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This hits ALL the pet peeves and stupid bullshit I hate about games! W00t!

An excellent read. Although there are some things I disagree with. Namely, a game that would start you off with every bit of content in the game. I mean, what's the point of the game if you start off with all of the weapons, vehicles, etc. without having to earn any of it? I can understand wanting to have quick access to the content, but to have all of it at the start? To me it diminishes the fun of the game. Besides, first levels with crappy weapons/vehicles against enemies with equally crappy weapons/vehicles is usually fun and unique from later levels.

IRG CommandoJoe wrote:An excellent read. Although there are some things I disagree with. Namely, a game that would start you off with every bit of content in the game. I mean, what's the point of the game if you start off with all of the weapons, vehicles, etc. without having to earn any of it? I can understand wanting to have quick access to the content, but to have all of it at the start? To me it diminishes the fun of the game. Besides, first levels with crappy weapons/vehicles against enemies with equally crappy weapons/vehicles is usually fun and unique from later levels.

Well there are arguments to be made for both ways. I think he was saying to get rid of the generic "Crappy Starting Pistol that can't do shit (tm)". Like he said, start with a machine gun with enough ammo to make a difference and build from there. And I think he was more advocating having all the cars unlocked from the start in say, grand turismo's arcade mode (can't speak for 4 but I know in 3 you had to unlock the cars in arcade mode) so that you can still to the simulation stuff if you want to but if you're a cheap/lazy/busy bastard you can just hop into the arcade mode and race your uber car.

Excellent read. Hits the nail on many issues

Good to see someone else hating the insta-fail stealth levels in action games. This is the sole reason I never got to replaying Jedi Outcast. That stupid level with the Alarm buttons of doom.

McNum wrote:Good to see someone else hating the insta-fail stealth levels in action games. This is the sole reason I never got to replaying Jedi Outcast. That stupid level with the Alarm buttons of doom.

Seconded. I had to cheat my way past the 'Forest' level in RtCW just to continue playing. Seriously, why do they do that!?

Damn Straight. Especially the parts about barriers that any ten year old could get around in the real world and the horrible camera angles that have infested so many otherwise good games.

I should have Uts take a look at this.

As it stands, format-wise, this is one of the weaker manifestoes that I've read (in cinema you tend to read quite a few). For one, it's in list form, for God's sake. A proper manifesto should be an essay...

While we're on the subject of camera angles, I hate third-person shooters for the one reason that the programmers think it's cute to program in a bit of lag in the camera movement whenever the character tries to turn. I don't want to calculate complex trigonometry in my head just to get my bullets on a target because the camera's acting like an excessively long dog's tail!

And Spanky, nice attempt at a thread hijack. Considering its content (a bunch of discrete attacks on different boneheaded game design ideas) it works great.

I wasn't attempting a thread hijack, you gimp. Just making a joke by commenting that it's more of a bitch list than a true manifesto. Otherwise other than a few complaints of pettiness, I think it's rather justified.

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:I wasn't attempting a thread hijack, you gimp. Just making a joke by commenting that it's more of a bitch list than a true manifesto. Otherwise other than a few complaints of pettiness, I think it's rather justified.

Good point. I'd just woken up rather surly and didn't get the joke. Here's a LART.

I also hate the 'no-jumping-allowed' bullshit with a burning passion just slightly less than I hate the 'save-point' bullshit. Because it's BULLSHIT.

The AI thing really does get me.

It's a good article, but I really disagree with some of his arguments. The game industry, for example, has been trying to get women to buy games for years. Here's the thing: women don't LIKE videogames. Market research for would-be-game-maker Purple Moon, for example, basically said that women don't like competition in videogames. How the fuck do you make a game without competition? You can design programs that might be entertaining, but gaming is contingent upon having objectives that can be accomplished with some amount of difficulty. Games that have been tailored to reach women have failed miserably. This is not a failure of the market, then, when games are targetted at men--it's simply a statement of who is willing to purchase games, and women have no right to complain that they've been ignored by the videogame market.

The one particular point that caught my attention: Overly difficult end levels. Or as I call them, Puzzle Bosses. You all know the type: "The boss can only be harmed by attacking it's exposed left hand pinky nail at the precise moment it begins to sing the second verse of Old MacDonald. A successful attack like this will cause 2 points of damage to the boss. It has 10^30 hit points, and the last save point is a half an hour away. Have fun."

