Dear video game industry,
I have been quiet all this time, but in recent years, your celebration of self-importance has gotten so bad that I have to stand up from my audience chair in protest, and wave my tightly clenched fist in the air. Massive loss of bonus points for you, game industry, for YOU!
Since you somehow seem to have lost track of what is important in video games over being busy blowing up that shooter bubble, let me give you a few pointers. Let me show you where I think your way of doing things, although surely expensive and sophisticated, does, how shall I put it, well, reek of elephant shit. (I hope that elephant shit smells bad, because that is how the thing smells that I picked this metaphor for.)
So here we go:
REALISTIC 3D GAMES ARE A DEAD END
Over the past years, games have become more and more "realistic". It was all well and good when they added physics and high resolution textures, and surely I enjoy a few more round and glossy surfaces. But when more attention is put to fucking normal maps than to actual gameplay ideas (I am talking to YOU, Doom III!), or the character you are supposed to play has such a nice model that the game has to be in third person so you can watch his perfectly modelled backside for the entire game - "...and in case you are not getting how awesome that model is we are going to blow it up over one quarter of the screen! Isn't it awesome?"- No it isn't, that is space wasted, or let's call it fucking DEAD SPACE! - when modellers and game designers get lost in details, the big picture is certainly lost, and so they lose me, the well paying customer with an uninformed opinion. Speaking of the big picture...
GAMES ARE NOT MOTION PICTURES
Just to point that out for you, useless and uninteresting trailers of would-be game blockbusters like Gears of War 2: The difference between a movie and a game is, that in a movie, I expect to sit back, watch, and let the movie decide what kind of emotions I'm having over the following 90 minutes (or 160 minutes if it's a Paul Thomas Anderson movie). The kind of flick I'm watching has - usually - great actors in it, great photography, a great story arc, and it has a lot of new things I've never seen before.
Now I recently heard someone claim that game developers have made huge advances at bringing the same emotional depth and richness of story to the video game world. I am happy to bring good news to this certain someone. You can stop making huge advances, because YOU HAVE FAILED. Haven't you seen Final Fantasy? Yes well, you have seen it a while back, but watch it again. It was technologically impressive back then, but it's utter shit today. These characters act like zombies. And even if you managed to overcome the uncanny valley, where the fuck are you going with this? Finally, when your stupid CGI characters have learned to adequately mimic a real human face, and I mean so real that it makes me cry or laugh, what is the point? Why don't you just take fucking real actors? Yes, Red Alert 3, I know you are doing that, but they also have to be GOOD.
And still, it's a game! When I am playing, I am not leaning back! I am sitting in front of the screen, pushing buttons, agitated, frustated, screaming. I have no time for fancy love stories! I must KILL! Then there's that other well repeated situation which is supposed to "engage" the player, where you operate a gatling, mowing away monsters appearing at the horizon while your frat boy soldier team mates go "WOOHOOO!", it's basically a piece of cake - finally the last monster is dead and in the cut scene your partner says something like "wow, that was close, they almost got us" - NO THEY DIDN'T? It was a fucking breeze, I just executed them like nothing, what are you talking about?
Game designers who second guess what the player is feeling in any situation create situations that just come over as unwillingly funny and unintended. Stop pretending you are Hollywood because you are not. Focus on the gameplay, do something that Hollywood can not: sharpen my skills in a challenging situation.
But if you feel like ignoring my advice and making up a story anyway, then please:
ENOUGH WITH THE ZOMBIE ALIENS FROM HELL STORIES
PUT YOUR WORLD WAR II REENACTMENT GAMES WHERE THE SUN NEVER SHINES
HOW ABOUT A SHOOTER WHERE I GET TO GO RAMPAGE IN REDMOND HQ?
Actually the last one slipped into this article by accident. If you like that company, reader discretion is advised. Why is a game 7GB of data, 40 hours of gameplay, but only fucking 5 seconds of ideas? What is wrong with you? Ideas are the essence of anything that calls itself good entertainment. By the way, play Psychonauts and World of Goo, if you didn't yet.
Ach, I grow tired with my rant. Here are some quick last points:
- Having an orchestra is not instant win if it's just dramatic octaves, scary choirs and RAM BAM BAM - BAM BAM BAM! BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM! BAM! BAM! I am sick and tired of supposedly "epic battles" - epic battles of CGI. When will it end?
- Bloated marketing campaigns hint at a shitty game. When you see big names, fucking large Time Square ads, braindead celebrities gushing and egomaniac game designers with a california haircut boasting about their characters depth, prepare for an initially eye-catching game that quickly becomes a chore, because it's busier trying to convince you that the fat brick of money you left at the store was worth buying it - instead of teaching you something about life, and making you feel good about yourself. This goes to all the game producers who care more for revenue than for the minds of their audience: you are cockgobblers.
- Portal was fucking awesome. More of that. Make me think.
Thank you, that's it for today.
7 comments:
I thought you are working in the video game industry (or at least have at one point)?
yes, but i'm not proud of it ;)
Sorry about question, but what do you think about "Casual games"?
Sorry about my answer, but I've been more surprised by casual games in the past than by headliners with storylines promising 40+ hours of gameplay.
As I see it, it's a difference how designers make decisions. With headliners, there is a lot of money in the game, for both development and advertising, and the publishers want to see a proper return of investment. That means: as a designer you are afraid to take risks, so you pick recipes that you believe are going to work well because they did so in the past.
If you work on an independent game, your constraints are time and the way you can advertise your game. That means you have to pick a concept that doesn't take long to realize (no long storylines) and that kind of advertises itself by word-of-blog. Casual games are easier to scale, and ingenious ideas kind of advertise themselves ("you GOTTA see this"), so this is why they usually go hand in hand.
Of course, there are quite a few game developers somewhere between these extremes, such as e.g. Double Fine.
But anyway, story should be (but not for casual games, of course, because i am not sure, that long biography of minesweeper will be interesting for player ;) )! Otherwise it will be just stupid - you will play only for game's actions (click-click-click etc.).
I also doesn't like idea about 40+ lost hrs of my life, but hm... If i can change future events in game - it may be interesting (but i never seen good realization of it). Everything depends on designers' ideas.
"Game designers who second guess what the player is feeling in any situation create situations that just come over as unwillingly funny and unintended."
Portal did it. And did it well. It was only the second time (when I already knew the solutions to the puzzles) when it dawned on me how perfectly timed were the words of the computer watching you (robotic female voice). The game knew what went in my mind and synced the narrative to it. Freaky.
Actually, Valve didn't second guess. They had a quite close feedback cycle and lots of play testing.
For example: GLaDOS' comments about incineration of the weighted companion cube have been added after playtesters repeatedly showed affection for the cube and sometimes even refused to burn it.
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