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Mandatory Game designer training video

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by PenguinEmporium, Dec 2, 2013.

  1. PenguinEmporium

    PenguinEmporium

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    [video=youtube_share;WLFu8i7j16k]http://youtu.be/WLFu8i7j16k
     
  2. Loius

    Loius

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    If only there were a way to make that mandatory. For the publishers as well.
     
  3. SmellyDogs

    SmellyDogs

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    Supply and demand. People demand remakes, just like in TV e.g. Star Trek, Superman, Batman, Friends, etc. Depressingly tired themes but that's what most people enjoy. If you want a decent story, buy a good book.
     
  4. Yoska

    Yoska

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    Eh, so modern means less than 0.1% of actual games coming out. :rolleyes:

    What a disappointment. The title of the thread got me all excited.
     
  5. I am da bawss

    I am da bawss

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    Meh.
    There are actually MORE indie developers nowadays than any other time making "alternative" non-mainstream games (FPS/MMO/Racing..etc) and literally THOUSANDS of indie games that are breaking new grounds and yet this guy doesn't seem to be playing them and blaming the video games nowadays are boring? More like he just like boring video games and only seeking those out to play them!

    Same with Hollywood movies - there are actually far more small budget indie films nowadays than ever and people still complain about Hollywood making the same formulated nobrainers each summer. People are just not ready to accept the indie genre yet. A good example is this film I just saw called "Antiviral", almost nobody I know heard of it, and I will bet 99.9% will not like it. And yet I thought it is quite inventive, imaginative, well made film.

    So the real problem is not because we are not making innovative, ground breaking games, the REAL PROBLEM is the LACK OF BUDGET FOR EXPOSURE. Most of the indie titles that are decent are not getting the attention needed and eventually just falls into oblivion and forgotten.

    For example, this game called "continue?9876543210" I just discovered, is probably one of those titles.

     
  6. SmellyDogs

    SmellyDogs

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    Except I believe Indie to be even less original than AAA with ideas.

    Indie tends to be either quirky art style, broken conceptually or AAA clone.

    The reality is that I believe not many people are talented enough to design exceptional games. I think AAA studios do have that talent available to be original but they are constrained by market force.
     
  7. AndrewGrayGames

    AndrewGrayGames

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    I sympathize greatly with this video, but there's some fundamental problems we can't get around...yet.

    The funny thing? There's a trope for everything he described, which means we can mess with it!

    Point #1 - The (correct) charge of "Lack of originality" maps very nicely to It's Been Done
    Nothing is truly original at this point; barring a creative epiphany, all we can hope to do is create interesting interplay with our player to make for something remotely interesting. Needless to say, this is harder to accomplish than it sounds like it would be.

    Point #2 - The (correct) charge of "Treating the player like an idiot" relates well to The Forced Tutorial, or as I call it, "the damn unskippable tutorial."
    Ideally, our players should be allowed to do as their primary modus operandi; it's what sets games apart from static medium like books or movies.

    Our level design should be complicit in this 'do-first' education of the player, with environments that force players to evaluate the tools in our arsenal.

    Our enemies should equally be complicit, acting not only as an enforcer of the Loss Condition for your formal system, but as passive teachers that do things we can expect the player to do (for instance, in Final Fantasy IV the Magus Sisters cast reflect on themselves, cast a spread spell, and it rebounds to hit the player characters; as a result, not only does this amplify the damage of the spell, the players can't use magic to get around it!)

    Point #3 - The (correct) charge of "too much focus on realistic graphics" corresponds positively to Real Is Brown - and in the context of the FPSes he's talking about so much, specifically to Real Is Brown.
    I've never understood why we put so much effort into the specific "imitates reality" style; we're surrounded by reality. Going to the FPS example, there are much easier ways of replicating 'real' environments and objectives - real play. Some nerf guns, or Airsoft achieve the job pretty well.

    I've understood games to provide the surreal. Something - funny enough, like Halo - that cannot be real is where video games shine, because we can see the 'What If...' question posed by the developers of the work, and how they answer it ('Alien ships are lit with blue and purple lighting, have energy weapons, and sticky grenades.') But I'd like to take it further - can you imagine how freakin' hilarious a FPS with a graphic style similar to My Little Pony would be?

