Blog FeedThe Sound of Crickets: The Problem With Next-Gen
I recently saw an interview with Gabe Newell, in which he pointed out that none of the big products coming out, Revolution, Xbox 360, Vista and the PS3 are solving his problems. In fact he went on to tell us how the next gen consoles are really creating more problems for him. Thursday night, Nintendo unveiled the Revolution controller and I realized that as a gamer none of the next generation machines are really dealing with solving my problems with games. The stuff that was really bothering me about gaming, went ignored by Microsoft with it’s HD era, Sony with it’s doomsday machine, and Nintendo with it’s new controller. Was anyone sitting up on Wednesday night going “You know, I’d really love to be playing more games but I just can’t stand to use a controller, or buy some customized design over a network, or see it on a machine so powerful that almost none of the game programmers can easily work on it”. I know I wasn’t. The problems I was thinking about was how retail is strangling out genres, how story telling is still underrepresented in gaming, and how community management needs to be implemented so there are less people acting like jerks because they think they’re anonymous in online games. There has been a singlular response to each of these problems.
One problem that’s been on everyone’s lips since this year’s Game Developer’s Conference is how the current business model is hurting the games industry. Costs are on the rise like crazy, it’s nearly impossible to get an original game approved by most publishers. And when those games do get approved even if they’re excellent games they tend to bomb at retail. Look no further than Psychonauts if you need further proof of this trend. People have been talking up digital distribution and episodic gaming as a very real possible solution to this challenge. Valve is going to be selling Half-Life 2: Aftermath via Steam for a mere 13 dollars and then making a bunch more expansion packs. Ritual is moving Episodes of Sin, Telltale games is producing Bone and Sam and Max in this fashion. We’re starting to see some people move games in this direction and I think it’s a good one. Matrix games has already had a decent level of success with frequent war game publishing in this field. But when you look to the Big 3 on this subject what do you hear? The sound of crickets.
Another problem I have with games is they’re still by in large a story telling ghetto. RPGs do a decent enough job but compare even a great RPGs story to that of any quality fantasy novel or Novel series like Wheel of Time or A song of Fire and Ice and I doubt you’d really be all that impressed. As much as I like the casts of Baldur’s Gate 2 or Final Fantasy X or KOTOR I’m far more interested in the fates of Rand Al’ Thor, Egwene Al’ Vere and Elayne Trakand in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time Series. Furthermore RPGs are the only genre in which saying the word story is acceptable when you’re discussing why people are going to like this game. You know as good as great gameplay can be nothing hooks me to a game as deeply as an interesting interactive story. I mean the game I’ve had the most fun with this year is Baldur’s Gate 2, and enjoying the various romances that I hadn’t experienced before. I could talk your ear off about why Viconia, is the best lover in BG2 despite the fact she’s a bitch and Jaheira and Aerie are nice women. But I mean in an action games, we’re just developing into our infancy. Halo and GTA Vice City for instance had good action game stories. They were inspired homages to other classics in the Sci-Fi and Crime stories genres but i really can’t say i even came close to caring about the characters even though Tommy Vercetti and Cortanna are both really cool. But what do you hear from the Big 3? the sound of crickets.
Then lastly you have the online experience and the nature of the gaming community. I mean seriously, the community of gamers is right now the biggest problem facing gaming. The problem, results from the fact that gamers feel anonymous online. Since people don’t really feel they need to answer for their “crimes” they can do whatever they want without any punishment. Rarely a day goes by when I don’t log into World of Warcraft and get nailed by some level 55-60 when I’m just wandering about doing a quest minding my own business as a Holy Priest not threatening to anyone. It was actually a lot worse when I played shooters on a regular basis - between campers in CS, smacktards in BF 1942, and Microphone abusers on all manner of Xbox Live games, it could make my experience rather miserable. One of the few companies that has done something really right to stop this has been Visual Concepts—with their awesome VIP system in the 2k Sports line. If you logged on to a game of 2k sports’ game you got a rather detailed listing of people’s tendencies, furthermore you could look over them in practice if you wanted to and see for yourself exactly what you were getting into. If someone is prone to quitting you could see that. I know at the rank level I was at if you had more than a very small number of quits to your name people just wouldn’t play against you. Granted, I’m pretty good at those games. But yet very few other developer’s have really seen fit to develop a system like this for games where people could leave extensive feedback on players, where server ops could keep people in or out based on reputation points that sort of thing. And what do we hear from the Big 3 on this? The sound of crickets.
