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[Musashi Wins!]

i'd say the way it intergrated visors into gameplay (with misting/sunflare/reflection) in a FPS POV to allow gamers to immerse themselves into the role of samus

So it had innovative graphics? Just wondering...Like I said, some of it's high points are obvious and it's one of the highest rated games of all time. But I don't see the innovation. Basically when people praise it here they talk about it being Metroid in 3D or how well done the graphical environments are. It just seems to get thrown in easy to every conversation about innovation when really it's probably just a really really well done conventional FP game.

 

[borghe]

well, I'd like to see what games you consider good.



that's bullshit.

really.. then tell me.. why have final fantasy sales declined. why did metroid sales decline? why have zelda sales declined? why are GTA sales declining (IIRC). The list can really go on... if it is such bullshit then why do sales decline under the exact same scenario?

The problem is that even when GTA sales decline to just a million, the game is still profitable, and likely more profitable than taking a chance on an untested concept.

What's innovative about Metroid Prime? (NOT A TROLL POST!) I mean, it's obviously beautiful graphically and quite polished. Just curious.

IMHO, Metroid Prime was innovative because it actually did something with the first person view besides making another mouse/keyboard-dual analog shooter-style game. It basically created the first person adventure title... now yes people are going to say that System Shock, Thief, and Deus Ex did it before MP did, butat the end of the day those games still felt like FPS games.. Metroid felt MUCH more like an adventure game than any of those three did, even if they did do it first. IMHO of course.

 

[gollumsluvslave]

Take 2 of my favourite games of this gen:-

Psi-Ops & Mercenaries

It is arguable how innovative they are, and comes down to subjective tastes, however the
experience[read fun] they offer could not have been achieved in prior generations.

There will be games next-gen that offer an experience we could not have this gen.

I'm happy enough with that.

Gaming is simply evolving, like most other mediums:-

Is there any movie, song, album etc out there these days that is truly innovative? I mean really? Barring an extremely small amount(which again are subjective), the answer is No: just refinement, variation and different interpretations of the same ideas that have gone before.

 

[Musashi Wins!]

I guess it's a matter of opinion. I don't mean to sidetrack the thread as I'm interested in the topic as a whole. To me it just seems like a greatly polished FP game that has a little less combat and more scanning. It definitely creates a different pace, but it didn't feel like a whole new genre.

 

[Azih]

*ahem*

Originally Posted by borghe:
ahh yes.. the critical portion of the post with nothing to back them up. yes, I am unelightened. so enlighten me.




ICO, GTA III, Phantom Dust, Metroid Prime, Pikmin, KOTOR (and soon Jade Empire, Psychonauts) are all games of this generation. That's just off the top of my head. Plus this was the first generation that saw a LOT of PC styles cross pollinate into the console world. That's pretty significant in and of itself.

 

[Odnetnin]

I guess it's a matter of opinion. I don't mean to sidetrack the thread as I'm interested in the topic as a whole. To me it just seems like a greatly polished FP game that has a little less combat and more scanning. It definitely creates a different pace, but it didn't feel like a whole new genre.

Metroid Prime has more similarities to a LOZ title than any FPS out there. Its less about killing and more about exploration and discoveries.

 

[Dr_Cogent]

What's innovative about Metroid Prime? (NOT A TROLL POST!) I mean, it's obviously beautiful graphically and quite polished. Just curious.

I would say the visor was pretty innovative.

 

[Kon Tiki]

Metroid Prime has more similarities to a LOZ title than any FPS out there. Its less about killing and more about exploration and discoveries.

LOZ? wtf, it plays like a 2d Metroid in 3d, minus a few moves.

 

[borghe]

ICO, GTA III, Phantom Dust, Metroid Prime, Pikmin, KOTOR (and soon Jade Empire, Psychonauts) are all games of this generation. That's just off the top of my head. Plus this was the first generation that saw a LOT of PC styles cross pollinate into the console world. That's pretty significant in and of itself.

ICO is NOT innovative. Solid, beautiful, and awesome to play... but at its heart it is similar to many other action adventure titles out there.