    Graphics are a component of the game...they are NOT the game. At least, I hope not. If they are, I'll just leave the industry now, because no intelligent contribution most of us could make would ever hope to trump the power of the color brown. [/opinion]

    Point #4 - The (meh) charge that "Your Story Sucks" reminds me very much of a The Reason You Suck Speech
    Stories sucking is highly subjective, first. Personal taste - beyond mine - isn't something I can argue for, or against, because it's personal. Some people don't mind being a celebrated murderer who Did What They Had To Do; others find a setup similar to Grandia II, where those who are known to perpetrate violence are looked upon accordingly, to be a more engaging story.

    Personally, I think more Grandia II-style stories would be interesting, because the 'main hero' would be the violent outcast who has to work his way to being regarded as something other than an out-and-out murderer, or at worst, used for the fact that he will do what others won't. This charge of the author's is at once the most suspect, but also the one we have the most latitude to actually do something about.

    Point #5 - The (correct) charge that "games are not challenging" falls well into a poorly-done area of the spectrum of Anti-Frustration Features
    Yes, making the game less tedious to play is one thing, but reducing the cognitive load of gameplay to the point where I can program one of my computer's cores to do it for me with a minimum of trouble (not that I do it, but I'm staring squarely at World of Warcraft on this one)...it bothers me.

    For all those kiddos out there, back when I was your age, a dungeon meant a dungeon - you had one save point at the start, and one before the boss fight if the designers felt generous. Random encounters - particularly in Dragon Warrior 2 - could, would, and did routinely kick your ass, meaning you had to reload state once in a blue moon at least. Once you either A) farmed enough resources to be able to take on the random encounters, and B) figured out the dungeon's gimmick, you got to fight the boss, who - with all this planning, strategizing, and brute-force grinding - had a different, advanced set of gimmicks and nasty-as-hell tuning. You'd be loading saves again (the Wall boss in Final Fantasy IV reduced me to tears, because while it's obvious what you have to do - win a DPS race - doing it is another story altogether.)

    I think our understanding of cognitive processes is better than it was in 1991, when Final Fantasy IV was released, but I think games with tuning like Lost Odyssey are what we're severely lacking. Challenge is a part of fun! We play games to be challenged to solve problems, leading to Earning Our Happy Ending. How this has fallen out of practice, I don't know. But blaming the lowest common denominator is the wrong thing to do - that mindset exists because we let it.
     
  8. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    I haven't watched the video, but generally speaking the whole "lack of originality" thing is a load of crud. Yes, people are making clones and yes, people iterate a lot on an idea once they've found one that works and yes, you can pick virtually any game and find similarities with other games. The thing is, none of that actually speaks to a lack of originality.

    My last hobby game could pretty fairly be called a clone. It has a lot in common with Metal Gear Solid and/or Pac Man, pick one. There have been what, a dozen Call of Duty games, and that's just one of many franchises of "modern combat" themed games in a saturated market of first-person shooters. There are lots of racing games, all of which fit into one of relatively few categories. I could go on and on. But that's describing things that are happening, it does not at all provide any evidence as to what is not happening, which is the actual claim being made. It's kind of like saying "the only people making cars are Ford" and presenting a Ford warehouse as evidence - it shows that there is a warehouse full of Fords, it does not show what is or is not happening elsewhere.

    There are plenty of original and/or semi-original games out there. Not a lot of them come from AAA developers because AAA games cost a bucketload load of money and a darn long time to make, and even if they start original they won't be by the time the hit shelves. But that doesn't mean that other original games don't exist. Open up Steam and take a browse through the non-featured parts of the catalogue.

    And also, don't come back and say "they're not original" just because you can identify points they have in common with other games. By that logic nothing, ever, is original because everything is derived from something, and/or there's so much stuff that it's impossible not to have something in common with something.

    And finally... who cares anyway? First, do the people who complain about games not being original also complain about books/movies/TV shows? Second - and I say this all the time - since when does being original make something good?
     
  9. AndrewGrayGames

    AndrewGrayGames

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    I agree whole heartedly angrypenguin. Because so few things haven't been done, the chances of stumbling on one grow slimmer as we go along. Additionally, those unexplored mechanics may not lend themselves well to a game developed for profit.

    It's better, easier, and possibly far more efficient to take an existing system, and make modifications to it (and, for good measure, redo the paint job in the form of the overall aesthetic and that 'story' thing) as necessary. Lack of originality isn't bad. Just ask James Cameron (if Avatar dosen't remind you slightly of Pocahontas, that just proves you didn't see very many Disney movies growing up.)
     
  10. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    Or to a game that's fun.
     