So what are we, the gamers who’ve got to play games in this world to conclude? Well it’s simple, the big 3 are interested in solving their problems. I mean this is obvious everyone’s out to make a buck in this world and I don’t fault this because I’m certainly not devoid of interest in making money. But it would be nice if maybe they put solutions to gamers problems or developer’s problems or both into their hardware which is supposed to solve problems and make things better right? But talk to them about these things and they won’t have an answer to these things you’ll hear no substantive solutions, you’ll be likely to hear nothing but the sound of crickets chirping.
18th September | Reply
You’ve said a lot here, but I’ll try my best to order my thoughts:
I don’t think what we’re hearing is the sound of crickets. What you are hearing is something akin to the calm before the storm.
I haven’t been reading much about the XBox 360, but I’m fairly certain that the new XBox Live is going have a very detailed gamer profile system. I would assume then that statistics like drop rate and peer-to-peer reviews would be something included in that package. However, I do believe that the Penny Arcade has already foreshadowed abuse of the camera with pictures of wangs becoming an inbox staple.
XNA is supposed to make developing for games easier and more cost effective. However, being cost effective doesn’t necessarily mean being cost effective at a fifty dollar price point. XNA may keep costs of games from being seventy dollars, but I think everyone is expecting the next generation of games to run about sixty dollars a pop.
I don’t know much about Sony’s online plans. However, no one really does and I don’t think you should be too concerned about that. We have probably another six months before that system is released and I doubt we will hear any more about their online plans and services until closer to the launch date.
As for the CELL processor, Gabe Newell’s interview on 1up.com was very revealing. For those of you who haven’t seen it allow me to paraphrase: Sony is banking on more exclusive titles due to the shear complexity of programming for their new CELL processor. The CELL processor, using multi-thread technology (I’m sure others know much more about that than I do) as well as something like eight processor cores, will have a fairly significant amount of unique code that will not be easily ported to other consoles. Essentially making ports less cost effective. Boy, I sure hope that works out for them.
As for Nintendo, no one knows what their online plans are. We have all pretty much come to the conclusion by now that they are bat shit insane with their new Revolution controller, but not much else is known. Being Wi-Fi ready out of the box, it is possible that they have every intention of offering a Steam-like distribution system.
If you have seen the footage of Satoru Iwata’s keynote speech at the Tokyo Game Show you already have some idea of the kinds of games Nintendo wants to make available. For example: The three or four girls using the Nintendo controller as a fly swatter; do you really think that is a fifty dollar game? I’d be willing to bet that some of the “simple” games Nintendo wants to offer will only be available by download, keeping the costs down.
Okay, I think I went off on a tangent a bit there, talking about the online experience…
Trying to bring it back a bit: When people feel they are anonymous, they act like assholes. It’s like on Halloween, if you are wearing a mask no one knows who you are and you can act like you want. I think that is pretty sick. I pretty much act online like how I do in real life. I don’t mess with “lowbies” in World of Warcraft and I don’t generally go around telling people they are assholes on forums, just because they can’t punch me in the face if I do.
As for story-telling: You can’t have the best of both worlds. What I like about videogames is they allow you to explore the imaginations of other people. I love role playing games because they offer something akin to a virtual book. However, just like with many books, the stories can be rather so-so while, although rare, there a those games that have amazing stories.
You mention Final Fantasy X as not being on par with the “Wheel of Time” and “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, I haven’t read the former, but I agree about the latter. However, Final Fantasy X does deal with some rather weighty themes, and addresses them in a well-thought out, intriguing, and mature manner. I dare say that Final Fantasy X ranks higher, in terms of story, than many of the books I had to read in high school.
I do wonder though, why do all games need a story. As I’ve said, I enjoy games because they afford me the opportunity to play in someone else’s imagination, sometimes that means an epic story, other times that means rolling a ball of crap around and hurling still-screaming humans into the vacuum of space where the reconstitute they night sky.
