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Are Virtual Worlds Worth It? 331

Posted by timothy from the sliding-tux-down-hill-is-worth-it dept.
Junks Jerzey writes: "SIGGRAPH's Computer Graphics has an interesting article titled Are Virtual Worlds Worth It? which looks at the ever increasing complexity of 3D game worlds, and how such complexity is often at odds with the whole point of games (i.e. fun gameplay). There's a lot of good video game history in there as well (remember Jumpman and Miner 2049'er?). This was printed in the May issue of CG which just went online recently." Though this piece gets into some technical information about gaming worlds and the design process (as well as the audience of today's games), it starts with the simple question: "Are computer games any more fun now than they were 10 years ago?"
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Are Virtual Worlds Worth It? More

Are Virtual Worlds Worth It?

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  • Oh shit.

    Oh Shit oh shit oh shit.

    I wasted many night time hours when I should have been sleeping blowing up pillboxes and trying to wipe out opponents on the available Macs. And now, I discover that not only is the WinBolo (not much use there) but there is also LinBolo [lgm.com]! I know what I'll be compiling this evening... Waaa! There goes my sleeping hours again! :-)

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

  • The *reason* that the classic Star Wars movies are more satisfying to watch than the new one is because we grew up with them. (Well, for me, anyway, I'm assuming you're roughly my age, early-to-mid-20s.) I first saw Star Wars not until I was 12 years old (I might have seen it much younger but I can't recall ever having seen it before that first time), and my GOD I was blown away. I had seen Empire and Jedi as a kid (2 and 5 years old) but couldn't really remember them at all.

    BUT, I was only 12 years old. It had a huge impact on me. Now when I watch Star Wars, it's with a much more critical eye. I see the places where I think things might have been done better, or could have been improved, but I still have a nostalgic fondness for the movie. Also, Star Wars had the advantage of being something that no one had ever seen before: it really WAS groundbreaking. (What annoys me to no end is people who expected Episode I to be as groundbreaking as ANY of the classic trilogy, when we've had 20 years of clones, knockoffs, and (yes) movies that improved upon the original. It's hard to do what Star Wars did, let alone twice.)

    My point is, there's a good reason why the original Star Wars satisfies me more than Episode I: it's because of nostalgia. And I recognize this. At www.rottentomatoes.com [rottentomatoes.com], they collect movie reviews. Each review is rated as being either positive or negative, and then they tally the percentage of positive reviews, and give the movie that final score.

    When the Star Wars Trilogy was rereleased in 1997, they went and collected all the reviews for the rerelease:

    Star Wars: 93%
    The Empire Strikes Back: 97%
    Return of the Jedi: 83%

    Then they went back and found the ORIGINAL REVIEWS for those three films when they came out:

    Star Wars: 79%
    The Empire Strikes Back: 52%
    Return of the Jedi: 31%

    If this isn't nostalgia at work, then I don't know what is. (Disclaimer: I love Star Wars and I think all FOUR movies are excellent, however, I am trying to point out what time and nostalgia will do to our perceptions).

    I don't think that there's any fundamental difference between our perception of old games and old movies. Things that we loved in our youth, we tend to be nostalgic over. We forget their faults and glorify them. This is the Nostalgia Problem.

  • I've seen plenty of people complaining about "real life being dull".
    Yes it sometimes is, and that is why we make games.
    This does not however mean that it has to be unrealistic to be fun.

    The ultimate game, would be a game totally realistic, working excactly like real life, but being a game, lets you walk away from it afterwards, or even save and reload situations.

    This means that you would be able to do everything you normally does not dare to do (I can already hear George W. Bush screaming), like steal, kick the shit out of your boss, even doing stuff that makes "A clockwork Orange" seem like a childrens story, and you would be able to walk away without any damages when the authorities i.e. catches up with you.
    This is the controversial part. I believe most people would do most about everything if it had no consequenses. Will this harm society, lowering peoples limits, or will it help (letting out steam)?

    Realism does NOT mean dull. Some of the greates movies are very realistic, it just covers parts of the reality that you will never experience.
    Most of us will never be able to fly an F-15, or drive a F1-car, and if something can deliver that experience to me, that sure as hell beats pacman.

    Gaute

  • i didn't read the article but i think simple can be better. kind of depends on the game. in some of the newer games they eye candy is part of the fun

    as far as simple, xpilot [xpilot.org] is still my favorite game after 8 years. but part of the fun is that you're playing against other humans with and humor often is involved.

  • Actually, when the author was working on it, his Indian housekeeper (eventually to become his wife) would consantly yell "Bolo!" at him. In other words "Get off your ass, quit dicking with that damned computer, and TALK TO ME."

  • Re:Are computer games more fun now? No. (Score:3)

    by Bill Currie ( 487 ) on Thursday October 12, 2000 @08:33AM (#710888) Homepage
    Story was never a part of games, In fact, story tends to get in the way of game play. Now, I'm not saying a game having a story line is a bad thing (it's not), but it's not important that a game has a story line for it to be fun. eg chess, checkers and crazy eights don't have stories (or if they did, the stories were lost a long time ago) and they're still enjoyed by many.

    Bill - aka taniwha
    --

  • People who aren't doing something useful are better off doing something useful. If they're good, skilled people, they can make other jobs for themselves if those jobs don't already exist -- which, in the existing market, they do.
  • Does anyone remember the name of the game where you were this warrior, 2-d scroller, walked down the hallway with this shield, which you could turn into the SUPER MEGA SHIELD by slamming the joystick up and down repeatedly, and you fought other warriors at the end, knocking parts of their armor off until you hit a vital point?

    I remember trying to stay on the level with the chick as the boss for as long as possible, and trying to remove all of her armor. I can't remember the name of the game for the life of me, but I would spend my entire allowance there, in an attempt to see mostly naked video game chicks.

    I blame my parents.
  • The one reason I haven't gotten into games is because the graphics still suck. Are virtual worlds worth it? That's what I'm waiting for! I want a game where the graphics look like the real world. Don't give me polygons and fake-looking textures. I want full-motion, video effects. I want to see a real world, not some cheesy computer graphics.

    And yes, the current state-of-the-art still looks like cheesy computer graphics to me.

    Once they can make a game that looks as real as a movie, in full-motion, the game market will explode again. The notion of a virtual world will be compelling to people who want to explore a new world, not shoot at pixels.
    ________________

  • I'm not nostalgic -- it's just that most of the games that have been made over the past few years happen to suck.

    The problem with most new games is the misapplication of technology. Instead of being creative, id Software has made a thousand different iterations of Wolfenstein. Instead of being creative, games are about buzzword compliant graphics running at high resolutions and color depths at imperceptibly high framerates using overclocked $600 video cards in $1000 overclocked systems with over $100 worth of cooling equipment that sounds like a 747 at takeoff.

    Most of those games aren't very fun. Realtime strategy games all seemed the same by the time Starcraft came out, and it was a good genre that wasn't demanding of the highest spec machine possible.. Let's see some NEW ideas, dammit!


  • I remember back when the best computer games cost a quarter a play. I wasted tons of quarters too.

    I had more fun playing Battlezone and Tempest that I do playing Quake now.

    In fact I pretty much play Chess and Backgammon only now on computers.

    Oh, and XBill.... *grin*

  • I think children will still play pong and pacman a thousand years from now. They're classics, like checkers.

    Retro gaming isn't an oddity. There's no particular virtue in novelty; Quake isn't better than Doom unless you've already played Doom until you're bored of it.

    There are two areas in which the newest games are advancing: prettier graphics and larger, more complex, settings. The novelty of pretty graphics wears off quickly, and game worlds you can spend your life exploring don't really add anything for the casual gamer.

    The old games are as much fun as the new ones. What they lack is the "progress high" of witnessing the latest and greatest step forward. That is a powerful thing; I remember the first time I played Doom as something like a religious experience. The same thing happened with Quake and Zelda64.

    At some point, virtual reality will develop to be indistinguishable from reality. One thing people will use it for (between fantasies about barbarian killing sprees, orgies, and exploring surreally beautiful worlds) is to simulate the original forms of classic games (like the Q-Bert box that went "THUMP!" when Q-Bert fell off the pyramid), just as they'll simulate checkers (and I suspect that they'll simulate abacii, too; the ultimate case of emulation lag ;) ).

    --------
  • This game even predates the Mac; I remember playing it on my Apple ][+ in the early to mid '80s.

    Of course, it wasn't networkable on the ][+.

    -
  • Although I do enjoy a bit of fun emulation of yesteryears favorites, I think the difference is that today's games are more fun now than the games of 10 years ago would be now. For example, Duke Nukem 3d was a fun game, and I played it a ton, but would I want to play it now instead of Quake3? No.

    Similarly, would anyone really want to go back to the Gold Box AD&D games? If they ported them to Linux and win9x/2k, would you recommend them to a friend, or would you tell them to go get Baldur's Gate/BG2/IWD/etc? That said, I had as much fun playing the gold boxes then as I do now with the BG series, and ditto for duke nukem. But that doesn't mean if I went BACK I'd still have as much fun
  • In reality you have to realize that most games really would benefit from realism at least in interaction with the game itself.

    I say this because of some of the insanely hard things you have to do logically within games say like find a hidden key or get some magical monster.

    For example instead of having to look blind I should be able to talk about any topic I want with a character in a game. Say I don't want to let on to the barmaid that I am looking for the treasure but want to simply engage her in small talk and get her to spill the beans about the adventurers who have been frequenting the tavern? What if I want to have a different approach each time I do something instead of being preprogrammed in? All that takes is a little creative use of the if() statement and you're home free.
  • there are more than a few game styles that have really benefitted from new technology. Take Gran Turismo, at its heart, its pole position. But with all the 3d graphics, and more complex physics, it has become much more addictive and fun. Tony Hawk Pro Skater is another example. At its heart its just Skate or Die or 720. However with the larger environments and more varied tricks, its 20 times better than either of those games. That being said, there are truly great games out there that will always be good. Tetris, Super Mario Bros., the first Zelda, are all examples of just plain good gaming that are still good today. Its like a movie in many respects. Just because Star Wars is almost 25 years old, doesnt make it dated. So what I'm trying to say is games benefit from the tech, but the tech alone does not make a great game.
  • HEY! Don't mess with DigDug!

