Bay 12 Games Forum

Awesomeness! Once the bugs are ironed out the only thing missing will be the CryEngine 3 frontend.

\o/ Tarn! \o/

Just to make it clear, I define content as what happens in gamers head when he plays the game. Everything else is just bits and pixels.

That's a very unorthodox interpretation. I guess you must consider DLC - downloadable content - a misnomer altogether.

I show empathy toward the artist with no paintbrush just as I show empathy toward the artist firmly pinned by both his investors and financial status to do work with time and money enough as to be a completely emaciated end-product no matter how hard the artist tries to show the best side of whatever they have been commissioned to make.  Should both still hold both responsible for their work?  Yes, certainly!  But are they all lazy for being in their impositions?  No, not at all; that's generalization at best and bias at worst.  I fear you are allowing the contextual relationship between developer and investor to slip undetected by your decisions of when something is lazy or not.  Not that I am saying that developers can't be lazy but this is an incredibly difficult field of work to be 'lazy' in.

You keep returning to "lazy". I ran a search of this thread: There are eigth separate instances - all yours.

Was this an insult or a misguided attempt to focus my attentions inwards?

Look, you descended on this thread with a rather confused-looking appeal for sympathy. I agree with your position that most of the people actually working on commercial games are caught between a rock and a hard place as far as certain overarching decisions are concerned, and I have no problem acknowledging that it's hard to please everyone - especially in the light of what most people choose to endorse by purchasing.

A main theme of this thread has been ideal design; few posters, if any (see what Footkerchief said), have claimed it would be entirely unproblematic to "fix" the perceived failings of parts of the gaming industry, or those of certain games.

EDIT: I'm sorry if I seem haughty or belligerent. As Neonivek pointed out, our interactions here are devoid of many of the social cues we otherwise depend on to gauge intent. You're obviously a decent guy, and passionate about what you do, which is admirable. No one is lambasting you or your colleagues. As Footkerchief mentioned, there is a stark contrast between attacking a product with which one has a beef and attacking people who are mostly just trying to make a living.

Sorry, I only searched the DF General Discussion section. The fact that there was no mention of this should have raised a flag.

Feel free to delete this thread or move it.

*plays his New Member Card and prays for lenience*

We should be closing in on three big ones!

I am thankful for Dwarf Fortress.

Gothic II struck an acceptable balance between freedom and direction. Almost the entire world was open to you at any point, which meant you'd face instant death if you veered to far at the start; but exploration was rewarding. I think it's a very underrated game, though it's quirky and has a couple of flaws.

Is there anyone here who've played through it? Gothic I was less polished, and the more recent Gothic III was well nigh broken upon release, though perhaps it's been fixed since.

You know what will be great ? A game that'll constantly be under development, with releases every year or so (after an initial longer development time of course). Think of DF, or better yet, think of all these professional software like Photoshop or Microsoft Office. After releasing a new version of the program, the developers start adding more feature and bug fixes for the next version. But in the videogame industry, once the game is released, everything involved in it's development (short of the 3D and game engine) is discarded, and if they want to make a sequel, they start against from scratch.

The MUD I mentioned in a previous post could be called such a game. And companies have started experimenting with the incremental development business model in mainstream gaming.

An example is the PGA Tour series by Electronic Arts. They've realized PC and console gamers have different requirements, and have started developing a persistent, online version of their hugely successful golf series. Oliver Hughes, Senior Product Manger for the game, explains in an interview that, if profitable, PGA Tour Online will be in development indefinitely, and is aimed at a broader, more mature, more "golf fan" demographic, and that the console version will remain as a separate franchise. It's not enitrely analogous to what you're suggesting, timst, but it is a long-overdue attempt at internal market differentiation.

Of course, an RPG built on this last would be open-ended, without a set story, by definition, since arbitrary replayability would be a requirement, and I suppose MMOs work in that direction. MMOs are eventually abandoned due to the restraints of their obsolescent technological platform, which brings me back to the idea that it may be wise to let presentation be a secondary concern, or at the very least implement a modular graphics system.

I still, however, find the idea that the only way that we'll be getting good games anytime soon is the complete destruction of the PC market as we know it today.

Yeah, this was probably a bit of hyperbole. I doubt he really meant it. I will say that I don't think PC gaming is benefiting from the trend toward every release being a single, unified, cross-platform game. The more arcadesque influence of consoles is acutely felt in our case in point, DA:O, and it's not a good thing.