Phantom Dust.. Hello... Lost Kingdoms? PSOIII? Magic?

Prime I will give you even though many others here even question it. KOTOR is Baldur's Gate with a 3D engine and Star Wars slapped on top of it. Great.. One of the best Star Wars games ever, but let's not confuse that for innovation.

Pikmin I will give you.

Jade Empire I really don't think will be much different from the standard Bioware RPG. Granted that means it will be excellent, but will play just like the rest. Maybe I'll be wrong.

GTA3 I will give you.

Pyschonauts just looks like a really good platformer/adventure title.

eh.. whatever.. I guess you are either happy with what's coming out or not. You seem to be happy.. many of us are getting bored. I guess it all depends on which of us controls more money (and thus how much of it makes it into the publishers pockets).

LOZ? wtf, it plays like a 2d Metroid in 3d, minus a few moves.

I think what he meant was that they took a FPS game and slapped the LOZ OOT/MM/TWW/SFA control scheme on it. Which is pretty much what they did.

 

[Azih]

ICO is NOT innovative. Solid, beautiful, and awesome to play... but at its heart it is similar to many other action adventure titles out there.

At their heart all games are similar to SpaceWar. The experience ICO provides is distinct to anything that came out before. Sure it acheieved this by basing gameplay on a unique story telling device but innovation is innovation..

Phantom Dust.. Hello... Lost Kingdoms? PSOIII? Magic?

Lost Kingdom is a single player game where PhanDust is built for online PvP. PSOIII is turn based and what does Magic have to do with anything?

Edit: Sure you might not agree that my distinctions between the games are distinct enough to be considered innovative. But in that case just replace Phantom Dust with Lost Kingdoms as an example of an innovative single player game. And Phantom Dust as a very good online evolution of it.

KOTOR is Baldur's Gate with a 3D engine and Star Wars slapped on top of it. Great.. One of the best Star Wars games ever, but let's not confuse that for innovation.

The combat system is completely different from Baldur's Gate. Innovative. The only other RPG that has combat like KOTOR is KOTOR II. It does not play like Bladur's Gate in 3D in either the exploration or combat segments. It's reminiscent, but that's all.

Jade Empire I really don't think will be much different from the standard Bioware RPG. Granted that means it will be excellent, but will play just like the rest. Maybe I'll be wrong.

The combat system in Jade Empire is again completely different from the KOTOR series which are the closest games it can be compared to.

Pyschonauts just looks like a really good platformer/adventure title.

Well yeah I jumped the gun a bit on this one.

many of us are getting bored.

Many of who? Gaffers? General gamers? Hardcore gamers? Nintendo fans? What?

I guess it all depends on which of us controls more money (and thus how much of it makes it into the publishers pockets).

No idea what you're saying here.

 

[borghe]

ok, to go through point by point

- Ico I won't argue about anymore. I don't think it was really at all innovative, but the game was wonderful and doesn't deserve to get bashed. It stands out as one of the best games of the generation but I don't know if I would call it one of the best games of all time.. that was more or less my point.

- Phantom Dust. It is VERY similar to pretty much every other card game out there. I can't see how this is innovative.

- KOTOR... don't kid yourself man.. I beat BG1, I beat BG2, I beat IWD, and I beat KOTOR. That game has THE SAME FREAKING MECHANICS BEHIND IT. I mean IDENTICAL mechanics...

- Jade Empire like I said, I hope I am wrong. but if it is as "different" as KOTOR is, well... not knocking EITHER game, but don't kid yourself that they are anything other than the same (obviously versatile) system as Bioware has been using for 7 years now.

- many of us posting in this thread. many people I have talked to. the guy who wrote the article, etc. I am not saying most people.. I am just saying there are a LOT of people out there who are saying the same thing. The same "safe" releases month after month year after year with better graphics are not going to keep the industry going for very long.

- as to the last statement, it was just a fancy way of saying the people will speak. either lots of money will continue supporting the stagnating system as it currently exists, or money will leave from that system and either go into new and innovative development or leave the industry completely. MY voice here is just another anonymous internet voice. the voice that matters is the cash to the companies.

