What determines the sucsess of a game? It is a broad subject, however I decided to express my thoughts and opinions about the curent state of games. I started playing along time ago. My first mager addiction to computer games came from Space Quest 1 and 2, and later followed by some famous as well as underdog games, like "Betrayal at Krondor", "Realms of Arkania", "Mokey Island", "Doom" and many, many more. For the last 3 years I''v been heavily into online rpgs'' (Ultima Online, Everquest and Asherons Call). Ultima Online was great and kept me for nearly 2+ years, Everquest, in my opinion, was a waiste of space and didnt take me more than 2 weeks to cancle my account. Asherons Call is a fun game, yet after 4 mounths + beta, I no longer have a desire to play. So recently I went and got a tons of games that came out recently as well as some of the big titles of the last few years. My view on the games of today. Crap! I deleted most everything within an hour of instalation. Has it become so damn important to have spiffy graphics and 3d dolby sound, than the game designers completly forgot about the plot, storyline, simple easy to understand interface? I sertainly don''t want to configure 50 or so keys for each action! 99% of all today games are clones of another. Have we become so sterile, than we cannot think of a unique storyline or a different concept? Lets examine some good and bad games since 1995. Follout - an rpg set in the post apocaliptic future. Great game, alot fun. I am sure many of you played it. Follout 2 - comes out about 2 years later, but apart from a different charecter names everything remains the same. (the hero has to go save a villiga, only to uncover a big bad men trying to distroy the world = Follout 1) Warcraft 1 & 2 - both grate games. Unlike Follout, Warcraft 2 offered not only a different storyline, charecters, but also new engine. Diablo - In my opinion one of the most over rated games. The game engine was a sure piece of art, but the storyline in this "RPG" was almost non existant. GTA (grand theft auto) - Great game! Doesnt take more than few seconds to get into it and you can play from any level. paine old fun. Daikatana - i said screw it after the first mission. I think I had enought of fps. It doesnt look much different from Quake3, Unreal etc.. Asterix and Obelix [something] Adventure - picked it up since I love the comic book. Unfortunatly it was a huge disapointment. A beginner programmer can write a better game, not to mention a 5 year old can come up with a better plot. The list can go on and on, but you get the picture (i hope). It is unfortunate that we (game designers) are more interested in creating a stunning visial game, instead of makeing a fun game. Its like writting a novel, only you''ll spend 80% of the time makeing awessome looking cover and manuscript looking pages, but the novel itself would lack the plot, storyline and even charecters. Just some food for thought... PS. if you looking for a "fun" RPG to get, I advise Nox (westwood). It was the only game that kept me glued to the chair for an entire weekend! Alot fun! Regards the prima dona ***Stand and Deliver***

I agree with your point, but what i figured out is that average people mostly care about the visual and aural effect more than the engine behind the game. i play the game tiberian sun (c&c) a lot, just because everytime i play this game, i can see the power behind the code. just think of how much the programmers would have spent to make such a great game. in addition to the high quality graphics and normal (not so great) sound effects.

a game such as tiberian sun takes a long long time to make and it requires a lot of training in order to be a ble to play a *good* game. and of course, u need to be able to think a lot and find the perfect strategy. don''t forget that more than half of people dont bother to think about these things. if they wanted to think, chess would have been the most popular game in the whole world.

what the game developers (the ones who care about money more) know is that if you want to make money, make a quick and dirty program; don''t go around looking for new ideas or advancements and just use the same old game ideas; and hire some graphists to make some nicegraphics for you, it doesn''t matter how bad you make your program, people just see the cover and think it''s gonna be a great game, so they pay 40 bucks for that piece of crap.

a real game deveoper (i.e. westwood ) would rather spend a lot of time and money to come up with a perfect game idea and a well-developed game engine. although they might not make a lot of money out of this (considering how much time and money they spent for production) they''re still one step ahead of other gamedevelopers: they''re REAL game developers...

