Where did all the good games go?

MORDETH LESTOK · Post by **MORDETH LESTOK** » September 8th, 2009, 17:17

For me, its from being ancient. I've been playing PCgames since 1986 back when they were fresh. These days, so many of the "new" games are sequels or remakes. There's just not enough originality anymore and the same can be said for TV/Movies.

Although, when you do find something somewhat original...it sure does feel good...

Post by **HereComesPete** » September 8th, 2009, 18:38

Simple fact is you can find plot similarities and quite a few outright steals in every game and film. You'll find stories that seem fresh and new to the cinea/monitor in the literature of the oldest civilizations on Earth.

Sumerians and Babylonians copied off barely cognisant cavemen, the Greeks copied everyone. Egyptians and Japanese feudalism types managed quite a few epics. Enlightenment authors stole each others ideas as well as the ancient ones. Shakespeare was a cheeky idea robbing brummie. There really is only so many ideas to go around.

MORDETH LESTOK · Post by **MORDETH LESTOK** » September 8th, 2009, 19:05

HereComesPete wrote:blahblahblah... There really is only so many ideas to go around.

hmm...maybe the basics of an idea but a finite number of ideas altogether?

I think the entertainment business is limiting ideas to what makes them money from the masses.

friznit · Post by **friznit** » September 8th, 2009, 19:11

All computer game ideas are stolen from the Sumerians, so we should blame the cavemen really.

The annoying thing is I've had several (what I consider to be) good ideas for games, as I'm sure many other 5punkers have too. I very much doubt they'd ever see the light of day from a publisher because they're either too niche, don't hit the 'target market', or aren't suitable for multiple platforms. Classic example of an independent who's gone this route if Derek Smart who (apart from being a social retard) simply doesn't have the budget to realise his dream.

shot2bits · Post by **shot2bits** » September 8th, 2009, 19:44

MORDETH LESTOK wrote:
I think the entertainment business is limiting ideas to what makes them money from the masses.

this is a point i was going to bring up. especially in regards to games people dont want to invest in something that might not work, especially with the amount of games that are flops these days and the whole piracy thing no one is going to want to invest in a ideathat hasnt been done before because they dont know what the market is like for it, unfortunatelly this is having deminishing returns as most people dont want to buy the same game they already played just in a different setting, you might aswell just move the computer onto the roof and play it there.

games are an industry and as such need to make a profit, if they make a game tailered to suit one person or a very small group of people with very similar taste its not going to appeal to a wide enough audience for them to make a profit

i did have a point but i forgot it

/
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centerededgedesign

shot2bits wrote: games are an industry and as such need to make a profit, if they make a game tailered to suit one person or a very small group of people with very similar taste its not going to appeal to a wide enough audience for them to make a profit

Aye, but as investors know, following the coat-tails of others only leads to diminishing returns in the long-term. BUT, if you're only in it for the short-term, it doesn't matter as long as you're getting yours! PC games might be at a plateau now, and that I blame partially to the fact that companies have seen the money being made by video games, they like money, and they've gotten onboard and made games predictable and profitable.

There's new ideas, (or remixes of old ideas together to make a wonderful lager out of what used to be simple grains and yeast!) but until the money is there to realize them, they'll just stay ideas, which don't play well on any platform.

I'd love to be the one to throw down the laser-resistant-gauntlet to challenge the collective hive-brain of all 5punkers to come together with their talents, (and FUNDAGE) to form a privately held consortium of gamers for the sake of NEW games, but honestly, I'm not the organizing genius that could pull it off. Mayhaps that person doesn't exist, perhaps they do. I'd wager that we could do it, but I'm usually skint, and typing on a borrowed laptop at that.

Ideas though, I've usually got more than my share of in the story department, and a game with an engaging story sucks me in EVERY time. Perhaps the next big thing is graphically as unimpressive as, well, something graphically unimpressive. Tetris wasn't ray-traced, but it reigned for a time, meck, games on pc used to only have one color, and they were fun. I'd be UBER impressed if ANYBODY pulled off a text-based game in this day and age, but there's always competition in the "How in the world did THIS happen!" division.

So, who has an extra bit o' cash to throw in the hat to get us all some pizza, so we can discuss this nice 'n proper.....

Post by **FatherJack** » September 9th, 2009, 1:04

amblin wrote:I doubt we'll see another Crysis ever again.

Apart from Crysis 2. They're making a new engine for it and given their history it will likely focus on more realism rather than performance. But, yeah - releasing a game that runs crap on just about everyone's PC wasn't the cleverest move ever.

2009 has been a bit poo for PC games - I've bought more old games this year than ever, and those have been what I've been mostly playing, too. One reason is that a lot of the highly-anticipated titles for this year haven't actually emerged yet, this includes a lot of big console titles too. take a look at this list of Gamesradar's 100 most anticipated games of 2009 - I count less than 35 that have actually been released - though most do still show a pre-order date before the end of the year.

I've played Anno 1440 and Dawn of War 2 a fair bit, as well as Champions Online, then found a bit of time for Wolfenstein, The Sims 3, Restaurant Empire 2 and Empire Total War. Not found much time at all for EndWar or FEAR2.

