Half-Life Fallout: The Soapbox - Half-Life Fallout

Lyndon, on Jun 20 2008, 05:52 PM, said:

Never said the world was an equal place.

And you don't have to be naturally talented to be good at something, it helps of course. But if you're intrests are in that field and you have the drive to work on it, you should still be able to be good at it. And it may sound cliche, but I have found that people often have they're own specialties and you have to know how to use those.

I do acknowledge that there are certain people out there, who are just much better than others. But to say that games are mediocre today, because most people making games aren't those extraordinarily skilled is nonsense. Especially since team these days the teams are just too large for that to be the primary or even significant factor.

I think the biggest problem is quality control vs. deadline. A lot of touches and things that could have made a game better slip through, because they have to get the game to the publisher. And the lack of time again comes from the fact that games are more complex and larger nowadays.

Games are getting blander because you're getting older. It happens.

That too. Everything seemed awesome when I was little. Now everything seems.... hmm.... "meh whatever"

Berrie, on Jun 20 2008, 07:04 PM, said:

Agreed

Berrie, on Jun 20 2008, 07:04 PM, said:

Definitely. Take a film like Fifth Element, that's got some of the best art direction I've ever seen in a movie, and that's because they spent a year just doing concept art for that film. Games of today, are rushed so fast that the artists don't have time to allow their work to evolve into something new. Instead they only have time to mix and match proven cliches.

I like a Abraham Lincoln quote "If I have 4 hours to cut a tree, ill spend the first 3 sharpening the axe"

Most game companies start programming and developing waaaaay too early.

Regardless though, I still believe that the companies also hire far too under trained artists. I was offered a spot in game art straight out of college, I turned it down because I didn't want to join the industry until my fine art skills and fundamentals were mastered, but a lot of my friends at school did take the jobs, and they are definitely talented but don't have the experience to produce anything other then mediocre work.

Lyndon, on Jun 20 2008, 04:01 PM, said:

The most important part of any game is the basic mechanics. Those need to be tested and refined as early as possible in development. Most likely the original ideas will be heavily modified or completely changed for the better by the end of development.

You're almost on the right track with your point though. Most companies don't have the time and budget to refine the art style until its as good as it can be. Companies like Valve do though and thats why they can develop brilliant games like Team Fortress 2 over a course of many years and many iterations.

PhilE21, on Jun 20 2008, 04:08 PM, said:

And take as much time as they need to get things as close to perfect as possible.

Cake21, on Jun 20 2008, 10:20 AM, said:

I meant for the PC too... I played the old hitman games they were great, but the latest one had nothing new to offer, it still felt kinda clunky. When we have games like GoW that are so fluid, I expect other games to have similarly fluid controls (not the same controls, the same amount of effort making them work well)

Lyndon, on Jun 20 2008, 12:52 PM, said:

I dunno if you're dense, or a good troll.

First, game companies were far closer to the show Code Monkeys, than whatever world you live in.

Second, being a 'top dog' doesn't mean you're 'smart'. You're lumping a myriad of skills and and types, and going by the poorly designed IQ system. Guess what, I'm a genius, not by an online test but an actual administered one. You wanna know how I did in school by only looking at my grades? Poorly. I had to take an exam to get credit for English I and II, and AP US Gov. Well F, that blows you're narrow scale of smart and stupid out of the water.

It's not back and white, it's not even many shades of gray, it's the damn color spectrum.

Lyndon, on Jun 20 2008, 03:01 PM, said:

The real problem is the majority of the companies follow a rough business model. Make game, find publisher, sell game, or have deal with publisher, make game/make game they tell us to, sell game.


In a traditional distribution model, you're going to have a very hard time pulling off anything good. Id is a good example of what people need to be doing now. Make a game and distribute online... Steam's a huge help in that area.

Inspector *******, on Jun 20 2008, 10:14 AM, said:

By "mediocre" you seem to be referring to games that just don't appeal to you, which doesn't mean they're really mediocre. Games like Halo 3, BioShock, Orange Box, Mass Effect, R6 Vegas etc. aren't mediocre by any stretch of the imagination.

Most likely you're just getting bored of games.

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Baldur's Gate implemented dialogue choices and other features that Mass Effect has way back in 1998, and it obviously wasn't even the first game to feature dialogue choices. Many of the features in Mass Effect are a result of ten years of refinement (BG, BG II, KotOR, NWN, Jade Empire). Dialogue choices are as much of a gimmick as shooting guns.

Lyndon, on Jun 20 2008, 05:04 PM, said:

Mediocre and crappy games have always existed. I gather that you never watch Angry Video Game Nerd. The video game industry wasn't populated by some geniuses in the early eighties, they were mere mortals just like today, with some people standing out more than others. I would venture to guess that crappy games were actually more prevalent in those days. Making games is very expensive now, and it's not necessarily easy to get people to buy a shoddy game since the market is flooded by different titles and word gets around fast.

On Metacritic, there are only 38 games rated lower than 50 for the 360. 164 games out of 400 are rated 75 or more.

Cake21, on Jun 20 2008, 05:47 PM, said:

A mouse is superior to a gamepad but that doesn't mean that gamepads don't work.

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In my experience the 360 gamepad is far superior to a mouse and keyboard except for aiming. It's just a lot more comfortable and intuitive to use. R6V, for instance, has very complicated controls which work flawlessly once you get the hang of them.

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I don't have any significant problems hitting things without autoaim. Maybe you need to practise more.

Lyndon, on Jun 20 2008, 08:52 PM, said:

You don't have to be God's gift to humanity in order to contribute to a game, especially if you're just doing modelling or level designing.

Ohs Noes! W-ninja quoted me!

whew, I didn't get quoted. :D

Panacea, on Jun 20 2008, 08:46 AM, said:

Also, I bought Mass Effect out of stupidity. Back in November there were no interesting games coming out at all and everyone kept talking about how amazing Mass Effect was, I don't even like RPGs yet I bought it anyway.
I played for a total of 5-6 hours and didn't like it so I never bothered playing it again.

Inspector *******, on Jun 20 2008, 06:30 PM, said:

Alright that's com-completely incorrect. Yeah that's completely incorrect. First of all you can actually play as a man or a woman in the game. Cooper, have you ever played Mass Effect?

Inspector *******, on Jun 20 2008, 10:30 PM, said:

Maybe you should donate it, I hear theres a thread for that...

WTF. 2007 was THE best year in gaming for a long time.

BioShock: *******in awesome
Orange Box: *******in awesome
MassEffect: *******in awesome
Halo3: *******in fun
Crysis: *******in boring but cool.
(I have to hand it to crysis for making me spend @ $6000.00 on comp-gear that I'm still paying off, and will be for a looong time)
Not to mention TF2 and a bunch of Wii ******* that I don't play.

So that's like 8 games that may not be ultimately original per se, but that are highly polished and technologically advanced games that made 2007 a good year for me to gain wieght from sitting on my ******* playing video games.

jaystein, on Jun 20 2008, 07:22 PM, said:

This entire thread is based on the ******* inspector's opinion, so even if you liked the games of this year it really won't matter.

I personally thought this was a great year with some of my favorite games coming out.
Orange box,
bioshock,
oblivion,
crysis,
cod4,
etc... the list goes on.