I. Fucking. Hate. Those. Things.

EDIT: And furthermore, why do bossbattles always have to be so goddamned long? It's not like prolonging the aforementioned ridiculously complex bossbattle will make it any better. Jedi Academy had good bosses. Regular humans (more or less anyway) that fought fair and square, and the match could be over either way after the first saber swing.

Master of Ossus wrote:Here's the thing: women don't LIKE videogames. Market research for would-be-game-maker Purple Moon, for example, basically said that women don't like competition in videogames. How the fuck do you make a game without competition? You can design programs that might be entertaining, but gaming is contingent upon having objectives that can be accomplished with some amount of difficulty.

Two words.

The. Sims.

Massive female audience and sales figures to give EA execs a ten foot erection.

From reading through, two and five don't really take the market and demand into consideration at all. Eleven is just stupid.

Vendetta wrote:Two words.

The. Sims.

Massive female audience and sales figures to give EA execs a ten foot erection.

The Sims isn't really a traditional game in that there's no conflict or challenge to complete. It's almost literally rather a toy than a game.

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:The Sims isn't really a traditional game in that there's no conflict or challenge to complete. It's almost literally rather a toy than a game.

I'd disagree. Whilst it is based on open ended play, there are defined rules for 'success' in a Sim's life. The structure of rules and responses that underpin The Sims (and before it Sim City) make t more of a game than a toy.

The fact that there isn't a single defined 'win' condition doesn't mean it's not a game.

RPGs tend to attract more females, too, NWN and MMOs come to mind.

Vendetta wrote:I'd disagree. Whilst it is based on open ended play, there are defined rules for 'success' in a Sim's life. The structure of rules and responses that underpin The Sims (and before it Sim City) make t more of a game than a toy.

The fact that there isn't a single defined 'win' condition doesn't mean it's not a game.

I specifically addressed this in my original post on the matter (and I'd question what sorts of female sales data The Sims managed to generate). The Sims have no win conditions and are not based around competition. You can slowly improve your little family, but if you don't keep up with the Joneses there is no penalty in the game. While an enjoyable program, The Sims has difficulty being classified as a game since there is no competition involved, and so it really does fit better as a toy than a game--do you consider Furbies to be games, too?

Incidentally, there are plenty of games that do not have set, defined winning conditions (there are lots of ways to win at, say, Civilization). Even things like Magic: The Gathering (IIRC) allows you options in how you win the game (you can reduce your opponent to zero life or potentially prevent them from drawing a card by forcing them to expend their entire deck). That does not prevent them from being games. To be a game, though, some level of competition or goal must be involved, and by that standard The Sims does not qualify.

JediNeophyte wrote:RPGs tend to attract more females, too, NWN and MMOs come to mind.

There, women make up only very small minorities of the playing population. While The Sims is rejected on technicality, RPG's and MMO's are seriously male-dominated, and hence -oriented.

The Sims have no win conditions and are not based around competition.

... I think that's the sort of thing the article was talking about when it delved into non-standard gameplay. Sure, it's a software toy... but damn, did it make a shitload of money. Too bad other game developers can't take the hint.

And I guess it depends on what you call "competition". If you're going for a basic, start-middle-end format, that's what most games are. If you want an ongoing, more abstract definition of "competition", then the Sims most certainly has it... there are obstacles to overcome and various ways to do it.

SPOOFE wrote:

The Sims have no win conditions and are not based around competition.

... I think that's the sort of thing the article was talking about when it delved into non-standard gameplay. Sure, it's a software toy... but damn, did it make a shitload of money.

That's true.

Too bad other game developers can't take the hint.

It's kind of hard to figure out where to go in that genre, though. Seriously, it's really hard to create a computer program involving a scenario like that. I'd rather not have a franchise which consists of such titles as "The Sims in the Big Apple," "The Sims in Space" and "The Sims meet Krusty the Klown."

And I guess it depends on what you call "competition". If you're going for a basic, start-middle-end format, that's what most games are. If you want an ongoing, more abstract definition of "competition", then the Sims most certainly has it... there are obstacles to overcome and various ways to do it.

That's a pretty broad way of defining "competition," though. I usually don't consider living to be much of a competitive endeavor, or driving for that matter, but by that definition both of those would be competitive activities.

When you're alive you're competing against the world's attempts to kill you. When you're driving you're competing with all the nutters that are on the roads.