Rage in Edge Magazine

[caco_killer]

We had games that were like movies, they were those terrible FMV games from the early 90s.

I hate when people talk about videogames through rose-tinted glasses.

[david_a]

The content creation tools haven't really kept pace with the visual improvements. Art assets are so expensive to produce now that it's natural that games would give you smaller playing fields. Remaking a game like Deus Ex with state-of-the-art visuals would probably be prohibitively expensive.

These seems to be one of the big pushes from id with this whole megatexture stuff. We'll probably start to see other technologies evolve to combat this, like utilizing more procedural concepts for detailing geometry and textures.

[myk]

gemini09 said:
Well, to be fair, you are a marine and your job is to follow orders, and not to wander off and see if you can find random baddies and health packs in your own spaceship.

In those cases, the designers need to create a system where you are punished for not acting that way or rewarded for doing so, while eliminating ideas they can't find a way to associate to a form of interaction. Not to just force you along by making game elements that are numb to what you may do, especially in obvious cases, like when you shoot a comrade. "Realism" that is added in without game integration is just half-assed gloss, if not a distraction or an element that also contributes to make a dull game. I mean, you start to think, "so the designers actually spent time and effort on these parts of the design that don't interact properly?"

[DuckReconMajor]

DaniJ said:

Console gaming in general is far more laid back, perhaps due to being sat further away from the display and the mechanics of the input devices (i.e., gamepads) themselves. More likely however due to the manner in which console games are consumed i.e., they aren't meant to be intense experiences that deeply involve the player because the player is typically either; so young as to be more captivated by the spectacle, or old enough to have a job and commitments.

PC gaming on the other hand, is a very niche market. PC gamers demand an incredibly rich game experience which they are willing to commit time to if deserved.

I disagree. Whether you like the games or not, I wouldn't call people who participate in tournaments for games like Halo or Super Smash Bros "casual gamers".

On the other hand, on the PC, games like WoW are getting further bent toward casual gaming with every patch.

[Whoo]

DaniJ said:

PC gaming on the other hand, is a very nice market. PC gamers demand an incredibly rich game experience which they are willing to commit time to if deserved.

I wouldn't call the PC market friendly since mostly all the modern PC gamers think if the graphics aren't top of the line, the game sucks, and if there isn't any multiplayer in the game, the game sucks.

[Kaiser]

* PC Gamers are whiny little bitches that are hard to please.
* Console gamers are whiny little bitches that are Halo fanboys.

[hardcore_gamer]

Kaiser said:

* PC Gamers are whiny little bitches that are hard to please.
* Console gamers are whiny little bitches that are Halo fanboys.

*No, only he people who hate consoles are.
*Not everybody likes Halo. I own a xbox 360 and i think Halo 3 is exremely overrated.

[Whoo]

hardcore_gamer said:

*No, only he people who hate consoles are.

I hate consoles past the Gamecube. I'm not hard to please with a PC game at all(That is, games before 2000).

[Kaiser]

hardcore_gamer said:

*No, only he people who hate consoles are.
*Not everybody likes Halo. I own a xbox 360 and i think Halo 3 is exremely overrated.

Yeah I know. But I still stand on my thoughts for the PC audience though. And yes, I am a whiny little bitch as well.

[gemini09]

myk said:

In those cases, the designers need to create a system where you are punished for not acting that way or rewarded for doing so, while eliminating ideas they can't find a way to associate to a form of interaction. Not to just force you along by making game elements that are numb to what you may do, especially in obvious cases, like when you shoot a comrade. "Realism" that is added in without game integration is just half-assed gloss, if not a distraction or an element that also contributes to make a dull game. I mean, you start to think, "so the designers actually spent time and effort on these parts of the design that don't interact properly?"

I'll use Graf Zahl's earlier example... If you have a mission and aren't limited to one course of action, it will take at least twice the amount of work to build an alternative route. So the most logical choice for developers is to focus on one path, and make its presentation as good as possible. And I think it's odd to complain you didn't have an alternative route, when they focused on making the single one best.

That's all I'm saying. And I think it's surprising you can't show any understanding for that for commercial and competitive game companies.

I would appreciate freedom and all that too. But if the game plays a certain way, that's how it is. Whether it's a fun game or not, isn't necessarily linked to its linearity. And linearity sounds like a negative word but don't forget there is PRESENTATION along with it. Insisting on an alternative route is akin to a child refusing to do what its told.

And I have a comment on the comrades you can or can't kill. I usually try it out, and I'm slightly annoyed when you can, only to have the mission fail and game reload. Maybe they should put work and effort into something that IS interactive, so if you shoot a medic comrade, you have to radio for another one, and wait for him to arrive. Or better yet, whip out the laptop and hit Wikipedia.