  11. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    Mostly it is a risk factor. Original game mechanics and especially IP are risky. If you are going to create a game that takes several million dollars and several years to make, you want to mitigate the risks as much as possible. Successful new IP is time-consuming and risky especially at the AAA level.
     
  12. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    Yes, and...

    - One of the best ways to mitigate the risk is to give it a go on a smaller scale. So you make a small game with the original concept and, if it's actually good, incoprotate it into your bigger game. It is then no longer "original" because it's been done before... by you.

    - Also, lack of ideas is not an issue. A gamer considers an idea "original" if they have not seen it before, whether or not it has been done elsewhere before. Most gamers don't play indie / alternative / non-mainstream games (hence the definition of "mainstream"), so if you're not a developer or an indie/alternative enthusiast then the stuff that those people whinge about being unoriginal might be new and fresh to you. So, given the above point, why start from an untested idea when there are plenty of barely used ones that have already shown success elsewhere?

    I mean, seriously, I just personally can't see the logic or the sense to the whole "original = good" thing. There is no correlation between how good things are and how original they are. (Actually, there might be, but I strongly suspect it's a negative correlation since more originality almost necessarily means less refinement and polish.)
     
  13. I am da bawss

    I am da bawss

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    Well, part of the problem is kids nowadays seem to be born with ADD or ADHC or both. You give them something even remotely challenging and they will throw in the towel. Plus there are just so many games out now with whiz-bangs they simply have too much choice - meaning if they get frustrated even slightly, they simply move on.

    My theory is that, the game has to be design like a web page now. If you can't engage the viewers/players within the first few seconds, they move on. If you can't keep them interested, they move on. This only means you have to keep rewarding the players and lower the bar on challenges in order to appeal to the widest audiences. I remember there was an article 15 years ago about the success of Half-Life and how they systemized the play testing and found levels are "too challenging" and epouse the idea of dumbing everything down than you thought is already dumb down - to the point of idiot proof, and now that axiom had become the maxim of game design almost everywhere.

    The truth of the matter is that, those who complain about difficulty being too easy - are the X or Y generations, the kids nowadays they don't know any better. ;)
     
  14. I am da bawss

    I am da bawss

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    More like... Dances with Wolves, or Dune or.... ;)



     
  15. AndrewGrayGames

    AndrewGrayGames

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    There's a big difference between initial difficulty being low (bringing Final Fantasy IV up again, the game is holding your hand even with the first boss, which teaches you to reason when to attack or not) and overall difficulty being set for a monkey afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain combined with a severe case of aphasia.

    A good game teaches as you go, so that you can make informed choices, in pursuit of a clear and compelling goal. Many modern games make no pretense of posing a challenge, rendering any choices you make nigh pointless. My theory is this mindset is the reason Final Fantasy XIII's level design turned out the way it did. After all...why bother exploring a map for helpful resources when you can just follow a long, narrow hallway?
     
  16. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    Is it the lack of challenge or the lack of fun?

    I don't know about kids, but to me losing a game isn't necessarily a bad thing. If I had fun trying I don't really care what the outcome was. In fact, why would I want to win if winning means the end of the game and I was enjoying myself?

    On a semi-related note, I think that a lot of games these days try too hard to set up cinematic moments and not hard enough to set up cool gameplay. For instance, I love the Assassin's Creed games, but the other night I played a platforming segment that displayed a classic case of missing the point. Every couple of minutes I'd reach a checkpoint where I'd lose control of the character and the camera would change and some dramatic jump, environmental fall (eg: a platform breaking) and then recovery would happen, and it'd all be done for me. For the love of God, why? Consider: I am playing that game because I want to overcome those challenges myself. But as it was designed I was missing out on the coolest bits of the platforming because the designers thought that showing me something that looked cool was more important than giving me something cool to do. Now, if I wanted to see something cool rather than do something cool I'd have put on a DVD instead of a game. So isn't that whole thing backwards?
     
  17. AndrewGrayGames

    AndrewGrayGames

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    You speak as though there's a difference...
     
  18. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    You speak as though there's not...

    There are plenty of games that are fun despite not being much of a challenge. In fact, I'd say that Assassin's Creed is one of them.

    And there are plenty of games that are challenging without being fun.
     
  19. AndrewGrayGames

    AndrewGrayGames

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    Well-phrased. :)

    EDIT:

    ...So, I contradicted myself. If this were a debate, I would have just shot myself in the foot with a SCUD missile.
     
  20. TylerPerry

    TylerPerry

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    This must be a joke of some kind....