 

[ChryZ]

So you're saying we're going to see more creative gaming options on the handhelds because the dev costs will be lower, making it a more attractive option to those mid to lower tier companies? Or even the first tier companies, will they see those systems as the place for the fun quirky games, while they use the PS3/Xbox2/Revolution platforms to make the guaranteed hits and fill the coffers to use for other development?

Exactly! Those publishers and/or devs who are not ready for next gen's development costs can migrate to PSP/DS. They are able to keep doing, what they did the last 5 years, for the next 5 years. Unproven startups with small teams or risky pet projects of established publishers can prove themself on those capable handhelds. Innovation and new ideas can be scaled upwards onto PS3/X360/REV ... if feasible.

 

[Azih]

Ico: What does being the best game of all time have to do with innovation?

Phantom Dust: The reason I put in Phantom Dust was it was an online, real time card battle game. Certainly Lost Kingdoms came earlier as a real time card battle game. But that's also this generation and thus counts in lieu of Phantom Dust. The Real time bit is really important in terms of innovating card battle games.

KOTOR: I've finished BGII myself, and to my mind the extremely sped up turns as well as the brand new interface make the combat really different from the BG games.

Jade Empire: Yeah I guess this should be put on the 'wait and see' pile along with Psychonauts.

 

[Musashi Wins!]

Exactly! Those publishers and/or devs who are not ready for next gen's development costs can migrate to PSP/DS. They are able to keep doing, what they did the last 5 years, for the next 5 years. Unproven startups with small teams or risky pet projects of established publishers can prove themself on those capable handhelds. Innovation and new ideas can be scaled upwards onto PS3/X360/REV ... if feasible.

That would be cool. It didn't happen on the GBA. It didn't happen on TapWave (which if it would have had a different OS and probably different architecture would have been an interesting experiment for independent development. Or maybe it was a good experiement, and it just proves that anything outside of mainstream industry will fail.)

 

[human5892]

Borghe, a good game is a good game is a good game. Period. There's a reason why "Amount Of Innovation" is not a category in most reviews.

 

[VALIS]

Besides the older consoles, there's another good example to put an enormous dent in the "high development costs = stifled creativity" bullsh... I mean, argument: The Game Boy Advance. The cost to make a game for it has to be a fraction of what it costs to make one for the consoles. And yet, where's "teh innovation"?!? The GBA library is a sea of sequels and familiar concepts and characters. People will buy YuGiOh 12 and Super Zelda Brothers XXII and Pokemon 18. Like others have said, when that dynamic changes is when you'll see a shift from the current mentality of "bigger and better than the previous version." And that has not changed in 30 years and is not going to change.

 

[vitaflo]

I mean, should we figure this out on paper? "OMG, last generation was 9% more innovative than this one!" The point being, there are new and different/innovative games now surrounded by a lot of generic crud, just like there has been in every generation.

I think there's two issues here that seem to be at odds. Risk vs Profit. Doing something truely innovative is a big risk, and you can either make a lot of profit doing it, or lose it all. Given the cost of making games these days, the risk of *losing* money is much much greater than it ever has been, thus more companies will not want to take that risk to innovate.

This is even more true if you look to previous generations. Take SMB3. The cost of development of SMB3 was WAY lower than Halo 2, but it sold a LOT more than Halo 2 did, at the same price point! Sure, SMB3 may not have exactly been a "risk" but the profit margin on that game was so high, that it allowed Nintendo to take other risks later on games, without much impact on the bottom line if one of them was a failure.

To take risks these days you need the profit from large hits to fund the risky games. As dev costs skyrocket, the profit margins even on the big games like Halo go down, thus there's less incentive to try risky, innovative games for fear of losing even more money. The higher dev costs get, the more "safe" game companies will be with their games in order to maximize profit.

I think the entire discussion is a result of gaming not being as large of a cash cow it once was, and devs clamming up because of it. Yes there will always be crud on every system, but the question is will there always be money to be made for the ammount of work that goes into the game? If not, who's going to be willing to take any risks at all?

