Gamers' Manifesto

[voodoolily]

Originally found here.

I posted a portion of it in the Namacha thread, but this baby deserves to be read in its entirety. Enjoy.

The Sony Playstation 3 is going to cost $465.00.

In the desolate economic climate of post-apocalyptic 2006, I'm thinking that's going to be a lot of money. Now, it's true that at E3 Sony was boasting the Playstation 3 could crank out 1.8 TFLOPS, or 1.8 trillion FLOPS. If that many FLOPS were piled together they would fill the Grand Canyon, assuming each FLOP were the size of a muskrat. So what do gamers want from all that money and FLOP? Just ask them.

20 things gamers want from the seventh generation of game consoles

1. Give us A.I. that will actually outsmart us now and then.

Look at the little guy. The one on the left. The one who's just a head.



I mean, let's face it: strategy is all that guy's got going for him. He has no limbs and he's already on fire.

And yet, did anyone stop being impressed by Doom III long enough to notice he and the other bad guys were flailing at us with the same straight-line Ulysses S. Grant calvary charge that failed them twelve years ago in Doom 1? Even Far Cry had bad guys that went into spinning seizures when they got confused.

We get so overjoyed every time an enemy actually shoots from cover in a game that we forgive the fact that real, advanced A.I. is as much an unfulfilled promise as the flying car. Where are the FPS bad guys who can adapt their strategy on the fly? Enemies who themselves have six different guns and switch up according to what the situation calls for? Bad guys who work in teams, who strategize, who create diversions to distract you? Where's the enemy Solid Snake who sneaks up on you with the silence of a ninja's church fart?



Chances of that happening...

Almost zero. One, there's more and more focus on multiplayer for this sort of game. This takes some of the pressure off programmers because in multiplayer, other humans supply their own A.I. Even the ones who are complete morons.

Two, as developers have lamented, the guts of the new consoles are geared to make the gaming equivalent of dumb blondes. It has to do with the fact that both the XBox 360 and the PS3's Cell CPU use "in-order" processing, which, to greatly simplify, means they've intentionally crippled the ability to make clever A.I. and dynamic, unpredictable, wide-open games in favor of beautiful water reflections and explosion debris that flies through the air prettily.

That means the next generation of games will likely play just like this generation. Only shiny.

Actually, this might belong in a different category than Useless NEws. If someone moves it, just delete this sentence.

[Daydreamer]

I like to think that some day the businesses of the world will wake up and realize they're part of a greater whole, that the energy devoted to cannabalistic infighting means ultimate doom for all. The leaders of the great religions of the world will realize that all of us, Muslim, Christian, Jew, all want the same for humanity. Women will realize it's the pale, studious type they want instead of the quarterback of the football team, and everywhere we walk, bunnies will dance a path for us. Dance, little guys! Dance!

ROFL

EDIT: And this gem about VR Helms in a piece on a possible upcoming market crash

people's desire for tech novelty outweighed by their fear of being caught in an enormous electrical dorkhat

EDIT 2: I am so making a quote from this guy my siggy

[voodoolily]

I want to give a shout out to the Metroid Prime games for giving us infinite ammo on the default gun. Think about how your life would have been different if your gun had never run out of bullets, my friend. You wouldn't be in that Mexican jail right now, I can tell you that.

I hadn't had time to read the whole thing yesterday. I haven't laughed this hard since I can't remember when.

14. Seriously, get rid of the crates

The crate has long been held up as a symbol of lazy game art design, a crutch that game level decorators have been falling back on for fifteen damned years. Come to think of it, have you ever actually seen one of those wooden crates in real life? And did you smash it to see if there were bullets and medicine inside?

ROFL

THEY SHOULD HAVE NEVER DONE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. EVER. WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS? I DEMAND TO KNOW. WAS IT TUROK? WAS TUROK THE FIRST? THE VERY FIRST FUCKING PERSON TO EVER PUT A JUMPING PUZZLE IN A FIRST-FUCKING PERSON GAME SHOULD HAVE BEEN FIRED, TIED DOWN AND HAD HIS EARS FILLED WITH PISS.