    --DigDug

    --

  • Nah! (Score:2)

    by rnturn ( 11092 )
    ``Are computer games any more fun now than they were 10 years ago?''

    I felt better about the time I spent (most would say ``wasted'') playing `Zork', `Hitchhiker's Guide...', `Leather ... Phobos', or even `Racter', than I do nowadays after a couple of hours of wielding a hyperblaster. Apparently, I get more fun exercising my brain cells or, in the case of `Racter', my funny bone than I do to wearing my finger joints down blasting mutants.

    For me anyway, it can be more fun exploring the little known corners of a piece of software than it is shooting things, more fun setting up the system to be able to play the FPS game than to actually play it. (Wonder if anyone else feels that way?)



    --

  • , but I dare you to go back and play Dig Dug or Frogger again now.

    I play Dig Dug every day. My high score is 94,376.

    Some day I'll beat it. I'm sure.
  • "In reality you have to realize that most games really would benefit from realism at least in interaction with the game itself."

    Keeping in mind that these sort of questions are purely subjective, I must respectfully disagree. Consider SimCity (now called SimCity Classic) vs. SimCity 2000. SimCity is by far the better game: easier to understand, easier to play, and the player develops a better understanding of the underlying system dynamics model (usually unawares). SimCity 2000 took this clean, enjoyable game and gunked it up with useless pseudo-3D graphics and meaningless options. Even SimCity 3000, which got the 3D graphics right, is in many ways (MHO) inferior to the original.

    Personally I think this applies to many of the current generation of games. Panzer General II vs. Panzer General 3D is another one that comes to mind.

    sPh
  • Without showing you the book, its hard to get across what the original poster was refering to (as an illustrator, McCloud draws better than he can explain). When he talks about reality, it is not the fact no amount of bullets will cause my car to burst into a giant fireball the size of the Goodyear blimp. Rather, he means a visual reality where things look like a thing rather than a class of things.

    I could really go on at length about this, but it'd better for you to simply find a copy and read chapter 2. If you're in a real hurry (or just want to get the jist while standing in Barnes & Nobel) read pages 48-55. Should talk all of 4 minutes.
  • Not in any particular order:

    "Jeremy", Ten, Pearl Jam
    "Smells Like Teen Spirit", Nevermind, Nirvana
    "Champagne Supernova", (What's the Story) Morning Glory, Oasis
    "Black Hole Sun", Superunknown, Soundgarden
    "My Hero", The Colour and the Shape, Foo Fighters
    "Enter Sandman", Metallica, Metallica
    "Break Stuff", Significant Other, Limp Bizkit
    "Closer", The Downward Spiral, Nine Inch Nails
    "Devil's Haircut", Odelay, Beck
    "Come Out and Play", Smash, The Offspring
    "You Oughta Know", Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morisette
    "Everything Zen", Sixteen Stone, Bush
    "People of the Sun", Evil Empire, Rage Against the Machine
    "Plush", Core, Stone Temple Pilots
    "Would", Dirt, Alice in Chains
    "Tonight, Tonight", Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Smashing Pumpkins
    "Under the Bridge", Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Red Hot Chili Peppers
    "What's My Age Again?", Enema of the State, Blink 182
    "Connection", Elastica, Elastica
    "Man in the Moon", Automatic for the People, R.E.M.

    I did this off the top of my head. No references. Gimme a break, dude, your line about "no one can think of a top 20 list for the 90s". What, you expect me to believe that there was no notable music in the last 10 years? What the hell are you smoking? You think music wasn't driven by commercial interests until the 1990s? You think back in the 60s that everything was driven by highfalutin visions of peace and happiness and artistic creativity? Bullshit. Things were as money-driven then as they are now; the only difference is, the people doing that driving have gotten a lot better at it.

    As for comics, there you're right. Comics certainly take up much less of the page, and are less colorful, than they used to be. Having not read many large-format comics from the past, I'm not in any position to comment on them.

  • "You are playing the "best of". That 10% of games that are remembered. They're good because they were good game designs."

    This is a valid point, but there is a counterpoint as well: constraints often force the creation of elegent design. When the constraints are removed, bigger things are accomplished but elegence is often lost in the process. This applies to most engineering fields that I know of; look at the design of an electropneumatic control system from the 1920's vs. a digital control system today. No doubt you can accomplish many more things with DCS', but the designs from the 1920's were often far "better" (whatever that means). The constraints of available technology forced the engineers of the day to be good.

    The same may be true for games. The old Tank was (IMHO) much more fun to play than most of the current crop of 3D shooter tank sims (if you deliver one of each to my house I will be happy to verify that thought!). The designers of the early 1980's didn't have as much to work with as today's game designers - were their works better? Or just simpler?

    sPh
  • I would tend to think that, at least in the case of games, it's not so much that they were necessarily more creative given smaller constraints -- although in general I would admit that this is true; if you have a goal and very limited resources, you have to be creative or you will fail -- but one other thing to keep in mind was how novel everything was. People used to play Pong, PONG for Chrissakes, for hours and hours, but that was when it first came out. Nowadays, I'd be amazed by anyone who'd seen any other games, was introduced to Pong, and found it that absorbing.

    Yes, I'm sure it could happen, my point is that novelty often has an attraction that vanishes over time.

  • Yes, karma whoring is SO effective now that the karma cap is 50. Shut your piehole, you fucking tool.

    Oh, no! I've been trolled! Oh, wait, I don't care.

  • You completely missed the point. :) (For one thing, no matter who I named, you would never agree that they were as great as Dylan, and my perception is that you're biased to think that Dylan is so great that none could ever surpass him.)

    I don't personally listen to much folk music (although I got plenty of Dylan as a kid, thanks to my dad; and personally, I think Dylan's writing is very good, but I don't care for the music itself at all), so I couldn't personally provide an answer to that question. But let's use a different example: say, The Doors, as influential a band as I can think of. Rock and roll has progressed a lot since the Doors were around. Ray Manzarek (keyboards) is a friend of the family, he comes over and watches football with my dad all the time.

    When the Doors came along, there hadn't really been anything like them. They were groundbreaking, they were revolutionary. Thirty years hence, we have seen quite a lot of development in rock music. If the Doors had not existed back in the late 60s, someone else would have (probably) filled their role. Now pretend that Jim Morrison is 21 years old at UCLA, and it's the year 1998. He starts a band with Ray and John Sizemore and Robbie Krieger, and they call themselves the Doors and sound exactly like the real Doors did back in the real 1960s. Do you honestly think they would be as famous or influential as they were in reality? OF COURSE NOT! The Doors were great, but a lot of the stuff they did has been extensively copied, modified, and improved upon since their time. If they came along with that now, everyone would wonder where they'd been for the last 30 years.

    I'll agree that sometimes there are individual people/movies/games that will be SO good as to defy comparison even years down the road. I don't personally think Dylan is among them (of course, this is now in the realm of personal opinion). I've listened to a fair amount of Dylan, and I don't like him all that much. I recognize why he's so famous, and I can appreciate it; and his lyrics are definitely well-thought and, dare I say it, masterful. But I don't like his music, which is, thankfully, my choice. :)

    Come on, do you honestly think that Dylan would be as influential if he started his career today?

  • "Are computer games any more fun now than they were 10 years ago?"

    Even better question: "Are computer games any more fun now than they were 20 years ago?

    17-20 years ago Infocom ruled the game scene, and I haven't played games as good since.

    wish
    Vote for freedom! [harrybrowne2000.org]
    ---

  • You're right, I didn't really mention that. I was just trying to head off the tendency of people to say things like, "Bah, nowadays the graphics make everyone ignore things like story and content and plot! Back in my day, every game had the depth of Shakespeare!" which is hogwash.
  • You're right, MOST of the games that have been made over the past few years happen to suck.

    This statement could have been made accurately in every year for the past 20.

    That's my point. Most games DO suck. They always have. They always will.

  • You seem to start off saying that crap 20 years ago is crap today. Sure, I'll buy that. But then you go onto say that things that were great years ago (Bob Dylan, Dig Dug, Frogger) would be crap today. This is wrong; they would not be crap... they wouldn't be groudbreaking either, but greatness and groundbreaking are hardly the same thing.

    Plenty of people not from the sixties have discovered and enjoyed Bob Dylan well after his prime. I, for one, didn't start playing Galaga, my all-time favorite game, until I discovered standing next to a Mortal Combat II machine.

    I argue that several classic games are just as great as the ones made today. They were developed with the tools they had at hand. Because tools were primative is no reason to say a game wasn't great.
  • > How long is the average computer game popular?

    We may never see the death of tetris.

    > How long have games like Go and Chess been popular?

    How often do such games even come around?

    Still, I think you're comparing apples and oranges. I'm having terrific fun playing Baldurs Gate 2 (it's leagues better than the original in terms of richness and complexity) but when I've played all the way through it, and maybe played it as an evil character just for kicks (and probably using a cheat, assuming shadowkeeper works correctly by then) it'll go on the shelf, or I'll give it to someone. So it's more like a concert or a book or a play (a little bit of all of them really) than a game such as chess. The genre constitutes a lasting form of entertainment, not the individual game.
  • Heh... thanks. I actually held off on making an account for a few days after Taco implemented it since I thought making people log on was annoying. In hindsight, probably shouldn't have done that... 'twould be cool to be #80 or so. :)

    ICC's a very nifty idea, but I prefer to play against real people... I spend enough time in front of a CRT as it is, and a little social contact's never a bad thing. :)
  • > Rational Rose for yet another webbrowser with avatars built in.

