take with future technology you realize we're just taking baby steps right now. Also it's a retarded capitalist baby so that complicates things a bit.
Bigger teams and the idea that game development should be collaboratively developed leads to more design by committee. That's why you see such a clear vision on indie games, 1 or 2 people controlling the vision of their game rather than a whole team of designers and writers.
Actually, seeing as how people didn't start making films until the 1870's and all those films you listed were made after 1920.....
If anything we're closer to Birth of a Nation and Intolerance.
I may have been a bit unfair in dating video games earlier than reasonable. But if you take 1895, "the first public motion-picture film presentation" to be the beginning of "real" film, and the Magnavox Odyssey in 1966, the first public console, to be the first "real" video game, games have been around for 46 years. 46 Years after 1895, that's 1941 (the year of Citizen Kane!). So okay, not all of my examples completely fit in, but if you consider that we already know what games will come out for the next two years... it's not that far off.
Edit: my bad, the Odyssey was designed in '66, but only came out in '72, as illo said. Still, All quiet.
Thats not quite fair to say though because our knowledge only really grows, I dont see why youd expect to take the same period of time?
Granted, gameplay and player interaction and all that shit but storytelling? composition? so many elements that make up games aren't going to be starting completely from scratch.
There are so many elements of level design which will take its cues from composition and leading the eye around an image, colour temperature etc etc etc, we arent finding these out now as these are elements of design that have been around for years so its more an implementation of existing ideas.
Replies
Nope. It's a RedLynx game, the company is just owned by Ubisoft.
And then he turned off the street lights and cars started flipping over eachother and exploding, and then people with machine guns came out and I just...stopped caring.
Then again I pretty much only play games if I have friends to play with me. Single player experiences are pretty much lost on me.
So.............a video of Operation: Bodycount?
One thing i miss in games is pressing bracket keys then enter to activate some item. Raven and 3D Realms made the best out of that in the day. Jedi Outcast is the last game I can remember having such a thing.
That being said, I'd still want a new baldurs gate, not a remake, a new one! And more stuff like grim fandango (Think they are making a new game, didn't they start a kickstarter funding project?)
So nvm, it's quite fine really. That being said, I don't feel like playing diablo at the moment, and I don't like origin, it wouldn't even let me buy Battlefield 3, and BF2 were one of my top games ever, so that's a shame. I'll be sticking to Skyrim! (Modded that thing to oblivion, got so buggy my character even turned into an npc with a schedule, and I couldn't control it
Oh, and let's not forget mass effect and Bioshock Infinite!
And pandaren wow expansion.... to bring everyone back to wow and spend more money once they're done with diablo, then more expansions for diablo and so on! *cough*
I've haven't played it but i've heard good things about it.
I would recommend GOG.com for everyone who want's old games or indie titles. I basicly worship that site.
I'd be cool with all the sameness, if they were all fun. Sadly, a lot of games are truly not interesting to play for someone who's done it before.
Don't think flashier art can fix that.
There's also a ton of awesome PC and Indie games that do appeal to me. I don't feel like I am missing out on anything because of those other games. E3 isn't everything. As someone already said, right now there's more games and types of games available than ever before.
I just don't enjoy playing games as much as I used to. If I do play games it is to look at the artwork - the character artist in me wants to pick apart what other artists are doing. I'm not sure why this has happened. Perhaps in my case its just the natural process of getting older and having your priorities shift.
There are too many great games.
My advice, turn off your computer/videoconsole and play a sport like soccer/football.
I remember 8bit, 16bit, 32bit, 64bit... games beeing pretty boring, and for 70$.
So, my answer is no.
When you sink yourself into E3 and 99% of the stuff you see are franchised games that haven't changed since the 90s you start thinking that's the accurate ratio of original/unoriginal content available.
But all I have to do is look at my steam library and I realize those games don't even make up half of what I play and I still own so many games that I don't have time to play them all!
Not having to worry if other people will buy it or not.
We could take risks and do new things.
With the talent here,I know we could make an awesome AAA game.
yeah yeah,its very unlikely for all of us to come together and make a game.
But its fun to think about
For AAA titles at least, many are not games in the strict sense but rather interactive experiences. Things like the following video represent a low-point in game design to me.
[ame="
For instance - as massive D2 fan (who wasn't one?) I monitored D3 information and reception. Thanks to being patient now I am almost sure it is not a thing I want to pay for and invest my time - at least before major update or expansion.
When new Humble Bundle was out I checked it, gave it a shot and it was pure gold.