Again, ROFL

[Jain Zar]

They speak many truths.

But they forgot one.  I like actually fucking OWNING my games. I like them in a nice physical form I can keep and use and love for as long as the media and hardware I play it on holds out, hopefully decades.  Everyone seems to be going to this "buy online" STEAM bullshit as if its a good thing.  No.  No its not.  Its a way for developers to assrape us in the future by making us buy the exact same game again for almost the same price as the original if inflation is taken into account. (Example: The NES Classics series on the Gameboy Advance.  20 dollars for a game one can get for a working NES for 2-3 bucks outside of the battery games which are all dying which I am sure gives Nintendo's accountants raging hard ons since us nostalgics and retrogamers are fucked.  Until we discover emulation and the realization we can download the games for free.)

I know these days most people gleefully trade their 2 week old 50 dollar game for 20 bucks store credit, but some of us aren't that fucking stupid and actually try to get our money's worth or GASP realize we might want to play the damn game sometime in the future so maybe we should hang on to the damn things and take good care of them.  Programs like DOSBox and sites like VOGONS wouldn't exist otherwise.  My main reason for buying a CD burner was so I could have a permanent copy of game patches in case companies pull an Interplay.  Not to mention its easier than dealing with Fileplanet.

Disposable gaming is very dumb.  What happens if the hardware dies with the game on it?  What if the company who released the product goes bankrupt?  Shit, LOOK AT STEAM.  Its quite possibly the worst thing to happen to gaming since EA's current business plans went into effect around the year 2000 or so.  Right now its doing ok on cell phones, but the games are only 5-6 bucks and cell phone users as a whole are quite stupid.  Hence why they pay 2 bucks for new wallpapers for the things.   But its proof of concept.  And its already made headway on to computers.  Micropayments, purchase but don't own.. its coming, and it sucks big time.

[voodoolily]

I happen to be one of the people who saves her games, too. Unless I buy it off eBay and realize it's lame (Turok Evolution, anyone?), in which case I sell it fast. But I like to replay my games - I've beat WInd Waker three times and still have fun with it. SOme games, like FFX have SO many side quests that there's an entire 20+ hours of extra gametime if you wanna go through with it again. I can't recall ever getting rid of a game I paid full price for. Although Tak and the Power of Juju was pretty asstacular, and I regret having thrown down the cash for it. (I'm a platform whore and there wasn't anything better at the time)

[Velorath]

I liked owning my games back in the days where the average game would entertain me for longer than a couple of days.  I've still got all my games from the 2600 and Coleco up through the Genesis and SNES.  From the Playstation on through I've known most of the games I've bought I'll never have the time or the inclination to go back through and play again.  Some stuff I'll hold on to, like a lot of my RPGs or Resident Evil 2, but I don't think I'll ever miss my copy of Metal Gear Solid 2.

[WindupAtheist]

I liked their review of SWG, scripting and all.

"John here again. The AI in this game proved to be quite a challenge, as I did not yet have godlike powers. When I logged back in after 18 hours of auto-run accelerated play, though, I did find my character was now a Level 99999 artisan. I used his newfound skills, and all the ore off the Moon of Lindseer, to build a Super Star Destroyer. I've seen several of the planets now, and found sandy Tatooine to be by far the most boring. I destroyed it."

[Jobu]

Patents. Did you know there's a patent held by some microscopic software company on spherical camera controls in realtime 3D, and they're starting to level lawsuits against EVERYONE? Did you ever wonder what happened to force feedback, controllers that push your hands around so you can feel the action in the game as well as see it (we're talking real force feedback, not controllers that vibrate like pagers)? Somebody has a patent, that's what. Did you know you can't have mini-games during a loading screen because of patent law?

Is that true? Wow. That sucks balls. Anyone know more about this claim?

