Boring! The repetiveness of modern games
polycounter lvl 18
Im finding games less and less enjoyable.
1.The repetition of themes between titles.
2. The idiotic hero stories with no character depth that only a 15 year old would enjoy (even though the game might carry a "M" rating-Hmm now I see why parents complain).
3. Mimicking hollywood stylings with cut scenes or other that take away from the players interaction!
4. The generic attributes of the characters in the game. Super man or woman.
5. Its to the point you can tell when the art/game/level was rushed. Its so glaring on the screen you want to hit whomever let that slide.
6. Offering paths to a destination that become dull because the game or AI still reacts the same way.
7. Sequelitis.
8. Short games. Not because of art assests. But because the team realized that the game pretty much was the same idea on every level. Shoot/Hammer/Whatever thine enemy. Triumph.
Lanning comments were right on. Im getting bored of playing games. I also believe though the age group has gone up for game players, the publishers still won't think beyond 21 years old as audience. The audience WHO HAS seen the same type of play before.
It boring! BORING! BORING!
1.The repetition of themes between titles.
2. The idiotic hero stories with no character depth that only a 15 year old would enjoy (even though the game might carry a "M" rating-Hmm now I see why parents complain).
3. Mimicking hollywood stylings with cut scenes or other that take away from the players interaction!
4. The generic attributes of the characters in the game. Super man or woman.
5. Its to the point you can tell when the art/game/level was rushed. Its so glaring on the screen you want to hit whomever let that slide.
6. Offering paths to a destination that become dull because the game or AI still reacts the same way.
7. Sequelitis.
8. Short games. Not because of art assests. But because the team realized that the game pretty much was the same idea on every level. Shoot/Hammer/Whatever thine enemy. Triumph.
Lanning comments were right on. Im getting bored of playing games. I also believe though the age group has gone up for game players, the publishers still won't think beyond 21 years old as audience. The audience WHO HAS seen the same type of play before.
It boring! BORING! BORING!
Replies
I also disagree, games are changing but just not as fast as people would like.. take half life 2 (i know every one goes on about it) but it is a great game the lead character also isnt as ... standered as usual, it also brought 1984 to life for me to an extent!! when games start working more off thier strengths and not have to keep up so much on the r and d front i think gameplay will SHINE.
I have a solution (more of a prophecy? Muad'Dib!): I think a critical fallout needs to happen. Like in the comics industry. I believe this next gen consoles will allow this to happen after people get over the hype of how cool they are, and realize how the games will begin to blur. I think then we will see the age range begin to reduce on consoles as only younger generations that will still consider what presented to them as "new".
The biggest solution will then be a publisher that focuses on the older generations. Whom realizes all those little tricks and rushes wont cut it to the gamers who have been around for decades.
oh, and i like cut-scenes, but fucking hate if they're not skipable. whomever thinks they shouldn't be should be knifed in the face.
Jody
personally I think the answer would be some kind of plateau of technology advancement, where everything looks pretty sweet and the only way to distinguish your game is in unique style and gameplay, and not some fancy new water graphics.
that and an increase in online delivery platforms- if the distribution could be made cheaper, maybe other organisations other than publishers could fund games. That would doubtless lead to more diversity.
The biggest underlying reason for this, and a plethora of our other problems, lies in the stupidity of the modern education system. The everyday people of this world are very dumb. No refined taste, very little aspirations, low intelligence level, and very sheep like. I realize this is by design, as this keeps them all very obedient and consume a lot of products to keep the CEO's who run the place happy, but this is where our fundamental problem lies.
For every one discerning gamer, who can tell the difference between good art and bad art, who can appreciate a deep back story and refined character, who can enjoy involving gameplay and engaging dialogue; there are fifty people who cannot. So even if we could somehow get the managers and publishers to allow us to make better games, no one would be there to appreciate them. They wouldn't sell enough to justify the extra time, care, and passion poured into them. Look at Oddworld Inhabitants. Strangers Wrath got a 9.6 on metacritics. Any game that awesome should have sold by the bushels full. But EA didn't pay enough to brainwash the masses into going out and buying it. In an ideal world, the fact it was so fun and gorgeous, that should have spread like wildfire in the underbrush and people would have bought it in droves, full page magazine adds or no.
