So in a stunning display of PR ineptitude, a Vita game was stealth launched today. Atelier Totori Plus - an enhanced port of a pretty good PS3 RPG - just showed up on the PSN. The thing is, the game had never been announced for US release & as far as I can tell, there are no press releases about its launch. Makes me wonder if Tecmo-Koei was contractually obligated to release it overseas but is doing the bare minimum to ensure that the game bombs hard and gets out of having to release US versions of the sequel.
Yeah, TK just released Atelier Ayesha on the PS3 with no fanfare as well... the game was already being localized by NISA when Tecmo Koei bought out Gust. Neither Atelier game is even on TK's American website. I suspect the company doesn't care about releasing Gust's games in English, and I'm sad to say we may not see any more Atelier games here unless TK is willing to sell the localization/publishing rights to a North American company... like perhaps NISA. :-p
Want to find me on a gaming service? I'm SwashbucklerXX everywhere.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I can get behind the idea of Microsoft having their turn at becoming too complacent and fucking up extraordinarily.
@Snake Gandhi I don't think the Kinect's problem is its functionality (well, it can definitely improve since it's a tech, but that's beside the point), the problem is software. One of these days someone will hit it right. I still maintain that the proper use for Kinect in tandem with regular video game playing is stuff like menu use. Though it'd have to be able to track your finger waving around in front of your body potentially.
Chris Roberts, who worked with Garriott back when Origin Systems was producing both Ultima and Wing Commander, isn’t Garriott’s only exception—he also identified Will Wright and Peter Molyneux as examples of quality game designers. The majority, however, become designers because they lack other skills, according to Garriott’s analysis.
“If you like games, you eventually get to the point where you’d like to make one,” said Garriott. “But if you had this magic art talent as a youth, you can refine your skills and show a portfolio and say, ‘I’m a good artist, go hire me’ If you’re nerdy enough to hack into a computer, programming on your own, you can go to school and learn proper structure, make code samples and go ‘Look, I’m a good programmer, hire me.’
“But if you’re not a good artist and not a good programmer, but you still like games, you become a designer, if you follow me. You get into Q&A and often design.
“And the most valuable part of creating a game is the design, which the programmers are technically executing. And they’d be happy to just execute some of them. But in my mind, most artists and programmers are just as much of gamers as the designers, and I usually find in my history that the artists and programmers are, in fact, as good of designers as the designers. They’re often better, because they understand the technology or the art.
“So we’re leaning on a lot of designers who get that job because they’re not qualified for the other jobs, rather than that they are really strongly qualified as a designer. It’s really hard to go to school to be a good designer.”
Interesting view point, true or not?
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BrocksMulletInto the sunrise, on a jet-ski. Natch.Registered Userregular
So in a stunning display of PR ineptitude, a Vita game was stealth launched today. Atelier Totori Plus - an enhanced port of a pretty good PS3 RPG - just showed up on the PSN. The thing is, the game had never been announced for US release & as far as I can tell, there are no press releases about its launch. Makes me wonder if Tecmo-Koei was contractually obligated to release it overseas but is doing the bare minimum to ensure that the game bombs hard and gets out of having to release US versions of the sequel.
I'm going to have to push forward my plans to acquire a dedicated PS Vita memory card for the US PSN store. I may already own the LE/special boxed copies of Totori and Meruru on the PS3, but I want some Atelier on the go as well... assuming that Etrian Odyssey isn't eating up my down time while on public transport... hmmm...
My usual contact site for news that include the Atelier series is also showing a bit of surprise that Atelier Totori Plus is being stealth released. Not exactly a good thing if you're actually serious about a franchise and certainly isn't any help for the Vita's prospects outside Japan (and on that note, I do not want to see a repeat of the PSP's history where a lot of interesting and good games get released for it but since the market outside Japan is dead, they don't make it across). On top of the reduced dub only release of Atelier Ayesha, yeah there's a bit of apprehension about TK's handling of the franchise since it appears the Atelier games are going from strength to strength in its little niche.
Chris Roberts, who worked with Garriott back when Origin Systems was producing both Ultima and Wing Commander, isn’t Garriott’s only exception—he also identified Will Wright and Peter Molyneux as examples of quality game designers. The majority, however, become designers because they lack other skills, according to Garriott’s analysis.
“If you like games, you eventually get to the point where you’d like to make one,” said Garriott. “But if you had this magic art talent as a youth, you can refine your skills and show a portfolio and say, ‘I’m a good artist, go hire me’ If you’re nerdy enough to hack into a computer, programming on your own, you can go to school and learn proper structure, make code samples and go ‘Look, I’m a good programmer, hire me.’
“But if you’re not a good artist and not a good programmer, but you still like games, you become a designer, if you follow me. You get into Q&A and often design.
“And the most valuable part of creating a game is the design, which the programmers are technically executing. And they’d be happy to just execute some of them. But in my mind, most artists and programmers are just as much of gamers as the designers, and I usually find in my history that the artists and programmers are, in fact, as good of designers as the designers. They’re often better, because they understand the technology or the art.