[StGabe]

Hmm.  So far this guy doesn't seem to really know what the hell he's talking about.

Good AI tends not to exist a lot in games because ...... it's really fucking hard to do good AI.  Also, there isn't really anything about the architechture of the PS3 (as revealed thus far) that would preclude good AI.  Some fanboi on the other side of the fence could just as easily rave about how the new architechture is more similar to the layout of the brain and will lead to awesome AI (an equally dubious conclusion).

The graphics stuff well ... he's making the same mistake I've seen on this forum: blaming developers for the sins of consumers.  Consumers have proven, again and agian, that they will go ape-shit over suitably impressive graphics.  Game designers that I know would love to spend the money that consumers give them on other sorts of gameplay -- but won't if it's not what's selling.  When game companies or console companies can make good profits without caring that much about graphics then, and only then, will they stop putting so much money into it.

A proper gamer's manifesto really needs to be one targetted at consumers telling them to clean up their act.  PS3 costs a lot of money?  Doesn't deliver a lot of stuff you want?

Don't.  Buy.  It.

That is how you cast your vote in the world of game development.  If other people outvote you well, it sounds like you might need to mount a more effective campaign targeting OTHER CONSUMERS and their wallets.

Gabe.

[HaemishM]

The graphics stuff well ... he's making the same mistake I've seen on this forum: blaming developers for the sins of consumers.  Consumers have proven, again and agian, that they will go ape-shit over suitably impressive graphics.  Game designers that I know would love to spend the money that consumers give them on other sorts of gameplay -- but won't if it's not what's selling.  When game companies or console companies can make good profits without caring that much about graphics then, and only then, will they stop putting so much money into it.

A proper gamer's manifesto really needs to be one targetted at consumers telling them to clean up their act.  PS3 costs a lot of money?  Doesn't deliver a lot of stuff you want?

Don't.  Buy.  It.

That is how you cast your vote in the world of game development.  If other people outvote you well, it sounds like you might need to mount a more effective campaign targeting OTHER CONSUMERS and their wallets.

Gabe.

And as I've said before, expecting consumers to "smarten up" or to change their habits is stupid because it WILL NOT HAPPEN, especially if the market does not provide alternatives that are as easy to purchase or comparably priced to what's already out there. People are fucking stupid. You could feed them poison and tell them it's candy and if you market it right, THEY WILL BEG FOR THE POISON-FLAVORED CANDY. MORE PLX NOWKTHX, GAK! *THUD* See the tobacco industry for examples.

Developers who are in at least some moderate control of their money have to be the ones to lead the industry, because consumers will not. Sometimes consumers will surprise you, but more often than not, they will run off the cliff like lemmings. Developers stop focusing on the shiney and start focusing on the gameplay and eventually the consumers will get it. But in abscence of any alternatives, consumers will follow their basest instincts. They are the mob, the rabble.

And no, indy game development and/or digital distribution is not the answer by itself, because you still have to make a good game that compares favorably to the stuff that's already on the market.

[Sauced]

Good AI tends not to exist a lot in games because ...... it's really fucking hard to do good AI. 

Actually, no, good AI tends not to exist a lot in games because ..... it would make for some really fucking hard games to play.

[StGabe]

You can't "lead" the industry by selling stuff that won't sell.  You lead the industry by selling the stuff that will sell.  I.e. what consumers are buying.

Say Sony took this blogger's advice and decided, "to hell with graphics let's make sure we don't publish any games with crates in them instead".  Or whatever.  Do you think this would actually help them compete with XBox?  Uhhh, not really.  Their market IS very interested in and reached through graphics -- for better or worse.

Saying that consumers will never change is just being lazy.  I'll agree that by and large consumers suck.  But that doesn't prevent other markets from developing a niches for indie work and quality.  And more importantly the fact that consumers suck does not change the fact that asking EA to start making quality games is going to wrong end of the cash flow and accomplishes nothing.

"EA: Please make a game that will be less successful than the games that you are making now because I say I want it.  KTHX."