Console-wise there have been a few great 360 JRPG titles (which I was going to write an article on wasn't I?

) and a few blockbuster titles, the former keeping me very entertained, the latter less so.

Old-game wise, in just the last month or so, I've completely played through Prey, Devastation, Unreal II, Cod 4 and Cod WAW, and am a good way through Warcraft 3.

Not finishing games I buy is a problem of mine I'm trying to rectify - there's no point whinging about no new games if I only play an hour or two of the ones I do have.

However, on the high standards thing - I don't think I have impossibly high ones, I'm just less impressed by fancy visual effects these days than by gameplay innovations. Pariah was perhaps the first to do that screen ripple effect, yet it was a rather poor game (it doesn't even do the ripple effect anymore, the screen goes black on moderm GPUs).

Devastation however is still a cracking game (bugged to buggery on release, owing mostly to ahead-of-its-time physics objects, but fine now) - the game mode where your team has to assault bases where both teams have respawners is not something I've seen anywhere else outside of multiplayer games. Unreal II did the same in reverse - this time your squad were the last line of defence. Perhaps they are relics of the days before you could do all that online, but I find it refreshing to have a team that (kinda) follows your orders, though in truth I've never had the cojones to take up a command role where there are real players involved.

I found the CoDs singleplayer games virtually indistinguishable - WaW even copies your settings from MW. I can't really complain about them, they are what they always have been - mission-based sequences with automatic savepoints and some cinematic on-rails segments. Sometimes frustrating, but often satisfying with big toys to have a go on and plenty of sniping opportunities. Any innovation they once had over the Medal of Honour team they came from has been diluted and recycled though - they even use the anachronistically impossible UI from MW to order airstrikes in WaW.

Post by **HereComesPete** » September 9th, 2009, 11:31

centerededgedesign wrote:
stuff...5punky gaming studio...stuff

5punkworks? 5punkfactory?

Mr. Johnson · Post by **Mr. Johnson** » September 9th, 2009, 11:35

5punkers? Organization?

friznit · Post by **friznit** » September 9th, 2009, 12:15

HereComesPete wrote:
5punkworks? 5punkfactory?

T.E.5ticcles & Co?

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » September 9th, 2009, 12:22

centerededgedesign wrote:words and words and more words

Well we do have a few talented artists, someone can probably handle a 3DSMax or something, I've been getting into DirectX for a while, it might even work y'know.

Post by **Dog Pants** » September 9th, 2009, 12:24

I'll buy the* pizza!

*a

amblin · Post by **amblin** » September 9th, 2009, 12:25

centerededgedesign

Well, for a first offering, my under-edumacated mind was thinking a browser game, probably a bit easier on the development side, take little to no budget(maybe?), and allow the creative amongst us to write and/or render as their skills fit. Use that to grow 5punk's ranks until we're able to take on biggerer tasks, all the while letting our creative selves roll inovative ideas about until we strike upon something clever and elegant, perhaps even something as simple as a new distribution system using thumb drives so people can take their games with them anywhere.

Thoughts?

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » September 9th, 2009, 13:27

Depends, there are three types of browser games.

Firstly, there are the true browser games, usually written in PHP or ASP, with a MySQL behind it to back it up. In my opinion, these are very limited, and require a lot of budget: you need to buy a domain to set it up on, you need to pay for all that bandwidth, bills if you're running it on a local server computer (this part would be mostly solved if the game could use the 5punk domain, but I guess bandwidth cost would skyrocket if it ever got popular). It also requires a lot of maintenance. On the upside though, PHP is pretty easy. If you get the game going though, you can always balance the budget with some paid parts (for example the no move limit donation in Shartak or gold in Travian) and ad revenues.

Then there are flash games, which is entirely different: Flash is nowadays pretty capable, even though the flash framework itself is pretty slow. On the upside, you don't require any budget, there are sites out there where sponsors can bid on a game to buy a license for it, and a lot of the sponsors also share ad revenue with developers. You also don't need local servers, pay bandwidth costs, or anything else for flash games, since sponsors will do it for you. Downside is that good flash games actually require good art but I don't think that would be a problem.

Finally, there are the hybrids, browser games with integrated flash elements, which carries all the downsides of browser games but do not carry a lot of the upsides of flash.

Voilá.

Mr. Johnson · Post by **Mr. Johnson** » September 9th, 2009, 13:30

It'd be fun to see a game with Shada's art and grimmie's flash talents, but getting it done might not be so easy.

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » September 9th, 2009, 13:36

I'm familiar with ActionScript 2, but it'd take a good amount of work to make something impressive. A good game would pay off though, exclusive licenses tend to go at an average of 1000$.

Post by **Dog Pants** » September 9th, 2009, 13:51

Generating enthusiasm among 5punkers isn't hard. Keeping momentum is more difficult.

That said, I'm happy to offer my limited skills if anyone's seriously considering this - creative writing and a spot of artwork.

Post by **Joose** » September 9th, 2009, 19:09

Dog Pants wrote:Generating enthusiasm among 5punkers isn't hard. Keeping momentum is more difficult.

amblin · Post by **amblin** » September 9th, 2009, 20:28