    Slashdotting from your programming job? I think you meant "moove", not RR :)

  • Re:Read "Understanding Comics" (Score:4)

    by garagekubrick ( 121058 ) on Thursday October 12, 2000 @01:45PM (#710970) Homepage
    I think this is way off base - despite sharing a certain literary pedigree with games, comics are an inherently different medium to games. Movies, after all, present us with real humans in their full blown visual glory, and this is not an impediment to our identification.

    I actually think that this level of abstraction has nothing to with what I call the empathy a player has with a game character. It has to do with far more esoteric elements, like dialogue and action and what other characters say about the player, the basics of character in traditional drama - and/or options given to players to shape that character.

    For example, I feel that JC Denton in Deus Ex is, for the most part me, to some degree. I have shaped that character through various choices into representing how I tackle the game world, how he looks, how he behaves.

    On the other hand, Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid completely elicits my empathy despite being a fully fledged character who I don't choose dialogue for, who doesn't grow in skills of my choice, and looks slightly less realistic due to old technology. But when *spoiler warning* a certain character got sniped and I had to find a way to rescue her, my heart was pounding. In that moment I had a complete game playing epiphany, I was honestly concerned for the character involved and was really determined to get some payback. This was because the game had taken the time out to develop a relationship and put it in crisis.

    Now that in Metal Gear Solid 2 I can actually read the expression on Solid Snake's face I think the empathic response will grow. It's a stated intention of Hideo Kojima to insure that his face will be readable as much as possible to convey that emotion.

    On the other hand, I really, really cared for my Avatar in Ultima V, rendered in glorious EGA - especially, in another special moment in gaming, when I was asked to free an innocent man, knowing that it would get me into deep shit and danger. I was posed with a choice that had more consequence than abstraction survival by dodging bricks, and as a result I felt like I was in the world. This much feeling for a stick man.

    Abstraction of character in the best comic books almost come off as a psychic defense; the cartoonish look of Barefoot Gen (autobiographical comic about the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima) or Maus have been stated as a means to try and work through the reality of the horrors portrayed.

    The real important necessity for gaming, as I've been babbling about for years, is not the degree of visual realism, but rather the need for sharp characters and deeper plots than bad cliched retreads of the most juvenile and aesthetic elements of genre fiction. Get that right, and you'll see empathy skyrocket.

  • "Does anybody else miss the old side scrollers, Contra, MegaMan, Super Mario and all? "

    Look for Mega Man X 5, in glorious 2D on the playstation soon.
    ----
  • Quake 3 was never meant to be 'well balanced' - it was meant to be frantic instead.

    However, taking realism AND gameplay, and putting it together say, in a game like Counter Strike, definately works.

    Plus, "Realistic" first person shooters do have a suspension if disbeleif.. most people who play it aren't SWAT team members.
    ----
  • Do you like chess? (I'm just talking about the two-human kind).

    It's not immersive in the sense you speak of... but (IMHO) it's one heckuvalot of fun.
  • System Shock was released in September 1994. That's six years ago, not ten. That's a significant difference in computer time.

    Is there something wrong with enjoying "twitching at pixels," as you put it? I highly enjoy Quake (and derivatives). I also highly enjoyed System Shock, Half-Life, Starcraft, Diablo, EverQuest, Command & Conquer, and a whole raft of other games that have nothing in common except that I find them FUN.

  • Story or dynamic gameplay are more important. (Score:3)

    by DunbarTheInept ( 764 ) on Thursday October 12, 2000 @01:53PM (#710987) Homepage
    The reason some of us remember the old games fondly is because we didn't place as high a value on the irrelevancies like graphics and sound. What has improved in the last two decades is not the storylines or dynamic gameplay, but the whiz-bang effects. Big Deal. Some of those past games were really good, just as good as today's games if you ignore the whiz-bang window dressing.

    Here's my list, off the top of my head, and what made the game good in my opinion:

    GAME....................GOOD FOR
    Jumpman(c64)...........Needed tactical think-ahead movement to avoid death.
    .......................Variety of traps and tricks.
    Impossible Mission.....Groundbreaking for complexity of the "map".
    .......................Required logical thought to evade the robots.
    .......................That scream sound when you fall to your death was addictive.
    .......................(The first time I played I kept throwing myself to my
    .......................death just to hear it again.)
    Phantasie 1,2,3........Predecessor to the Ultima series, by the same guy.
    .......................Fun map exploration, party-style D&D setting.
    .......................Could change the item descriptions in a text file, so
    .......................after a while I was fighting with "trashcan lids",
    ......................."Big sticks", and so on.
    Atari 4-paddle games (like Warlords, Quadrapong, etc) - Instead of
    .......................the impossible task of making the computer an interesting
    .......................challenge, it put the players against each other, but
    .......................in the same room. (Moderm net play is too impersonal.)
    Civ (original).........Nice game length, and a user interface that was efficient.
    .......................(unlike Civ:CTP).
    Lemmings...............Hilarious premise, and a fun challenge to boot.

    Does this mean all new games are bad? No, just that the extra graphics and sound don't really make a game good all by themselves. It's important to have a good, *fun* idea at the core of the game. Ask yourself the question, "Would this game still be fun if the graphics and sound weren't as good?" If the answer is "no", then there's no substance to the game.
    One modern game I do like is Thief 1&2. Why? Because they had the balls to try something *different* instead of just another Duke Quakem clone. Much like Ultima Underworld (which was also by Looking Glass), this game was groundbreaking and unique without needing the best graphics of the day - they relied on other stuff to make it a good game - like a plot, and a realistic set of physics. (While the graphics engine in Thief wasn't the greatest, the realistic physics for throwing projectiles and shooting bows was awesome. Having an FPS where you have to arc your shot was a new idea, and they did a good job with it.)

  • There's nothing wrong with it if that's what you want. That's what Space Invaders was. I personally enjoy Descent when I want some mindless action.

    It's just that I hear so much news about each latest FPS like it's some kind of great new innovation, and they're all basically the same thing.

    Does anyone remember what Quake was originally described as by id in the early days? It was radically different from the warned-over Doom it became. They went on and on about physics simulations, elaborate hand-to-hand combat, actually story elements in the games like puzzle or role-playing. What did it end up as? More shotgun shuffle with endless zombies and demons... ho hum. I just like a little imagination in my games rather than running around endless brown labyrinths with the computer congratulating me in terms of gay sex.

  • Thanks for your opinion, but we weren't trying to come up with the ultimate list of great songs. The point was, he didn't even TRY to think of anything.

    Personally, I think Primus sucks. Never listened to Midnight Oil. If I'd thought of DMB before some of the others, I would have put "Ants Marching." Now, are you gonna argue that my musical taste is wrong? Cause if so, you're utterly and completely off-topic.


  • This is the same as the Film market, its so much harder to make a different and challenging film, it much better to rehash an old plot and add in some more FX.

    That said however the games market does benifit in increasing the level of reality in games that are meant to be real (F1, FIFA, Quake etc etc) but whether their current dominance of the games market is due to a lack of imagination on the part of developers or publishers is easy to say.

    Of course it is. Just look at what happens when a new genre comes out, everyone plunders it for years to come. Film and games companies contain accountants and imagination is not their strongest point.

  • (WARNING, YOU ARE TEMPORARILY LEAVING THE FREE SOURCE WORLD) www.winbolo.com (they have a port called linbolo) BOLO was a game for the MAC which I played at least 8 years ago. Because the mac had more network-ability than your similarly equipped intel-class PC, this game spread across (mac-equipped) campus labs like wildfire. Which is proof, that you don't need 3-d graphics (in fact, the game is designed to work well in BLACK AND WHITE) to have great gameplay. Now it's available for windows and linux. Don't miss it.
  • "Are computer games any more fun now than they were 10 years ago"

    I don't think they're any better. They're always best when you're 12 years old and they're the most exciting thing you've ever seen. I would say that the additional complexity and megs & megs of content has made them more linear however.
  • You're right that the "nostalgia" problem exists; however, what makes you think that this is evidence of it? The 80s weren't the only time that people made games which weren't massive 3d "virtual worlds". You can find any number of modern examples of such "primitive" techniques just about anywhere. The first one that springs to mind, of course, is Nethack (which I swear I will finish one day..if I ever dare to play that black hole of time again..), but even something as simple and uncreative as lbreakout is an excellent example of an "old" game done well in a creative way. Freeciv is mostly derivative of Civilization, an 80s game, but the coders have many ambitious plans to add features that Civilization never dreamed of. Probably those will see the light of day, but even without them, it's still an engrossing and fun-to-play game (even with the "must reproduce like rabbits" syndrome) I tried the Quake 3 demo. It had the prettiest and most "immersive" graphics I've ever seen. It's not on my hard drive anymore. Nethack, lbreakout, and Freeciv are. (and the first of those, I might add, is far more immersive overall (not graphically, of course) than Q3..) Daniel
  • Immersiveness is a subjective value as well. I find Infocom text adventures and text-based muds to be far more immersive than graphical games.
    I think a problem that we'll all have when it comes to quantifying the playability of games is that you /can't/ quantify it. Saying "it's immersive" or "it has good graphics" is just one person's view of it. (Also, OCD is not the disorder you're looking for; I think you're referring to addictions - OCD /is/ bad)
  • And we're supposed to believe that it's just a coincidence that they're both overhead-view tank shooters? Especially in light of Keith Laumer's Bolo series?

    -
  • Unforunately my generalization was speaking more toward the quake 3 and other online only genre of PC games.

    I had a similar conversation to this with a traditional (Dungeons and Dragons-style RPGs) gamer. He claimed that gaming was dead. When asked why, he answered that the game itself hadn't declined - it was just that the card "RPGs" like Magic: The Gathering had stolen away most of gaming's core constituency.