“So we’re leaning on a lot of designers who get that job because they’re not qualified for the other jobs, rather than that they are really strongly qualified as a designer. It’s really hard to go to school to be a good designer.”
Interesting view point, true or not?
When I read the link line I was laughing about how full of it he sounded, but when I read the quote... uh, he's actually on to something.
- Always on, Always connected
- Low powered mode
- Kinect sold with every console, wider FOV, no motors, better tracking
- Kinect is required to be plugged in
- Low latency controller with "improved ergonomics", simplified interaction with console OS
- Bluray drive - All games must be installed on HDD [you can start playing few secs after installation starts], game data streaming from optical disc not supported
- Only digital audio out
Dun dun dunnn.
Grain of salt, etc.
Still, the concept of not streaming data from a disc is... uh, hmm. Well that's pretty fucking criminal.
Why? It sounds like they want to run it the way many games do now where you can play before the install is finished. Requiring the devs to make the game run off the harddrive also improves load times and responsiveness and all that. All this means is you slap your disk in and wait a few seconds while the pre-load or whatever to your harddrive gets going.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Chris Roberts, who worked with Garriott back when Origin Systems was producing both Ultima and Wing Commander, isn’t Garriott’s only exception—he also identified Will Wright and Peter Molyneux as examples of quality game designers. The majority, however, become designers because they lack other skills, according to Garriott’s analysis.
“If you like games, you eventually get to the point where you’d like to make one,” said Garriott. “But if you had this magic art talent as a youth, you can refine your skills and show a portfolio and say, ‘I’m a good artist, go hire me’ If you’re nerdy enough to hack into a computer, programming on your own, you can go to school and learn proper structure, make code samples and go ‘Look, I’m a good programmer, hire me.’
“But if you’re not a good artist and not a good programmer, but you still like games, you become a designer, if you follow me. You get into Q&A and often design.
“And the most valuable part of creating a game is the design, which the programmers are technically executing. And they’d be happy to just execute some of them. But in my mind, most artists and programmers are just as much of gamers as the designers, and I usually find in my history that the artists and programmers are, in fact, as good of designers as the designers. They’re often better, because they understand the technology or the art.
“So we’re leaning on a lot of designers who get that job because they’re not qualified for the other jobs, rather than that they are really strongly qualified as a designer. It’s really hard to go to school to be a good designer.”
Interesting view point, true or not?
When I read the link line I was laughing about how full of it he sounded, but when I read the quote... uh, he's actually on to something.
when I was a lot younger, I deliberately chose not to go into programming, because I knew how thankless it was and I didn't have a head for the math. My passion is writing, but good luck getting credit for being a writer in this industry unless you are either A) a designer or blood relatives to some already famous writer. And even then writing gets the short end of the stick.
That said, proper project management is a hell of a skill, and one that is lacking in all sorts of industries. It's just not something that can be taught all that well, especially with an artistic project endeavor. So.. yeah. I fully agree with him. The designers that are good are rock stars. Everyone else? Not so much.
For instance, I have no clue who was lead designer on Halo or Gears of War.
Chris Roberts, who worked with Garriott back when Origin Systems was producing both Ultima and Wing Commander, isn’t Garriott’s only exception—he also identified Will Wright and Peter Molyneux as examples of quality game designers. The majority, however, become designers because they lack other skills, according to Garriott’s analysis.
“If you like games, you eventually get to the point where you’d like to make one,” said Garriott. “But if you had this magic art talent as a youth, you can refine your skills and show a portfolio and say, ‘I’m a good artist, go hire me’ If you’re nerdy enough to hack into a computer, programming on your own, you can go to school and learn proper structure, make code samples and go ‘Look, I’m a good programmer, hire me.’
“But if you’re not a good artist and not a good programmer, but you still like games, you become a designer, if you follow me. You get into Q&A and often design.
“And the most valuable part of creating a game is the design, which the programmers are technically executing. And they’d be happy to just execute some of them. But in my mind, most artists and programmers are just as much of gamers as the designers, and I usually find in my history that the artists and programmers are, in fact, as good of designers as the designers. They’re often better, because they understand the technology or the art.
“So we’re leaning on a lot of designers who get that job because they’re not qualified for the other jobs, rather than that they are really strongly qualified as a designer. It’s really hard to go to school to be a good designer.”
Interesting view point, true or not?
When I read the link line I was laughing about how full of it he sounded, but when I read the quote... uh, he's actually on to something.
when I was a lot younger, I deliberately chose not to go into programming, because I knew how thankless it was and I didn't have a head for the math. My passion is writing, but good luck getting credit for being a writer in this industry unless you are either A) a designer or blood relatives to some already famous writer. And even then writing gets the short end of the stick.
That said, proper project management is a hell of a skill, and one that is lacking in all sorts of industries. It's just not something that can be taught all that well, especially with an artistic project endeavor. So.. yeah. I fully agree with him. The designers that are good are rock stars. Everyone else? Not so much.
For instance, I have no clue who was lead designer on Halo or Gears of War.