[LordHavoc]

I was told by a Prey developer that they asked 3DRealms up front whether they wanted large levels with medium detail, or tight levels with high detail, 3DRealms told them to go with tight levels with high detail.

I think this gets to the heart of the open/tight debate, a matter of requiring high detail or else a game is accused of not looking "nextgen".

I'm continually saddened by the state of art tools - in particular level editors - they simply are not up to the task of making high detail levels quickly, if a level takes more than a week to make and requires multiple artists (mostly "environment artists" who make static mesh models), you aren't going to see many creative levels in a game.

Give a level designer an oldschool tile map editor and they whip up dozens of levels in a month

Give a level designer UnrealEd3 or DoomEdit and modern "nextgen-ness" requirements and they might get one level done in a month, usually needing assistance with static meshes to even meet that target.

But we're getting off the topic of regenerating health...

[Kaiser]

LordHavoc said:

Give a level designer UnrealEd3 or DoomEdit and modern "nextgen-ness" requirements and they might get one level done in a month, usually needing assistance with static meshes to even meet that target.

Developers are leaning more towards wanting more quality than quantity. Thats why games these days are becoming much shorter and that multiplayer based games are shipping with fewer maps. But I agree that next-gen engines are taking longer and longer to produce a level, mostly because that a level now needs more than one person to make. With Unreal, you MUST have a level designer and a environment artist.

What also sucks is that a lot of people are demanding more and more games to be open/outdoors. Its not that simple to create a next-gen title that is based on that setting. Thats also why Section 8 (the game that I worked on) is getting poor reviews because of that (blame xbox 360 optimizations).

LordHavoc said:

But we're getting off the topic of regenerating health...

Yeah.. I should stop..

[gemini09]

Wow.

What work did you do on Section 8? Looks very good, at least artistically.

LordHavoc said:

But we're getting off the topic of regenerating health...

The topic was just Rage and we started discussing regenerating health and now we've moved on and I think it's quite so interesting.

[LordHavoc]

When I saw Rage at QuakeCon (with no cameras allowed, too bad), it looked pretty fun, especially the freedom to race as much or as little as you like, the Monster Bash game show, and other elements that made it cross genres so many times it was quite unique.

It's definitely a sandbox FPS RPG but still fairly directed (akin to STALKER).

I could not shake the feeling that it resembles Fallout3 though, which isn't a bad thing because it definitely improved upon all the weak spots in Fallout3 (especially the combat).

I got the impression it has several minigames (also unusual for id Software).

I have a fondness for singleplayer, but I'm really curious what is going to happen with the multiplayer, because the environment seems to have a lot of potential for something unique (beyond basic deathmatch or racing) if the designers are sufficiently inspired.

[printz]

I am not sure I like the idea of regeneration in FPSs, because it can encourage waiting, which can easily be a bore factor. Right, situations like 7% health left aren't nice, but they can be controlled by having enemies whose presence and shots don't come instantly.

[myk]

gemini09 said:
I'll use Graf Zahl's earlier example... If you have a mission and aren't limited to one course of action, it will take at least twice the amount of work to build an alternative route. So the most logical choice for developers is to focus on one path, and make its presentation as good as possible. And I think it's odd to complain you didn't have an alternative route, when they focused on making the single one best.

I was referring to game mechanics. To eliminate stuff entirely if it's not really going to be integrated. Don't even add an NPC if it's going to be tacked in, and the like. Simplify the game a bit and make sure each element used really has a place in the overall mechanics and it was not just added in a half-assed way to make things a bit more cool.

And I think it's surprising you can't show any understanding for that for commercial and competitive game companies.

No, no, I do pity the people that design modern games :p

I would appreciate freedom and all that too. But if the game plays a certain way, that's how it is. Whether it's a fun game or not, isn't necessarily linked to its linearity.

In a shooter, as far as I'm concerned, shooting shit is the dominant factor, and if progress is linear, that will suffer because route optimization is a key factor in a game you'll want to play more that a couple of times. Hell, I see it in DOOM level design itself, which is why I tend to favor lower-detail, less-feature-intensive level design even there. A lighter load on the designer will give him more time to optimize "game routes" and the strategic balance between game elements.

There's a perhaps eternal discussion going on about whether games should be games or sand-boxes. It really narrows down to genre making. If most games are a hybrid of either, most games will tend to suck. Not because you can't have some types of games that can delve in either direction, but simply because many games really need to decide on what they are going to deliver. Although we can see that designers are looking for ways to tackle this problem:

LordHavoc said:
I got the impression it has several minigames (also unusual for id Software).

It sounds like a good way to compartmentalize game play so each part can work out well, not limiting each aspect and giving the engine a chance to develop different aspects. It might make some people favor only parts of the game, although if it's easy to access those once you are familiar with it, they could each be usable in themselves.