    I think it's the same deal with computer games. I mean, I catch myself falling into the trap all the time. I have Balder's Gate II on my computer, which people are telling me is very good, but I've never played it. Why? Because every time I have some free time, I think "Do I really want to learn a whole complicated system and try to remember everything everyone's telling me? No.. actually I just want to shoot people in the face with the sniper rifle." And then I play Tribes.

    There will always be computer games which improve on previous computer games in every way. The question is whether anyone will play them.

  • Actually, the Tandy that I owned was bought in 1988. It was the Tandy 1000 TX, and among its features were an 8MHz 80286 processor, TGA graphics (Tandy Graphics adapter, I think it added one additional mode that never became standard), the 3-voice sound that you mentioned and a 3 1/2" double density floppy drive.

    As for games, well I didn't play them much because Tandy games were only kicking for a very short time. The ones I had were Marble Madness, Thexder, and an arcade-perfect port of Sega's Outrun. Outrun was particularly neat, because it was a perfect arcarde-quality game even before Sega's Genesis had even been conceived. And my version of Marble Madness (complete with a real Tandy joystick) was just plain leagues ahead of the NES version.

    Tandy could have been in a unique position to bring about a revolution in computer gaming, but alas, they screwed up somehow and we all had to wait until about 1994 or so before we saw good enough IBMs to bring back computer gaming in a big way.

    (Note: I am blatantly ignoring the Apple, Amiga, and others because I never owned one and don't really know the history on them and gaming too well. Forgove me.)
  • It dependes on what part of the argument theou're basing it on; as for the last line "are games more fun than they were 10 years ago", I'd have to say 'yes' -- mostly because of the advent of multiplayer gaming; playing against a human bean is much more fulfilling than an AI.

    But there are some noticable let downs as well. Most current games (with some notable exceptions) are relying too much on technical merit and not enough on design or inspiration. Most single-player games of today are completely devoid of anything resembing an enveloping story line or interesting characters; I'll still pull my Apple //c out of mothballs every few weeks just to play Ultima IV because it's a story I've been engrossed in for well over 10 years.

    In short, I don't think the advance in 3D design is taking anything away from the experience, but I don't thing advanced 3d Design is enough to make a game 'fun', either.
  • Eamon was a little apple basic program that allowed you to make a little hack'n'slasher and walk around in a severly stunted ZORK universe. It featured plug in adventures, where authors could rework special commands, etc.

    Adventures are still being dripped and there's a quarterly newsletter print (though the back issues are available here [ftp.gmd.de].) The openning paragraphs are a great read, if a bit depressing.

    1995: 80 Subscribers

    2000: 28
    The maintainer is also putting out a CD containing all the adventures, perfect for any emulator or APPLE// thats still working. Search rec.games.eamon for more info.

    On an aside, Trinity by infocom is still beyond amazing, and people are still getting stuck in Zork every year...

  • How long is the average computer game popular?

    How long have games like Go and Chess been popular?

    Misfit

  • Yes and No (Score:3)

    by Tiroth ( 95112 ) on Thursday October 12, 2000 @07:47AM (#711041) Homepage
    The answer is that realistic virtual worlds make games more interesting and more immersive, but fail to make up for a failed basic premise. If a game is well thought out and well designed, the realism added definitely increases the fun and value. A pretty game that is not fun to play lasts only as long as the eye candy is still intriguing.

    This is why there are still plenty of people playing Quake and Starcraft. They are poor examples of current (audio visual) technology, but as games they are just plain very entertaining.

    What we lack currently is the killer app for virtual worlds: a game that is both technologically stunning as well as based on a framework that keeps gamers playing. It's a hard mix to achieve, because so much work *is* required for modern games. We've come a long way from the days of 2d scrollers; many modern game projects are beginning to look more like movie sets. Getting all that fancy technology (and complicated geometry) working may require more effort from designers than ever before, but if they can pull it off they can also show off a game that is more amazing than previously thought possible.
  • Bolo was originally for the BBC Micro. The graphics in the Mac version and Winbolo were taken directly from the original.

  • Gameplay ORTHOGONAL to graphics (Score:3)

    by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Thursday October 12, 2000 @11:04AM (#711051)
    Let's first look at the evidence:

    Numerous people love 3D shooters (Quake, Thief, Counter-Strike, CTF, etc). Lots of people love 2D RTSs (Age of Empires 2, Starcraft, Majesty, etc), and other people love traditional games like Cards, Chess, Backgammon. Many people enjoy the socializing, goodies, trading, and virtual community in RPGs (UO, EQ, AC, Diablo 2, Balder's Gate), and yet others love the retro C64, Apple ][, Atari games (*cough Apple ][ : Aquatron, Rescue Raiders, Gemstone Warrior cough*) , while others love a good puzzle game (Monkey Island, Zork, Myst, etc). And last but not least, there are a good number of people who enjoy sports games (Football, Basketball, Soccer, Driving, etc)

    And what conclusion can we draw?

    How complex were the games from yesterday? For the most part, they "were simple." People want something that is "fresh" and "exciting." Adding complexity to a game, i.e. more detailed world, is the easiest way to do this. (Note, that I didn't say the best way ;-)

    If we look at the (short) history of computer games, are today's games just as fun as the "oldies"?
    Not everyone has the same taste, but Yes! Today's games are just as fun. (Popularity is ONE way to guage this.)

    One thing we all must remember, is that good gameplay is, for the most part, independent of graphics and sound, but great graphics and sound helps the player to be immersed in a world. Something which seems to be lost on most publishers chanting the mantra "MUST SELL 3D GAMES." (Could you imagine playing Thief without 3d sound? Ugh. Playable, but the expercience wouldn't be that good.)

    You can still have a good game and have bad graphics. A bad game with pretty graphics is still a bad game (even though it still might sell)

    The main problem is there are a lot of REPEAT games out there. Of course it's not as fun playing the ump'teenth version of a shooter, because the INITIAL thrill of playing something ORIGINAL wears off, but slowly we are seeing NEW genres. i.e. Thief, Majesty, Sims.

    One should note there is an interesting parallel with the movie industry. We could ask the same question: Are movies still fun to see after all these years they have been around? After all, the plot has pretty much been seen before, in either books, or previous stories. Movies are using the "latest 3D" rendering techniques to impress us visually, i.e. Matrox. And 3D sound is nice, but not essential to enjoy a good flick.

    But what do I know, I'm just a game programmer and avid game player :-)

    Score 0: Obvious
  • Save yourself some time, use Crystal Space, an open source 3d engine, http://crystal.linuxgames.com/, cross platform, suports 3d hardware, just as good as the halflife engine. I think the real problem is how do you support a virtual world with 50 thousand (or 2 million for that matter) people walking around in it having real time conversations?
  • But seriously, how can you compare songs like "What's my age again" to songs like Don Mclean's "Vincent", or "Windmills of my mind", or Donovan's "Catch the Wind", or "Diamonds and Rust", or "Sounds of Silence", "bridge over troubled water", or at least half a dozen of Cat Steven's earlier songs (e.g. "sad lisa", "matthew and son"), or John Lennon's "working class hero" .. and really, we're just scraping the tip of the iceberg here.

    Speak for yourself. Most of that music I find deadly boring. Naturally, these are just one person's opinions. :)

    Most of the songs I listed in the 20 (and I never said they were the 20 best songs, where did you get that idea?) I like listening to a hell of a lot more than 60s stuff. There's a lot of 60s/early 70s stuff I DO like (like The Doors, some Beatles, Hendrix, Steely Dan, and more) but for the most part I just don't find music from that era very interesting. And for what it's worth, your opinion is no more valid than mine.

    Now it would be dense for me to claim that a lot of that music isn't a) very well done, b) important in terms of musical history, and c) highly influential, but that doesn't mean that I have to agree that it's "better" in the conventional sense than, say, Joe Satriani. In fact, right now I'm listening to my current favorite song, "Motorcycle Driver" by Satriani.

    I've had plenty of experience with classic rock and folk and pop. Usually, I don't like it. Are you going to tell me I'm wrong? Do you think I'm trying to tell you that you're wrong? How the hell can you be intellectually justified in saying "These are just my opinions" and then implying that I'm somehow wrong to say that a modern song is, IN MY OPINION, better than an equivalent song from the 60s?

  • I think what distinguishes one game from another is really "concept". There's nothing like a totally novel approach. That's why The Sims are so popular right now (sorry, no Linux version) - but isn't it just a dollhouse taken to the next step? It certainly looks that way to me. What about FPS games? Isn't that just the same as when you played with toy guns as a kid (or paintball as an adult kid)?

    The only difference I see is that instead of using your imagination to supply the terrorists and interpersonal relationships, you're letting the software do it for you. I think the same has been said of television - that it acts as a substitute imagination rather than stimulates.

    That's not to say that all media does that, but certainly the mass-produced, sequel-milking, eye-candy-filled television shows and video games have that effect.

    I would point at history to demonstrate that whenever a new form of media comes out, it takes quite a while for it to start producing art. The printing press, photography, and film have all had a "trial period" before people started to use those mediums for art. Film has progressed relatively quickly in that regard, but how much art is there on television? Sure, Dark Angel might be a "neat show", but can you really call that action-thriller bullshit stimulating and provocative? What new ideas does it introduce? Even the bastion of high-brow programming, the PBS documentary, has been dumbed-down to pointless shows about guns & wars (History Channel), shock-value gore-fests (The Learning Channel), and completely unchallenging and basic trivia (Discovery Channel).

    Anyway, in regard to games the same thing is happening (has been happening all along): somone takes some sort of fictional situation and creates a simulation so you can "immerse" yourself (as another /.er put it) in this fictional situation with graphics, sound, and...well, graphics and sound--instead of either using your imagination or actualizing the situation. This all has the effect of limiting the scope of our imagination and/or fixating our expectations . Just think of how the pr0n idustry has shaped male expectations of how women should act in bed (how many women do you know actually like to have guys ejaculate on their faces?).