Gamers need to savvy up and start becoming immune to game hype, advertising, etc. and actually use their wallets to dictate where games are going to go.  Sites like this could help that along, or they could just sit back and talk about how stupid everyone is.  Instead of spending post after post talking about how stupid EA, et al is, why not spend a few posts trying to figure out how you could educate your fellow gamers as to how better to spend their cash?  How about reviewing a lot more indie games yourselves?  (yeah, I saw the one review -- do more)

If not then at least get the blame right.  Game developers do not create a demand for crappy products -- they fill it.  And if one company decides to stop filling it then they will simply be replaced by someone with less qualms about the whole thing.

Gabe.

[Samwise]

Good AI tends not to exist a lot in games because ...... it's really fucking hard to do good AI. 

Actually, no, good AI tends not to exist a lot in games because ..... it would make for some really fucking hard games to play.

"Good AI" doesn't necessarily mean "difficult to beat".  It usually means "behaving in a lifelike fashion".  Big difference.  And "behaving in a lifelike fashion" is really hard to pull off, especially for creatures/characters that are supposed to be as intelligent as humans, because AI isn't anywhere near that level yet.

[voodoolily]

  Game developers do not create a demand for crappy products -- they fill it. 

THis just sorta strengthens what Haemish said. THere hasta be a shift somewhere, and shifts like these NEVER come from the consumer. MAybe there needs to be a Gamer's Advocacy Group for this to happen, but it NEEDS TO HAPPEN. We (gamers) aren't all closet developers who give a shit about the intricasies of making this happen. You have to give us different choices if were are to make different choices.

"Good AI" doesn't necessarily mean "difficult to beat".  It usually means "behaving in a lifelike fashion".  Big difference. And "behaving in a lifelike fashion" is really hard to pull off, especially for creatures/characters that are supposed to be as intelligent as humans, because AI isn't anywhere near that level yet.

The author of the Manifesto made the very valid point that enemies in games are retarded, and only become difficult if a) there are a shitload of them and/or b)they have a million hit points. I personally like games with easy-to-kill baddies if the story is good enough (yes, I am one of THOSE people). For most of the people I know, however, the fun of gaming is vanquishing powerful foes. It might be difficult to engineer smarter foes, but it can't be that much harder than getting perfect hair that glistens in the sunlight or water that ripples in the breeze.

[Tale]

I'd like to see an evolution of the Skaarj and multiplayer bot AI from Unreal 1. All that ducking and weaving was amazing for its time and if it could be made to use cover and react to tactics, it would still be challenging. Bot team deathmatch in Unreal 1 is still fun.

[Sauced]

"Good AI" doesn't necessarily mean "difficult to beat".  It usually means "behaving in a lifelike fashion".  Big difference.  And "behaving in a lifelike fashion" is really hard to pull off, especially for creatures/characters that are supposed to be as intelligent as humans, because AI isn't anywhere near that level yet.

I suppose I'm nitpicking here, but I just think having NPCs acting with intelligent human behaviour would make games difficult.  It certainly depends on the game, but if you're up against, say, a military unit, maybe you don't want them having a really intelligent decision framework at their disposal.  You want them to run at you at shoot, occasionally ducking behind cover.  If they start flanking you, that's gonna get tough.

Anyways, yeah, lifelike AI is certainly difficult, but I don't think it's impossible.  You don't need to implement a true neural simulation to get "lifelike AI", just like you don't need to fully render every pixel of skin to get "lifelike graphics",  you use bumpmapping and lighting to create an illusion.  So, you use the current context to similar affect by determining what the character should be doing at any particular moment.  I'll certainly concede that it'll probably take offloading physics onto its own processor before enough cycles are left to do this really well, but I refuse to abandon all hope.  

I still don't think anyone would really want it - what people "should" want is AI that is as much a part of the immersion as the graphics or sound, so that characters behave in a fashion that fits the game world, which I think is certainly possible but might not get the love it could in most games, which is what I originally assumed this guy is whining about.