[Woolie Wool]

DaniJ said:

So then, buy a console :P

Being serious though, a video card with the capabilities to match the Xbox 360 can be picked up for less than 30 GBP where I live.

Well the video card might have superior theoretical performance to the XBox 360 but with the massive overhead and lack of optimization inherent to the PC you won't get anything on the level of, say, Forza Motorsport 3 on a £30 video card. With a very streamlined, stripped-down "operating system", a single set of system specs to build for, and years to learn every single quirk in the hardware and every trick to make it push more pixels, a console has an insurmountable cost-effectiveness edge.

Id Software has pretty much been a tech demo business ever since John Romero Tom Hall left anyway.

caco_killer said:

We had games that were like movies, they were those terrible FMV games from the early 90s.

I hate when people talk about videogames through rose-tinted glasses.

I don't think you can fairly compare many of them to movies unless you're talking about a movie like Plan 9 from Outer Space or a 90-minute '80s music video. They were on an entirely new level of terrible.

One thing I find appalling nowadays is how little modern game demos contain for their size in megabytes. Doom gave you a third (later, a quarter) of the entire game for free. Forza Motrosport 3's demo takes hours to download, weighs in at 1.25 gigs, and has one percent of the game's total content available. Five cars and one track, out of 400/100 for the whole game. Bullshit.

[hardcore_gamer]

Woolie Wool said:

One thing I find appalling nowadays is how little modern game demos contain for their size in megabytes. Doom gave you a third (later, a quarter) of the entire game for free. Forza Motrosport 3's demo takes hours to download, weighs in at 1.25 gigs, and has one percent of the game's total content available. Five cars and one track, out of 400/100 for the whole game. Bullshit.

But to be honest, expecting game developers to release a whole third of there game to the public for free is to much to ask from them. I think the demo for Painkiller is a ok example of a decent demo. The demo for Painkiller gives you some of the weapons in the game and 3 full levels from the game unless i am mistaken (though the awesome metal/rock music is missing for some stupid and a sad reason).

[gemini09]

The demo for STREET FIGHTER IV is only 400MB :)

http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_sfiv_home.html

[Zaldron]

Woolie Wool said:

Id Software has pretty much been a tech demo business ever since John Romero Tom Hall left anyway.

Even though they haven't pursued licensing in years? A ludicrous statement.

id's shortcomings in the design department precisely stem from keep making games with as much "design" effort put as the stuff they did in the early 90's. That doesn't cut it anymore in the FPS department, although in some other genres one would be so lucky as to see the level of dedication last seen in a decade and half old game (turn based strategy comes to mind, some sims, etc.).

[bardcat]

it's just a game, guys.

[myk]

In a place where people design game material or know games to the tee "just" is a lot more than someone casually related to games would think.

You're just on Doomworld :p

[Graf Zahl]

gemini09 said:

I'll use Graf Zahl's earlier example... If you have a mission and aren't limited to one course of action, it will take at least twice the amount of work to build an alternative route. So the most logical choice for developers is to focus on one path, and make its presentation as good as possible. And I think it's odd to complain you didn't have an alternative route, when they focused on making the single one best.

If game designers start thinking like that the game is already lost. You may rationalize all you want - but if taking away the main reason for an interactive medium you end up with nothing.

That's all I'm saying. And I think it's surprising you can't show any understanding for that for commercial and competitive game companies.

Oh, I understand. There's the creative people and there's the suits. The suits will love games that don't have any replay value - as long as they can sell them. For a game designer it will be pure torture to develop such garbage (been there, done that far too often myself.)

I would appreciate freedom and all that too. But if the game plays a certain way, that's how it is.

You are way too accepting. Even in a game like Q4 most battles were fun - but the game still ended up an utter disappointment because I never had the feeling to play a game - just watch a movie in which I had to do the walking myself. I thought it was quite fitting that the best part in the game was a cutscene (Stroggification, of course...)

Whether it's a fun game or not, isn't necessarily linked to its linearity. And linearity sounds like a negative word but don't forget there is PRESENTATION along with it. Insisting on an alternative route is akin to a child refusing to do what its told.

I don't know what to say. That's so completely and utterly wrong that I lack the words to form a proper response.

And I have a comment on the comrades you can or can't kill. I usually try it out, and I'm slightly annoyed when you can, only to have the mission fail and game reload. Maybe they should put work and effort into something that IS interactive, so if you shoot a medic comrade, you have to radio for another one, and wait for him to arrive. Or better yet, whip out the laptop and hit Wikipedia.

Here's some advice to you: Quit playing games and start watching movies. You are clearly not made to play a real game... :D

[Arch-Valentine]

So about that game Rage...

no? ok.