But it does seem like there's less uniqueness with games, everything is blending together.
I don't think games in general are getting boring though when you compare the games of today to 6 years ago when every game was about WW2. Now there are more MMO games and of the war games there are more diverse themes.
Look harder.
Couldn't agree more,UT99,Quake3,SimCity and addition to that,Freelancer,Freespace and so on..Those are my all-time favorites.UT99 and Simcity4 are still fresh as it's first days.I may want new versions of those games with my full heard(there's in development new simcity potentially spiritual successor of simcity4)but I know no any remake shall surpass our memories with original ones.I'm sure after 10 years from now,today's kid will ask same question and they mention today's games.
yeah, i agree. It also is how people vote with their dollars. But, when what people want is violence... how far are we going to take this?
will character artists have to create full anatomical models so that, when i shoot off a 12 gauge point-blank... i see half the character's lung pop off? how far is too far?
like for example, the last part of THE LAST OF US, when he shot the dude in the face. I fucking grimaced (because it looked too brutal) but people fucking cheered?! isn't that a bit desensitized?
I love the game and the plot explains the extreme violence, but when every other game is violent because it SELLS? that's concerning...
my 2 fucking cents.
The thing is, I still playing Ocarina of Time recently, and still having a blast! So i don't think it awesome because we were younger, not because nostalgic effect either. Maybe because Zelda are actually better then today so called next-gen games? well for me it is..
Also it's not because i'm biased toward japanese games either, i'm playing x-com : ufo defense and it's awesome :P
to sum it up IMHO :
are today games boring ? not all of them, if normal maps are involved then very likely it will be a boring game.
are games becomes boring : yes.
It only applies to SP games though
qft
We've been playing shooters for fifteen years now. (full on 3D, that is) It's said that you need to spend 10.000 hours on a topic to become an expert. Spread over the course of those 16 years, that's less than 2 hours a day. I have no doubt that some people on the forum have played this much, and while others might have not played as much, they still played a lot.
Add to that the fact that we don't just play games - we make them as well. This means we're not only spending more time, but we spend focused time on analyzing them [as an aside: analyzing a game while playing it also makes it less fun than just playing it, due to multitasking/attention issues] so we learn even faster how they work. A player learns the rules of a game by reverse-engineering the results of those rules. We learn of those rules by talking to a colleague.
What this all boils down to is that games are more boring faster to us, because we understand them faster and deeper. We already know how most of games work before we play them, and that hurts the joy of learning.
note: this is not the only reason games might feel boring, but it's an important one.
Edit: also, guys. We have the power to change this feeling, right? By making games that are not as standard, for instance?
The prevalence of the thread topic has more to do with human nature than the actual state of the industry, regardless of whatever problems it's currently facing.
Problem is, we only have 365 days a year, in the US alone, you get about 750+ movies in a year, that's twice the number of days, lets not even talk international numbers.
In the game industry it's much, MUCH worse, we get at least 4x the numbers we have in a year, and a good chunk of them are a copy of another game.
So there is a good chance, based upon all the FPS games alone, free or not, if we played them back to back, we wouldn't have time to eat.
I guess what I'm saying is while there is no lack of original games out there, it going to take a while for me to find good content that has not been advertised vs. the big company next door who released 12 FPS games which certifiably can be called "Generic Mediocre Drivel" in a single year, with a 40M Ad campaign on each one.
Im sure it would be the best looking game ever. Whether or not it would actually be fun is a different story : p
But seriously though. To me, the turning point for what developers would create in terms of what is fun vs what is beautiful/technically sound/boring is the comparison of ut99 vs q3. I remember getting q3 because it was the defacto way to determine "who got skill" or not, but i put that shit down after i realized ut99 was "hella fun"
Games more or less veered in the direction ID took, even Epic. I guess it helps give us art types more work but it certainly isnt driving the consumer or publishers to fan out and take chances, what with the giant pricepoint and all. At the same time free app-like titles and social games in general are trivializing our efforts in the short term. Im just glad the tech is again catching up to allow us to make prettier murder simulators on tablets
Sometimes I wonder if I've ever really liked the game aspect and not the juicy sense of achievement and bad stories attached to them. After all, I can't be bothered with chess, even though that's one of the best games out there. Would I have liked my favourite games if they had no sound or advanced graphics, no more information than absolutely necessary? Shouldn't I be playing board games, which are generally much more clever, instead, if it was the game aspect I'm interested in?