Project management falls to the producer, not the lead designer.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Damn. I thought the producer just acted as liason between the money and the designers, but I guess that's the executive producer. My bad.
I can get behind the idea of Microsoft having their turn at becoming too complacent and fucking up extraordinarily.
@Snake Gandhi I don't think the Kinect's problem is its functionality (well, it can definitely improve since it's a tech, but that's beside the point), the problem is software. One of these days someone will hit it right. I still maintain that the proper use for Kinect in tandem with regular video game playing is stuff like menu use. Though it'd have to be able to track your finger waving around in front of your body potentially.
Hardware is part of the problem, and most easily fixed (better cameras to track fingers, better viewing angle, etc) but I think a bigger one was the old peripheral problem of who's gonna go out of their way to use something only a small percentage of users have. Putting it in the box with the system solves that problem.
But I agree that more stuff you can do with a Kinect and a controller would be awesome. Even just standard voice controls in all games would be huge
EA has enough hubris that they can't just come back to The Newell and say "We were wrong to create Origin, and we would like to sell our AAA titles on your glorious digital platform again." That won't happen. But if they torpedo their own platform, that gives them a legitimate reason to come crawling back.
(Yes, I know this is an unlikely scenario)
No company will admit they are in the wrong. They might admit to doing something that didn't work out, but they won't admit they were in the wrong.
Plus more competition is a good thing, Steam should not be the only digital service out there. Hell I'd like to see someone absolutely rival Steam, it might make The Newell to actually get some damn support for it. In the end competition, true competition would only benefit us.
Yes, all that competition has served us so well. Uplay and Origin are certainly making the DD market a better place.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Damn. I thought the producer just acted as liason between the money and the designers, but I guess that's the executive producer. My bad.
Seriously though, a good producer is the guy who is doing things on the production / business side of game development, not the creative end. There was a whole episode of Extra Credits on this. A producer is making sure everyone / each team is up to speed on what everyone else is doing and acting as a liason between the teams internally working on the same project.
A bad producer is one like you describe, one who is just hovering around making sure publisher demands are being met and that's it.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
EA has enough hubris that they can't just come back to The Newell and say "We were wrong to create Origin, and we would like to sell our AAA titles on your glorious digital platform again." That won't happen. But if they torpedo their own platform, that gives them a legitimate reason to come crawling back.
(Yes, I know this is an unlikely scenario)
No company will admit they are in the wrong. They might admit to doing something that didn't work out, but they won't admit they were in the wrong.
Plus more competition is a good thing, Steam should not be the only digital service out there. Hell I'd like to see someone absolutely rival Steam, it might make The Newell to actually get some damn support for it. In the end competition, true competition would only benefit us.
Yes, all that competition has served us so well. Uplay and Origin are certainly making the DD market a better place.
While snarky, I actually think that GreenManGaming, Good old Games, Desura, and a few other "smaller" shops are doing a lot to keep Steam on their toes. I mean, Greenlight for all its faults was borne out of Valve trying to stay relevant in the indy scene.
EA has enough hubris that they can't just come back to The Newell and say "We were wrong to create Origin, and we would like to sell our AAA titles on your glorious digital platform again." That won't happen. But if they torpedo their own platform, that gives them a legitimate reason to come crawling back.
(Yes, I know this is an unlikely scenario)
No company will admit they are in the wrong. They might admit to doing something that didn't work out, but they won't admit they were in the wrong.
Plus more competition is a good thing, Steam should not be the only digital service out there. Hell I'd like to see someone absolutely rival Steam, it might make The Newell to actually get some damn support for it. In the end competition, true competition would only benefit us.
Yes, all that competition has served us so well. Uplay and Origin are certainly making the DD market a better place.
I'd like another service that has more games than just the ones the publisher running it owns. Uplay and Origin would nice if they sold more than just Ubisoft/EA games.
EA has enough hubris that they can't just come back to The Newell and say "We were wrong to create Origin, and we would like to sell our AAA titles on your glorious digital platform again." That won't happen. But if they torpedo their own platform, that gives them a legitimate reason to come crawling back.
(Yes, I know this is an unlikely scenario)
No company will admit they are in the wrong. They might admit to doing something that didn't work out, but they won't admit they were in the wrong.
Plus more competition is a good thing, Steam should not be the only digital service out there. Hell I'd like to see someone absolutely rival Steam, it might make The Newell to actually get some damn support for it. In the end competition, true competition would only benefit us.
Yes, all that competition has served us so well. Uplay and Origin are certainly making the DD market a better place.
I'd like another service that has more games than just the ones the publisher running it owns. Uplay and Origin would nice if they sold more than just Ubisoft/EA games.
That would defeat their purpose though. They exist to ape the most basic aspects of Steam in order to cut any distributor out of the profit chain and that's it. There's no incentive to really improve since they have a lock on people buying their products from their store because they won't let anyone else sell them. They just have to be "Not so terrible that you go to Bestbuy or Gamestop instead".
I can get behind the idea of Microsoft having their turn at becoming too complacent and fucking up extraordinarily.