Second, we need a better distribution method. Every game is successful or not based on a 2 month max shelf life. That's horrible. This has been touched on others more experienced than myself, so I don't need to elaborate. See the gamasutra cover on the GDC designers rant if you want to read more.
Third, more money needs to go to the developers. For each fifty dollar game, at max five dollars goes to the Dev, and that's if they are lucky.
Fourth, the ridiculous disparity between line workers and CEO's. It's in every industry, but it affects us too. If the money a game made only had to pay for the sallaries of those who made it, they could sell much less and still be super profitable. It's the fact there are CEO's like Probst and company that expect multi million dollar sallaries, along with all their cohorts and shareholders, that they will only spend/risk money on a game if it will make them more millions.
Fifth, we must look at ourselves. I've mentioned it before, but I'll mention it again here. We keep complaining that the industry is broken, but no one is willing to stop contributing to the broken model. How many people reading this thread would love to work for Epic, Valve, Naughty Dog, Blizzard, Ubisoft, EA, etc? Rather than pursue their passion (making the games they themselves would want to play, both art style and game play) by going the independant route, everyone wants the security of a large company. The paycheck every two weaks, the fairly certain shipped title after two or three years, and working with enough people to get the job done. If everyone who was fed up with modern games was working on a project they believed in, I bet we would see a lot more innovated fun games.
Well that's all I have to say about this for now, but that's how I feel.
Strangers Wrath got a 9.6 on metacritics. Any game that awesome should have sold by the bushels full. But EA didn't pay enough to brainwash the masses into going out and buying it.
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EA didnt advertise it. So it was by ear only. Had more to do with the lack of getting the word out than stupidity of the masses.
But in the end, it showed EA's own stupidity of rules with punishing/pushing a developer for multiple platform releases. If I were a larger shareholder, I would take them to court, because such idiocy causes my share value to drop.
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Strangers Wrath got a 9.6 on metacritics. Any game that awesome should have sold by the bushels full. But EA didn't pay enough to brainwash the masses into going out and buying it.
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EA didnt advertise it. So it was by ear only. Had more to do with the lack of getting the word out than stupidity of the masses.
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That's exactly why it's stupidity of the masses. Consumers don't care enough about quality to research or ask others, they just rely on the latest magazine or commercial to tell them.
I agree in HL2 was the one shining example. But even it showed some of 8.
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Too short?! It took me 3 months to finish. I know some of your guys are able to complete the game the day it's released, and you make me SICK!
I would love to work with an independent team. It's being able to compete with companies such as Valve and Epic that would prove overwelming. Those guys have been fine tuning their software for years.
Fifth, we must look at ourselves. I've mentioned it before, but I'll mention it again here. We keep complaining that the industry is broken, but no one is willing to stop contributing to the broken model. How many people reading this thread would love to work for Epic, Valve, Naughty Dog, Blizzard, Ubisoft, EA, etc? Rather than pursue their passion (making the games they themselves would want to play, both art style and game play) by going the independant route, everyone wants the security of a large company. The paycheck every two weaks, the fairly certain shipped title after two or three years, and working with enough people to get the job done. If everyone who was fed up with modern games was working on a project they believed in, I bet we would see a lot more innovated fun games.
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Shitty games piss me off to the core and due to rising costs it will only get worse.
The only light I can see is open source game engines. Or very cheap ones that equal pro engines.
Consumers don't care enough about quality to research or ask others, they just rely on the latest magazine or commercial to tell them.
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You assume they all have the time. Do you research the sandwich you had at Mack Joes? While just down the street a smaller restaraunt serves a much better and cheaper tasting sandwich? Wouldn't that also make you stupid under your own theory?
