http://beepsandboops.com/2012/08/video-games-are-stupid/ (http://beepsandboops.com/2012/08/video-games-are-stupid/)
For someone who subtitled his book “Why Video Games Matter,” Tom Bissell spends much of his time in Extra Lives discussing why many games, in fact, matter very little. The book is ostensibly about why video games are sophisticated vessels of creativity. Bissell makes a compelling argument, but must overcome one major hurdle: namely, that video games often, if not always, fall short of real sophistication.
Torment’s cumbersome combat system ranges from terrible to extremely terrible. The user interface is unkind, and the game’s quest tracking is spotty, leaving inattentive gamers scratching their heads as to the location of some critical NPC. But the game coasts along on the strength of its massive 800,000 word script and lengthy sections which are better compared to the puzzling fetch-quests of adventure games than to hack-and-slash dungeon crawls. You can play for hours without lifting a battleaxe. Many obstacles can be overcome with an insightful dialog choice if you’d rather avoid physical combat, and in fact you gain vastly more experience by navigating dialog trees than slaying monsters.
Designers today are not looking into some indeterminate future where we have finally overcome the limitations of the medium; they’re making games right now that they could have made decades ago.
The biggest limitation in a medium like this is not realizing the potential you can use, so even if they could have made those games decades ago, the fact that they didn't was itself a limitation, and one that they're now overcoming.They're not overcoming anything, the free-market sells to the lowest common denominator.
Does entertainment need to be profound in order to be fun - or worthwhile?Yes. Thank you for asking.
Languge...Language? What about my disagreeable nature and offensive wit?
They're not overcoming anything, the free-market sells to the lowest common denominator, you want something more interesting you have to look between the cracks. I'd be more likely to find the next best game from an indie developer than these a******s.
And are indie developers not designers?I didn't mean to imply that they weren't.
There are definitely issues with the big names focusing more on tried-and-true formulae than on sophisticated innovation...but that's not an issue with "designers" as a whole. (As for why they do it that way, it's because big high-graphics games are expensive to make, and they don't want to risk a bust. The real question is why they don't produce indie-style games in addition to the big stuff...)
The way I see it, is that game designers will not be truly free until the ART outweighs the PROFIT.Any ideas how that can be done? Is there some pragmatic model short of finding a rich and mellow patron like it was the Renaissance except for the mellow part?
How many times has anyone here gotten hopes up for a game only to have it turn out utterly horrible?Hope is the refuge of fools.
Or it can be done the Dominions way.The way I see it, is that game designers will not be truly free until the ART outweighs the PROFIT.Any ideas how that can be done?