The RPG's top priority--character, battle system, or story?

Yeah, it’s surprising just how much less developers (and probably 3D artists as well) get paid compared to other people in the same field, considering that their jobs often require much more mental work and creative energy. Perhaps, that’s one the reasons I’m not a developer (professionally) any more/at the moment (although there are of course a number of reasons for this).

A friend of mine came up with a theory that developers are often not appreciated as much as they should be is because when observing their work behavior it often doesn’t look like much is going on. A week might go by when the product wouldn’t look or behave any differently, but behind the scenes hundreds of lines of code could have been changed.

I’m sorry but someone who makes a bad game does not harm another person, nor does he promote or allow harm to other persons, like someone filming child porn does. Where the fuck does that analogy come from? Also, I never said we should buy and pretend we like bad games, I simply opposed the concept that 99.9% of developers are lazy or similar and took up this profession out of greed. Trust me, there are many other professions you can take out of greed before you settle on “game developer”, even using the same skills that requires.

Hell, it’s a profession so it HAS to make money, else it would be a hobby, like it is for many people out there (and some of them make great games too). Sure they probably do make a lot of things they don’t like, in order to make that money, but that doesn’t mean that’s what they stand for, and that they don’t put any real effort into creating whatever it is they are creating.

What makes you think that the guy who modelled the amazingly detailed models of the latest FIFA game doesn’t like doing that sort of thing, modelling? Would he be better off if he got to have his own company to create the games he imagines? Maybe, but that doesn’t mean what he does is not a labor of love, even if EA manages to squeeze that out of them sometimes… Similar for the math obsessed programmers that did the new physics engine or whatever, and so on.

What is it then? You think that modellers can only possibly like what they do if they are modelling dragons, and that programmers can only possibly like honing their skills if the things they make are to be used in a grand epic RPG and not a football game?

I really didn’t expect that you would have that mindset Geoff, thinking so many souls out there are lazy, lack imagination, and took up this profession that is so unfair to many and only a few become really sucessful in (perhaps they do it unfairly too) simply for the money and nothing more.

As for PDS (or ANY and EVERY game you enjoyed, with some exceptions), you can probably be sure that it didn’t follow a process of development that much different to other titles you happened to hate instead of love like it. You think they magically got permission to use creativity in that, and they magically happened to be developers different from everyone else, not being lazy and doing it because they like it and not for money? Get real.

Feel free to start up a studio and make your very own dream game without thinking about trivial things like sales and development costs but nothing gives you the right to call people who don’t get that chance greedy, lazy or whatever else. I’m sure you can come up with examples that prove that kind of people exist, but that’s the case with most any activity out there so it does not prove that is the case for the majority of them.

If you take a purely cynical perspective on everything, things become much, much clearer.

Like it or not, games have sold their souls to demographics. Games are made for non-gamers. You cannot win no matter how hard you try. Why do most modders mod? To make a name for themselves so they can earn the big bucks. The end.

We can pretend that there’s nothing wrong with the world we live in all we want, Alex, but you know better than that.

You are not as all knowing as you seem to think you are. You’ve failed to post any relevant reply other than “things are how I say they are”. I’m sorry but I’ve been interacting with this kind of people for years now (and worked with a few of them back when I was attempting to model) and you couldn’t be further from the truth. If you want to be cynical, start with judging yourself and your opinions about people you don’t know.

As for your purely cynical view on everything, whoever told you that’s how you should look at things? Personal experiences can be an isolated incident, so if you somehow hurt your poor soul and as a result became a cynical asshole, then get a psychotherapist and/or blame the people responsible, not a whole bunch of people you never met and know nothing about. Cynical does NOT mean objective, regardless of what you try to say here. Click the link to see what you are.

[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]
Like it or not, games have sold their souls to demographics. Games are made for non-gamers. [/quote]

Just out of interest, isn’t that what Nintendo, last bastion of true gaming and upholder of the supreme truth is going to be spending this entire console generation doing?

