Last-Gen

[Naota]

Inspired by a little supplemental reading, I figured it was time for a little incessant ranting against certain facets of the general direction of modern game development. Conveniently, I possessed a dev blog ready to hand (or key, as it were) and a poignant deprivation of sleep. This... is the result.

It has come to my attention that the venerated Source engine is now considered somewhat of a relic in today's world of awe-inspiring lighting and 3D texture-mapping insanity. It has also been called "last-gen" (the horror!). I make no attempt to deny this fact, but quite honestly I would actually much rather the focus on designing game assets, particularly levels, be more akin to that of the first Half-Life, if not earlier. There it was possible to have maps like obj_thanatos and oberland without half a year of commitment from multiple artists, and maps weren't restricted by performance limits nearly so harshly. It was easy to experiment, and fun to design levels to whatever size one felt was reasonable without the need for constant detailing, yet there were still a hundred ways to make things look prettier if required - just compare the original FA or any early HL1 mod to latter entries like The Specialists if you find my suggestions at all dubious.

With some heavily planned and coordinated optimization I believe levels of such magnitude would still be possible in FAS, but nevertheless the minimum work involved is now several orders of magnitude larger than it once was. Where before all you needed was a mapper like sulsa with a copy of Wally, some photo-sourced textures at a low resolution, and a lot of free time, now people like myself must work simultaneously to detail the environment outside of Hammer as it's being laid out and textured. Modeling, unwrapping, texturing, compiling, toying with material properties and directory structures... In an actual studio you would in fact use four or five more people with compartmentalized duties to cover the same role as this eternally savvy crew of ours. This would make perfect sense to me if in fact games were becoming ever more complicated, larger, more ambitious or revolutionary or intelligent... yet they're not. They're becoming smaller, shorter, simpler, and generally dumber presumably because all of the money is being sunk into hollow spectacle.

As a result, I believe levels and gameplay in most commercial games have actually begun to regress in both ambition and complexity. It baffles me how a game like Crysis can expend so much on looking the way it does, yet end up with writing which could, in its entirety, have been done for $10 by a 12 year old child. In a way, the "next generation" actually seems to mean less of what I actually care about as a gamer and more in the way of increasingly less visible improvements to visuals. I still have a great time replaying old favourites like Thief (don't claim mere nostalgia, as I played Crysis before Thief Gold and Thief II, believe it or not), because their gameplay and quality of writing eclipse just about everything on the market these days. In every aspect but visuals I believe Thief to simply be a superior game, as System Shock is to Bioshock or Tiberian Sun to C&C 3.

Of course, with newer engines usually come better or at least more versatile tools, and quite frankly Valve seems to have designed their engine with the explicit goal of driving third-party developers utterly insane, but in the end? I would much rather a "last-gen" graphics engine pushed to function at its utmost with good gameplay and a thriving content-producing player community than I would a simplified, stagnant, and shallow product that boasts a pretty face but disappears from memory in three months. For Firearms I can deal with .qc files which read like three copies of Lord of the Rings strung together, confounding error messages, and compilers purposely crafted to induce suicidal tendencies.

We may be last-gen, but this team knows what's important in a game. Our gameplay is developing forwards rather than backwards, which is something this exalted next generation seems to have conventiently forgotten. Artificially-defined generations be damned - we aim to be timeless.

[BornToDie]

I shaw the new cod:mw2, the new moh (medal of honnor) and the new c&c3...
Egidio.

[AlejandroDaJ]

Good writeup. I may disagree with the concept that gameplay and storytelling is regressing as more time and money are spent on art design, but I see where you're coming from and on a bad day I'd rage along with you.

I've been playing Modern Warfare 2 and I can't tell you how many times I die in multiplayer when my character gets caught or pushed by some sort of cosmetic detail, like a complicated doorjamb or a bit of rubble, that does something to my character's movement that causes instead death from a nearby opponent. "YOUR LEVEL MODELER JUST GOT ME KILLED!" I tend to scream at the TV.

Think of it this way: as modern games become ridiculously expensive and require huge art departments, notice how indy games are reverting back to 2D and emphasizing often more-complicated games with simpler graphics and shorter development spans. And less price-gouging too. It may be that the industry is just dividing into separate camps.

[Shinobi]

you want good writing?


play hotel dusk 215


http://hoteldusk.com/

[Naota]

Well to be quite honest, storytelling has never been the strong suit of gaming as a whole. Not to say that it's not possible or that there haven't been games which really held my interest on the quality of their writing alone, but in a form of media which originated from riveting tales of digital table tennis and descending blocks forming colour lines you take what you can get. There are always some real gems out there in this regard, but as a writer when I look at the overwhelming majority of games on the market, I can only facepalm at just how inexplicably awful the writing and concept tend to be even on the highest profile of releases. It baffles me completely that millions of dollars can be shelled out to create these incredibly ambitious triple-A titles, and yet the story of the game is about as compelling as a bus stop ad. I'm willing to strike the people in charge of this travesty a deal: take what you're paying your ten-year-old son to write the plots and dialogue of your games and give it to me. I will even write for your game for free if neccessary, as it would be a service to the public.

Thankfully writing has been getting notably better over time, but that doesn't really excuse the fact that mere books overshadow the storytelling of games as overwhelmingly as they do. Writing is dirt cheap, so why not hire an experienced writer to avoid the horrid cliche subjects and give your product's premise some semblance of intelligence? I just finished a mission set in an "unobtanium mine" in Global Agenda for god's sake. These madmen must be stopped.

