Silkworm on 26/10/2008 at 03:21
Quote Posted by Chade
If you want to make a change to a game, the cost of that change includes everything that will come packaged with it.
Fine, but for the last time, the costs of that "package" are NOT DUE TO GAMEPLAY CHANGES.
This is a very simple point. A developer providing an "arcade" mode and a "hardcore" mode takes no more resources than a mod team doing it, in fact much less, since developers have access to actual source code and intimately know the properties of the game they are making. More importantly, making a hardcore mod does not require that you actually change game (media) assets at all (with the admitted exception of level design). SS1 isn't the only game that has done this, the classic shmup Tyrian from 1994 has "Arcade" and "classic" modes as well.
In fact the very concept of the "difficulty" mode which has been in games since the 80's, is proof of my argument. All we are asking for is an expansion and elaboration on the "easy" and "hard" modes most games already offer. I don't buy your excuse that resources are too scarce for this to be done.
Quote Posted by Papy
Editing tools will cost a lot more (they obviously can't give away anything under license so they would have to create them) and are also mostly useless for changing fundamental gameplay aspects.
Quote Posted by Papy
Most developers now use 3rd party softwares under license (sometimes modified to suit their needs) to create their own games. They can't release those so, yes, they would have to create a new set of tools JUST for fans.
Actually, both the Unreal and idTech technologies all allow developers to release their tools. What other core engine technologies exist that are licensed? (Obviously if the company owns the license than there's no issue, they can simply release the tools they used ie Oblivion)
In virtually every case I can think of, it would be in the developers and the players best interest just to release the tools with the games; while that's not quite as good as developers designing games right in the 1st place, its definitely better than nothing (ie BioShock).
Quote Posted by Papy
As for a "code" editor, if you mean by that having the possibility to add a few scripts here and there, this is not enough to do anything meaningful. You need access to the source code.
Unless I'm interpreting what you're saying here incorrectly, the entire history of mods for games shows this to be completely false. The source code for Half Life 2, Unreal Tournament, Quake and its sequels were not available in the golden era of mods for those games (id releases its sources usually about 5 years after the games come out) and yet thousands of mods were released for them, some of which changed the game completely. The source code is not available for SS2, and that game still has a mod scene. I could list hundreds of examples that contradict your point unless...
Perhaps you meant "SDK" by "source code," in which case yeah your right, but the vast majority of popular games are released with SDKs and they're no problem (SDKs are the compilable source codes to the gameplay only, without graphics, sound, multiplayer or system code. When people talk about "source code" they usually mean the source to everything.)
Papy on 26/10/2008 at 08:38
DDL : I'm pretty much certain the number of people who killed Page at Versalife the first time they played Deus Ex is close to zero. Same thing for lam climbing. Those are really unnatural ways to play and only happen with someone who is more on trying everything possible rather than simply playing the game. If someone fuck the game playing that way, I simply don't view this as a problem. As for the tunnel, testing two paths instead of just one is not something that would require a lot of resources (particularly considering beta-testers are paid with peanuts) . It was obviously a fault from the person managing beta-testing, but in the end this is just a bug that was overlooked, as there is in about every game. One thing is for sure, I will forgive a bug once in a while, but I won't forgive a dumbed down game. I think the bug ridden Arx Fatalis was a good game, while the relatively bug free Oblivion was crap.
As for how the actual demographics break down, no one knows and it is changing very fast anyway. The ESA percentage of under 18 years old players for 2005 was 35%, for 2008 it is 25%. That's an enormous change in 3 years. I'm guessing a lot is due to the Wii, but i doubt that's the only reason. I believe the actual demographics is mainly the result of what is available, not the result of demand. Video games are not an essential need, so if someone find no games interesting he will simply find something else to do and forget about video games. I buy a lot less games now than in 1990, but that's simply because I now find very few games interesting. That means actual demographics numbers are pretty much useless. (And by the way, I play most story based games only once, Deus Ex is about the only exception, and I think a 15 hours game is more than enough to justify a $50 price tag. I always believed it was kids who played games to the death.)
To me, there are only two questions which should be important : how many people loved Deus Ex (particularly how many would be displeased with a dumbed down sequel) and how much would it cost to make an additional gameplay mode which would be similar to the original. For now, it looks like Deus Ex 3 will be another IW (or worse) and if this doesn't change, I won't buy it. How many people are like me?
Chade : If an FPS player, after playing the tutorial of thief, which is extremely explicit, still don't get it, this is not a "psychology" problem, this is an intelligence problem. Of course, I would understand that someone might not be interested with a gameplay like the one of Thief (there are a lot of games for which I have absolutely no interest) and, because of that, would still try to get an FPS out of the game, but this has nothing to do with a lack of experience or because of "deep design patterns" learned.
Silkworm : There were a lot of things I wanted to change with Oblivion. In fact, there was a time when I wanted to create a small adventure. Unfortunately, the SDK didn't give me access to important variables or functions. To make a simple character leveling up mod I had to use ugly hacks and in the end I did what I could instead of what I wanted. The SDK was simply not enough.
Chade on 27/10/2008 at 05:38
Quote Posted by Silkworm
In fact the very concept of the "difficulty" mode which has been in games since the 80's, is proof of my argument. All we are asking for is an expansion and elaboration on the "easy" and "hard" modes most games already offer. I don't buy your excuse that resources are too scarce for this to be done.
What was originally asked for was a game targetted to both hardcore and casual gamers. This is not the same thing as having different difficulty levels. This is asking for two fundamentally different types of games to be packaged up as one.