[quote=“Kimimi”]

[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]
Like it or not, games have sold their souls to demographics. Games are made for non-gamers. [/quote]

Just out of interest, isn’t that what Nintendo, last bastion of true gaming and upholder of the supreme truth is going to be spending this entire console generation doing?[/quote]

Actually, one of the biggest talking points in the industry is how recently, games have been made for no one but gamers. Do you truly think non-gamers can navigate a PS3/X360 controller?

The big N is just trying to appeal to a different market because it’s too miserly to compete with Microsoft and Sony. This has always been the case with Nintendo. Hell, the SNES was years newer than the Genesis, yet Nintendo put a CPU in that was almost 3 times as weaker as the Genesis’s to be cost efficient.

No Alex, you can’t deny what the industry has become. I’m starting to care less and less as we head into an era of suitcase nukes anyway in this oh-so perfect world we apparently live in.

I completed Indigo Prophecy a while back (Fahrenheit in Europe) and asked myself why gems like this are so rare. Compare Sands of Time to its sequels to see what I mean as well.

It’s laziness in that people stick with common themes. You don’t even need to be cynical to see why.

[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]The big N is just trying to appeal to a different market because it’s too miserly to compete with Microsoft and Sony. This has always been the case with Nintendo. Hell, the SNES was years newer than the Genesis, yet Nintendo put a CPU in that was almost 3 times as weaker as the Genesis’s to be cost efficient.

[/quote]

Yep they did much the same with the N64, by making a separate Sound chip to cut costs, which really hurt the machine . NCL also make a great machine like the CUBE yet cut costs by not making it 5.1 ect , they sat onthe final CPU of the GBA for over 3 years and the less said about the cost cutting onthe Wii (low Ram, No 5.1, 720P) the better.

I’m a bit thankful for SONY, becasue with out them the 360 would be no where near as good , thanks to NCL given up onthe Spec game. Fair enough they don’t have to beat MS or SONY. But at least give gamers spec on Bar with Lindberg or somting (using cheap off the shelf PC parts ) that wouldn’t add much cost to the Wii .

[quote=“Abadd”]

[quote=“Kimimi”]

Just out of interest, isn’t that what Nintendo, last bastion of true gaming and upholder of the supreme truth is going to be spending this entire console generation doing?

Actually, one of the biggest talking points in the industry is how recently, games have been made for no one but gamers. Do you truly think non-gamers can navigate a PS3/X360 controller?[/quote]

I think that’s a false question…didn’t we all have to learn?What’s the big problem…

I still don’t see how you can blame the developers for lazyness Geoff, you almost said it yourself, it’s the suits that have turned the industry the way it is, and if anything you should blame the majority of players that keep buying whatever mediocre products the suits decide they want made. And yet you find it easier to blame every hard working developer that’s looking for the chance to make what he wants, that tries to put his soul and personal touch into the dullest of projects, for greed and lazyness.

Once again, get real, see how the real world works, and you will realise why the developers have to make what they make, why the unique, inspired indie games never sell well (how many of those have you bought?), why it’s so hard for such studios to get publishers, and many other things that show greed and lazyness is the least of it.

I would mostly call it will to survive, and will to keep doing what they set out to do despite things not working out in their favor, despite getting measly paychecks, despite many other things you are so eager to ignore, just as you ignored many of my points in previous replies making this a non-discussion.

As for PoP, you know, just because you did not enjoy the sequels (what’s wrong with the last one?) doesn’t mean the changes happened purely because of greed, and if they did happen because of the greed of the suits, it doesn’t mean the developers got lazy and didn’t put as much effort into the products. I would again bet that the first game which you happened to enjoy had more or less the same development process as the sequels.

You are just being narrow sighted: “I like this game so the developers did good. I don’t like the sequel so it means they got greedy, lazy and basically changed their whole beliefs after the first title. Fuck them.” That’s what you’re saying and it’s incredibly ridiculous as, developers or not, they can like things you don’t like so unless you actually spoke with them and saw their attitude and understood their motives, and all of them are now richer because of those, then you are just talking bullshit.