@Snake Gandhi I don't think the Kinect's problem is its functionality (well, it can definitely improve since it's a tech, but that's beside the point), the problem is software. One of these days someone will hit it right. I still maintain that the proper use for Kinect in tandem with regular video game playing is stuff like menu use. Though it'd have to be able to track your finger waving around in front of your body potentially.
Meh. Over nine (9) years later, I'm still waiting for some of these visions to be realized.
(Yeah, I know it's the Move guy. I still want to peak around corners in CoD.)
EA has enough hubris that they can't just come back to The Newell and say "We were wrong to create Origin, and we would like to sell our AAA titles on your glorious digital platform again." That won't happen. But if they torpedo their own platform, that gives them a legitimate reason to come crawling back.
(Yes, I know this is an unlikely scenario)
No company will admit they are in the wrong. They might admit to doing something that didn't work out, but they won't admit they were in the wrong.
Plus more competition is a good thing, Steam should not be the only digital service out there. Hell I'd like to see someone absolutely rival Steam, it might make The Newell to actually get some damn support for it. In the end competition, true competition would only benefit us.
Yes, all that competition has served us so well. Uplay and Origin are certainly making the DD market a better place.
I'd like another service that has more games than just the ones the publisher running it owns. Uplay and Origin would nice if they sold more than just Ubisoft/EA games.
Origin does.
No I don't.
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CuvisTheConquerorThey always say "yee haw" but they never ask "haw yee?" Registered Userregular
EA has enough hubris that they can't just come back to The Newell and say "We were wrong to create Origin, and we would like to sell our AAA titles on your glorious digital platform again." That won't happen. But if they torpedo their own platform, that gives them a legitimate reason to come crawling back.
(Yes, I know this is an unlikely scenario)
No company will admit they are in the wrong. They might admit to doing something that didn't work out, but they won't admit they were in the wrong.
Plus more competition is a good thing, Steam should not be the only digital service out there. Hell I'd like to see someone absolutely rival Steam, it might make The Newell to actually get some damn support for it. In the end competition, true competition would only benefit us.
Yes, all that competition has served us so well. Uplay and Origin are certainly making the DD market a better place.
I'd like another service that has more games than just the ones the publisher running it owns. Uplay and Origin would nice if they sold more than just Ubisoft/EA games.
Uplay and Origin will never be nice.
In all seriousness, Steam is fast becoming way more than a store, and Ubisoft and EA are way behind if they want to forge competing platforms. And then there's the problem that they don't have nearly the reputation Valve does in the market, and even if they were to have a great platform and a great rep, it'd only serve to introduce more fragmentation into the PC marketplace. It might be better for them to go the route of Amazon or GMG, where there's not a centralized client program and instead you simply download the installers from their website. Even better if they can find a way to integrate their wares with the Steam client (maybe the installers can look for Steam, and if they detect it, automatically register as a non-Steam game?)
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
I can get behind the idea of Microsoft having their turn at becoming too complacent and fucking up extraordinarily.
They're already there but too many people are complacent to do anything about it. It's the reason why I'm moving over to PS+ as far as subscription based services are concerned.
EA has enough hubris that they can't just come back to The Newell and say "We were wrong to create Origin, and we would like to sell our AAA titles on your glorious digital platform again." That won't happen. But if they torpedo their own platform, that gives them a legitimate reason to come crawling back.
(Yes, I know this is an unlikely scenario)
No company will admit they are in the wrong. They might admit to doing something that didn't work out, but they won't admit they were in the wrong.
Plus more competition is a good thing, Steam should not be the only digital service out there. Hell I'd like to see someone absolutely rival Steam, it might make The Newell to actually get some damn support for it. In the end competition, true competition would only benefit us.
Yes, all that competition has served us so well. Uplay and Origin are certainly making the DD market a better place.
While snarky, I actually think that GreenManGaming, Good old Games, Desura, and a few other "smaller" shops are doing a lot to keep Steam on their toes. I mean, Greenlight for all its faults was borne out of Valve trying to stay relevant in the indy scene.
... and the daily sales were a reaction to Impulse. (Or, at least, Steam started them after Impulse did; correlation <> causation, etc.)
Chris Roberts, who worked with Garriott back when Origin Systems was producing both Ultima and Wing Commander, isn’t Garriott’s only exception—he also identified Will Wright and Peter Molyneux as examples of quality game designers. The majority, however, become designers because they lack other skills, according to Garriott’s analysis.
“If you like games, you eventually get to the point where you’d like to make one,” said Garriott. “But if you had this magic art talent as a youth, you can refine your skills and show a portfolio and say, ‘I’m a good artist, go hire me’ If you’re nerdy enough to hack into a computer, programming on your own, you can go to school and learn proper structure, make code samples and go ‘Look, I’m a good programmer, hire me.’
“But if you’re not a good artist and not a good programmer, but you still like games, you become a designer, if you follow me. You get into Q&A and often design.