    The consequence is, of course, that we become more and more reliant on the next game or next TV show for our dose of escape, but eventually the shit's just not gonna do it for us anymore and look, here comes bland ol' boring reality right back at ya, with the car payments, the acne, the commute, the gov't, the consequences...

  • You desire you shoot at the real world? Man, I think you're way beyond computer games, why don't you go get a job at the post office?
  • What makes you think I want to shoot? I used the phrase "shoot at pixels" because that is the most common type of game. As it happens, I dislike all such shooter games because they are boring. I prefer games that test imagination, not reflexes.

    But thanks for making a wrong negative assumption about me anyway.
    ________________

  • Funny you should mention that! I've played Action Quake and Counterstrike some against people who really enjoyed the game (although I did not). When I watched them play, they just charged in and shot things. One side one, the other lost, and they started another round. They had a great time.

    When I jumped in the game, I immediately realized that because all the weapons were hitscan (immediate hit, no delay like a rocket launcher) and dealt a lot of damage, whoever got the first shot in won. Therefore the best strategy was to camp in an area and wait for the other team to get bored and attack. In my estimation, the team that attacked first lost over 70% of the battles. (In one 3 hour round of LAN action quake, I had more frags than the enemy team combined-- and it was the first time I'd ever played the mod!)

    Therefore, the optimal strategy in counterstrike and action quake is to wait until they attack. Note that this is NOT fun. Counterstrike is fun only as long as people always charge in guns-a-blazing.

    Too bad the gameplay for counterstrike encouraged camping. The reason the gameplay encourages camping is the prevelance of hitscan weapons, which in turn is based on a firm founding in reality at the expense of fun. This is a clear example of where a variety of unrealistic weapons (eg. Rocket Launcher, railgun, etc.) would encourage more attacking, creating more action, and therefore be more fun.

    If you want to add on some realism later, that's great. Realism _is_ a good thing, but gameplay is better. Don't choose realism just because it makes your mind feel better.

    -Ted
  • It won't destroy society through the lowering of limits...the real problem will be the people who never come out. If you can create your own personal dream life in a simulation, why would you ever want to leave? A good number of people will be able to convince themselves that their fantasy world is in fact real. When the time comes that someone finally pulls the plug, the shock could cause insanity. A few incidents and the government will have em off the market in a heartbeat.

    Fuckin' bastards...I really wanted to live in a fantasy world then go insane.

  • Read "Understanding Comics" (Score:4)

    by goliard ( 46585 ) on Thursday October 12, 2000 @07:53AM (#711068)


    All graphical game designers (pro and otherwise), drop whatever the hell you are doing and pick up a copy of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics [amazon.com].

    This book has some imporant original things to say about the way people relate to abstract vs. realistic images, and should be a handbook to anyone doing graphical games. He argues convincingly that people are more engaged by abstracted images of characters precisely because they are more unspecific. The trend in games to be more and more realistic works precisely against this principle.

    The question of whether or not games today, with their visual richness, are any more fun hinges on whether or not that visual richness is being used in ways which enhance the player's relationship to the game or detract from it. Read this book to begin to understand how this works.

  • Too many.
    Are computer games any more fun now than they were 10 years ago? Surely they have improved considerably in terms of technology, with flashier visuals and generally more immersive gameplay than the experiences of before? Maybe I'm just a cynic, but the games just don't seem to be the same fun these days. One of my own games, Centipede 3D, is a remake or "modernization" of a classic game, the original Centipede as created by Ed Logg in 1980. The new version of the game has a much flashier, involved and graphically lush gameworld, but the game mechanics are largely the same as the original Centipede. Is the game any more fun for having a virtual world? Quite the contrary; I'd say it's less fun. If anything, the 3D world in which the player navigates in Centipede 3D distracts from the core gameplay.
    Well duh. Centipede was designed for a simple, 2D world. It was not designed for a 3D world, hence, it doesn't play as well in a 3D world.

    Rouse seems to be taking this consequence and implying that it even goes for games that are designed for 3D worlds. That is not a logical conclusion. He says himself that the 3D world distracts from the gameplay of Centipede. Well, it's a gameplay designed for a 2D world, not 3D, that's why the "distraction" developes. I don't understand why he can't see that.

    Similarily, if you took a 3D game such as Tomb Raider, Goldeneye, Quake 3, Soul Reaver, or any other game designed for a three dimeisonal world, and tried to force them into a 2D world, it wouldn't work. Different games are designed to be implemented in different ways.

    The reason games seem less fun to him, or anyone else who's been playing them for a long time (and I'd consider him beyond even that, since he is a game programmer), is because he's jaded . They aren't a new experience anymore. They were much more fun when they were new. Now they're not, hence they're not as fun for that partiuclar gamer.

    The funny thing is, he's arguing how cookie-cutter some of the modern 3D games of today are, presumabely using this as an argument as to why they're "less fun." Yeah, and all those Atari games and NES side-scrollers weren't cookie-cutter.

    In ten years, gamers are going to look back at the games now and wonder if the ones they are playing are better than the ones that are here now. And the same in twenty years. Once the concept of playing video games becomes customary, you become jaded, and it takes more to entice you. You're still having the same amount of fun, but it may take more to please you. And once you've been exposed to a game of a certain complexity, you often expect at least that level in subsequent games. I assure you that the people who are being introduced to today's games are having just as much fun with them as everyone else was when they were introduced to gaming.

  • IMHO it's really not about whether or not they're *more* fun, they're just *different* fun.
    If you'd been playing a couple of hours of Pacman every day for the last 10 years would it really still be fun? Possibly, but for most people it would lose it's appeal after a while.
    That is why games continually evolve in new directions, the companies are trying to create something new and fresh that will inspire the young to waste hours of time and tons of money ;)
    People who whinge about how FPS games are so old hat, tired and boring should look at the phenomenal success of the Half-Life mod CounterStrike (http://www.counter-strike.net), which is played by more people than all of the games which supposedly lead the FPS genre (ie Quake3 and Unreal Tournament). Why is CStrike so popular? Because it's damn good fun. Sure it doesn't have the slickness of Quake3, or the raw adrenalin frenzied action, but at some fundemental level it's just plain more fun.
    If it takes the John Carmacks of the world to push the envelope of their given genre so that someone else can come along and make it more fun, that's fine by me.

    (Don't forget to look for me putting some bullets through your head next time you play cstrike ;)

    [DOG]Ng
  • High detail 3d virtual worlds may not elevate the gaming experience in an exponential way, but thats not really what it is about anymore.

    Realism is becoming the standard these days. Dot matrix printers offer a good analogy. About 15 years ago a good dot-matrix printout was good enough for most anything. Today, the standard is much higher but we are still printing the same words!
  • actually I was just outright dissing you. I happen to agree that games should be more taxing on the brain but I don't see the need for any better graphics. We havn't even started to push the currently available game engines to their full potential.

  • Huh? (Score:2)

    by cduffy ( 652 )
    I'm just saying people shouldn't be paid to do things that don't do anyone any good -- like spending hours on making detailed worlds that nobody will really appreciate -- just for the sake of having them be employed.

    I don't know *what* kind of strawman you're building, but the above is what -- and all -- I meant.

  • One potential that I see with virtual reality and 3D engines is that pretty soon, maybe the structural aspects of it all may become standardized, or at least compatable. Spending a long time building a model of the Whitehouse might make more sense if you can then put the model on the Internet, and then people can import it into their own games over and over. They can even have put the Whitehouse into their barbie game if they want.

    This is theoretically possible with the virtual reality games, because all the models really do try to simulate a single platonic ideal: physical reality. (Not a platonic idea in real life, but it is one from the point of view of a simulation -- weird, my brain is hurting.) It doesn't make sense to put the Joust screen into Pacman; it just doesn't map. But it would sorta make sense to put Doom E1M3 level in Quake 7. There's game-specific stuff that wouldn't translate, but the structure would.

    I look forward to the day when VR maps become non-game specific.


    ---


  • Ah, but where can on find a version of "Fool's Errand" which runs on anything other than a Mac with OS6?

  • Inviting the user to be a designer (Score:3)

    by fhwang ( 90412 ) on Thursday October 12, 2000 @07:59AM (#711101) Homepage
    I think Hague's piece, while it's a bit heavy on the nostalgia, does have one good point in it: As 3D-rendered worlds get more and more complex, the level design will be inevitably more and more time-consuming.

    However, he doesn't note the business model that successful FPS games have used to overcome that problem: They open up the level-design specs, and make it possible for anybody to design their own level. That, plus the recent phenomena of near-universal Internet access, means that you can find people out there willing to give their work away for free as long as they get one e-mail's worth of praise for it. Egoboo is a powerful thing [wirednews.com].

    This puts a pretty radical paradigm shift into the gaming world: Your users determine the game's level design and play pattern. The most obvious example is that they can control the spacing and variety of obstacles (puzzles, enemies, etc.). But there are also people who have used the basic 3D engine at the heart of an FPS and applied them to uses that most people would have never predicted, including:

    It would be incorrect to argue that 3D-rendered games will lead to a lack of diversity in play. (They won't even completely eclipse other types of games: There will always be people who like Tetris or Scrabble or poker.) In some ways, 3D games represent a broadening of play that's pretty much unprecedented.

    Francis Hwang

  • You can never get enough graphics, but you can be blown away by a game with none. After seeing on the technical side high end SGI Infinite Reality equipment, or on the artistic side the things the best artists (like Jeffrey Shaw of ZKM) can do with them (or anything, they don't need tech it is just a great tool), you begin to realize that when you depend on just pixels without any real intention or signification behind them you get a product that pales quickly. Especially when you've gone a generation or two past it in graphics card evolution. Honestly a large part of my feeling about this is I would probably have more fun building some PS2 soft than buying games for it.