[Samwise]

It certainly depends on the game, but if you're up against, say, a military unit, maybe you don't want them having a really intelligent decision framework at their disposal.  You want them to run at you at shoot, occasionally ducking behind cover.  If they start flanking you, that's gonna get tough.

Oh no!  Not a tactical challenge!  Anything but THAT!   

Seriously, if my choices are between an enemy that's hard to beat because he has 10000 hit points but is dumb as a rock, and an enemy that's hard to beat because he's smart, I'll take the smart enemy.  Maybe if our video game enemies weren't as dumb as rocks, they wouldn't need to have 10000 hit points in order to present decent challenges.

[schild]

How about reviewing a lot more indie games yourselves?  (yeah, I saw the one review -- do more)

Reviews:
Gish
Stella Deus
Darwinia
Puzzle Pirates
DAOC 1.71
Riddick, questionably indy
Starport

Interviews:
Claus Grovdal of Razorwax
Aaron Hunter of Playtechtonics

In other words. Shove it up your ass.

[Sauced]

Man, my post-fu is weak these days.  Rusty.  What the hell are we talking about?  I suppose what I wrote above sounds like I'd like a pass on hard games, so I'll just correct that here.  The scenario you just described?  I'm all for it.

I'm just playing devil's advocate, mostly.  I'd just as soon play a game with really challenging AI that had "sub par" graphics, cause I'm nowhere near a graphics whore, but I think that puts me in the minority.

[Yoru]

It might be difficult to engineer smarter foes, but it can't be that much harder than getting perfect hair that glistens in the sunlight or water that ripples in the breeze.

 To nitpick, yes, it is that much harder to make a machine exhibit human-like behaviors - in essence, to pass the Turing test - than to do graphical work. Graphics engines are essentially computational models of geometry and optics, both of which is something we understand very well in terms of mathematics. You can easily do perfect hair that glistens in the sunlight - just not in real time (quite yet).

We do not, however, have a great mathematical model of the thinking mind. We have some inroads - machine learning, computer vision, knowledge/expert systems - but we can't combine these in real-time into anything that someone would describe as cunning. Instead, it's simpler for programmers to put in what is, in essence, a very large if-then-else decision tree that instructs the foe what to do. The bigger and more detailed the tree, the "smarter" the AI can appear to act; however, that's a far cry from computational cogitation.

And that's leaving aside all questions of budget, managerial assessment of contributions to product quality, etc.

[voodoolily]

I'm not asking anyone to build me a goddamned robot with which I may do battle. I'm just saying, maybe enemies can employ a dodge better than the old bob-and-weave. Or can hide. Or can see me coming and decide to NOT jump out in front of me.

[Jeff Kelly]

Hmm.  So far this guy doesn't seem to really know what the hell he's talking about.

What he knows or doesn't know is irrelevant to the discussion at hand, because he isn't talking about technology but about what he (and most passionate gamers I know) actually want to see in a game. It may not be possible to do in its full glory today, but as far as I am concerned it is good that somebody actually takes the time to talk about it.

Good AI tends not to exist a lot in games because ...... it's really fucking hard to do good AI.

This depends on your definition of AI. Real AI (neural nets and the like) is hard to do (most algorithms are np-complete) is only applicable for special kinds of problems (like pattern recognition) and research on it has stalled for the last fifteen years. Yeah you won't be getting something like that soon. This doesn't excuse developers from creating games where your computer controlled opponents are ussually dumb as shit.

Especially when there are games out there which did it right with today's technology. Look at Operation Flashpoint for example. It is a game with a fairly good computer AI and actually makes the game a challenging experience. Look at fps  like Unreal Tournament where the bots are very well crafted and can be a challenge even for an experienced player and compare that to Half Life 2 or Doom, where the only tactic of your opponents is zerg rushing you. Doom 3 can be played by a retarded monlkey without a problem.