“And the most valuable part of creating a game is the design, which the programmers are technically executing. And they’d be happy to just execute some of them. But in my mind, most artists and programmers are just as much of gamers as the designers, and I usually find in my history that the artists and programmers are, in fact, as good of designers as the designers. They’re often better, because they understand the technology or the art.
“So we’re leaning on a lot of designers who get that job because they’re not qualified for the other jobs, rather than that they are really strongly qualified as a designer. It’s really hard to go to school to be a good designer.”
Interesting view point, true or not?
Mmm, I did a bit of game programming but I went out of my way to move into design because that is the whole interesting and fun part of building games. I even had a coworker who walked away from a six-figure coding job to join the team because he simply likes game design more than either programming or money.
If you love games (and fun game mechanics) and you love building (mechanically interesting) games, it doesn't really make quite as much sense to work on any other part of the process.
And leaving that aside, Molyneux's a confusingly bad designer to call out as an exception to this supposed trend. He may have been a good designer once but these days he certainly spends more time peddling his shitty games than he does building good ones in the first place.
kedinik on
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
EA has enough hubris that they can't just come back to The Newell and say "We were wrong to create Origin, and we would like to sell our AAA titles on your glorious digital platform again." That won't happen. But if they torpedo their own platform, that gives them a legitimate reason to come crawling back.
(Yes, I know this is an unlikely scenario)
No company will admit they are in the wrong. They might admit to doing something that didn't work out, but they won't admit they were in the wrong.
Plus more competition is a good thing, Steam should not be the only digital service out there. Hell I'd like to see someone absolutely rival Steam, it might make The Newell to actually get some damn support for it. In the end competition, true competition would only benefit us.
Yes, all that competition has served us so well. Uplay and Origin are certainly making the DD market a better place.
While snarky, I actually think that GreenManGaming, Good old Games, Desura, and a few other "smaller" shops are doing a lot to keep Steam on their toes. I mean, Greenlight for all its faults was borne out of Valve trying to stay relevant in the indy scene.
Is Desura actually relevant? Any of the times I've seen a developer break down where their sales came from Desura has been a really tiny portion.
Desura is generally relevant when it comes to games that aren't on Steam. But generally when they hit Steam, historically most games do not end up selling much on Desura. They also run the Indie Royale, which is not as prominent as Humble obviously, but still does better bundles than Steam does.
Chris Roberts, who worked with Garriott back when Origin Systems was producing both Ultima and Wing Commander, isn’t Garriott’s only exception—he also identified Will Wright and Peter Molyneux as examples of quality game designers. The majority, however, become designers because they lack other skills, according to Garriott’s analysis.
“If you like games, you eventually get to the point where you’d like to make one,” said Garriott. “But if you had this magic art talent as a youth, you can refine your skills and show a portfolio and say, ‘I’m a good artist, go hire me’ If you’re nerdy enough to hack into a computer, programming on your own, you can go to school and learn proper structure, make code samples and go ‘Look, I’m a good programmer, hire me.’
“But if you’re not a good artist and not a good programmer, but you still like games, you become a designer, if you follow me. You get into Q&A and often design.
“And the most valuable part of creating a game is the design, which the programmers are technically executing. And they’d be happy to just execute some of them. But in my mind, most artists and programmers are just as much of gamers as the designers, and I usually find in my history that the artists and programmers are, in fact, as good of designers as the designers. They’re often better, because they understand the technology or the art.
“So we’re leaning on a lot of designers who get that job because they’re not qualified for the other jobs, rather than that they are really strongly qualified as a designer. It’s really hard to go to school to be a good designer.”
Interesting view point, true or not?
When I read the link line I was laughing about how full of it he sounded, but when I read the quote... uh, he's actually on to something.
Yeah I suppose he could be on to something, if "making an incredibly broad generalization that probably won't hold up under even minor scrutiny" qualifies.
Look, Richard Garriott is a cool guy and a very important innovator in the infancy of video gaming, but by this point he's little more than an egomaniac who's drunk too much of his own kool-aid. His entire pitch and press circuit regarding Shroud of the Avatar has been nothing but patting his own ass and talking up how great he was thirty years ago is, despite the fact that he's produced essentially nothing of worth since he was all-but-forced out of Origin in 2000. Most of his contributions to Tabula Rasa were limited to giving big broad strokes ideas for world design, getting his name in the title, and then playing absentee landlord while he faffed about with NASA. Hell, the main thrust of that article - that Richard Garriott is still the best designer around - is kind of mind-boggling. The last design credit - any design credit - he's had? Ultima Online's first expansion. In nineteen ninety-fucking-eight.
He's a fossil, and not even a particularly useful one like Will Wright or Miyamoto or even Peter Molyneux (while under liberal amounts of directorial oversight). He should barely be listened to and certainly shouldn't be given any money; yet here we are, with him at least a million Kickstarter bucks richer and his ass thoroughly patted.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Video game design is not a learned skill. It's creativity you either have or don't have. By the industry's standards anyone can step up to the "designer" plate and bat for .100. There's few lead designers who actually knock shit out of the park, or failing that come up with something different or a new angle on things. Richard Garriott is right.