Personally, I think there's a lot of possibilities with the medium, even though not much has been explored yet. In short, that there are no games yet we consider art, does not mean the medium cannot make art - it just means we have not yet done so.
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That and an understanding of gameplay mechanics, less circlejerk threads when someones game comes out with decent environments, games are played so if its shit to play then its a bit of a failure... being content because the art came out looking good irritates me no end.
Snader > Most people here dont make games, they make assets for games.
I mean, sure, Portal's neat and all, but it's still just a set of puzzles. Isn't an on-the-fly multiplayer puzzle creator like chess be much more interesting in gameplay terms?
Games are well and above a different type of medium for experiencing anything. That may sound like hyperbole, but considering the relative youth of games as a defining text for human expression and records, and the fact that we simply don't know much about them as a construct.
Interaction and the concept of play are so involved, important and poorly understood that they can't be ignored. You could watch a movie, receive an interesting story as can be mimed by its creators but you can't play with it. You can listen to stage music but you have may have no context. You could play a completely ludic game but you would have no story.
To add any elements that belong to other mediums is already creating the cross-media present in video games: The Overall Experience. The combined aesthetics employed by a game create a completely new experience.
Portal may be a group of puzzles, but the format in which they are contained plays outside of currently possible physics; in a humorous world that tells a story. Most importantly, it involves its audience.
Games, and as extension, play doesn't exist without a player.
But yes, they're boring because I've played that experience too many times to give a shit any more.
Games have two components for me, to greatly summarize: Presentation and gameplay. Presentation is story, music, art, and all of the bells and whistles that overlay gameplay, which is the core mechanics. Good core mechanics can make pixels interesting (dwarf fortress, for example). Excellent presentation can elevate a played out turd-burger of gameplay into a AAA title (most shooters). Modern games go heavy on presentation while skimping on gameplay, and thus they have shit for replay value. Or even play value to begin with.
The only games that have interested me lately are genuinely good RPGs where the story can shoulder the burden of a shit play experience (Mass Effect), open world games that can craft a powerful mood despite story and gameplay flaws (Skyrim) or games of skill where the presentation really doesn't matter much (MOBAs/D3).
> systems
> mechanics
> art
Systems would be more about how the game will act i guess, i think the best examples would be things like Skyrim/GTA/Dwarf fortress
I'd say that mechanics are more closely related to how you interact with the world, how responsive controls are etc
If you look at a game like dwarf fortress id say that its mostly system of things acting out certain things in given situations, i cant think of a better way to word it. Then you can have games which are mostly focused on mechanics (stepmania/rockband/fighting games).
Poorly explained but whatever.
People hailed the death of games and the dawn of boredom the moment 3d became big in games.
Think about that for a moment.
My point is, there hasn't been a lot of time yet to go deeper, not to mention the demand for more mature and intellectually stimulating games has only been a trend for awhile now. We're also in the first generations of the medium. Many people who run the industry never grew up with the same admiration for games the way we younger devs do.
Think of where film was in it's first 30 years after the invention of the moving camera. Films we're basically all shot the same way for decades before more people decided to start moving the camera around and setting up shots like photographers do. And even that idea was expanded upon for decades.
It's a lot of factors as to why games haven't evolved quicker, but really, like a lot of mediums before it, it's taking baby steps. And maybe once in awhile a game comes along that makes it take a bigger step.
By the way I really love reading this thread and the different thoughts people have on the OP.
Do you think there's any video game out there that will outlive chess? I'm not sure if adding stuff is the way forward.
Plenty of things have interaction. Like this conversation! I like conversations better than games, because they're not about winning and they don't have to be understood by computers.
That idea gets sillier every year. When movies were as old as video games are now, they already had Metropolis, All quiet on the Western front, Double indemnity, Casablanca, the Wizard of Oz, and their Citizen Kane, Citizen Kane.
Maybe they were right ?
Hehe
Actually, seeing as how people didn't start making films until the 1870's and all those films you listed were made after 1920.....
If anything we're closer to Birth of a Nation and Intolerance.
Edit: my bad, the Odyssey was designed in '66, but only came out in '72, as illo said. Still, All quiet.
Granted, gameplay and player interaction and all that shit but storytelling? composition? so many elements that make up games aren't going to be starting completely from scratch.
There are so many elements of level design which will take its cues from composition and leading the eye around an image, colour temperature etc etc etc, we arent finding these out now as these are elements of design that have been around for years so its more an implementation of existing ideas.