You have to realize that there will always be stupid people in power and you will spend the time of YOUR LIFE pondering that and hating them for making stupid decisions. Not everything has to be innovative, you don't have to innovate everywhere and create new stuff for every second of the game to make a fun engaging gaming experience, if you don't want to play repetitive games, then DON'T, if you are in the industry then you have some power to affect whats going on, but even then don't innovate just for the hell of it, do what you like because after all we do not save lives, we just make games, stop taking these things so damn seriously.
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Strangers Wrath got a 9.6 on metacritics. Any game that awesome should have sold by the bushels full. But EA didn't pay enough to brainwash the masses into going out and buying it.
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EA didnt advertise it. So it was by ear only. Had more to do with the lack of getting the word out than stupidity of the masses.
But in the end, it showed EA's own stupidity of rules with punishing/pushing a developer for multiple platform releases. If I were a larger shareholder, I would take them to court, because such idiocy causes my share value to drop.
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If you read that article posted by skankerzero, the reason why it wasn't marketed well is because the game couldn't be ported over to other consoles. EA simply felt that the game could not make any amazing profit off the game (despite the fact that it looks and plays well) and gave it a shoddy marketing campaign. It sucks because Oddworld Inhabitants chose the Xbox because is has the most robust features of any other console to date and its not like people dont own Xboxes so it would have turned a profit anyway, just not the huge profit that 2 or 3 consoles can bring in. So in regards to a studio making a great game versus a publisher making a huge profit, a publisher will opt for the latter. It only makes business sense after all. In the CEO's eyes its To hell with innovation and whooptee-fucking-doo if someone that we employ can do that innovation for us. As long as its good enough <-- key words there, then thats all needs to be understand.
And as for..
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You have to realize that there will always be stupid people in power and you will spend the time of YOUR LIFE pondering that and hating them for making stupid decisions. Not everything has to be innovative, you don't have to innovate everywhere and create new stuff for every second of the game to make a fun engaging gaming experience, if you don't want to play repetitive games, then DON'T, if you are in the industry then you have some power to affect whats going on, but even then don't innovate just for the hell of it, do what you like because after all we do not save lives, we just make games, stop taking these things so damn seriously.
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Uhm, I had talked a little bit about this at work once. Innovation is a slow process. Normal maps and other eye candy tech have been around for a while, its just that the hardware has reached a point where they can actually be implemented. Everyone should know that. But innovation when concerning game design, well, thats a slow process also and most will not risk a lot of money to be a trendsetter. And Rockstar is right, only innovate when you need to. And even then most people will take the concept of innovation too literally. You dont have to make new features or tech to be innovative either.
I mean look at WoW. Most of its interface, in-game chat commands and a whole other mess of features that have been around in other MMOs and independent software. The problem with the MMO games is that they had a good feature or two, but those features were specific to each individual MMO and were not integrated into one game. Its a no brainer for a company like Blizzard that looks at the genre AS A WHOLE and then takes out all the good bits from every other game and mashes them all together into a game that many would consider heavily polished. The next leap would be to see what other games HAVENT DONE or more importantly, HAVENT DONE WELL and then go from there. Why do all these things? Because it takes too long to come up with a fresh concept that it totally original. Therefore the innovation lies in Blizzards implementation and execution and not actually coming up with a whole lot of new shit to put into the game to make it cool and different.
As for stupid people, well they are mostly ignorant and lazy. It could also be that people fall into demographics that just arent gamers, or avid ones at that. And the more traditional mediums (i.e. television and to a lesser extent, radio) can reach more people than looking for specific web sites that cater to a particular thing like video games. That leads to a company like EA and its CEOs thinking to themselves Should we market a really nice game thats only for one console .or do we market another lame-o sports game that is on ALL platforms that will make us a LOT more money?
Sad to say that most companies are at the mercy of a publisher and their financing and its a lot easier to make a watered down game than it is to add new features that take more time to do. You just do what you can with what youve got.
But in the end, it showed EA's own stupidity of rules with punishing/pushing a developer for multiple platform releases.
