So depressing

poopinmymouth

Every once in a while, I will happen across an article about the "good old days" of gaming. Whether it's an article on textfiles.com, an article on loonygames, an old post on the old boards, or an old article on polycount homepage, it just makes me so depressed. The one that set me off the most was reading Masters of Doom.

It seemed like a time where everyone involved was more passionate, more all out. There were just a group of guys wanting to make something awesome. So much less marketing BS, less commercialism, and less concern whether what they were doing would be "successful" (by Joe Walmarts standards). Sure there was less stability, but I would gladly make that trade myself.

The real kicker for me, is that I see so many people in the game industry who are even better and just as passionate as those forerunners. Almost every studio has at least a couple awesome employees who are both good at what they do, passionate, and full of ideas. Why is it we have so many craptastic games? It's like the industry is fighting us tooth and nail to prevent us from creating what we want, and are able, to create.

Just had to vent, it's been on my mind a lot lately.

JKMakowka

Back in the day, there was less 'corporate interest'... you get that everywhere... In Biotech for example, nowadays the passionate people are often forced to research some new crop that is just used to increase profits, not for the better of mankind etc.

But I see it that way, earlier there where just very few game developing companys... today there are much more... but there are still a few, that are run by enthusiasts... so actually it is still the same, it is just less visible, because of the mass of other companys.

rawkstar

you know what this means right?

EVERYONE MUST GO TO THE ISLAND OF MAN!!!

cochtl

I really didnt check my grammar and punctuation, so tough!

With that aside, I’ll compare games to grunge music a bit.

80’s music with its hair bands and glam rock is so meaningless, shallow and bland that sales are in decline. Much of the music is pretty shitty, and most of the bands are all about the showboating, fire hazard hair and makeup. Enter grunge, which has been underground for quite sometime but has only begun to surface in the early 90’s and is pretty unique to the masses. Many of the bands feel that it is very original and are passionate about the music that came from it. A few sign on with record labels and hit it big, most notably nirvana, and that once reclusive angsty grungy sound is now a mainstream cash cow. Ok, how do other companies fight back? Simple, get grunge bands of their own and sign them on and play that grunginess to the bone. Once again, commercialization just takes over a once unique sound and bangs the money out of it until the sound becomes sterile and is no longer a viable financial venture. Punk comes into the scene after lurking in the grunge shadow for some time and the same happens with that unique sound. And so on and so forth… See a pattern?

Same story can be said for doom. The 80’s brought about all kinds of weird crappy consoles that only played their games and making games for all of those games were a bitch to do. Big publishers like Atari ran sweatshops for programmers and paid them jack squat to make titles for their consoles. After a lot of crash and burn between these early publishers the Nintendo came out on top with Sega 2nd. Nintendo decides that millions of shit games don’t account for good games, and the official seal of quality ensures that. But skip all that. The pc is still an untapped resource. There are mud games, but nothing that visually appealing is going on with games for the pc’s. Take a couple of passionate people, long hours and lots of devotion later and a game like doom is born. A new unique game is born and lots of other potential is just oozing from that pc’s goodness. And then publishers enter the fray, many of the execs coming from tv and radio companies. Well you know what happens there. Creativity goes out the window in favor of appealing to the masses’ and spoon feeding them a whole buncha crap and getting loads of money from them, until the idea is spoiled and the next incarnation of the Big Hit is born. Things that could be considered “noble” such as staying late, working long hours, lots of overtime, and working weekends is exploited because potential creative people read about the good ol days when people stayed up late and put in weekends to work diligently on their ground breaking cooler than hell project. Business oriented minds know that the average consumer will buy crap and that passionate people will want to work their asses off to try and make a good game.

What does all of that have to do with passion? Well, passion and devotion will certainly start something new and different. If you are at that forefront and take a part of the control early, you can pretty much gain all the resources you need to make great quality stuff after your initial run. The “stragglers” will come in to reap the financial benefits until it’s dead.

There are many passionate people in the gaming industry, but many just don’t have the resources needed to start such a venture. Unfortunately those that are able to take on such endeavors are usually the only ones that can finance the project and get people like us to do the artistic….stuff for them. Concerns are usually about the profits gained from the games we help create for them, and many times quality is often disregarded in favor of making a buck. Don’t forget the shareholders either. Many people and institutions have to be appeased and get some financial benefit from any project.

Artists don’t have that kind of control to help govern what is good or bad for a game. Despite all the ideas we or anyone in other departments may have, we just don’t have the power to enforce them. Rather, we hope that our immediate superiors will address the concerns that we may have for certain aspects of the project, if they are able to do so.

It’s all a matter of perception and how things are viewed from two distinctly different standpoints. From an artist angle, many games look crappy, play like ass and are all around not fun. From the business end however, as long as people will buy that crap it’s good enough. And people continue to buy hyped up crappy games, so it’s good for business.

gauss

poop, you're a little too young to get trapped into that kind of thinking. everyone has nostalgia, but try to avoid the mistaken impression that any one era is really all that significantly different from another. like old people automatically start yearning for a time when popular music wasn't all dirty minded... but it basically always has been in its successive iterations. even 'boogie woogie' (a euphemism for sexual congress), while lyric-less, had awfully raunchy titles. point being the more things change the more they stay the same, i guess. but humans being subject to perception of time as they are, it's difficult to get any good perspective on the matter.

there will always be a lot of largely forgettable art/music/games/films being produced... we just forget them and remember the good stuff, which is what makes the past seem so appealing.


same as it ever was!

RageUnleashed

It is what happens to any art form really. It is human nature, that isn't really an excuse nor a justification, but one of those patterns that happens throughout cultures and history.

Personally, I wish it was an industry all about the passion. No ego, no hyping, no concerns about pleasing publishers and a broad audience of gamers. I wish it was all just about groups of people who come together to make something they really enjoy.