Duck and Cover

Retlaw83 wrote:I don't know how Dragon Age Origins can claim to have 1,000 characters unless it includes generic city dwellers that don't have interactive dialog. And there's no way it had that many cutscenes.

Kashluk wrote:(...)A couple days ago my Mrs. asked me that "Isn't that awfully patronising?"(...)

Kashluk wrote: A couple days ago my Mrs. asked me that "Isn't that awfully patronising?" I responded: "What do you mean?" as I was playing Dead Space 2. "You're constantly told what to do, there's no room for you to figure stuff out yourself -- doesn't that bother you?" she continued. I was stunned. She doesn't play herself, but occasionally she likes to watch what I'm doing. That was her 3 min observation when I was about 1 hour in to the game.

Age of Decadence is the only reason for me to care about modern gaming.

Mismatch wrote:dead state seems promising as well

Dogmeatlives wrote:I was really psyched for LA Noire as I was intrigued by the mystery solving until some hands on previews came out and the hand holding seems to make it possible for even small children to solve these crimes.

Do you think the setup with publishers and developers stifles the creativity of the designers?

RH: In many ways, yes. What most people tend to forget, and because I've worn the CEO hat with Contraband and Logicware -- this is a business. We need to make money because the paychecks I had to write to people were coming from a bank account that only had so much money. Once that money reached zero, everybody gets laid off.

Whereas many people would like the Id software model -- it'll be done when it's done -- most companies don't have that luxury, especially big companies with shareholders. They need to have profits every quarter.

The only way to do that is to minimize their risk and go formula. Formulas are sequels or licensed titles like Harry Potter the game. Those are the safest bets. Licensed properties -- EA sports -- they license NFL, NBA, NHL, NASCAR...There's your thing. Of course, lately they've been trying to branch out with new franchises like Mirror's Edge, but they still want to create a franchise they can milk over time.

One thing we actually found at Interplay, which I was raising the red flag all the time over, was that Interplay's greatest contribution to the gaming world was that we took risks. We came up with a lot of games that no one would touch because they were so off the wall -- like Tass Times in Tonetown, I mean, who in the hell would come up with that and actually ship it? We did!

Neuromancer was based on a book, but we did Battlechess. It's just chess with the pieces beating the crap out of each other. Earthworm Jim, Boogerman, Clay Fighter, all these games that Interplay did -- we had a gimmick, but a lot of the publishers said, a game with clay warriors? Why don't you just make Mortal Kombat V?

We made a lot of games that would have never seen the light of day. The trouble is that we did too many of them, and the company eventually ran out of money, which is why Interplay had to die and eventually be rebirthed as a company that was Interplay in name only -- what exists today.

Companies like Electronic Arts, if they were to do a title that was risky and didn't have some real meat to back it up -- to make people not afraid -- it's a hard sell. It would kill the person's job. How would you like to be an executive producer who green lights a game that's never been done before, and the game tanks? You're fired.

Nobody wants to get fired. So, they need to come out with NASCAR 7, then you can blame it on the NASCAR license. Oh, Need for Speed, maybe they don't like that type of game anymore, but we can still milk the franchise. It's not something innovative that's at fault, it's just the franchise is tired. Blame something else, so the executive producer can keep their job.

That's where, right now, in my opinion, indie games is where it's at for innovation. Who would do The World of Goo, Minecraft... Indie games are done by a couple of people locked up in a closet. They don't have anybody to answer to, so they can write something that's brand new and, in fact, doing something new and innovative is what gets them attention. Look at Introversion. They did Uplink, Darwinia. Those games, when you see them, are pretty out there. They made some money. Bingo! That is where the new ideas come from.

At a big company, if you were an executive producer and somebody gave you the idea for Darwinia, could you tell your CEO that Darwinia would absolutely, positively make you a million dollars? It's a hard sell. If it makes a million, you'll be a star. You'll be executive VP. If it bombs, well, the door is right there. With that kind of a choice, it really stifles the executive producer's ability to green light titles as innovative as Darwinia. Hence, the reason the vast majority of games these days are sequels, movie tie-ins, or some sort of celebrity hook.

One of my pet peeves right now is that a lot of video games these days; for example, Command & Conquer III. They have all these big name actors in the cut scenes they film at a sound stage. Does that really add to the game? Did that really make the game a better game? I thought I was buying a video game. I didn't think I was buying an interactive movie. I want to play a game.

So many games these days are supposedly a first-person shooter, but you walk around a couple corridors, kill a couple formula monsters, and the game freezes as it plays a cut scene with voice actors. Then you continue on. Why don't I just buy the DVD and watch the movie? It's less work on my part. In fact, many games like Bioshock or Dead Space -- I didn't play the game. But I pretty much did; I went to YouTube and watched people do a run through. As far as I was concerned I just watched the movie.

A game that did first-person shooter right: Portal.

One of my favorites.

RH: Where are the cutscenes? Is there a cutscene in there? The only one there is that you actually get to see the cake. Other than that, it's just listening to GLADOS taunt you and go completely mad. Otherwise, it's the game. All about the game.

So you don't think that game would've been better if every few minutes it would have taken you out of the game and shown you 15 minutes of cut scenes with some big name actors?

RH: I would have thought that they wasted a couple million dollars. Think about it, they saved a couple million dollars they could use to do Half-Life III, to be released in 2017. We hope.

Frater Perdurabo wrote:Yeah I played some Condemned 2. There's a crime site - this looks cool. And then I realised that they told you exactly where everything was, what to use and what to look at.

But it had great GRAPHIX

The industry is becoming a victim of it's own success. Just like every Hollywood movie has to be a remake/sequel/comic book/old sit-com/japanese horror movie formulaic crapfest to turn a profit, so it seems that gaming follows the same path