[/ QUOTE ] It was still stupid of them.
It could be stupid in your eyes, but not to the CEO's and shareholders of Electronic Arts. Money matters. I wonder if the game were developed for the PC if it would have had better marketing (but then again it would need a multiplayer aspect to be more salable and to extend its shelf life a bit).
All the stomping feet in the world will not change the attributes of the surface titles of the video game industry, like how most hollywood blockbusters are balls and how most big bands are gang bangers you either go your own path and make a difference, or in your case with someone that has absolutely no patience to look beyond the front of your nose, get a fucking aquarium.
I'm not saying most videogames are bad, or that all mainstream media is horrible. But if it's made for the masses it isn't build to be great to you, but satisfactory to everyone. It's how the modern world works.
It could be stupid in your eyes, but not to the CEO's and shareholders of Electronic Arts. Money matters.
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Again, (me) [ QUOTE ]
If I were a larger shareholder, I would take them to court, because such idiocy causes my share value to drop.
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(IE the money lost on sales of that game because of not promoting it)
But companies like nintendo walk on thin ice, and one big bad decision and they'd go under.
But companies like nintendo walk on thin ice, and one big bad decision and they'd go under.
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Nothing could be further from the truth. Last year Nintendo generated more profit than Sony and microsofts game divisions put together. They are smart, they are entrenched, and they have never owed money to anyone. Nintendo has billions in the bank. I don't think that means they can rest on their laurels, but they could definately make a bad decision or two and keep ticking.
It's because of the risks they take that they are so profitable, not in spite of it.
Look at nintendo, they've innovators and are pretty much the trailblazers of the console world, all other consoles just cautiously follow their lead.
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nintendo are innovative? most of the stuff nintendo themselves make is based on old properties, like the hundreds of mario, zelda and metroid games. then you've got the remakes of the resident evil series, and twin snakes.
let's look at the top 10 games on gc in the uk at the moment, taken from gamesindustry.biz.
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1 MARIO PARTY 6 NINTENDO
2 RESIDENT EVIL 4 CAPCOM
3 METROID PRIME 2: ECHOES NINTENDO
4 BATEN KAITOS NINTENDO
5 FIFA STREET ELECTRONIC ARTS
6 MARIO POWER TENNIS NINTENDO
7 DONKEY KONG: JUNGLE BEAT NINTENDO
8 TOM CLANCY'S SPLINTER CELL: CHAOS THEORY UBISOFT
9 TIMESPLITTERS: FUTURE PERFECT ELECTRONIC ARTS
10 VIEWTIFUL JOE 2 CAPCOM
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that's 8 sequels, 4 of which are made by nintendo, you could add fifa street football on to the sequels list, but i'll leave it as it's own title.
as for nintendo's hardware, the leap between the original and the advance was pretty good, but the ds is a gimmick at best. nintendo didn't even think that online gameplay was worthwhile for the gamecube, hardly a sign of brilliance.
Guess it shows what age group plays consoles more-so than the other.
It's like comparing Apples and oranges, they both circle make crappy products, but apples has the DS and oranges have a rehashed mobile PSone.
Poop: I ment as a bad decision in a next console, like anal probe controllers or whatever they're talking about for the "revolutlion OLOL!"
Sure they make good de niro
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You talkin' ta me?
Now I jump into chaotic battle in a huge virtual world full of 63 other human opponents killing each other in all sorts of interesting and amusing ways. I can pilot ships, planes, tanks, jeeps and motorcycles. I can use my brain to figure out the most cunning ways possible to take them out. I can dump explosives into my virtual jeep, drive it into my opponents base, bail out at the last minute and detonate. I can land my plane on an opponents aircraft carrier, stop at the end of their runway, hop into the rear gunner position, point back down their runway and pepper them with lead as they try to take off.