Video game design is not a learned skill. It's creativity you either have or don't have. By the industry's standards anyone can step up to the "designer" plate and bat for .100. There's few lead designers who actually knock shit out of the park, or failing that come up with something different or a new angle on things. Richard Garriott is right.
Yeah I basically agree with both you and Korodullin, since you both seem to be tackling different aspects here.
Richard Garriot hasn't really done much of anything game related in a long long time. In that respect his credits don't mean as much today, and I say that as someone who still thinks Ultima 7 is an awesome game (barring the 90's interface issues and design quirks).
At the same time, whilst I believe that the PC Gamer pullquote and article were pretty skewed, I believe he's right in that the path to game design isn't nearly as well implemented as it should be. People often fall into game design, there's not as much structure there compared to other fields in game development.
I mean I can see that the vast majority of AAA games have awesome art / visual design in one form or another, but actual gameplay design far too often is hit and miss, and frequently acting against itself, even in the biggest budget games.
Eh, it's not so simple as a binary Creative Spark you're either born with or not.
Generally speaking, you need to spend a lot of time playing a lot of games in order to understand what game systems already exist, how they've evolved over time, and where you might be able to take them next.
And equally importantly, you need to think about these systems and talk about them with friends often enough to develop the ability to articulate and implement your thoughts.
And frankly, the idea that it's difficult to come up with "a new angle on things" reflects a confusion as to what it means to design a game.
It's easy to come up with crazy and unusual ideas; it really is! In fact, the worst designers I knew were the ones who spent the work day wanking to their own high-concept ideas rather than, er, designing anything whatsoever.
The devil's truly in the details of how to build a compelling mechanical system around whichever idea happens to be the starting point. The starting points are damn near trivial compared to what is challenging about the job.
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I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
Eh, it's not so simple as a binary Creative Spark you're either born with or not.
Generally speaking, you need to spend a lot of time playing a lot of games in order to understand what game systems already exist, how they've evolved over time, and where you might be able to take them next.
And equally importantly, you need to think about these systems and talk about them with friends about these systems often enough to develop the ability to articulate and implement your thoughts.
And frankly, the idea that it's difficult to come up with "a new angle on things" reflects a confusion as to what it means to design a game.
It's easy to come up with crazy and unusual ideas; it really is! In fact, the worst designers I knew were the ones who spent the work day wanking to their own high-concept ideas rather than, er, designing anything whatsoever.
The devil's truly in the details of how to build a compelling mechanical system around whichever idea happens to be the starting point. The starting points are damn near trivial compared to what is challenging about the job.
I agree, I don't think this is something purely innate. You need to have the ability to observe and comprehend mechanics, why they're implemented the way they are, and understand why they work. Seriously think critically about how a mechanic functions, and what it does to the player that makes them feel "satisfied", or "tense", or "glee" or whatever.
Personally I'd say this nature of observation can be taught / learned.
You also need to be able to formulate your own, and in doing so, the ability to fine tune for the "feel" of it, which I think is something I think is a lot more subjective and harder to teach. Depending on the nature of the design, there's also often a lot of maths and logic involved, and those aspects can also be taught.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Hmmm. A debate on nature/nurture with regards to video game design. That could lead to some really awesome discussion (no seriously). It could also dovetail into why there are so few female lead devs, how much say the artistic and programming leads have in a project, and what happens in a design by committee or focus tested environment.
Hmmm. A debate on nature/nurture with regards to video game design. That could lead to some really awesome discussion (no seriously). It could also dovetail into why there are so few female lead devs, how much say the artistic and programming leads have in a project, and what happens in a design by committee or focus tested environment.
Henroid, want to start up a thread on this?
Sure why not, making threads is the thing I do around these parts. It'll keep the Garriott discussion from derailing this thread any further too.
Also didn't those numbers get posted already Allforce?
That was UK monthly software (which was my mistake, I read it as hardware but was corrected), this is the weekly Japanese chart that comes out every Wednesday.
Edit: derp myself, I just realized you already clarified.
Vita's going down but it's a much gentler drop than most of us would have expected. I guess time will tell if the Vita will settle in at a higher "normal" or if this is just a burst of fence-sitters.
Posting this because I think this is an interesting sign of the times:
There are currently no plans for Tomb Raider single player DLC according to Crystal Dynamic's global brand manager.
When asked during a Reddit 'Ask Me Anything', Karl Stewart explained that the company was focusing entirely on the multiplayer portion of the game for the time being.
In response to a query about what adventures future single player DLC would hold for Lara, Stewart replied, "There are currently no plans in place for any Single Player expansions. All of our DLC is based around the Multiplayer experience for now."
The first such multiplayer DLC for the game, the Caves & Cliffs map pack, released earlier this week on Xbox 360 as a timed exclusive, so expect it to crop up on PS3 and PC at some currently undefined point in the future.
I never cared about multi player and seeing it shoved in games like that always made me think how desperate they are to have it in everything nowadays. I mean does that really help, is it that much of a selling point.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Animal Crossing is in 4th place after how many months? That fucking game man. I'm so amused by its success.
