"Instead of making games that immediately make sense to everyone and everyone agrees about, it would be better to have dimensions to games that cannot easily be explained. That's the kind of game that people remember ten or fifteen years down the road. There were more of those games during the Super Nintendo era compared with today."
31 comments:
First half of that comment I definitely agree with, but the second - I dunno, I think there are a lot of games out there with that extra dimension, they just require more effort to find as the number of ones without have grown just as much.
Above post from The_B was in reference to me. Deleted the comment because I noticed a glaring grammatical error. :P Re-posting, but fixed.
I agree with this quote completely. I've been wondering why games don't feel nearly as memorable as they did in the past, and that sums it up right there. The moment you hit the power button on your console, everything is laid right out there for you.
Now in response...
True enough, but they feel few and far between. Don't get me wrong, I've played a lot of games that I've loved lately. It just seems that game companies are so bent out of shape about sticking with what works that they are too afraid to go for the things that would really catch and drag people in.
He's right, but you can see why this problem has come about, though. Very few companies are going to risk millions of dollars on an unproven gameplay model. Hence, it's no big surprise that the games that do push the boundaries of design tend to be indie titles.
I agree completely. There's a lot of untapped potential out there -- game developers just need to tap it. Even having a smaller development team work on something on an engine the company has already built (like Portal) seems like an option; but then again, I wouldn't know the first thing about the financial dynamic of a video game company.
I completely disagree that it was "better in the old days" unless you mean because of limitations the imagination had to fill in gaps and holes. Nintendo had an iron grip over what could appear on the SNES. Sony broke that down but it wasn't until the DS when Ninteno approved most anything that actually unique gameplay entered the console market.
Hmmm...
Tasty.
I'm gonna say that there are more of those types of games today, they just get buried by all of the hyperbole, coverage and marketing that focuses on the triple-A.
Nowadays there's a whole plethora of open source and indie games that just weren't around back then.
Excuse my thought burp.
It's funny, I was thinking of Portal when I wrote that comment, along with The Path and the up-and-coming Heavy Rain.
Heavy Rain is a title I've seen in the news a lot recently, and most stories revolve around the gameplay – some people saying it's just a load of QTEs; Caaaaaage Daaaaavid saying that's not the case. Here's a game, with a big budget attached, that is really trying to do something different, yet people are already chastising the game without even playing it.
It almost suggests that part of the problem is us, in that some dogmatically refuse to play a game just because it's different. Maybe Heavy Rain will turn out to be a glorified QTE game, but my point is this: how are will we ever know if we don't give games like this the benefit of the doubt?
Certainly the inexplicable has a place in making something of substance. David Lynch is an extreme example of it in film. Seeing it in games would, thus, be more than welcome.
At the same time, though, that's a tricky thing to accomplish. If one deliberately tries to bewilder, it usually comes off as very cheap or contrived. They're best when just accidentally part of the work. It'd take a designer with some major savvy to get it right...
... Whatever "it" would even be. I wonder what he had in mind saying that.
"If one deliberately tries to bewilder, it usually comes off as very cheap or contrived."
Worse than all that, it can make a game incredibly frustrating and, ultimately, not fun. It's such a difficult balancing act and I have seen games try and fail at this – and it's a real shame, because you almost want to reward them for the guts they've shown in trying something different.
Well, it's the same problem that nips at the heels of every form of artistic expression when it's industrialized: what should be fun and enriching - both for the artist(s) and the audience - turns into just another way of making a buck. But then artists gotta eat, so they have to do something that a lot of people will pay for so that when circumstances are ideal they can focus on their art and create a masterpiece. And, since it's art, it's all subjective anyway.
I agree, but some people do take it too far. There's a big difference between having a game with extra dimensions (say, Silent Hill 2) versus having a game where the entire point of the game is hidden and complicated (The Path).
Some aspects should be easy to understand in ANY game. You can't really expect people to dive into something that doesn't engage them within the first hour. There's a really nice balance that developers can reach, but drifting too far in either direction is suicide.
Kojima, Suda51, how are your allegorical cyborg flying pigs today?... Sweet.
I agree with the people saying that there are actually more of these games today, but they get buried. I'd expect them to account for a smaller percentage of all games released, simply because the 8 friggin Petz games that come out every year are throwing off the curve.
Is there anything from the SNES era that's even half as evocative as Shadow of the Colossus? Is Final Fatansy X more easily grasped than Final Fantasy IV? And what about the flood of indie games that push the envelope? Zeno Clash, Braid, Blueberry Garden, Flower, and these are just the big names in the last year or so. We've also got people like Stephen Lavelle, Jason Rohrer, Daniel Benmergui, Gregory Weir, Terry Cavanagh, and on and on, making shorter games that are thoroughly meaningful.