Also, there isn't really anything about the architechture of the PS3 (as revealed thus far) that would preclude good AI.  Some fanboi on the other side of the fence could just as easily rave about how the new architechture is more similar to the layout of the brain and will lead to awesome AI (an equally dubious conclusion).

They left out branch prediction and out-of-order execution for the PS3 and the X-Box 360 to make the chips cheaper to produce, which means that every type of code which relies heavily on branching will run like shit on those platforms because every time you branch you have to wait until your pipeline is empty. Also those processors have very large pipelines in order to make those 3.2 GHz possible (20 to 30 steps). This hampers performance of AI code which, in its nature, is highly branching.

If you talk about graphics processing then it was a smart move because graphics code doesn't rely very much on those functions. So in some way they have sacrificed functionality to get higher clock speeds and improve graphics performance.

Jeff

[Ironwood]

Didn't anyone play half-life ?  There we had AI that was difficult and challenging while still retaining the proper 'scope' of the game.  There were soldiers - trained soldiers who were designed to operate as a team.  They did so.  It was impressive.

For those who say we don't want a challenge or we don't want anything to be 'too hard', I disagree.  The first time the grunts in HL pinned me down on two fronts with fire and then I heard 'Fire in the Hole' (didn't know what it was at the time), I wasn't disgusted they beat me, I wasn't dissapointed they were clever and I wasn't unhappy at those stupid developers RUINING MY LIFE.

I was ecstatic.  I was truly, truly entertained.  And I knew I was gonna play again and ROAST those fuckers.


(and then HL2 came out and it was about the engine and the shiny.  There was no a single crumb of intelligence anywhere.  My dreams fall like tears on broken glass in the silence.)

[Trippy]

Also, there isn't really anything about the architechture of the PS3 (as revealed thus far) that would preclude good AI.  Some fanboi on the other side of the fence could just as easily rave about how the new architechture is more similar to the layout of the brain and will lead to awesome AI (an equally dubious conclusion).

They left out branch prediction and out-of-order execution for the PS3 and the X-Box 360 to make the chips cheaper to produce, which means that every type of code which relies heavily on branching will run like shit on those platforms because every time you branch you have to wait until your pipeline is empty. Also those processors have very large pipelines in order to make those 3.2 GHz possible (20 to 30 steps). This hampers performance of AI code which, in its nature, is highly branching.

The branch mispredict penalty in the PS3 Cell SPE units is a relatively hefty 18 cycles even though those have a short pipeline. On the other hand there are 7 of them running at once so assuming the one that's reloading isn't holding a lock on some critical piece of data your game isn't going to come to a screeching halt. The branch mispredict penalty on the main PPE unit is only 8 clock cycles even though it has a relatively deep pipeline and the PPE also supports dual thread executation so if one thread stalls because of a miss the other thread can run at full speed while the other one reloads. Also dynamic branch prediction and out-of-order execution are relatively new developments in CPU architecture design so it's not like a CPU without these things totally falls apart. People have called the SPE design in the Cell a simplified PPC601 and if you assume that heavily branching code ran like crap on those things back in the day then something like the Macintosh UI would've never run properly on the early PowerMacs. Actually, you might have a point there.  :-D

[HaemishM]

You can't "lead" the industry by selling stuff that won't sell.  You lead the industry by selling the stuff that will sell.  I.e. what consumers are buying.

The industry provides the choices. The industry big boys have decided that ONLY stuff that sells well is going to get made. Consumers only choices at the point of purchase is rehashed shit and shinier rehashed shit. What are they going to buy? For awhile, they will buy rehashed shit, and even shinier rehashed shit. But eventually, they might get tired of rehashed shit and stop buying, or buy in smaller numbers. But they won't do that as a conscious entity because consumers who are not "plugged in" don't do that sort of thing. Most consumers aren't informed, and don't want to be. Thus, consumer advocacy groups that do things like calling for boycotts and such have minimal impact on the market.

If the industry won't provide new choices, the industry will choke itself.