A lot of gamers either started learning at a very young age, or started with a much more basic controller. Most non-gamers either stopped playing back in the NES days or simply never got into gaming period.

So, a lot of people have a hard time navigating 2-3 buttons, nevermind 2 joysticks, a d-pad, 4 face buttons, 4 shoulder buttons, and two thumbstick buttons. Couple that with the fact that there is a vast majority of people who don’t understand a lot of gaming conventions (i.e. items inside crates, combos, etc) and you get a lot of people who are only very marginally interested in games that get shut out because they don’t have the willingness or time to invest to learn how to play games.

On top of all that, given that the vast majority of gamers are 18-24 males, most games revolve around muscle-bound military men carrying big guns in games that almost always feature violence. Put that all together, and you have a very specific market that caters to a very specific audience.

I had a concept for a game that I knew wouldn’t sell, but thought would be interesting to make. You know those infamous dating sims from Japan? How about doing one, but without the cheesy anime cliches? And make it more open ended? It’d be like playing through your own love story… if done right, it would potentially be very appealing to women. However, you’d still run into the whole don’t-know-how-to-use-the-controller aspect. Perhaps on the Wii?

(Speaking of which - back in 2002, I had this very argument with my boss. I argued that controllers were simply too intimidating for non-gamers and that in order to expand the market, we’d need “controllers” that could accept inputs that were not dependent on current gaming conventions. I even spoke about motion sensors and whatnot… guess my mind was in the right place :slight_smile: )

The trouble is with these non gamers , is that they’re not the ones that will be buying the games week after week . I get what some people are trying say about the controler , but I know loads that can’t program a video or use half the features on the DVD.

I don’t see Manufactures making DVD players, PC more simpler , I don’t want games to go the same way either . I see no reason why we can’t have your standard X-Box like controler , and then a seprate controler for the party games ect , have the best of both worlds .

It like with sports , should we scrap half the rules in Football, NFL, Rugby to try and get the non fans onbard , at the cost of the real fans ?

The thing is, with each subsequent generation, games get more and more expensive to develop, but the audiences aren’t expanding at the same rate that costs are. Granted, audiences are expanding, but just not fast enough.

In order for the market to grow, you have to reach for the non-gamers. Eventually, everyone will be a gamer in one sense or another (just like everyone reads books or watches movies), but there is a chance that videogames will become just like comic books (in the US, at least… Japan is a different story). There’s a reason why comic books are much bigger in Japan than in the US. The market wasn’t limited to appeal to specific demographics, so you get comics about businessmen, basketball teams, superheroes, ambiguously gay relationships, and whatnot.

[quote=“Abadd”]I had a concept for a game that I knew wouldn’t sell, but thought would be interesting to make. You know those infamous dating sims from Japan? How about doing one, but without the cheesy anime cliches? And make it more open ended? It’d be like playing through your own love story… if done right, it would potentially be very appealing to women. However, you’d still run into the whole don’t-know-how-to-use-the-controller aspect. Perhaps on the Wii?

(Speaking of which - back in 2002, I had this very argument with my boss. I argued that controllers were simply too intimidating for non-gamers and that in order to expand the market, we’d need “controllers” that could accept inputs that were not dependent on current gaming conventions. I even spoke about motion sensors and whatnot… guess my mind was in the right place :slight_smile: )[/quote]

I’ll be honest by stating that Hentai Games are the only games I enjoy playing nowadays…not only do they have good stories, but I get a hard-on, as well. It’s too bad that there is virtually no gameplay at all, though – if it weren’t for the chronic masturbation, it would be a very boring experience indeed.

In a somewhat unfortunate way… the above post actually fits with a response to Abadd’s point about controllers. Typing on a keyboard is also complicated and intimidating if it’s not something you’ve always done, but just imagine how many people have probably relearned typing because of email. Or for that matter the recent phone text-ing phenomenon (that I don’t entirely understand) which is even more daunting to get fast at with a regular phone. People will get used to things quite transparently at any age, if something compels them. I believe game content and conventions are still the main discouragement to possible new users.