The other thing that really stings about many of the games I end up buying today is the quality and staying power of them as a whole - as I mentioned I can go back and play Thief, Syndicate, Fire Emblem, or Heroes of Might and Magic even now and have a great time for hours longer than most commercial releases of the day. They're just great games and stand the test of time (plus I only played Thief and Syndicate for the first time last year), because the only things that age about them are their graphics and interfaces. At the same time I absolutely cannot see myself reinstalling Crysis or C&C 3 to play it again at any point down the line because they are just plain not as good.

Being a 3D artist myself I've got nothing at all against graphics improving, especially if it means bigger teams, more beautiful worlds, and even wider scope for settings. It's the constant sacrificing of everything else just so a game can look a smidgeon prettier and the relentless drive for better hardware which sustains it. What drives me to such proverbial extents of cynical rage is that more people than ever are working on new titles, more money is being spent, the industry is expanding rapidly, the platforms are being perused by more people, and yet:
-Writing in games on the whole is still awful compared to any other media format, even modern movies
-Games are as much as one quarter the length they used to be, and no more enjoyable than older titles which are eight times as long
-Modders are being shut out, both from the amount of work involved and from lack of support by developers (why allow mods? They don't sell! They could cost sales on the sequel!)
-Mechanics are being made ever more simple and games less involved. Apparently too much thinking will scare away the stupid people whose dollar is more important than a quality product.
-WWII games and Tolkien-esque fantasy settings are if anything more abundant. Please let them die a horrible death. Please.

[Naota]

In case any of you have been wondering where the greater portion of my sanity (or my rational mind wholesale) has gone, it's obivous that this man has it. This time however, I have the satisfaction of knowing that I posted my tirade in advance, and thus clearly I hold the upper hand with the greater power of insanity.

Either way, I'm very much glad to see that I'm not the only one baffled and vastly irritated by the astoundingly bad quality of writing which I'm ashamed to say seems to be the default within the medium. If this keeps up... somebody might read it.

...Can high-ranking game company managers read? More importantly, I'm going to mimic Shamus and pose the question of the decade: what do you fine individuals hold as your best-written games of all time?

[Anonymous]

I'm going to mimic Shamus and pose the question of the decade: what do you fine individuals hold as your best-written games of all time?

Max Payne. Even playing through the game right now. It's still great.

Penumbra Overture.
This I feel, is what games can do with a story.
Most games just tend to tell you the story. In Overture you went through the story yourself.
None of that hero crap either.

[Pork Fried Squirrel]

In case any of you have been wondering where the greater portion of my sanity (or my rational mind wholesale) has gone, it's obivous that this man has it. This time however, I have the satisfaction of knowing that I posted my tirade in advance, and thus clearly I hold the upper hand with the greater power of insanity.

Either way, I'm very much glad to see that I'm not the only one baffled and vastly irritated by the astoundingly bad quality of writing which I'm ashamed to say seems to be the default within the medium. If this keeps up... somebody might read it.

...Can high-ranking game company managers read? More importantly, I'm going to mimic Shamus and pose the question of the decade: what do you fine individuals hold as your best-written games of all time?

WILL YOU PLEASE LEARN TO FORUM POST AND JUST SUM SHIT UP?

[Mirsky]

There are very few "new" stories written, most of the content of current media is recycling of existing tropes. This is one of the reasons that my wife hates going to the cinema with me as I generally spot how the movie will run in the first 15 minutes... and yes, I'm am assholish enough to spoil it

Anyhow, what gives a story that X-factor is its implementation; the rounding out of the experience with alternate views (back and side stories) and general pacing.

Pacing can be a real problem in a game where the control of the main character is not in the hand of the author and I think alot of games have fallen down in this area .As mentioned above Max Payne 1/2 did a great job at this but only because the game was essentially a story book with short, player controlled action sequences in the middle.

On top of this creating a believable atmosphere is also hard to do - CoD4 did an excellent job of this with the Nuke.

If you take this into account the two games that really stand out for me are

-Half-Life (go figure) for its ability to tell a story and flesh out the side characters well. It's not always intuitive though, you can pick up alot of the back story from reading the posters and newpapers left behind but most people playing the game won't pick up on that.

- System Shock (1 and 2). Not only is this a truly atmospheric/scary game but he information left over from in the form of logs from dead characters and clues from the general scenery lets you pick up alot of information and really rounds out the game world. Not to mention the small "cut scenes" you get to witness in ghost form in the second incarnation of the game really give you a sense of being there.

[DysPatch]

WILL YOU PLEASE LEARN TO FORUM POST AND JUST SUM SHIT UP?

Well seeing as this is his forum, he can post w/e he wants in here. You aren't forced to read it.

[djdon917]

hmmm

[Shinobi]

I'm going to mimic Shamus and pose the question of the decade: what do you fine individuals hold as your best-written games of all time?

I'm gonna have to think about that all day but off the top of my head:


Hotel Dusk 215
Chrono Trigger
Grim Fandango
Final Fantasy 3/6
Many of the Lucas arts games on that note


Looking forward to playing planescape:torment. trace memory and the last express. They are all supposed to have great writing.

[StealthSilver]

FPS games have always had bad writing though, with few exceptions. In terms of games regressing, I disagree with that statement. I think that as games have evolved, developers have found ways to streamline games to the point where they've become much more playable. Would I love to see Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear with in a modern graphics engine? Of course! But I understand why recent Rainbow Six games have become more mass-market friendly, for instance. However, if you still want overly complex but still awesome experiences, there are still games like Arma 2 around.

[Shinobi]

I've heard the vampire FPS by troika is also supposed to have great writing