Say Sony took this blogger's advice and decided, "to hell with graphics let's make sure we don't publish any games with crates in them instead".  Or whatever.  Do you think this would actually help them compete with XBox?  Uhhh, not really.  Their market IS very interested in and reached through graphics -- for better or worse.

But I'm not saying don't make good graphics, I'm saying that don't make good graphics first and only priority. Games sell ultimately on GAMEPLAY, not graphics. Graphics draw you in, gameplay hooks you.

Saying that consumers will never change is just being lazy.  I'll agree that by and large consumers suck.  But that doesn't prevent other markets from developing a niches for indie work and quality.  And more importantly the fact that consumers suck does not change the fact that asking EA to start making quality games is going to wrong end of the cash flow and accomplishes nothing.

We're not talking about niches. There is no console game niche. You either sell at the retail outlet or you don't sell. PC games need to realize they are a niche and develop that, but that doesn't mean complete withdrawing from the retail outlet, which is what you are talking about with other markets.

"EA: Please make a game that will be less successful than the games that you are making now because I say I want it.  KTHX."

I'm not talking to EA. EA is the problem. They wouldn't listen to me anyway, and what would be the point of that? We know who EA listens to. EA is also not an indy developer. They are the tail following the dog. The dog is led by the developers, the people who make the products.

Gamers need to savvy up and start becoming immune to game hype, advertising, etc. and actually use their wallets to dictate where games are going to go.  Sites like this could help that along, or they could just sit back and talk about how stupid everyone is.  Instead of spending post after post talking about how stupid EA, et al is, why not spend a few posts trying to figure out how you could educate your fellow gamers as to how better to spend their cash?  How about reviewing a lot more indie games yourselves?  (yeah, I saw the one review -- do more)

There have been no less than 3 indy game reviews on the front page of this site in the last 3 weeks. One by me, and 2 by Samwise. I don't do many reviews because I don't play a lot of games. 

If not then at least get the blame right.  Game developers do not create a demand for crappy products -- they fill it.  And if one company decides to stop filling it then they will simply be replaced by someone with less qualms about the whole thing.

Yes, game developers DO create a demand for crappy products. It's called hype and advertising. Or did you not just say that gamers need to stop following hype and advertising? Why should they if the developers are not using hype and advertising to get players to buy games? You said hype and advertising are making gamers buy shitty games, which means that a demand IS being created. They both create demand and fill demand. That's what marketing is, creating demand.

[Pococurante]

You can't "lead" the industry by selling stuff that won't sell.  You lead the industry by selling the stuff that will sell.  I.e. what consumers are buying.

The industry provides the choices.

Agreed.

Gabe you do realize how young your industry is right?  It was only four years ago that there was no such thing as a sure thing in MOG offerings.  Senior entertainment execs discounted the video game entirely just three years ago and are still highly skeptical about MOGs.

You've got this bizarre belief that everything that can be known about a seven year old industry is now known.  Marketing consultants are rarely visionaries they're mostly about bi-monthly cash flow, and business executives highly risk-averse and more focused on the next big hit for promotion.  It's always the outer edges that innovate.

If that's your point, the big houses will always derivate and middle tier innovates... cool say as much.  Corporations have lifecycles too.

This is a community that doesn't give a rat's ass about what "everyone knew" last year.  We're your free focus group.

[Jobu]

You can't "lead" the industry by selling stuff that won't sell.  You lead the industry by selling the stuff that will sell.  I.e. what consumers are buying.

If the industry won't provide new choices, the industry will choke itself.

The truth is somewhere between the both of you. The indsutry has provided new choices. Beyond Good & Evil, The Longest Journey, The Sims, Grand Theft Auto (which until recently had been fresh and new), Toontown, Planetside, Ico, Amplitude, blah blah blah. All these games were different and unique, or just plain fun when they came out. Some of them were huge successes, others just languished on the shelf despite glowing reviews. You can't discount the whole catalogue of games released in the past 10 years so easily.