 

[Kobun Heat]

One of the major issues (that the conversation snippet I posted above was addressing) is that as systems get more and more powerful, the number of development houses able to actually take advantage of that power is shrinking.

People said this at the beginning of the PS2's lifespan and it was passed off as so much puffery. But it's true! Only a select few publishers/developers have been able to harness the full power of the system. Consumers are demanding more from their video games, but very few companies are able to pole-vault over that bar.

That's what Nintendo is saying with the Revolution -- yes, it will be graphically powerful but it will also deliver that "more" factor in a way that avoids putting up a barrier to all but the biggest developers.

Whether this is an actual workable solution or a gimmick that will blow up in their faces is yet to be seen.

 

[kaching]

One of the major issues (that the conversation snippet I posted above was addressing) is that as systems get more and more powerful, the number of development houses able to actually take advantage of that power is shrinking.

People said this at the beginning of the PS2's lifespan and it was passed off as so much puffery. But it's true! Only a select few publishers/developers have been able to harness the full power of the system. Consumers are demanding more from their video games, but very few companies are able to pole-vault over that bar.

But it's not as if the "underprivileged" dev/pub houses would be standing completely still with newer hardware. Baseline performance would still be raised for everyone and while the depths of the new hardware may now be deeper possibly leading to fewer plumbing those depths, everybody will still be able to make more technically accomplished games than they did last gen.

And who are really the consumers demanding more from their video games than any of these companies can actually give? Is it the majority? There's no game on modern platforms that sells to majority share of the total respective userbase. Not even close. At best you see games like Halo2 sell to approx. 1/3 of the total userbase. So who exactly is being so demanding here if you never get even a half of the userbase to buy a particular game on the merits of how much it pushes the envelope?

 

[Suerte]

XBox 2 killed my father and raped my mother!

 

[disabledHeliocentric]

Well, the way I see, some of this is like a guy complaining about how he can't move his stock of bell bottom jeans in the year 1985.
Or maybe it's an artist who paints in a style the galleries and art dealers aren't interested in at the moment, as good as he may be.
Although, I do see how a lot of mid sized game projects get marginalized, especially ones which have daring IP which isn't liscence based. After all, the Jet Set Radio, Rez, Viewtiful Joe, Katamari Damacy, ICO stuff is a big reason I am a gamer.
Often people buy really crap derivitaves of your GTA or FPS, the knock offs, and pass up the good stuff. It's sort of like in the publishing world where people gobble up the Clancy, Dan Brown, Stephen King etc. And that's just crass commercialism and marketing triumphing over sound artistry and craftsmanship. So I conclude, then, that it's not entirely a style shift. A lot of it is really near sighted marketing hype cutting into the creative space and basically dumbing things down a notch. Even though that mentality USUALLY FAILS, people get sucked into it over and over because they are bean counters and that's what they're about; minimizing risk and taking the easy way out.

 

[jarrod]

Taito will be around until the end of time. They have more money than they know what to do with. (Which is kinda funny, cause they obviously DON'T know what to do with it.)

Actually, I fear Atlus isn't long for this world. Their amusment business has dried up (outside Print Club), their console games continue selling less and less, their very public merger with Takara's gone nowhere and now big daddy Konami is already stepping in to distribute their stuff. Not looking good.

 

[kevm3]

Now that I think about it, and has been already mentioned, the PSP may be a great place for middlesized and smaller developers. They won't have to have extremely large teams to produce games on PSP that will be required for these next generation systems. There is enough power there to make a really nice looking and playing game. It obviously won't have to be up to par to a PS3 due to the fact that the PSP is a handheld and that it's accepted fact that the games aren't expected to look as good as the consoles. However, PSP has more than enough power to punch out visuals that are still impressive. PSP developers will need big budgets, but not AS big as the next generation consoles, in order for the games to stand out, so I'm saying that it has just enough power for quirky developers to develop high quality titles on it.