As for the Big 3 being out to solve their own problems: the Big 3 percieve their problems as being gamer problems. Nintendo honestly thinks that the Japanese market has hit the skids because we’ve been playing games the same for twenty years, and that the entry rate into our hobby is diminishing because of the complexity of the controller and titles.
Microsoft honestly believes that there overriding issue is creating the best online experience for the home console possible. They must feel like they were successful with the Xbox, to place second in the market on the first try. Unfortunately for them, Live subscriptions are only in the neighborhood of ten percent of system owners. To them, that is their biggest problem, getting gamers online.
Sony seems to think that the problems gamers have are solid faces and wallets full of cash. Their solution: melt your face with CGI-quality graphics and drain your wallet with “the most expensive console ever not designed for the average home.”
Well, that about does it.
18th September | Reply
The last ‘techno-conceptual’ achievement in videogames was the leap from 2D to 3D graphical environments. Mario64 was the first 3D game on a console and to this day it is still the biggest selling console game in history. Why?? It presented a technical advancement that opened up whole new “worlds” of game design and development.
People can sense the palpable nature of such a breakthrough.
We are now approacing a new era in game design and development. The primary emphasis, however, won’t be on graphics, as many in the game industry would envision; nor will it be on image recognition, longer gaming experiences, or on-line tournaments where one can both gamble AND play a first-person-shooter at the same time.
The next techno-conceptual innovation is ‘Authenticity’. Games will include authentic characters in authentic settings playing out authentic stories where the Player is an integral and authentic contributor to the unfolding plot. In essence, the leap from 2D characters and stories to 3D characters and stories will provide the foundation for “Next-Generation Games.”
Ccreative teams will be smaller and more evenly distributed across technology, audio & visual artistry and narrative. Writers, artists and programmers will leverage new technology and production processes to create gaming experiences the likes of which have barely been hinted at by the best games developed thus far.
Games populated with authentic characters and storylines will merge into an art form that will become the movies of this century. Already we see children opting to play games rather than go see many movies. http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,63449,00.html
-Where are video games headed? The answer lies somewhere games have never been. A place where the Player and the computer participate in an authentic interactive experience - a PlaySpace.
18th September | Reply
Actually, there’s probably a few grains of truth there. I remember when my parents were happy to play the occasional game on a Commodore 64 because the controller was so simple (joystick with a single button). These days the controllers as exponentially more complex and getting increasingly so. If you’ve never played a game before and you are faced with a gamepad that has 10 buttons, 2 joysticks (each with a button underneath) and a D-Pad, I’d personnally find that a bit daunting. My wife likes games like Tetris and Breakout because they are so simple to play and control but won’t touch anything on our PS2. On thinking about it, now I understand why.
19th September | Reply
I think a bit of insanity is the perfect prescription for bringing some fresh games to life.
Games should be played, enjoyed, and make the player feel important.
Games should NOT be watched like a movie, or include traits which make the medium as uninteractive as book.
In movies, books, and tv, we watch the characters.
In games, we should always BE the characters.
Immersion will come through more active player involvement via input like the Revolution and DS, where the output sought from the player is not influenced by the GPU, but an emotional bond established with the game via the idea of the player being the most important aspect.
Halo, GTA, and the like will be continue to be for the 18 to 24 year old male whose looking to shoot something and blow stuff up. That’s fine. But for people looking for genuine fun, it will be a return to a time before clockspeed mattered in the console. In this respect, I think Nintendo is best aligned to satisfy the widest spectrum of players in the nextgen of console gaming.
19th September | Reply
19th September | Reply
^ I was trying to quote this:
For example: The three or four girls using the Nintendo controller as a fly swatter; do you really think that is a fifty dollar game?
19th September | Reply
Debian, story doesn’t nessacarily need be uninteractive. I mean PC RPGs have known this for years dating back as far as I can remember their were a few like this; Story should be interactive. It shouldn’t nessacarily be something you can just put a box around and say this part of the game that’s the story and this part of the game that’s the gameplay and we could remove A from B.
