GDC 2012 : Calling out players, press and developers for lack of variety in games

News & General Discussion
1

I really like how he put his balls on the table. What he says is exactly what I feel for a long, long time.
Devs aren’t taking risks anymore (covering themselves behind “it’s the fault of investors/gamers”), gamers are asking for the same [Heroic fantasy cliché/Military chaos/Crazy guy shooting everyone] again and again (covering behind “I don’t want to learn something new because I will be treated as a noob”), and press don’t even try to judge on originality anymore (I remember the time during 90’s where “originality” was a score section in tests).

For sure he’s gonna get flamed by defensive people (or people who still ask for more CoD), but he really got a point, imho.

2

Ok so if game devs dont have to eat, live in a house or anything like that then they can take the risk of making out there games, indy game makers sometimes take this risk, but putting 100 employes lively hood on the line isent something AAA studios are willing to do, and that is a good thing.

It is not! the game devs fault, it is the gamers we just make what they want, or what we think they will want.

3

Every game maker does have a part of responsibility in how the market evolves. Taking risk doesn’t necessarly mean making something completely unsure, but trying at least to search for new ideas, whatever the general opinion thinks. This is what makes great artists in general; the will to please themselves a bit before trying to please others.

Plus, when you look at history, every single blockbuster that tried to appeal to “an even broader audience” (©) simply triggered its own fall.

Imho, the best way for a dev to deliver a potential hit starts with admitting that he will not please everyone.

4

No no, there is no need to be nervous. Just backup this project, it will come with all the creativity you might miss in many of today’s games.

5

Good point.
Also, I was kind of astonished when I read comments about blatant game clones* on these forums. A lot of people/developers were saying there’s nothing bad. That quite discomforted me, also because Unity’s forums are mostly for Indie developers, which should shine on originality. If the developers industry is partly represented by that, this means we’re not looking on a simple lack of originality, but on pure laziness (or pure business-play). Luckily, I also saw some original stuff, but I hope (as a developer and as a gamer) it won’t stay as a small niche.

  • I know “clones” is a debatable word, but I think it’s easy (if we’re not talking in legalese) to understand if a game is just a clone or a new take on a genre. New takes are ok, on my opinion, while clones are bad in any possible way.
6

Mh, never have I seen more interesting games/styles than the last years/months…
Such rants are nothing new, from what I can gather, and there’s always devs that go the safe route, which is fine. You can’t blame people for liking or developing certain games. Each individual may decide on its own, afterall.
I’ve seen magazines judging many many indie games that never ever had a platform as huge as that, so I don’t see any of these things, really.
Never have markets been more open to creative, twisted and interesting games and concepts. And never have chances been better than now, to sparkle interest in your weird weird project.
Every single day I stumble upon a true beauty in gamedev execution and I feel wonderful for these awesome developers that actually have a chance to sell their game, gain respect and a living out of what they truly love doing.

So I can’t really share this guys opinion. I don’t blame people for liking or developing certain kind of games. Neither have I superhuge respect for people developing something that is totally off the line, just for being off the line. That is not a good thing at all.
This is an entertainment industy afterall, and whatever entertains people should get respect, for whatever reason it works out, afterall.

7

Just wanted to add something, about the “we give them what they want” argument. It’s kind of a thorn in my side, actually. Mainly because of politics. Here in Italy, we had a guy named Berlusconi (you might know him as Mr. International Buffoon) who was elected for years (and probably will be again in the future). He made incredibly bad and awkward deeds (I’m not talking about the prostitutes affair, that’s nothing compared to other things he did), but the motto was “I give people what they want” (which, in that case, was just a mouthful of smoke).