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Yeah, TK just released Atelier Ayesha on the PS3 with no fanfare as well... the game was already being localized by NISA when Tecmo Koei bought out Gust. Neither Atelier game is even on TK's American website. I suspect the company doesn't care about releasing Gust's games in English, and I'm sad to say we may not see any more Atelier games here unless TK is willing to sell the localization/publishing rights to a North American company... like perhaps NISA. :-p
@Snake Gandhi I don't think the Kinect's problem is its functionality (well, it can definitely improve since it's a tech, but that's beside the point), the problem is software. One of these days someone will hit it right. I still maintain that the proper use for Kinect in tandem with regular video game playing is stuff like menu use. Though it'd have to be able to track your finger waving around in front of your body potentially.
Interesting view point, true or not?
Steam: BrocksMullet http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197972421669/
I'm going to have to push forward my plans to acquire a dedicated PS Vita memory card for the US PSN store. I may already own the LE/special boxed copies of Totori and Meruru on the PS3, but I want some Atelier on the go as well... assuming that Etrian Odyssey isn't eating up my down time while on public transport... hmmm...
My usual contact site for news that include the Atelier series is also showing a bit of surprise that Atelier Totori Plus is being stealth released. Not exactly a good thing if you're actually serious about a franchise and certainly isn't any help for the Vita's prospects outside Japan (and on that note, I do not want to see a repeat of the PSP's history where a lot of interesting and good games get released for it but since the market outside Japan is dead, they don't make it across). On top of the reduced dub only release of Atelier Ayesha, yeah there's a bit of apprehension about TK's handling of the franchise since it appears the Atelier games are going from strength to strength in its little niche.
When I read the link line I was laughing about how full of it he sounded, but when I read the quote... uh, he's actually on to something.
Why? It sounds like they want to run it the way many games do now where you can play before the install is finished. Requiring the devs to make the game run off the harddrive also improves load times and responsiveness and all that. All this means is you slap your disk in and wait a few seconds while the pre-load or whatever to your harddrive gets going.
when I was a lot younger, I deliberately chose not to go into programming, because I knew how thankless it was and I didn't have a head for the math. My passion is writing, but good luck getting credit for being a writer in this industry unless you are either A) a designer or
That said, proper project management is a hell of a skill, and one that is lacking in all sorts of industries. It's just not something that can be taught all that well, especially with an artistic project endeavor. So.. yeah. I fully agree with him. The designers that are good are rock stars. Everyone else? Not so much.
For instance, I have no clue who was lead designer on Halo or Gears of War.
Project management falls to the producer, not the lead designer.
But I agree that more stuff you can do with a Kinect and a controller would be awesome. Even just standard voice controls in all games would be huge
Yes, all that competition has served us so well. Uplay and Origin are certainly making the DD market a better place.
Seriously though, a good producer is the guy who is doing things on the production / business side of game development, not the creative end. There was a whole episode of Extra Credits on this. A producer is making sure everyone / each team is up to speed on what everyone else is doing and acting as a liason between the teams internally working on the same project.
A bad producer is one like you describe, one who is just hovering around making sure publisher demands are being met and that's it.
While snarky, I actually think that GreenManGaming, Good old Games, Desura, and a few other "smaller" shops are doing a lot to keep Steam on their toes. I mean, Greenlight for all its faults was borne out of Valve trying to stay relevant in the indy scene.
I'd like another service that has more games than just the ones the publisher running it owns. Uplay and Origin would nice if they sold more than just Ubisoft/EA games.
That would defeat their purpose though. They exist to ape the most basic aspects of Steam in order to cut any distributor out of the profit chain and that's it. There's no incentive to really improve since they have a lock on people buying their products from their store because they won't let anyone else sell them. They just have to be "Not so terrible that you go to Bestbuy or Gamestop instead".
Meh. Over nine (9) years later, I'm still waiting for some of these visions to be realized.
(Yeah, I know it's the Move guy. I still want to peak around corners in CoD.)
Origin does.
Uplay and Origin will never be nice.
In all seriousness, Steam is fast becoming way more than a store, and Ubisoft and EA are way behind if they want to forge competing platforms. And then there's the problem that they don't have nearly the reputation Valve does in the market, and even if they were to have a great platform and a great rep, it'd only serve to introduce more fragmentation into the PC marketplace. It might be better for them to go the route of Amazon or GMG, where there's not a centralized client program and instead you simply download the installers from their website. Even better if they can find a way to integrate their wares with the Steam client (maybe the installers can look for Steam, and if they detect it, automatically register as a non-Steam game?)
I know I'm lttp but that because as far as Activision is concerned, sans Blizzard's stuff, the PC doesn't exist.
They're already there but too many people are complacent to do anything about it. It's the reason why I'm moving over to PS+ as far as subscription based services are concerned.
... and the daily sales were a reaction to Impulse. (Or, at least, Steam started them after Impulse did; correlation <> causation, etc.)