Long gone may be the days where you EXPECT the handheld to get an inferior and half-baked versions of a game. Smaller and midsize developers may now be forced to put their games exclusively on the system due to development costs. I expect to see, for example, a full fledged (just a hypothetical example) Final Fantasy Tactics, not a Final Fantasy Tactics-Lite that has typically hit handhelds. A Final Fantasy Tactics, storywise, gameplaywise, and graphicwise that would have the refinement of a console title. These smaller developers may carve their niche in and actually treat the PSP as a small console as opposed to giving it the handheld inferiority status, where they will throw something of lower quality on it.

 

[Johnas]

MP is still my best game of this gen.

Agreed. And let the people say it.....Amen.

 

[inpHilltr8r]

ICO is NOT innovative. Solid, beautiful, and awesome to play... but at its heart it is similar to many other action adventure titles out there.

ICO's camera system, and the way Yorda physically interacted with the player, were both innovations.

 

[The Take Out Bandit]

This is why you should ALL BUY Ponkotsu Roman Daikatsugeki Bumpy Trot!!

Irem, bless their goofy hearts, is gonna be next on the chopping block. I just know it. :/

If you ask me, that's your solution right there.

Support Sandlot, Wayforward, and whatever other screwball developer makes the games you like.

For all of the hype and publicity surrounding God of War, a convenient example, it doesn't get a response from my mantenna. The game that gets me all hot and bothered is Remote Control Dandy SF. Sure it's a sequel, but it's building on an obscure series from a dedicated team of developers who continue to improve their core game design with each new game they make.

Yet one need only look at the amount of response your average God of War thread gets compared to a Remote Control Dandy SF thread to gage the general level of anticipation. Look at the numbers, GAF is poseur central.

Just to play Devil's Advocate though, Sandlot has gone from Human, to Enix, and now to Konami. I guess I don't mind consolidation; so long as my favorite teams don't get torn apart.

Gamers already recognize that not all games are worth the same amount of money - shouldn't publishers, too?

I've been advocating this line of thinking as well.

Budget pricing is a way to appeal to all gamers with some money in their pocket. Sure, Gungrave Overdose may be beaten in a rental; but when you consider it only costs slightly more than two game rentals at Blockbuster it's not a bad deal. I also get the impression that if Katamari Damacy were released in the States at $40-50, it would suffer the fate of R.A.D. and Rez.

Niche developers should be creating games with a retail price point in mind in order to entice consumers.

My curiosity is also piqued.

I'd like to know what contributes to the high costs of game development these days?

How much money is wasted on porting code across three different hardware sets?

How much money is wasted on non-interactive pre-rendered FMV?

Is there an obvious means of trimming the fat from the cost of game development?

 

[Miroku]

I'd like to know what contributes to the high costs of game development these days?

For starters, doing normal maps properly (see UE3) each individual art asset can take about 4x longer to create, depending how much detail will be modeled into the normal map.

Theres also lots of pressure for developers to finish games faster, which means larger teams. Studios who want to create the best graphics in the universe will have art teams much larger than ever.

Another factor to note about the art side of things is that the High poly modeling required to generate normal maps is a fairly different discipline from traditional low poly modeling in games. Teams are having to pay more money for artists who have more than just one skillset. There is also a big demands for more specialized people, which costs more money. We're seeing studios hire lighting & shader experts from the film industry now because its more complicated and time consuming to create high quality assets in these areas.

As we move into the "HD Era" we also have to worry about rendering roughly 7 times more pixels. There's that much more opportunity for people to see flaws in the work, and theres that much more resolution and pixels to deal with when it comes to content creation. Painting a texture map for a character at 2048x2048 takes much longer than painting one at 256x256. In the texturing process there will also be more passes to deal with like the aforementioned normal map, and specular map, specular power map, bump/displacement maps, and so on...

Art teams as of now can be successful at 6-10 people. In the future, art teams can and will bloat up to around 30ish. Thats a lot more overhead, given that its not only more people but also more specialists, who dont necesarrily come cheap.

How much money is wasted on non-interactive pre-rendered FMV?

Not too much, most studios outsource this work to specialized places like Blur or Pixel Magic, etc.... Its not cheap, but in the grand scheme of things its not too expensive.