    On the other hand I remember firing up Zork from Infocom on an Apple II emulator and being drawn into it much as I did 20 years ago, while I don't enjoy doom very much. I thought Nights was the best Sega game (think it was Sega anyway), and it looks like there are some good games for PS2 now as well. There is a good driving game and another fun one about leading middle-ages Japanese armies singlehandedly. One of the most interesting to me perhaps is I think called Magic Mouse, a drawing game for kids. It was designed by a well known artist named Toshio Iwai. You can draw a horizontal line for example and a tree grows up from this horizon line, etc., so the fun comes from playing with your imagination.

    So I think it is true that even with a machine that can do live animation of the Visible Human (a voxel model based on scanned slices of a corpse), you can still keep adding features until the machine gets overwhelmed without getting to a level of satisfaction or satedness. And some games that don't depend on graphics at all achieve this total immersion and enjoyment of the player..
    it depends on how the tech is used, not what level of graphics you've got (except for the first time you play, when you are watching a fireworks show, not playing inside a game).

    Some of the most interesting talk I've heard about game design was from Roe R. Adams III who was designer of Ultima IV and Wizardry (IV?) as well as Tokyo Dungeon (Playstation 1) I believe among others. I knew him for some years in Japan and found his stress on the necessity of game *designers* as opposed to programmers or graphic artists as a very important distinction. The graphics were not as important as the Quest, and the ability for the player to have valuable experiences in the game which he could take away from it. Roe often talked about psychology and how to intentionally lead users through game spaces, and there was a whole legend and history behind these things. Roe was knighted by Scotland for his contribution to promoting such traditional values as chivalry and honor.

    2 years ago I also met the chief architect of Grandia, which took eons to make and was designed to lead 14 year old troubled boys in particular to face their demons (real to them, many young boys commit suicide in Japan from bullying and despair) through a quest through imaginary lands.

    As Roe Adams had said many times, there are already enough stories in our collective pasts, and these legends can be used over and over again in games. I think the point is you get something out of the retelling, or reexperienceing of the story whereas most rehashes of arcade-style games, like doom or virtual fighter, are basically upgraded graphics on top of what was already a big selling muscle-flicker title. The most interesting parts seem to be the rendering of the costumes and their suggestion (kimono, or african medicine man, etc) of deep hidden strengths welling out of mastery of some obscure religion or discipline.

    I remember the main reason I liked the Source (Compuserve forerunner). Their Zork was so fleshed out it seemed real even though it was text. They must have made piles of gold from the adventure program. I don't know who originally wrote it, and don't understand why Infocom didn't make more money with their natural language parsing engine. I don't think Scott Adams' work translated or maybe was executed well in the semi graphical format that came soon thereafter.. it was just enough to destroy the scenery you created in your head.

    But it seems that there are at least two ways for you to go about building a game, either hire tons of talented people (mostly programmers and graphic artists) and blow a lot of cash, taking on a lot of risk, and when you hit something lucrative stick with it. The other way is to get the key persons you need to build a game - the kind that will be interesting and succeed to some extent almost no matter what direction they take, like Roe above, or the Myst brothers, or other game authors featured at /. I remember doing an interview with Sega's main game team a couple years ago for a video documentary. It took a while to find out that while this was the team they claimed that made Nights, the main guy had left and in fact almost nobody from the original team was still there.. just the team name!

    I think people who "get it", who are making the psychological life of the player a top priority, are probably as important to the big companies' game development efforts as to smaller teams. And that while nostalgia and human perception focusing on the highlights of the past are undoubtedly real, the presence or not of these individuals, given the freedom to follow their training and instincts, in the development cycle is a major factor in whether the software stands up over time.

  • For immersion, yes. (Score:3)

    by Xzzy ( 111297 ) <sether@tr u 7 h . o rg> on Thursday October 12, 2000 @08:03AM (#711121) Homepage
    A lot of entertainment has to do with hightening your "immersion" in the experience. Be it an orchestra in a huge opera house, a movie theatre with THX sound, or a ten thousand dollar home audio setup, it's all there for the same purpose: to trigger a bigger reaction in the person experiencing some form of input.

    That's not to say PacMan wasn't immersive; the goal was to forget about real life for a while and see how many points you could stack up.

    But the human philosophy is 'bigger, better, faster, more', and you can guarantee there were people who spent an hour at PacMan, and said 'what's next'?

    Smoothly rendered hills with details fading realistically into the background, animated cloud cover, and dynamic lighting.. they're kind of the answer to that question. It doesn't make the games themselves any better, but it improves our perception of them.

    Playing Q3, I find it impossible to ask the question of "do better graphics help?" seriously. There's times where you're so glued to the action and visual stimulae, when suddenly the fraglimit is hit and action halts, you come out of the game with a buzz.. and you're like, 'woa, that was awesome'.

    PacMan was fun, yes, but I would be hesitant to accept that anyone ever got an adrenaline high off it. :)
  • Think of it this way:
    You go to a lecture in school. Its chemistry. What is more interesting? Lab or the Lecture.
    By being human, the more we can see the more it is interesting..
    So, although Ultima4 was an excellent game, I find that Ultima7 was a better game because it had the same plot, but better graphics, allowing me to be more absorbed in the storyline.
    Deus Ex is a great example, too. With the graphics being closer to realistic, its easier to get more into the game and be completely absorbed.
    Valve Software made it a point to never show a picture of what the main character looked like, and never made him speak, just so you'd feel more like it was you running away from the aliens, and not some character you were controlling.
    We play games to be absorbed in some fantasy. By making better audio/visuals, we are making it easier to be completely absorbed into the games, and therefore, having a more fun, and, generally, better experience with the game.


    -- Don't you hate it when people comment on other people's .sigs??

  • The visual glass ceiling... (Score:4)

    by garagekubrick ( 121058 ) on Thursday October 12, 2000 @08:07AM (#711147) Homepage
    I've often wondered about what is it about human perception that continually raises a bar and becomes accustomed to the beauty of a current technologies graphical limits, and then when faced with a better revision can instantly find the old, much vaunted console or 3d engine incredibly ugly. What is it about perception that allows itself to instantly refine itself when faced with a better simulation? Often times and by mistake, it seems the correlation between playability and advanced realism seem to go hand in hand.

    Don't tell me for a moment that Ultima Underworld is anywhere near as easy to play as Deus Ex just for the 3d engine. UU's 3d world is a small, low res window where objects remain perpetually two dimensional and distort perspective. Repetitive textures lead to no real geography - the brain must adjust and form an abstract sort of wireframe map in the brain. Just getting your bearings is much more difficult. But the only thing that seperates the games, really, is technology. The storyline, characters, work on interface, and richness of the world is comparable today, and both are games far above the norm.

    In fact, one could find that richness and depth in a much uglier game than either, Ultima VII - but I remember when it was coming out being blown away by the screenshots. Too many console launches and neat graphics cards since then, my brain is spoiled. Sure, there's even a correlation between filmic graphics and the bar set - does anyone remember watching Terminator 2 and thinking, well that's quite shoddy work? It was the first I can remember seeing where there wasn't a single dodgy effects shot - but today it's showing its age. Awareness of the illusion leads to disbelief, which is probably more important to games than even movies.

    What seperates the games I mention above from others is a unification at every time they came out to be best at everything they attempted - technology and design both. We often argue for one or the other without ever thinking that the true beauty is when both work hand in hand. Building these worlds is absolutely worth it, and the best games continue to show the promise of the medium in the future.

    But current development cycles in gaming seem to stifle this. I won't even get into this, as it's a much broader issue, but gaming is being changed from the outside in by a nasty corporate culture, shortened development cycles combined with large, uncommunacative teams, lack of support upon release, runaway and ludicrous mismanaged budgets, and worst of all SUITS who don't understand gaming and don't care and want no interest in advancing it as an art form. They want their merchandised rights title on two consoles and PC and done NOW, and to fix the problem they're going to hire 100 more people.

    Retro gaming is an oddity at best, and doesn't address the larger issues of gaming entering the cultural mainstream. I say this as someone who collects consoles, aware of what gaming is becoming. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire PC edition will outsell Deus Ex two to one, I have no doubt of that.

    And as more people come to the party they will expect a union between technology and design, the more mainstream audiences will demand a greater visual realism from games. There's no avoiding it. What's important is to give them both.

    Or at least, that's what I think, but then look at Diablo II. Three year old graphics and console style gameplay - maybe that's the future (no disrespect to Blizzard as I find the product as addictive as crack.

  • Beware the Nostalgia Problem. (Score:5)

    by Dirtside ( 91468 ) on Thursday October 12, 2000 @08:07AM (#711149) Journal
    The "Nostalgia Problem" is what I call the tendency of people to remember fondly things of the past, and usually to the detriment of newer things. Ask any 50-something and they'll go on and on about how music back in their day (the 60s/early 70s) was the greatest, best ever. Groundbreaking, revolutionary, etc. etc. and there's nothing like it any more, everything today is just noise, blah blah.

    If you go back and actually look at it, though, you'll find that there was just as high a percentage of crap (re: Sturgeon's Law) then as there is now. People tend to forget the crap, and focus on the stuff that was great.

    One other thing to consider is also the fact that greater strides are always made earlier in any field than later. Bob Dylan was so groundbreaking because no one had ever done anything like it before -- but that was because rock and roll hadn't been around that long. Dylan himself is not particularly special; if he came along today, he'd probably be considered a talented artist, but hardly groundbreaking. (Someone else would have filled his role in the 60s.) The same goes for video games. When there's been 20 years of game development, it's a lot harder to be groundbreakingly innovative than when no one has done anything yet.