Now, that’s why I don’t believe in the “just give them what they want” thing. Mainly because it’s not so easy. If you only give s**t to people, they will get used to it, and want more: we are a very adaptable species. But if you give them better stuff, they will get used to the better stuff, and also learn from it. I mean, it’s simple education (though more risky, and easily forgotten after a short while) :stuck_out_tongue:

Also, Chris Hecker said a dumb thing in his “rant”. Taking from Kotaku’s article: “The core problem with players, he said, is that they buy, play, anticipate, and talk about the same games over and over again. He described visiting a thread at the website Quarter to Eight in which posters were talking about the Kickstarter funding opportunities granted to Double Fine’s Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert. The thread was asking what other games people would like to see funded in this way, and all of the games suggested, Hecker said, were sequels.”
Uhm, well, sure. What are you expecting, that gamers give you new ideas? It’s kind of obvious that they’ll go for sequels or the likes. It’s up to developers to astonish and fascinate them with originality.

That said, I’m talking as a gamer here. And I certainly don’t blame companies or developers that don’t shine in originality (unless they clone). It’s just nice to have a good balance between both sides of the coin :slight_smile:

P.S. sorry for the rant (and for the politics) :stuck_out_tongue:

8

This guy sounds like an arrogant dick. Uniqueness for the sake of uniqueness is for hipsters.

If I really like a game, I’d like to see it evolve in a sequel, but not become something entirely different; that would defeat the purpose of sequelizing a good game in the first place.

Also, this guy’s game Spy Party looks a lot like The Ship. Try harder, hipster indie dev.

9

Aha, true, I didn’t check his game (and I agree about the arrogance - though hearing hard opinions is sometimes good). Though, on a pure gaming argument, The Ship was an awesome concept that didn’t work quite well (I played it for a while, but in the end it was kind of boring): it would be nice to see a different take on it’s concept (unless it’s the same take - which I hope not, or that Hecker guy will immediately become a jerk, after what he said about originality).

10

There is a difference between making a sequel and re-releasing the same game every six months, though. It’s almost as if true sequels are a thing of the past.

11

/gives titanty a cookie

12

That’s my feeling too, “back in the time”, sequels were feeling like an evolution of the previous game : new character design, enhanced visuals, and most of all, much enhanced (sometimes completely different) game mechanics.
Nowadays, most AAA sequels are just asset refactoring, hiding behind “branding preservation”.

Look at those screenshots :

First one is ToeJam Earl, a 1991 Sega Genesis game. A top-down view gameplay, where you had to wander through space to find out your missing ship pieces. There were christmas gifts spread all over levels (which were totally random generated, as a sidenote). You wouldn’t know which effect would be triggered by each box until you used it. Some were good (speed boost, spring shoes, rocket shoes, buoy to go on water, etc), and some were bad. Added to that, the content of each box type would be randomized at each new game.
Enemies were totally random too, fun as hell, each having a different attack/effect on you. Like a hawaiian dancer who would stun you by making you dance for 5 seconds, or a fake mailbox (as there were true mailboxes where you could buy gift boxes) that would turn into a monster as soon as you try to approach it, or a Cupidon baby that would trigger some arrows at you, etc.
The biggest fun in this game was that you could coop with a friend, splitting screen as soon as one was going too far away.

I had so much laughter with it besides my friends, we’re still cherishing its memories at times.

There were totally random moments, like when Earl, the second protagonist, would randomly lose his trousers for no reason. Imagine that happening when you were with your friend trying to make a way through a horde of enemies …
Another fun game mechanic was that enemies could fall asleep when nothing happened around them. You could tip-toe by pushing A, passing next to them without waking em up. The fun stuff was that randomly, your char could suddenly ATCHOO while tip-toeing … I’ll let you imagine what would happen.

Basically, there was a true will to create new things. New mechanics, new designs, for the sake of fun. A game that came out of nowhere, and took everyone who played it by storm.

Second one is ToeJam Earl 2, released on the same system, in 1994. The dev team radically changed their approach to gameplay, and even to graphics. Everything was a global overhaul. There was a huge risk to piss off fans who wanted something “just like” the first episode, and I admit the game was surprising at first. But they took that risk, and it was a blast in the end. Different, but still good. That decision to change everything didn’t even come from gamers, it was all dev’s initiative, “just because”.
Everything was more oriented towards a shooting side scroller, based on agility and precision.

Gift boxes were gone, all enemies were totally regenerated, gameplay wasn’t top down anymore, but side scroller, and coop was more skill based. But it was still (differently) fun.