You also can't expect companies to work in some kind of crazy, Willy Wonka world where they sing and dance all day making bizarro games that are new. There are limits (such as, say, bankruptcy) that will force them to make games that they think have some chance of breaking even. Sure, Polka Accordion Zombie Dance Revolution might be really fun and fresh. But who's gonna buy a fucking game with polka in it? Not as many as, say, Hip-Hop Zombie Dance Revolution. Yeah, that was a shitty analogy, but I'm impatient and want to finish this post off.

A genre that I think works well for this argument is the WWII shooter. I played Call of Duty when it came out, it was pretty cool. Hooray for fun. Then every company started cranking out more and more. I yawned, and largely ignored them. Not my cup of tea, really. But just 10 feet from me, are 3 or 4 coworkers who eat that shit up. Not because they're stupid, or because they're trained into being mindless consumers by EA. They just LIKE WWII shooters, and they'll buy them all. They too complain that they're largely the same, but they don't give a shit. Running around on Omaha Beach killing Nazi's is fun for them. Any game that offers that experience to them, even if it's just with shinier Nazi belt buckles, satisfies them as gamers. We're all gamers, we all just want to have fun experiences.

[HaemishM]

But how long can the companies sustain WWII Shooter clones? Ask the SSI, the makers of great turn-based strategy games that churned out tons of good and bad TBS. OH, you can't, they are gone, because they got slapped by the newness of RTS games. Now RTS is getting churned out left and right, with almost no change to the formula, and sales on non-licensed stuff... not so good. The markets are cyclical, and the problem with the industry as it is comes from the industry acting like all successes are infinitely sustainable through repetition. I'm not even sure Madden's juggernaut of yearly repetition is sustainable, and sports fans have shown a rabid willingness to buy the same game with new stats every year.

No, innovative won't always be successful, and there are lots of factors for it. But the industry as a whole, and at the individual level, needs to realize that the current path leads to really, really bad things, especially for the PC gaming industry.

[Jain Zar]

I don't buy RTS games, and hardly any FPS titles.  They all play the same and suck in almost exactly the same way.  What was a breath of fresh air circa 92-96 is now tired and annoying, especially since OMG MULTIPLAYER SAVES ALL seems to be the only point of the fuckin things.

Remember back in the NES days where almost every single game was some damned side scrolling jump and fight where you had to save some girl who was usually a princess?  Remember how ANNOYING it was?  Then the same thing happened in the early 16 bit era with shooters since it seemed to have the same saturation on the Genesis/TG16 as platformers did on the NES.  Those genres are basically dead now because they were oversaturated.  Shooters have also made the mistake of only selling the things to shooter fans, becoming harder and harder to the point no average person will even make it through the first bullet strewn level.  But "preaching to the choir" games is a topic I can get on some other time in this thread.

The problem is for the last 10 years its the same small set of genres that really own the marketplace and people really are getting tired of it, some faster than others.  The console RPGs keep making their anime kiddie stories with the same basic gameplay, random combat, and utter lack of control over anything of import in the game.  FPS games are still kill everything, open switches, and sometimes stealth/enviromental puzzles.  RTS is still an action game where you build bases, collect resources at a certain hot point every other player uses, and send Zerg rushes all as fast as you can memorize hotkeys and tech tree build orders.  Racers are racers, but now its in a Fast and Furious wanna be ricer mode mostly.  Sports games still have a degenerate strategy that turns the computer stupid and mostly still play like the 16 bit titles cept prettier and Madden has more crap to spew.  3d Action/Adventure games still mostly play like NES action adventures cept in 3d with creepy incest cutscenes and camera angles that are still obnoxious and irritating.  Oh, and the dumb dialog is now because the creators are insane instead of just translated by some Japanese studies dropout who needed money for weed and Cheetos.  MMORPGs are still all mostly variations on Everquest, designed by people with no life, the ability to be easily amused, and a fetish for Elves.

And that is pretty much the main game genres out there.   Its tiresome.