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Mmm, I did a bit of game programming but I went out of my way to move into design because that is the whole interesting and fun part of building games. I even had a coworker who walked away from a six-figure coding job to join the team because he simply likes game design more than either programming or money.
If you love games (and fun game mechanics) and you love building (mechanically interesting) games, it doesn't really make quite as much sense to work on any other part of the process.
And leaving that aside, Molyneux's a confusingly bad designer to call out as an exception to this supposed trend. He may have been a good designer once but these days he certainly spends more time peddling his shitty games than he does building good ones in the first place.
Is Desura actually relevant? Any of the times I've seen a developer break down where their sales came from Desura has been a really tiny portion.
Yeah I suppose he could be on to something, if "making an incredibly broad generalization that probably won't hold up under even minor scrutiny" qualifies.
Look, Richard Garriott is a cool guy and a very important innovator in the infancy of video gaming, but by this point he's little more than an egomaniac who's drunk too much of his own kool-aid. His entire pitch and press circuit regarding Shroud of the Avatar has been nothing but patting his own ass and talking up how great he was thirty years ago is, despite the fact that he's produced essentially nothing of worth since he was all-but-forced out of Origin in 2000. Most of his contributions to Tabula Rasa were limited to giving big broad strokes ideas for world design, getting his name in the title, and then playing absentee landlord while he faffed about with NASA. Hell, the main thrust of that article - that Richard Garriott is still the best designer around - is kind of mind-boggling. The last design credit - any design credit - he's had? Ultima Online's first expansion. In nineteen ninety-fucking-eight.
He's a fossil, and not even a particularly useful one like Will Wright or Miyamoto or even Peter Molyneux (while under liberal amounts of directorial oversight). He should barely be listened to and certainly shouldn't be given any money; yet here we are, with him at least a million Kickstarter bucks richer and his ass thoroughly patted.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Yeah I basically agree with both you and Korodullin, since you both seem to be tackling different aspects here.
Richard Garriot hasn't really done much of anything game related in a long long time. In that respect his credits don't mean as much today, and I say that as someone who still thinks Ultima 7 is an awesome game (barring the 90's interface issues and design quirks).
At the same time, whilst I believe that the PC Gamer pullquote and article were pretty skewed, I believe he's right in that the path to game design isn't nearly as well implemented as it should be. People often fall into game design, there's not as much structure there compared to other fields in game development.
I mean I can see that the vast majority of AAA games have awesome art / visual design in one form or another, but actual gameplay design far too often is hit and miss, and frequently acting against itself, even in the biggest budget games.
Generally speaking, you need to spend a lot of time playing a lot of games in order to understand what game systems already exist, how they've evolved over time, and where you might be able to take them next.
And equally importantly, you need to think about these systems and talk about them with friends often enough to develop the ability to articulate and implement your thoughts.
And frankly, the idea that it's difficult to come up with "a new angle on things" reflects a confusion as to what it means to design a game.
It's easy to come up with crazy and unusual ideas; it really is! In fact, the worst designers I knew were the ones who spent the work day wanking to their own high-concept ideas rather than, er, designing anything whatsoever.
The devil's truly in the details of how to build a compelling mechanical system around whichever idea happens to be the starting point. The starting points are damn near trivial compared to what is challenging about the job.
I agree, I don't think this is something purely innate. You need to have the ability to observe and comprehend mechanics, why they're implemented the way they are, and understand why they work. Seriously think critically about how a mechanic functions, and what it does to the player that makes them feel "satisfied", or "tense", or "glee" or whatever.
Personally I'd say this nature of observation can be taught / learned.
You also need to be able to formulate your own, and in doing so, the ability to fine tune for the "feel" of it, which I think is something I think is a lot more subjective and harder to teach. Depending on the nature of the design, there's also often a lot of maths and logic involved, and those aspects can also be taught.
Henroid, want to start up a thread on this?
WiiU is the new Vita.
3DS 69,326
PS3 20,640
Vita 36,431
PSP 12,569
Wii U 8,567
Wii 1,603
360 485
http://www.4gamer.net/games/117/G011794/20130320003/
Sure why not, making threads is the thing I do around these parts. It'll keep the Garriott discussion from derailing this thread any further too.
Also didn't those numbers get posted already Allforce?
Edit - Hey Athenor thread is up.
Edit: derp myself, I just realized you already clarified.
Posting this because I think this is an interesting sign of the times:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/03/20/no-single-player-dlc-planned-for-tomb-raider
For context, everyone loved Tomb Raider's single player but thought the multiplayer felt tacked on.
All hail our multiplayer overlords.
1 - Sword Art game PSP - 138k
2 - Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 PS3 - 128k
3 - Super Robot Wars 3DS - 115k
4 - Animal Crossing 3DS - 58k (2,861,517)
5 - Soul Sacrifice Vita - 29k (121k)
6 - Hatsune Miku PS3 - 26k (136k)
7 - Dynasty Warriors PS3 I think? - 22k (272k)
8 - God of War PS3 - 19k
9 - Layton 3DS - 14k (175k)
10 - DQ7 3DS - 14k (1,174,077)
Parenthesis is LTD.
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