That's a little more interesting than the games of yesteryear to me ;-p
As soon as online games started to happen, I lost interest in single player games. Where's the fun If your opponent isn't a human being? The world feels dead in single player games to me. Because I know it's only me in there. I'm probably being a little facetious, since really you were talking specifically about single player games. But dont discount the amazing technological advancements in gaming ( that have lead to incredible gameplay that I could have only dreamt about as a kid ) for that reason.
Moz, well the part about Nintendo being innovative is only partly true. Sure, they sometimes comes up with amazing concepts but then they make sure to milk them dry with a bajillion sequels. Spoke the Nintendo-whore, heh.
I do play some single player games, but for the most part I enjoy multiplayer far far more.
How were old games different for that list?
Sides, when was the last Deus Ex, Doom, Half-Life, Grim Fandango, or other title that left a lasting impression on you versus a copy of a copy?
In my opinion and taste.
Where did you get this from, Poop? I'm not hatin', I'd just like to know for sure, 'cos I've been under the impression that Nintendo is close to doing a Sega ever since the N64 bombed (and to a lesser extent the GC).
As for innovative games...they come along very, very rarely. At most we get cool, polished games. Look at HL(2), even Spore (no innovation there except for the scope: every single feature has been done before, every single gameplay element is old and derived from Sim City, Populous, MOO2 etc etc) et al: not innovative at all, just very well polished and therefore cool games. Yet even that isn't a sure-fire way of making profits: look at Beyond Good and Evil (and I'm betting the exact same will happen with Psychonauts): great game which hardly sold enough due to poor marketing. And it made several game-of-the-year-lists too!
That is the sad thing: no matter hgow much you look down on the PR-gits, they sure are neccessary to getting the word out and translating a good game into money.
"Last year Nintendo generated more profit than Sony and microsofts game divisions put together."
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I think this has been common knowledge (I've certainly cited it a few times) since the start of april. It's because they don't subsidise the hardware, and some "missleading" figures largely caused by currency fluctuations.
Anyhow, Nintendo are still seen as the leader in innovation compared to XBox and Sony.
Nintendo is playing it safe while innovating, they throw the same five franchises at any game no matter how different it is. Take Donkey Konga, Jungle Beat and King of Swing: All three use the Donkey Kong brand yet they are VERY different games. Super Mario Sunshine: The waterpack changed the dynamics of the game and everyone noticed. Unfortunately people wanted a straight sequel to Mario 64, not something new. The Mario Party games were contracted out to Hudson, the lack of innovation and excessive sequelizing is to be expected.
One problem with innovation is how innovation is defined: Is it to play something that is nowhere close to existing ideas? A new genre? Or just a feature in a context it wasn't used in before? I'm tending more towards the last definition, just because the concept of staying hidden from your enemies was around since Wolfenstein (that's C64/Amiga for you Playstation kids!) doesn't mean Thief isn't innovative. Saying Spore is derivative may be true but have you ever seen all of those features in one game? Sometimes the synthesis of different, previously separate ideas creates a new idea.
Let's take Arena Wars: In theory there is no innovation here, the game modes were taken straight from UT2003. However, translated into an RTS context these ideas turn out completely different.
These days completely new concepts are becoming rare because there is a limit to the possibilites of a controller (no way to simulate exhaustion, for example). Not every thinkable action can be mapped to a controller. However, we don't need to scrap the fundamentals every time we make a game and reinvent the wheel. There are many possibilities how existing genres can be turned into something that still plays vastly different from anything before.
FPSes are a very bad example though, innovation in that area has been very rare. Compare HL2 and Quake 1. Both play very similar even though they were more than ten years apart. On the other hand, compare Dune 2 with Warcraft 3 or Perimeter. Or Ultima with Neverwinter Nights (or Nethack if that's your style).
These days completely new concepts are becoming rare because there is a limit to the possibilites of a controller...
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Which I believe is where Nintendo is focusing its innovative ideas for the next console.
Playstation and Xbox are more for profits in the market space that Nintendo doesn't cover. I wouldn't place Halo. And innovation in the same sentence.
MMOs introduce so much more, and make single player games seem almost two dimensional (pardon the pun)
hard to produce that in a single player game.