As illustration, my older sister who has really never played any of these “videogames” (Tetris and Myst don’t count) got really into Tomb Raider when she saw me playing it on Saturn when I was living with her while recovering from a car crash. And that’s a game that some real gamers think had overly complicated controls. But the deliberate pacing, the exceptional animation and visual feedback, and the well realized and distinctive characterization gave the game a hook for people who maybe didn’t ever get it about any other games.

I know the Wiimote has a certain innate advantage, it is more intuitive and is already clearly pulling in a lot of people who never gave videogames a look before. But the computer mouse did much the same thing, and just in terms of games well… one of the main genres that became big with “non-gamers” and the mainstay of popular PC gaming for a while, the point-and-click adventure, has faded into obscurity. But many of the principles are still in evidence with virtually every PC game type that isn’t an FPS.

I guess my point is ultimately that every medium has many echelons of popular archetypes. There are many people who only ever go to blockbuster action movies, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind would be far too complicated for them as well. In the case of comics, it’s the graphic novels with their “wider appeal” that are the relative niche market. How many people would read any classic literature if they weren’t forced to in school? Maybe we’ll have classic interactive media appreciation classes soon?

Driving a car is really complicated and stressful, but nearly everyone wants to know how because it’s extremely compelling to be able to go where you want when you want and fast. People will get past almost anything, if they’re given a good enough reason. I give all credit to Nintendo for their vision, I think that Wii will go down in videogame history as a significant paradigm evolution, I do not think it will represent, in and of itself, something worth calling a revolution… it will open new doors no doubt about that, I don’t see it closing any old ones though.

Great post, Heretic. I’d also like to add that simpler games are often more appealing to casual or non gamers. I’ve noticed that a lot of people will be happy playing simplistic games like Tetris, 2D Sonic, or Pacman because these kinds of games are easy to pick and play for short periods of time. The problem for game companies is that you can’t sell these sorts of games for the price of a new console game. People enjoy them because they’re cheap, simple, and fun for a few minutes at a time, which is quite the opposite of what most of todays console and PC games are like.

I’ve had enough of the real world thanks. The sooner it all burns, the better.

No one said we had to agree on everything Alex. Maybe my examples are too extreme? It’s like my rape porn analogy earlier. If it generated billions of dollars/whatever, what would stop you from selling it? Something like 60% of the world’s pedophiles originate from the states, thus creating a demand for their tastes. Who’s to blame, really? This culture that leaves people feeling like a part of nothing worthwhile, forcing them to search for meaning where there isn’t any, or the people who supply their “demand”, thus reinforcing the inner perception of their newfound identity?

I won’t content myself with being a worker drone making misery more bearable. There’s more to life than keeping yourself alive.

Hard working, sure. I bet without the monetary incentive, we’d see truly grander stories rather than the recycled crap we are forcefed today merely because familiarity is a bigger earner. If you aren’t part of the solution, then you are part of the problem. It’s that simple.

Now let’s go invade the Middle East to ensure lower oil prices.

I could give an actual game example if you want…

Back when I was helping people in the BG2 modding scene, there were a group of very smart straight women who wanted to make more male characters that were romanceable by female chars. They learnt how to code and rewrite the scripts all by themselves to make their dream come true (of course I have mixed feelings about the Edwin romance mod). It took them years.

They set an old wrong right. BioWare had to cut a lot of content due to time constraints, so cut corners here because the majority of players wouldn’t have minded anyway. If it were up to the guys, they would have expected women to be happy with the romanceable female chars.

What would you call that if not laziness? BioWare learnt their lesson though (they underestimated the demand here) and I remember David Gaider telling people that we “don’t live in a genderless world, and neither do they”.

But these universal themes aren’t going away. I was very disappointed when the show John Doe was cancelled since it was highly original. Why is Neighbours/Eastenders still airing, and not that? People complained about Firefly as well but we all know why that got canned (stupid Joss Whedan and his desire to impose his vision of life on everyone). Angel didn’t deserve to be canned, but hell, it didn’t empower women as much as Buffy did, despite Whedan constantly downplaying the importance of male characters. Even introducing a black character didn’t save it.