    The point is, a lot of us were kids back when videogames first became popular. We are inclined to remember them fondly, but I dare you to go back and play Dig Dug or Frogger again now. Sure, it's a nice feeling to play again, but how fun is it? I rarely am entertained with more than nostalgia by the old games I used to love. Don't fall into that trap; before you go on about how games used to be so much better, go back and play them again with the hindsight of years to help you figure out what you really think.

  • We certainly are remembering the best 10%, but I cannot go in an arcade today and find even 10% of the games worth playing. There are really only 3 kinds of video games being made any more:

    derivatives of Mortal Combat (which in fact do have a truly classic game in their ancestry: Karate Champ)

    driving games, which are fun, but you play one you've played them all and nothing interesting like Spy Hunter has been done in many years, well, since Spy Hunter

    shooting games with the plastic Uzi attached to the console... ho hum!

    Compared to those choices, I would take almost anything from the mid 80's.

    As far as PC games go, I agree with the thought that id (and many other companies haven't done anything truly original since Wolf3D). Some one was oozing about "rocket jumps" or whatever... big whoop! How about a reason for you to care about what happens in the game, rather than just twitching at pixels.

    Nothing id has ever produced will match the immersion of System Shock, which is about 10 years old now. System Shock 2 had lots of new graphics, etc, but was still basically the same game, and yet I also found it deeply engaging. There was a forboding sense of horror and isolation combined with a rich environment that let you go about your tasks in a fairly flexible way. It wasn't just "shoot anything that moves and go to the next level when the smoke clears".

    I haven't played Fallout, but two other games I found highly immersive were Baldur's Gate and Roller Coaster Tycoon. Guess what, neither is even a true 3D game, and both run on quite modest machines. My kids play RCT on a pentium 100. However, both games have a richness to them that is lacking in most games. You have a wide variety of choices for going about what you want to accomplish, rather then only having a crosshair and some silly moves. Nethack fits into this perfectly, I bet even the dev team hasn't figured out all the bizarre effects you can create in that game.

    There are immersive creative games out there, but not always where you would expect them... and most of them are _not_ 3D.

    Rick

  • ...take a look at the open-source Exult game engine for playing U7. We're already soking up CPU cycles using a 2X scaler contributed by the fellow who wrote the scaling code for Snes. It gives you double the original resolution with amazing clarity.

  • I think there comes a point when making the game realistic is detremental to the processing power of the box.

    The basics: You have to have enough frames per second to trick the mind into believing that the object on the screen is really moving (without flicker) and you have to make the visuals appealing enough to capture the player's attention.

    When you make a game too complex, you loose the whole fun aspect. To me, Counterstrike is more fun than Rainbow 6 -- not because of the graphics detail but because of the way it "feels".

    If a game has so much complexity that it doesn't "feel" right (interface, movement, etc.) then it will loose in the gaming market.
    --

  • Okay.. that WAS NOT a troll.
    I made a mistake. the site should be
    www.digiscents.com, the product is called the 'ismell'. There was an article in wired a year ago or so.....

    So 'smellvision' really IS becoming possible.

  • Real is often not fun (Score:3)

    by HMV ( 44906 ) on Thursday October 12, 2000 @08:08AM (#711156)
    A lot of the "evolution" of games has been to make them more realistic. Real life ain't fun, though.

    Take your typical combat sim...to play now, you must learn the entire systems of a modern jet fighter or warship. Great for those who crave realism and can immerse themselves in the experience, not so great for those who don't have 4 hours to spend in a sitting, who don't want to spend weeks learning how to start engines, and who just want to blow something up.
  • ...but what's being asked about here is practice.

    Did you ever play Commander Keen? Do you really think you have more fun playing Quake?

    Did you play Elite? Do you enjoy Wing Commander more?

    I was one of the people who thought, when Duke Nukem 3D came out, it really sucked compared to the side-scrollers.

    Yes, the whole concept of an immersive experience is nice and all... but the question is whether the new games are really more fun.

    I don't think they are.
  • Computer Games these days are mostly eye candy. Game play and story are a thing of the past. Sad.

    I don't mean to flame but have you ever seen some of the differences between the releases of the Final Fantasy series namely the difference between FFV and say FFVIII really quite stunning. Story line is not at all declining in favor of "eye candy".

    P.S. Can you imagine playing games on a beowulf cluster? You will probably need one to play in a virtual 3d world.

    I can't totally say for sure but most people in the modern world seen to have dedicated processing boards for 3d work and that allow for more and more 3d processing.

    Your above sounds like something people accuse me of saying but I think it's a little extreme. On the PC end you are talking about a great deal of money but less than $10,000 worth of hardware for anything but the most extreme uses.

    Remember the original playstation has a 33Mhz processor in it.
  • I keep a copy in my cube, but as a reference for UI design. McCloud's ideas aren't really revolutionary, but he distills what learned about human communication in five years of college anthopology classes into 215 pages.
  • Ah, the longing desire for the past. The fond memories of good times had. All those great games...

    C'mon! Do you REALLY want to go back to playing Pong? Jumpman? Atari 2600? Those were fun because they were all we had, and the concept of computer games was new. Sure, they captured elements of fun play...but if they were really that great, we'd be playing them now instead of thousands of hours of Quake.

    Do you remember all the games that sucked? The multitude of games that we played only because they were the only games available?

    Things haven't changed that much. Some current games are great fun; more suck. Some past games were great fun; more sucked. The technology hasn't changed things that much other than visualize and refine that which was barely doable on a 2600. Back then, we ran around mazes shooting at bad guys; today, we run around mazes shooting bad guys - the only difference is the experience is much more believable.

    I'll take Quake over Pac-Man any day.

  • Troll? Uninteresting, maybe. Offtopic? Possibly. Redundant? Almost certianly.

    TROLL? Damn, I wish some of the moderators would TELL me what they mean. I agree with the one guy who said that we need to stop vague moderation.

    WHERE ARE YOU, moderator? Please let me know what you meant?

  • Good graphics are sometimes a facade... (Score:4)

    by 64.28.67.48 ( 217783 ) on Thursday October 12, 2000 @08:23AM (#711175)
    ...for a poor game. One of my favorite all-time games to play was Combat on the Atari 2600. Even by 2600 standards it had pretty lame graphics, but it was a blast (and a sure way to wear out those awful joysticks!). Why? Because the gameplay was FUN. It had a whole bunch of options (tanks, bouncing bullets, big planes, little planes, etc), you could play over and over and over with few delays, and it was truly competitive -- there was a great mix of luck and skill.

    It's like the BASF slogan - Graphics don't make a great game, they make a great game better. How many times have you said, "the graphics were cool but the game was okay" ? If the game is really fun you don't even worry so much about the graphics.

    -------------

  • First: The off topic part (don't worry, there's an on topic part to this too) I noticed that too - for a different reason! Jumpman and Jumpman Jr were two of my favorite games for the C64. I still have both of them, and my SX-64 to play them on ;-)

    When I started getting into the idea of quitting what I do for a living, and going to game programming for a living, I hunted down Randy Glover, and chatted with him off and on. I've got the rights, and am developing a whole new Jumpman game - Jumpman: 2049. All the original Jumpman and Jumpman Jr levels are in there (as hidden items you have to find ;-), plus an unknown number more (IE - they ain't done yet!) For now - play Jumpman on an emulator - there's pleanty that can do it. But in the future, you can get the chance to play a whole new Jumpman! :-)

    As for are game getting more fun, etc. WAY too much time is spent on the technology behind games, and not enough time on the game it's self. Someone gets a good cool idea (like the blood difussion in water mentioned in the article) and while it does provide a chance to make a more 'emmersive' environment for the gamer in some ways, the resources could have be better utilized, IMHO. It's not that the game ideas these days sucks - they don't all suck (some do.) It's just that focus on technology. I remember talking to an agent I'm using for getting a couple of titles published, and I mentioned Jumpman - and one of his questions was basically "Could it be done in 3D?" For those who don't remember, Jumpman was a combination of platformer and somewhat puzzle game. Utilizing 3D just for the sake of doing it wouldn't lend much to the game (PS: Randy Glover is ALSO doing a second Jumpman project while I'm doing Jumpman: 2049 - it IS in 3D, and looks like it might work well, but don't think 3D as in Mario World, etc. Quite a good transition). Utilizing technology in a game where it makes sense, where it helps gameplay, where it helps immerse the player in your design, and where it truely makes the game more fun is important. Unluckly, too many publishers was buzzword compliant games, too many developers just want to use the technology for the hell of it, and too few people involved stop and ask "What is this REALLY doing for our gameplay?"

    Of course - this could just be a bunch of BS. I could just be looking back at the 'old days' of games, and trying to compair them to todays counterparts. The gap in technology between the different generations of games that it's now compairing apples and oranges.

  • Gameplay versus Reality tradeoff (Score:5)

    by Ted V ( 67691 ) on Thursday October 12, 2000 @08:14AM (#711177) Homepage
    I remember an interview with a lead developer at Lookglass, during the development of thief. The interviewer asked the question, "How do you make the tradeoff between making something realistic and adding good gameplay?"

    "If reality was so much fun, people wouldn't need to play games."

    That pretty much sums it up. Lots of people like "realistic" first person shooters. There's nothing wrong with that, but the people who prefer realistic FPS games over games with extremely well balanced gameplay (like Thief and Quake 3) usually have trouble with the "suspension of disbelief".