What I really hate in games are those scripted sequences in HL and HL2. Sure, nice idea to keep them from the POV of the player but I feel like a spectator with no purpose during those scenes (never mind I could never understand what people were saying in HL1 beause I was too far away most of the time, I played HL2 with subtitles). It was like being in the middle of a street theatre, people acting out a scene around you while all you do is watch. Sure, sometimes you had to push a button or something to make the scene continue (like those story-telling machines in theme parks) but overall HL felt much less immersive than any other FPS to me because I was a noncharacter, basically a gun glued to a camera.
I've talked about this at length before. I'll try to keep this short.
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Wow, that wasn't short,, but I can give an insider's perspective (becase i worked at 3Do, makers of truly sucky games). it's an unfortunate collision between Payroll, and development expenses, and Financial risk aversion. The developpers are told by the "bean counters" to avoid anything that will negatively impact the income stream, so the developers avoid controversy, do not gamble on the untried, and produce clones of the previously successfu to the point we have an impressive genre rigidity, to the point where fight game controls are nearly identical. Avoiding risk, and controversy, except the kind that gets them free publicity, makes the games blanderized. this thinking, where control of the money by one developer, and one man is seen as irresponsible, is also what makes current Hollywood suck.
Education may be a factor, but may not be as dominant as Poop thinks it is.
Scott
KDR: That was the point. You're not watching Gordon, you are Gordon. Alyx helps that perspective mostly. I liked being able to move around during the sequences, instead of being stuck watching a video.
"I think this has been common knowledge (I've certainly cited it a few times) since the start of april. It's because they don't subsidise the hardware, and some "missleading" figures largely caused by currency fluctuations."
Yeah, I heard the 'not subsidising the hardware' part too...but that doeesn't mean you're making a profit if you don't sell enough hardware (and thus software) to recoup the investment. So I'd still ike to see a source/link stating that Nintendo is fiscally healthy...which after N64 and Gc I rather doubt. Especially when [just about] the only games to do really well are dev'd by Nintendo in-house. Sorry for being the sceptic...
Anyway, I still say it's polish we're after as gamers, much more than innovation. HL(2) was pure polish, no innovation. Spore is polish and integration, rather than innovation. Sure, the scale it encompasses is larger than we've seen before, but it's just two steps larger than MOO2...there is no innovation, no gameplay mechanic we've never seen before. Just a polished game which uses the best elements from games past. Like WoW (which I've never played); and that's all I need: a game which draws me into the story and compels me to play it, through polished gameplay mechanics (screw it if I've seen the like before...I've had sex before and it doesn't bore me) and compelling story. Which is why I enjoyed HL2 even though I played HL1. And why I'm looking forwards to GTA:SA even though I've played GTA:VC.
Conclusion: I'd play an MMORPG if the leveling where cut...I don't level up in GTA:VC, do I? But still that game owns due to it's gameplay mechanics.
Shit, I swear: gimme a Shadowrun MMORPG where the gameplay is emergent due to all the shit I can do (hack in, use a glider to get to the top of a building, shoot my way in or charm my way in) rather than the fact that I've levveled up one level, and I'll be happy. Goddamn I'm gonna pitch this when I've finished my studies
The thing with the GC and the N64 is that while they might seem like a failure to a gamer (lowest sales numbers, fewer games) they are a huge success from a business standpoint. Nintendo is a publisher as well, after all so what they don't make on hardware they make on games sold. The hardware is built to be a compromise between power, reliability and price which is why they continually undercut their competition without losing money on the systems. So the hardware just needs to break even, they'll still selll tons of games and make a huge profit. Nintendo is one of the top publishers in the US (#2-4 varying from year to year, #1 is of course EA).
Integration is innovation. There have been third person shooters and driving games yet GTA 3 was innovative because no game combined those elements before. Combining isn't just copy&paste, you need to make the components blend together if you plan on making a good game. You demand every element to be completely new and never used before which of course will make the market seem rather uninnovative to you.