There are a lot of ways to approach that–one of them is interactive cutscenes like KOTOR or a lot of RPGs do things. Dialogue trees, that sort of thing where you’re really being tasked with making decisions that will effect the gameplay in a variety of ways. These tend to be pretty simple but for instance in Planescape Torment they’re pretty complex. Depending on the degree of moral complexity the developer wants to put into the game. The other way to develop interactiivity in story is also seen in a lot of RPGs, particuarily first person RPGs is to give the player loads of options on how they could accomplish things. Talk to 10 players who finished Deus Ex on how they handeled the Naval base and they’ll likely give you all sorts of different tales and the reason for this is they all saw different oppurtunities and the why? is answered in your own head and it effects the story in a variety of ways. We really need to do more in both these areas because story ought not only be cutscenes and those sorts of things. I think the place we should be going isn’t as uninteractive as a book what I’m after is more or less an interactive book–something that has all the positive qualities of reading a book–exceptional character developmment, symbolism, a intracite plot etc. But what story your told will be reflective of the way the player approached things and interacted with the world.
And you point to GTA and say it’s just good for blowing stuff up but I loved Vice City for being a teriffic Homage to Scarface, mixing that with loads of personality, quality voicework and a lot of 80’s flavor. I hated GTA 3 for it’s anonymity, and frankly the open ended word was just Daggerfall with whores and guns as opposed to swords and spells.
And Head you’re right too games need not have stories. But it’s far easier to get a really powerful response with story than it is to get a powerful response pushing data around on a screen. I don’t care if it’s with a keyboard, joystick, gamepad, remote thingamajig, pushing data across a screen is only really special once in a great while. Multiplayer games can do without too because they focus on a social experience not so much the game itself but the with people aspect of gameplay. Sure if you can manage a Burnout 3, or a Ninja Gaiden or a Half-Life 2 then you can manage to make games worthwhile without story but those games are extremely special for their ability to do just that without a story worth mentioning. But those games are more the exception than the rule as it’s hard to make pushing data across a screen into something exciting even if it is on a new toy of a machine.
And I’ll believe MS will get a decent community management scheme together when they actually have one. Their has been 3 major releases of Live(1.0, 2.0 and 3.0) and dealing with jackals hasn’t been any of them.Instead they’ve added stuff like chat rooms, Live Arcade, clans and stuff such as that. I’m just not seeing anything which would indicate they’re willing to police their prescious subscriber base particuarily well. It’s been a serious complaint amongst Live Users since very early on but they’ve shown no inclanation to do this in their updates. It seems they’re willing to let people who pay the bill be as much of an aggravation as they choose. And we won’t even discuss how little sony does to enforce their online realms. I mean really these people made Everquest–griefing is a god given right isn’t it? And their isn’t a damned thing people should be able to do to keep them out.
20th September | Reply
I couldn’t agree more with your words.
Maybe they’re trying to keep up with the same strategy with current generation consoles as they did 15 years ago.
A boost in hardwae and graphics was a major thing…Seeing the jump from NES to SuperNES was amazing, from hundreds of rooms that looked equal in metroid to super metroid which was amazing.
They’re leaving out a lot of people from videogames, olde people like my parents, younger kids, women markets.
So many games come out rated PG17, most are about guns blasts and blood. My little sister, she only bough a Gameboy and has 2 games, since no other games appeal to her.My dad likes playing burnout and rallisport challenge but it’s hard to him since he can’t keep the car on track for more than a minute. I even bought Zelda for Gamecube to my big sister, who spends too much time on it, but won’t play it much since she found it a little hard. She plays on gamecube the sonic collection, the original genesis 1 button sonic games.
And yeah, many games are missing a good story, from my 14 xbox games, only ninja gaiden and kotor actually HAVE a story..
I played the phsychonauts demo, i really liked it since it had the feeling to those adventure games like Day of the Tentacle. but it still costs like $700 here(65$ dollars) and i’m waiting till it’s on sale or cheaper. Games are way too expensive and my xbox has no mod chip. I like the geekness and hype of opening the new titles. but I haven’t been able to buy new games in a year.