- pouya

It''s always seemed to me that a game that''s FUN would be successful. Unfortunatly, it doesn''t seem to be that way. I think it all has to do with marketing and bussiness in all stages of game development, really. While trying to write a game that''s fun, a designer has to also write something that''s not so innovative that the general public is "scared" of it (a la Battlezone...a pretty good game, IMHO)--if they didn''t learn to think this way, they couldn''t find a publisher. Then, of course, there''s the marketing. To make a game successful, you need great graphics (and, of course, other features/buzzwords) as early as possible for the marketing teams to put them together into ads and press releases to build up hype. So, while the development team is trying to finish the game, the marketing group is trying to (over-)hype it. So, finally, if the ad guys did their jobs, the public will buy the game in droves the day it''s released.
And, of course, if some poor game development group is writing a completly new and innovative game (maybe even creating a new genre), they''re probably screwed. First of all, they''d have to find a publisher willing to spend his money on what is seen as a "high-risk" project, and, then, of course, if they go the way of trying to publish it themselves, they''re probably not going to have the resources to advertise that a huge company does, and, as the adage goes, "A product doesn''t sell itself."

Of course, I''m still in high school, so I don''t know this stuff...so I''m probably wrong.

P h a n t a s m
"Through dreams I control mankind."
--Legend

Forgot one key thing in your equation.
The more advanced tech gets and the more games you play, the more you start to expect from a game.
Agood example is System Shock 1 & System Shock 2....the sequel had better GFX and nice eyecandy....BUT it didn''t measure up to the gameplay of part one? Why? It was a good game in all respects, and many people who haven''t played part 1 say it''s one of the best games they ever played.
Frankly I think as far as sequels go, (and not just ''true'' sequels but also genre specific sequels such as any new FPS is measured to Doom and Quake, and HL), we all want bigger, better, faster, more. And often enough it really takes a lot of work and luck to get a sequel that kicks the butt of an orginal great game.

Well, as much as I''d like to post a nice, long "Gameplay is what counts and it''s really gone downhill recently" rant, the unfortunate truth is that what makes a really great game is twofold- it has to have enough graphics and eye candy that you look at it and say "Hey, that looks cool- I want to buy it" and, at the same time, entertaining enough gameplay that you want to keep playing it.

THe unfortunate truth is that in this era of hand-drawn sprites and realtime-rendered polygons, people simply aren''t going to buy something that looks like one of the eight-bit classics... If Super Mario Bros. were released these days, it would be a commercial travesty. If games expect to stand out from the crowd, their graphics have to be at least on par with those of most of the competiton.

Of course, on the other side of the coin, you have to remember that it''s the gameplay which will make your players keep playing the game- this is the part that will make your game truly "great" instead of just average. Unfortunatley, this is a fact which apparently simply hasn''t been that important to a lot of companies recently- may of them have just been going in for the fast buck by making a game which has lots of flashy 3D graphics bu underneath is really the same old Quake or Warcraft engine you''ve seen 100 times before, or a new engine which has promise but took the back seat in development to the graphics engine and wasn''t refined carefully enough to be anything special.

I''ve seen this many times before and expect to see it may times again- some companies honestly try to make great games, while others are only in it for the quick dollar. You still hear about Doom these days, but when''s the last time you heard anything about Blood? Remember Rise of the Triad?

--{-Seig----

Upon further inspection, I now realize that after saying I wasn''t going to post a "gameplay has gone downhill" message, I went on to do exactly that

I guess the ever-elusive point is that there are two things you really need to make a great game: the graphics to make people play it and the gameplay to make people keep playing it, and recently it seems that companies have primarially been focusing on the first : (

--{-Seig----

The cynic in me is going to say this:

You can''t put pictures of good gameplay in a magazine.
You can put pictures of good graphics in a magazine.

One will generate sales, the other will keep people happy with you (after you''ve got their money).

The realist in me is going to say this:

It is a lot easier to quantify good graphics than good gameplay. Especially where real things - tanks, cars, athletes, etc. are concerned. There are a lot of theories about good gameplay, some of which conflict on fundamental issues. Almost everybody can agree on what Kobe Bryant looks and moves like, or a F117, or a Ferrarri.

$0.02

I like ur name

If you code it, they will come...

Commander M
http://commanderm.8m.com
cmndrm@commanderm.8m.com

Anyone tried playing a game they used to love? I just picked up ultima7 from my piles of old games recently and started playing... I didn''t like it as much as I used to.

Our expectations fluctuate at an enormous pace...

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About time I put something funny here? I think so too...