New Rule: you can only voice agreement with this sentiment if you also give an example of a game of that era which possessed that quality.
nick -- brilliant.
any takers?
I agree with the sentiment. Example: Earthbound.
It wasn't just a "wacky" JRPG. It was deeper than most realized. Maybe not in terms of gameplay (although it does make some very interesting strides there), but in its somewhat dark (but hopeful) tone and its self-examination of the JRPG genre.
Well, maybe I don't agree with "There were more of those games during the Super Nintendo era compared with today" in earnest. With non-indie games, I'd say that yes, the SNES era had a lot of mystery. Including indie games, however, our current era is no slouch.
Good point, Nick. I should have clarified my position. When I said that I agreed with the man, I meant the part where he says, "Instead of making games that immediately make sense to everyone and everyone agrees about, it would be better to have dimensions to games that cannot easily be explained." I never owned a SNES, so I have no idea if the latter part is true or not.
Isn't it the case that most development teams were drastically smaller in those days? I don't have hard data, but I'm under the impression that many of the comparatively large indie teams (ACE Team, The Behemoth, Frozenbyte, Chair etc) are about the same size as the teams that made AAA SNES games. I can understand overlooking the single-person indie devs, but it seems off to discount the "major" indies.
Does anybody have good numbers on average teams sizes for SNES dev teams at major companies? My curiosity has been piqued and I don't know where to look for data.
Everything we love looks better through the haze of history.
Somehow Braid just ringed in my head.
Potentially good advice, until you pop back to reality and recall that being remembered doesn't pay the bills (which is all the industry giants tend to care about).
Real game designers don't need to be reminded of this.
For Nick:
Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures
I agree with the first part of the quote (good modern examples of this are Killer7 and somewhat the MGS games) but the second part... not so much. Like Nick said, I can't tell any game from the SNES era that was that complex. We remember them because they were (for some of us) our first true game loves, when we were old enough to understand but young enough to still be amazed. Just how we all remember our first car. Not because it was great but because it was our first. I guess the same could apply to sex.
Disclaimer: I was never a Nintendo fan back then so don't have a first-hand experience of that era.
I think the majority of SNES game didn't necessarily make sense because there was little impetus to create a coherent world experience. "Let's have rainbows! And turtles! And stars and rings and ponies!" The games didn't make sense because they were inherently nonsensical.
Compare that with today when developers almost have to go out of their way to leave ambiguity when the instinct is to let the audience know everything about the world - I mean, you wrote it, you worked hard to develop the world so you want players to see what you've done. The key to ambiguity is to fight that urge and leave a few of the pieces of the puzzle out, or figuratively turn them 90 degrees.
I'd argue that the same point for the NES. It was far closer to the amateur indie scene of try everything and see what sticks.
Secondly, I'd just like to see more variety in games and for reviewers to be more patient with unique games.
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I'd definitely agree. Illusion of Gaia was full of moments that I will remember forever. Of all the systems I come back to, the SNES is by far the one I come back to the most often because of reasons like that.
i think mystery is a very important thing to have, in anything, not just games. of course, if you're a scientist, you really try hard to solve those mysteries; to find the ultimate truth.
it might be a stretch to suggest that all game developers have 'scientist minds', but i'm sure programmers are in love with logic, and clarity.
i think for a lot of people, for their sanity, a sense of the unknown and the ambiguous is comforting, and intriguing.
i love super metroid, because you land on this strange alien planet, and at the begining you're completely unaware of what exactly is going to happen, or how you're meant to progress. there is no text, and no interuptions - it's like a silent, unconcious narrative that you play out; everything descriptive and suggestive..not spelt out. bosses too, come as a suprise. the chozo race.. you never know much about them; it's not all explained, they're not all friendly.
while i do think it's important in a game design context to explain what you mean clearly, for the benefit of others, and get feedback.. i hate the idea of treating the player as stupid; like they won't 'get it', kind of thing. it's annoying to read that so many people 'didn't get' noby noby boy, and were put off it because of this. it seems a lot of gamers need to be told exactly what is happening or exactly what something in a game 'is'.
there are a handful of 'far-out', or 'subtle, suggestive' games each gen, mostly published by sony, or on their platform. stuff like ico, shadow of the colossus, katamari, killer7, etc.
this gen, i think it's indie games that are becoming more 'artistic' in their ambitions..more suggestive and open to interpretation.
it's not all doom and gloom. ;-) they'll never be another super metroid though~
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