What’s the moral of this story?

The rape porn analogy is once again void as our current society does condemn it as it causes and promotes harmful actions, while on the other hand, game developing, even bad, does not cause any harm to someone. Gaming is a luxury, and you always have the choice of buying it or not buying it and, in theory at least, the choice to do that job or not do it. That’s very different from rape, I don’t know why I even have to state the obvious here.

Also, you still see developers in the wrong light and put them in the same position as publishers. Money is not the incentive that will make you want to become a game developer, it is however something NECESSARY for you to keep doing so. Without any monetary returns, sure you might get a grander story, but you would see it in a text adventure or similar. If that’s what you want there are plenty out there.

But since you’d know that already in that case, I’ll assume that’s not what you want, and say that the games you want to see cost and unless you want to fund the project, it won’t happen. Of course, when you fund it, you’ll also have expectations from the people that make it, just like the rest of the suits as you’d now be in their position. The only difference is that it would be a game you want, but of course, that might be a game many other people don’t want, including the people who would be developing it. See where this is going?

Like I said, there are many indie developers that make great and cheap products, but as you seem to ignore their existence by putting everything that exists in the same pot, I’ll once again say that the games you want, have high production values, they cost a lot to make, therefor you’ll have to sit tight and see if any developer ever gets to make them or if nobody will care about such concepts. Someone else, different than you, is probably thinking “wow that developer rocks, he’s making games exactly as I want them”. They do sell after all.

As for your Baldur’s Gate story, well, wow. They didn’t have enough time to put in the game all they wanted, what a surprise, huh? If you had enough of the real world, you’d know that, once again, lazyness is the least that prevented it from being included, and that it was, once again, the costs, and the neccesity of monetary returns, rather than the incentive. If anything the developers were probably overworked and exhausted by the game’s end. Unless you want to think they were sitting on their asses smoking pot instead of including the features you wanted. Allow me to have doubts about that, and note that’s what would constitute “lazyness”.

On the other hand, you can’t make one product to please every single person out there. You want developers to create things without monetary incentives, what do you want them to develop for then (not agreeing that’s their reason, just for argument’s sake)?

If they had that much economical freedom to spend 8 hrs a day to work on something as purely a hobby, then they would make THEIR dream games, not yours. On top of that, they are people too, like the majority that buys and plays and enjoys those things that you don’t, so their dream games might have very well been some of what you already hate. This way, you’d once again have complaints about the lack of this or that feature or dialogue option or even the whole game concept. Again, see where this is going?

As for the moral of your last story, it’s simply that the things you want, are not what every other person (or the majority in that case) wants but that simple fact doesn’t make them have any less objective (not cynical) value or be the products of lazy people. Are there such things out there? Yes, but that doesn’t mean everything you dislike is such a thing.

I’ll say it again, look to indy devs, and if you can’t find anything you like there either (that will be hard I think, but with your attitude I don’t find it impossible), then simply give up on gaming or get your own studio so that you can be just like one of the suits that decide what gets or doesn’t get made. You won’t be better, only different. You’ll still have expectations from the staff, even if they aren’t expectations about sales but instead about your personal likes and dislikes.

Alex, I hate to break it to you, but there is no honesty left in the world. The world is corrupt and EVERYTHING has been tainted. I remember back in simpler times (the 80s) when people were nice, the music was wonderful, movies were actually cool, and life, in general, was a blast. Today, however, everything is the polar opposite: people are assholes and are incredibly lazy, music is pure shit, movies suck, originality is condemned, money is everyone’s god – and life sucks major balls.

You need to wake up and take a good look around you before you start posting this idealistic drivel.

I think you didn’t even read my posts, the world I presented is far from ideal and does recognise certain things geoff points out, only in a more objective manner and without condemning things and people I have no clue about.