And even ToeJam Earl 3, appeared on the XBOX many years later, took yet another different gameplay approach (full 3D), and that didn’t prevent it from being a success.

Now, here is Gears of War series, which I guess doesn’t need any comment :

GoW 1 :

GoW 2 :

GoW 3 :

13

Yeah Check this out

Bohemia: Operation flashpoint

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Bohemia: Arma II

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858331--32007--$ARMA2-Boot-Camp-Screens_04.jpg800×450 90.2 KB

Activision: Operation flashpoint: Dragon Rising

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14

Don’t fix what isn’t broken. I personally wouldn’t want Half-Life 3 to turn into a sidescroller racing game…

15

Why should people always think that change automatically means “screwing up” … ?
It’s not about fixing, it’s about refreshing :slight_smile:
And you got it wrong : ToeJam Earl radically changed a lot of things, but the feeling was intact. You were still following the adventures of ToeJam and Earl, but from a different point of view.
They kept what made its success (the random, funky weirdness), but went further than just reskinning it with better shaders.

16

Lets be honest: lots of people want to play war games. They are not selling because there isn’t anything else to play. There is an audience craving every week for a new war game, if possible one that is simply more realistic than the previous one. Others may just want a new story but still realistic war game. Games for these players will be barely distinguishable from each-other on screenshots.

There is also a lot of originality out there.

When consumers complain about all games out there not being original, all they are saying without realizing is “i’m angry there are so many people pushing unoriginal games to the top of the sales charts.”

There are a few there also just saying “I’m too lazy to look for games outside the top charts.”

If consumers want original games, they should collectively put their money where their mouth is and buy them when they come out, instead of letting said games sell so little the studios end up dropping any plans on continuing down the road.

17

Are you proposing they do a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare top down RPG? Got to admit… it will be hard to balance the sniper rifle…

18

You can’t possibly unbalance it any more.

19

I feel you on Mirror’s Edge … I was so sad when I read that … Litterally sad, because this was one of the few games in the last 10 years that touched a bit of my emotions. I don’t know why, and it could be explained I guess, but the whole package just worked (on PC btw, I couldn’t imagine anyone enjoying this game with a pad).

Anyway, about the “gamers want the same thing” (valid) argument :

The problem is precisely that as years went by, developers listened far too much about what gamers wanted. They progressively started to silence their own gamedesign new ideas, just for the sake of “pleasing an audience” (and securing a userbase).
But this is a wrong approach, in my humble opinion. Of course we have to listen the userbase, this is not questionable. But here I’m talking an exaggeration.
Gamers have expectations for sure, but finding new designs is not their job :slight_smile: (underlined because it sums my whole stance, in fact). As it’s not their job, or expertise, to think about new ways to bring new stuff, then for sure they will always ask for sequels and “same old new”. It’s logical, and totally expected. You can’t wait for a car enthusiast userbase (whatever size it is, 100, 10000, or 1000000) to give the designer the best new idea possible. Never will they have the knowledge in physics, shaping, line balance and material choice to come with something both revolutionary and functional.

Put it short, it’s the game devs role to bring new ideas, not the gamers themselves. So as long as devs will be afraid to face potential bad critics of gamers just because “it is not like before”, we will be doomed. The worst in this is that it’s the snake biting its own tail : the more devs will refuse to spread their wings and try new stuff for the sake of not deceiving gamers, the more it will be taken for granted, and the more intolerant to change gamers will be. It is already proven with AAA games anyway (and even in this very thread).

Each to his role :

  • devs to do their job of finding new designs without screwing already working formulas
  • gamers to play games and give feedback

Also,

I’m not necessarly saying that every sequel needs to radically change its design from the ground, but at least stop that neverending belly staring that videogame industry has been doing during all those years.
And hey, to balance a sniper rifle in a top down RPG, why not just putting a limited radius, an obstacle detection, and longer triggering ?
:wink:

20

I don’t think that there is a lack of variety, it is just these kind of game like CoD and MW are actually more popular. Also, for me, comparing with the 90s year there are a lot of games being created every month, so these popular games are just “stealing” the attention of the gamers from another different games.