• 1Jun 09

  Game industry shifts

  Following some very exciting news releases from the Microsoft Press Conference, were some thoughts about the game industry and the trends or shifts they go through. Some of these seem to be negative, but I'll try to keep my ending thoughts more positive.

  Forza 3 has been announced with some schnazzy new additions to the game. One thing I noticed while they were showing off what you can make with the video editor were the cars drifting. Forza 2 did not really allow for any drifting, whether it be physics engine limitations, or that cars featured in Forza 2 at the speeds attempted simply cannot drift. As any real race car driver knows drifting is significantly slower around 99.9% of corners (I give that percentage because absolutely small hairpin turns help with drifting) than a car with a decent set of tires not drifting. My worry about Forza 3 is a game industry shift towards drifting: it's simply not a logically faster way of racing. It looks cool, burns tires (money), and leaves debris on the track and that's about it. The emphasis here is in the cool aspect (I also like to call it the BAMF aspect). That has historically been the majority shift in games. I hope Forza 3 can manage a realistic racing environment while adding a realistic drifting aspect (I admit it is fun to get my girlfriend's Rx7 sideways on the course and pull out of it, but unfortunately I am also losing time on my lap).

  Another cool aspect: consoles. I love consoles. I have a PS3 and an Xbox 360. Yet, I also have a PC for those mind blowing games that come out that can only be run on PCs. Our most recent example: Crysis. Can you guys hear it coming? Yes, I love Crysis. It may not have the best gameplay or story, but that was not what was touted about Crysis. Crysis was a technologically advanced game and it still is (this is including Crysis Warhead, but they both run on the same engine, so I'll just mention Crysis here). Here's why it is still the most advanced game: Consolification. Consolification is the adoption of a game series historically made for the PC, like the Unreal series. Many multi-platform adoption games have failed. Unreal Tournament 3 is the most recent (how many people play UT 3 online? Only a handful sadly enough). UT 3 failed across the board on all platforms. Why? Because time and budget was spent more on cross-platforming than gameplay. This is a simple business model: $2 million budgeted for a game for the PC. To multi-platform it takes a significant amount of money and time away from the budget to hire additional staff to program, test, and market on consoles. Now you have less than $2 million to spend on the PC version. Depending on how you budget things, you may now only have $1 million going towards PC and $500,000 going towards the 360 and PS3. What business sense does that make if you are to keep a great game great if you spend less money of each of its components? I know the answer, it is name-brand marketing and the law of sequels (or prequels, or whichever number it is in a series): people will buy a game based on its previous name without even looking at reviews or taking into account what others have to say about it. FEAR 2 is an example of why companies keep sticking with this. FEAR 2 is nothing like when FEAR first came out. Silly scare tactics were not used to try and scare the panties off you ever minute like in FEAR 2. Without going into much detail, FEAR 2 was a let down for previous FEAR players. Yet, because of the incredible marketing and blind buyers, FEAR 2 sold fairly well (unlike UT 3). FEAR 2 does not leave a legacy like FEAR, and instead leaves a bad taste in the mouth of FEAR lovers. Now coming back to Crysis, Crysis 2 was announced as a multiplatform. We all saw it coming with Cryengine 3. Crytek is not touting Cryengine 3 to be an incredible revolution in gaming graphics or physics, but allows for adoption onto consoles. Will Crysis 2 offer the same graphical greatness of Crysis/Crysis Warhead on the PC version? Less greatness? Or will there be a small bar pushed up on graphics on the PC version? Most likely no change in visuals. Let us hope Crysis 2 will offer incredible texture resolution like its predecessors if not more instead of less.

  Single player games made multiplayer. Same logic here as used in consolification: if you have a set budget amount to make a singleplayer game and decide to make it multiplayer, the budget once again gets spread out and diminishes the experience on what made a single player game great. Any Final Fantasy fans reading this will know about Final Fantasy XI. The worst possible way to destroy a single player series is to make it MMORPG. To understand this, we need to look further into what makes single player games great: the story! How hard was that? Sure MMORPG's may have stories, but where is the character development? Where is the story progression? People love these single player games because of the story. Adding a multiplayer component detracts from that experience. Why ruin a series to make it multiplayer? Why not create a different game for MMORPG or multiplayer? With that said, please oh please let Bioshock 2 be unharmed. Some games were created with a single player and multiplayer component that were great, but inherently single player games made to have a multiplayer experience detract from the original focus of the series, which is usually an excellent story.

  To the gaming industry: please look to innovation, not cash cows made from incredible games of previous generations. The gaming industry looks towards popular movements and thoughts in consumer behavior. How else do they get their data than from sales figures? Not much else. Hopefully my blog and others can all together amass to show the gaming industry that we like our previously great games and to make them better, not "cooler" or cash cows. Use some other IP to create a cash cow. Halo is a great example of how to take new IP to be a "cool cash cow." Readers, do not get me wrong, I love my good PGR style BAMF games, I love my console games, and I love my MMORPGS and multiplayer games, but when game developers try to make a game something it is not, the original attraction making a great game great starts to be blurred away. Game shifts is how the industry works, why not keep great games in their individual great essences?

  -Phatmista

  p.s.-These are my opinions based on experiences. I am not looking for fights, if you disagree with me, you have every right to disagree with me and I have every right to state my opinion and disagree with you. In respect to what games are good and not good, everyone has different tastes and you can like UT 3 or FEAR 2. I liked both, but there were some major problems with them both detracting from a much greater experience the both of them could have had.

  • Posted Jun 1, 2009 2:21 pm PT
  • Category: Games
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