    Myself, I have no problems believing I can carry 8 weapons, each weighing 40 pounds, and 1000 pounds of ammunition, and then jump over a 6 foot tall alien, doing a perfect 180 before landing. I guess I'm just gifted. :)

    -Ted
  • Screw the C64. Long live BSD games!


    bash-2.04$ /usr/games/quiz victim killer
    Sharon Tate?
    Charles Manson
    Right!
    Lee Harvey Oswald?
    CIA
    Right!
    Martin Luther King?
    CIA
    Right!
    John F. Kennedy?
    KGB
    What?
    CIA
    Right!
    Christ?
    CIA
    Right!
    the cat?
    Cock Robin
    Right!
    Bobby Kennedy?
    CIA
    Right!
  • freyia.battlegroundz.com:9990

    A MUD (multi-user dungeon). The game is all text, yet it's just as fun as any other game that's graphical that I've ever played. Chalk it up to my personal preference if u like, but then log on and ask all of the people who still play it, there's about 65 people on at all times average, why they're not playing EverGay or Ultima GoneLine.
    Screw graphics if the gameplay's not there.







    The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all, is the person who argues with him.

  • My personal opinion is that I think immersion = fun. If I can play systemshock 2, and a zombie sneaks behind me, shouts and hits me, and its scares me enough to jump and get killed, then I'm having fun. If I'm playing halflife and am running for my life from 20 aliens firing at me, I'm having fun. The immersion is why I play video games.


    -- Don't you hate it when people comment on other people's .sigs??
  • I've been working for two companies now that are in the 'vurtual world for chat' business, and I'm really questioning whether the idea of whether using avatar-based-chat (read: graphical MUDs) is worth the time and expense to write the software. For chat and collaberation, IRC or whiteboard software is fine. Want people to see a picture of you? Post a JPEG or use a webcam. Where I'm working now is a startup where avatar-chat is one of a list of 16 features (to be delivered December 15h, but that's another story), yet we're spending 3/4 of our time on it... and I can't see it as anything more than something pretty to help sell to investors. There've been a few companies that are already in the avatar-chat market, and as far as I can tell only two of them has had significant financial success:
    • VZones [vzones.com], the inheritors of the Habitat legacy.
    • ActiveWorlds [activeworlds.com] aka Alphaworld, VRML-like without using VRML, the most impressive of the bunch.
    • Blaxxun [cybertown.com], actually does use VRML but looks like IRC with a VRML plug-in viewer tacked on top
    • The Palace [thepalace.com], made by the original Habitat authors, doesn't have any pretense of being 3D so it focuses more on chat.
    • Rational Rose [moove.com] for yet another webbrowser with avatars built in.
    If graphics are so much better, why are these companies sort of floundering while IRC services like EFnet, DALnet and Undernet are getting swamped with 50,000 + users during any given minute of the day? It makes me think heretical thoughts about the product I'm developing now.
  • Yesteryears computer games mainstream where what people wanted, then they began to want more from them. Whats the point of playing a game even if you win you get no return right? Hence Multiplayer games. Whats the point of playing online when you just repeat over and over and over what you do, this is fun for a while or once in a while but every day or every other day? Hence MMPOG (massivly multiplayer online games,
    did i get that right?). Where you have a history and a future, but are not bound to it, starting over or reversing your gameplay is possible. You can both the bad and good guy. You can interact in ways other than fight, win/loose, fight win/loose.... you make friends, enemies even stress over these types of games... eventually people will want more. As a whole if you say the games are funner becuase they fullfill the users craving for more of a second-third life with all that comes with it including stress and long term emotion, then your answer is yes. The games are funner in the respect that they portray life as people want to live theirs but may not be able to.
    The gameplay has also got better:
    1. AI
    2. Graphics
    3. Sound
    4. Scalability
    5. Human interaction
    6. Controls
    7. Voice integration
    8. Ongoing and everchanging (MMPOG)

  • timothy on crax0r (Score:3)

    by Eil ( 82413 ) on Thursday October 12, 2000 @08:25AM (#711187) Homepage Journal
    it starts with the simple question: "Are computer games any more fun now than they were 10 years ago?"

    Which is, unfortunately, the wrong question. At least, if you're directing it towards *everyone*, and talking about *every* game. "More fun" is an almost dishonourably subjective phrase and one cannot just go ahead and ask it with a straight face and expect a logical answer. In the interest of proving this, I'll share my point of view.

    Yes. The games that I play now are more fun than the ones that I played 10 years ago, and not because they are newer. I think the point of new gaming technology is to create new genres, not just keep rahashing the old ones with a higher polygon count. As an example, let's try Unreal Tournament. Admittedly, one of my own personal favourite games. The multiplayer FPS gaming genre has been around since Quake (okay: earlier, but it sucked then), but a game with the sytle, gameplay, and subtle complexities of UT have only been technically possible in the last two or three years.

    Or how about racing games? I cannot imagine myself getting excited at watching little blocky cars whirr around a similarly blocky racing loop. No, something more is needed. In my case, I require a feeling of speed. No racing game will ever top the feeling of utter quickness of the classic WipeOut XL for the playstation.

    Now, things like puzzle games (tetris), adventure games (zelda), and jumpers (mario) have their place. But that place is not for me. I never did like either Atari or NES when I was growing up. I had a far greater time tinkering with my Tandy 1000 80286. I just wasn't interested in something that looked so obviously fake. My first system was a Super Nintendo, but I didn't really start getting into serious console gaming until Squaresoft started releasing a few of their 16-bit classics (FF3, Chrono Trigger, etc).

    Oh hell, I'll get off my pedestal now.

  • Or the Mona Lisa? Or any other realistic or semi-realistic rendition of the world? Should both games and art be reduced to cartoons and cubism? After all, it's really the content, not the appearance that matters, right?

    Different games have different styles and are appealing for different reasons. Some games are excellent with very abstract renditions, and others are interesting because of their immersive and/or realistic graphics.

    To me, Myst and Riven were interesting only because of the graphics; I found the game play mind-numbingly dull. And nethack, to me, still has more interesting game play than any version of Diablo. Quake and HalfLife are somewhere in between: their game play can be interesting at times, and the graphics and "tourism" aspects also contribute significantly to the game.

    Besides, I would think people who find current 3D games "realistic" must have had something other than a bagel with their morning coffee.

  • Does anyone remember the name of the game where you were this warrior, 2-d scroller, walked down the hallway with this shield, which you could turn into the SUPER MEGA SHIELD by slamming the joystick up and down repeatedly, and you fought other warriors at the end, knocking parts of their armor off until you hit a vital point?

    Sounds like Taito's "Gladiator". You can download the ROMS [www.mame.dk] for use with MAME [mame.net] and see for yourself (it plays great in emulation).

  • Re:Stated Nostalgia Problem flawed. (Score:4)

    by Dirtside ( 91468 ) on Thursday October 12, 2000 @09:03AM (#711193) Journal
    I didn't mean to imply that things that were great then are crap today. My point about Dylan was that Dylan wasn't some kind of miraculous super-musician who could not exist today. My point was that, when something like rock and roll is young, it's a lot easier to stand far above the average than it is now, after fifty years of development.

    Baseball is an easier example. Suppose we can take the average abilities and performance of all the players in baseball, and assign it a number. Early on in baseball's history, this number will be fairly low, owing to the lack of years and years of development. When someone with extraordinary talent comes along, there's apt to be a lot more space between his "ability score" and the average (e.g., Babe Ruth). Now fifty years pass, and the "average score" has gotten a lot closer to its theoretical maximum (namely, the physical and mental capacities of humans). Nowadays, someone who is as good as Babe Ruth was, isn't going to be nearly as far above the average. It's not that people have less talent or skill as time goes on (or that the earlier people have more talent), it's just that the average ability level has risen, and it's much harder to exceed by a large margin.

    And thus I agree with your statement that, "several classic games are just as great as the ones made today". I agree; games like Joust and Galaga and whatnot ARE as great as Half-Life and Civilization and whatnot. However, the "average" level has gone up quite a lot since the days of Joust and Galaga; all of the technology is far more advanced, and a lot of ideas that didn't exist back then, do now and are used by many or all games. So a "great" game today isn't going to be as high above the average as a "great" game of 20 years ago was. The two games are equally great, but the average has risen.

    This is all better explained in Stephen Jay Gould's book, "Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin", so if you've got a problem with my analogies, take it up with Dr. Gould :)

    Now this is all separate from the issue that people tend to fondly remember the greats of the past and ignore the crap. The "Nostalgia Problem" itself is in two parts:

    1. Back in the "good old days", there was a higher percentage of quality stuff, compared to today when there is a higher percentage of crap. (This is usually false, although true in some cases.
    2. The high-quality items of the past are, individually, greater than the high-quality items of the present. This is the issue addressed above, regarding the averages.

    The first issue is one of selective memory; the latter is one of simply not being aware of the gradual increase in average ability of participants in a field.

    This is not to say that some people will not truly find certain old games "better" than certain new games; your case obviously proves that it is possible (unless you are lying :). My point is that people will often dismiss the new in favor of the old, simply because they have fond memories of it, and that is something to beware.

  • Ah, so many people commenting blindly. (Score:3)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Thursday October 12, 2000 @09:14AM (#711202)
    Hmmmm...did anyone actually read the article or are they just keying off of the blurb on Slashdot? Go read it. It isn't saying quite what most people here think it is saying. It's not putting down modern games or saying that old skool games were better. It's a history of increasing game complexity and whether the escalating requirements have inherent limits, considering the goal of creating marketable and fun games.

  • Re:The visual glass ceiling... (Score:3)

    by Th3 D0t ( 204045 ) on Thursday October 12, 2000 @08:30AM (#711206)
    Ultima VII originally was meant to run at 2-3 fps. Imagine what could be done today with such a low average framerate requirement? Certainly, some situations in Diablo II can reduce the framerate to that much (lots of monsters + revives + frozen orbs). But Diablo II is really more of an action game than a role playing game, in that it emphasises quick reflexes in combat rather than plot or character development (other than combat stats). As such, wildly varying framerates are the accepted norm. But take a more static world like that of Ultima VII. Imagine an engine similar in detail level and complexity designed for today's hardware, with a good 500-300 ms available to render each frame.
    ---

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