Quote Posted by Papy
If an FPS player, after playing the tutorial of thief, which is extremely explicit, still don't get it, this is not a "psychology" problem, this is an intelligence problem.
You know, I remember arguing with somebody a while back about what I saw as limitations in the tutorial and first levels of thief 1. It might have even been you ... ?
Anyway, this is yet another huge potential argument which I don't really want to get fully into right at the moment.
Papy on 28/10/2008 at 10:57
Argument? The first time I played Thief, it was a friend who gave me his CD (among a few others) during christmas. I didn't know anything about the game before and the only thing my friend said was this was a great game without anything else. I did the tutorial and it was more than enough to understand what the game was about. I didn't need to read some hints on the internet nor had to replay the game several times (I finished the game in a single session).
So there's no argument possible there (unless you think I'm some kind of genius :cheeky: ).
Edit : forgot to say, Thief was obviously the first game of its genre I played.
DDL on 28/10/2008 at 11:06
Might depend on your inherent natural playing style too, though: I'm naturally more methodical and careful in my playstyle, so it usually takes me quite a while to get used to the "mindless shooter" mindset when playing games designed that way. Spend the first hour or two doing far too much 'crouching, hiding and sniping' than I do 'charging in and maiming in bullet time', or whatever.
So just because you found the gameplay of Thief to be both well implemented and conveyed to the player adequately, there may be many people out there who still get stuck in "SHOOT EVERYTHING, LOUDLY" mode for a while.
heywood on 28/10/2008 at 13:28
Quote Posted by Chade
What was originally asked for was a game targetted to both hardcore and casual gamers. This is not the same thing as having different difficulty levels. This is asking for two fundamentally different types of games to be packaged up as one.
Are you trying to say that a hybrid game will never appeal to casual gamers?
Chade on 28/10/2008 at 21:42
Well, DX is a good example. Each "playstyle" of DX, taken strictly by itself, is poorly implemented compared to other games focussing on that playstyle alone. DX works as a hybrid game because giving the player a choice of playstyles, and being able to switch or mix playstyles on the fly, more then makes up for this.
(Also, "this is an action game but not an intense one", and "this is a stealth game but violence is always lurking around the corner", really suits the Deus Ex vibe.)
This is a bit different to that though. Games don't get bonus points because I can switch to and from being a dumbass on the fly.
EDIT:
Quote Posted by Papy
unless you think I'm some kind of genius
Hey, why not? ;)
heywood on 29/10/2008 at 17:09
I was referring to the genre, not the play style. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Deux Ex was a hybrid FPS/RPG/adventure game.
What I'm trying to figure out is why you think a DX type game can't appeal to both hardcore and casual gamers. It's certainly not a matter of difficulty; I think that notion has been thoroughly refuted in this thread. Difficulty can be scaled, various sorts of optional player aids can be included, etc. Also, there are many FPSs, RPGs, and adventure games that successfully appealed to casual gamers and sold in huge numbers, so I don't think any of these elements alone are necessarily a problem for casual gamers. So what else is there, aside from the possibility that a hybrid game that crosses the boundaries between game genres would be unappealing to the casual fans of those genres?
Myagi on 29/10/2008 at 20:00
I think the type of hybrids we're talking about here, DX, SS and other slow* paced deeper games, need a bigger investement from the player. I mean in terms of involvement, patience and so on. That in itself is a contradiction to "casual", and doesn't sit well with the ADD crowd (aka mass market aka focus group). Pardon me, let me rephrase it less inflamatory, the stressed out family/working person who might want to casually sit his ass on the couch with his console and mindlessly blow up some stuff for 15 minutes, before he has to go do some other stuff again.
* as we could see by the DX3 lead designer quotes from Edge, slow is apparently bad m'kay, aswell as simulation. Player centric design is the mass market mantra, see Bioshock, and that type design conflicts heavily with the design our old favorites are based around. Which is why I think it's hard to make a game that fully pleases both parties. Not only do you need two code paths for the "simpler" gameplay stuff, which might seem as not that much work, you would also need two design paths which conflict with eachother to boot, which affect a broader range of things from level design, scripted events to AI systems and whatnot.
Chade on 29/10/2008 at 21:40
The difficulty, as I see it, is getting the mainstream gamer to appreciate what is cool about DX. Or rather: doing that at the same time as providing an experience suited to the hardcore player.
A number of problems:
Firstly, people tend not to choose appropriate difficulties (apparantly the majority of players go for the middle difficulty irrespective of skill, which is why game designers are so interested in the idea of automatically changing game difficulty during play time).
Secondly, I'm not really sold on the use of handholding in a DX game. What path to hold the players hand along? If they do follow that specific path, won't they miss out on the prime appeal of DX (to me - choice)? If they don't go along that path, then clearly it won't provide any benefits. How sensitive will the validity of that path be to any changes the player might make (e.g., path asks player to choose GEP gun, but player chooses mini crossbow. When the path asks the player to get in through the front door, the player gets screwed). Any sort of hand holding is probably going to either be quite advanced (and a lot of work), or involve making DX much more linear and tractable.
Exploration. A significant number of people will by nature go straight to the objectives and get screwed. How to communicate to players that this is both an action game and an exploration game. How to do that without getting in the face of more experienced players? Do you need to gradually ramp up the exploration (start with a few required rooms of to the side, then build up)? Will this piss off existing players?
Ok, I could say more, but I need to go. I'm sure that will give you plenty to disagree with for the moment. :)