[kristus]

Graf Zahl said:

You are way too accepting. Even in a game like Q4 most battles were fun - but the game still ended up an utter disappointment because I never had the feeling to play a game - just watch a movie in which I had to do the walking myself. I thought it was quite fitting that the best part in the game was a cutscene (Stroggification, of course...)

And the map that was the least linear... or rather, the only map that wasn't completely linear, was the ship. Where you just strolled around for a bit, before getting briefed and going for a rail-shooter map. :p

[LordHavoc]

Sounds like Unreal 2...

Mass Effect is remarkably linear too, at times.

[Zaldron]

myk said:

In a place where people design game material or know games to the tee "just" is a lot more than someone casually related to games would think.

You're just on Doomworld :p

Dedicated fans have dedicated literally millions of hours deconstructing even the tiniest of details in the game, sure, but that doesn't mean the same amount of man-hours was spent designing those details. We know that because it didn't take a hundred years to make. It's no different than the tons of literature on chess moves and tactics in a game that, while ingenious, was in no way 'figured out' by its creator(s) to the point we have in this day and age. Same reason why we have scholars dedicated to single authors or even works of fiction.

The Doom games sure were a hit, but Doomworld is just a tight minority of fans. The game's formula is an aging dinosaur no one cares much beyond the occasional adrenaline kick or retrogaming nostalgia. It would be unwise to make a game for a community that pulls an average of 30-40 forum visitors at any given moment.

[myk]

Zaldron said:
The Doom games sure were a hit, but Doomworld is just a tight minority of fans. The game's formula is an aging dinosaur no one cares much beyond the occasional adrenaline kick or retrogaming nostalgia.

Heh, are we supposed to feel humble or something because we aren't "mainstream" or "state-of-the-art"? Do you get into games to "feel normal"? Billions of people don't care about video games at all, too. Most probably the majority of the world.

It would be unwise to make a game for a community that pulls an average of 30-40 forum visitors at any given moment.

I doubt anyone disagrees, but at the end of the day, they consider the opinions of many different people dispersed among various types, communities or whatever, trying to produce a product that will attract many. There's no archetypal gamer to aim a product at. Not that we comment with that in mind, necessarily. It's just a side-product of our community activity.

I think I get it now... You might have thought my post (which you quoted) was a reply to what you said two posts above. Actually, I was just telling bardcat to get used to seeing people commenting on game design and intricacies in this place, instead of people mindlessly taking everything in a game for granted.

[Lutz]

Graf Zahl said:

If game designers start thinking like that the game is already lost. You may rationalize all you want - but if taking away the main reason for an interactive medium you end up with nothing.

I could not disagree with you more. Linearity (is that a word?) doesn't necessarily mean boredom -- I still play Contra (and I dare you to find a more linear game than Contra) and it's still fun as hell. In fact, there are quite a few 2D side-scrollers that I really enjoy. Moving to 3D, I cannot wait to get to the "Surface Tension" episode of Half-Life, not because it's a giant sandbox, but because the episode is done amazingly well and just f-ing feels right.

Graf Zahl said:

I don't know what to say. That's so completely and utterly wrong that I lack the words to form a proper response.

I DO agree with that -- the parent/kid thing was a bad metaphor.

Graf Zahl said:

Here's some advice to you: Quit playing games and start watching movies. You are clearly not made to play a real game... :D

Quite frankly, Graf, that's just fucking rude, even if you do temper it with some cute little ASCII face.

Also, since it's apparently super-cool to badmouth a game no one has played yet: RAGE IS GOING TO SUCK! NOTHING NEW CAN EVER BE GOOD! CONSOLES SUCK BALLS! REGENERATING HEALTH IS TOTALLY UNREALISTIC AND WE NEED TO GO BACK "REAL" GAMES IN WHICH YOU WALK OVER CUTE LITTLE MEDICAL SPRITES THAT INSTANTLY ADD 25 POINTS TO OUR HEALTH METER!

I just wanna be cool.

[gemini09]

Graf Zahl said:

If game designers start thinking like that the game is already lost. You may rationalize all you want - but if taking away the main reason for an interactive medium you end up with nothing.

What about Super Mario? Those games are linear, and everybody will say they are the essence of gaming.

You are way too accepting. Even in a game like Q4 most battles were fun - but the game still ended up an utter disappointment because I never had the feeling to play a game - just watch a movie in which I had to do the walking myself. I thought it was quite fitting that the best part in the game was a cutscene (Stroggification, of course...)

I don't know what to say. That's so completely and utterly wrong that I lack the words to form a proper response.

Your entire argument boils down to if a game (and only FPS, it seems) is not non-linear, it is like a movie.

The walking part is the interactive part and the most interactive part, in an FPS.

Perhaps you could make an example of a game we can take a closer look at?

Here's some advice to you: Quit playing games and start watching movies. You are clearly not made to play a real game... :D

I was among the best Doom players.