Gaming A Gamers' Manifesto

[ForgottenRaider]

[url]http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/manifesto.html[/url]

First off the link has mild swearing and probably one or two off references, though I don't think it is overly vial considering some of the things you hear gamers saying in cs.

Anyway that manifesto is making the rounds currently and I am glad some one has finally sat down and written a well thought out list of things that modern games suck at. It missed out a few things like hype problems around games, pre-release lying, try hard graphics, 14 year old boys who just found out about the ?c word? and wish to inflict insults on every one in multiplayer games with it, and Steam (which is evil) though I hope some one in the game development world picks it up and takes note.

Apart from pointing that out to other gamers here I'm interested if people agree with the author, or if they have things they want to add, or even going against popular opinion and say some of the complaints aren't complaints at all but in fact features!

And are you happy with current games or do you think indie games (like DH Lore: Invasion) will own or promises (which have been broken before) like UT2kX (X=6,7) detail are the future?

[Desbreko]

[color=#4B0082]Very interesting article. I can agree with pretty much everything in it, too -- especially number 12. I really hate it when games do stupid crap just to artificially increase the difficulty. If a developer wants to make a game hard, that's great, but they shouldn't make it hard for stupid and annoying reasons that will only piss the players off.

Oh, and I'm moving this to the Play It forum since the article is talking mainly about consoles.[/color]

[Semjaza]

These are all complaints I've seen from various sources before... they're just compiled into one page. I am happy that he puts a reason why something will or will not happen, though. The AI thing, for example, has always been a matter of console design, as he states.

There actually is a game about survival on an island of sorts called Survival Kids. I'm not sure if it ever came out here or not. There are also games with nearly fully destructable environments such as Phantom Dust. A lot of these types of things in games he calls for exist in some capacity... They're just not things you see a lot of for whatever reason. I don't know if it adds to the development time and cost or what. One does have to keep that aspect in mind.

The patent thing brought up disgusts me as well. Patents are no longer used for what they were meant for; namely a pushing for further innovation. Now everyone comes up with a basic, vague idea and sues anyone that attempts to use any facet of that idea. It's incredibly sad.

[Bloodseeker]

1. I agree. Smarter AI is something that should take priority.

2. Those genres sound really boring. That's probably why they haven't been done yet.

3. Nobody with half a brain falls for those anymore.

4. I've seen some SNES roms that fall into that catagory...

5. Exactly, the sales say that sex sales, and that the prime demographic for gaming are younger males.

6. Again, I agree. Being able to quick save right before a hard boss would be ideal. Too bad that's part of the bullshitting with difficulty that they refer to later.

7. Really now? You learn something new everyday...

8. Its cheaper and less time consuming to have less spoken dialog. Its really not that important, especially when I usually have the TV's sound turned off and my radio blasting when I'm playing games.

9. Just make it so that the game's physics don't usually allow the players to hit the "top". Easy as that.

10. Again, not something that I'm too worried about... Sure the plate on the table realistically breaking and shattering under a clip of your machine gun bullets is cool at first, but once you really get into the gameplay, you stop noticing those sorts of things.

11. I HATE CINEMATIC CAMERA ANGLES! Ban em'. Eternal Darkeness didn't even sell 278 copies across the nation? It sounds like he's the one that's bullshitting this time. That's too much of a sub-abysmal number to believe. Link?

12. These piss me off too. You'd think that enemies with guns would have ammo on them. And I hate one sided catch-up. (That's called rubberband AI, right?) Why not just give them high performance cars that can keep up with yours? Thankfully, I'm usually smart enough to rent my games before I buy them.

13. This one's just stupid. They weren't bullshitting you, you just had to work to get the best stuff. I get a fair amount of satisfaction from finally saving up enough money to buy the million dollar + Formula 1 cars in Grand Turismo.

14. Its a traditional symbol that all gamers are familiar with. Why get rid of them? Bad situations in a generally okay future > post-apocalyptic future

15. As long as gamers continue to buy them, developers will continue to make them. Patents on gaming technology need to be banned, though. Whiny selfish sons of bitches.

16. Unfortunately, its probably profitable in the long term to force gamers to go out and buy a system that works...

17. I love that my PS2 can play DVDs. I'm all for entertainment systems.

18. I'd stop playing games if they did this. I'm not joking.

19. Yeah, that's bad.

20. Who cares?

One thing that I really don't like is the decrease in the length of games. Were as 50+ hour games were common in the 64 bit era, it seems like 20 hour games have become the norm. I don't like that at all. If game length continues to decrease, I'll stop buying games and find a new pass time.

[2010DigitalBoy]

That was sweet, dude. I never saw a better combination of all the complaints that I have about games.

Go to that website and click on the Halo 2 article. That was scary. Go read it now! I am scared to play Halo 2 now.

[Semjaza]

[quote name='Bloodseeker']11. I HATE CINEMATIC CAMERA ANGLES! Ban em'. Eternal Darkeness didn't even sell 278 copies across the nation? It sounds like he's the one that's bullshitting this time. That's too much of a sub-abysmal number to believe. Link?[/quote]

It's an obvious exaggeration to make his point. It sold something like 300,000 copies.

[ForgottenRaider]

[quote name='Bloodseeker']5. Exactly, the sales say that sex sales, and that the prime demographic for gaming are younger males.[/quote]
Most gaming males have a sister and/or a girlfriend. Is it just me or is Maxis the only company on the planet that has realised that so far? Do you have any idea how many females play The Sims and have many of the expansions? (My sister has at least five expansions all costing around $50.)

And it isn't really because they overly like The Sims that they are so involved, it is because there is nothing else focused towards types of games they enjoy playing. Generalisations yes, guys do play The Sims and there are one or two other games for females (eg sol.exe (win) or frozen bubble (lin)).

[OtakuSennen]

I like how he complains about putting hours into a racing game so he can get a good car. If that was the case, there wouldn't be any need to play the game for very long. Unlockable items = replay value. I read about this on some other forum yesterday, and put my feelings on this matter into a perfect phrase: "Screw the little Katamari. Give me the huge one immediately so I can run over all of the skyscrapers first." It's ultimately a pointless and nitpicky complaint. The same goes for the in-text writing, FPS jumping puzzles, and repeating Madden sound clips. That's the point of the article, obviously, but those are trivial.

[Lord Rannos]

I think he was right alot, but there were some things I disagree with him on. Here's my opinion on every single thing he said (because I'm long winded).

1. If AI was smarter, they would kick us around. The idea of monsters is that they are pointless fodder for you to kill.

2. He's got a decent point here, but some of those games sound like they would be boring. Personally, I would hate to sneak around and neverbe able to fricking kill anything.

3. He's right, but cutscenes are pretty....

4. This one I fully agree with him on. Stupid politicians

5. Again, he's got a point. The problem is that there are people who will buy the game for purely that reason.

6. I thought that save points were just to add a level of difficulty (or, in the case of Metroid Prime and FFX, salvation). It would be nice to be able to save anywhere, though.

7. Blech. Everyone hates load times. I always figured they were necessary for the game to do everyting else it does. So, I can live with a limited amount of waiting. Mercenaries, however, was ridiculous.

8. Didn't he say something about this earlier?

9. Ya know, he's pretty much right. Invisible walls are annoying. I think Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask handeled that pretty well.

10. Sounds like they already pretty much fixed this one. You shouldn't get too greedy, though. I mean, being able to shoot coke cans is pretty cool. Who cares about magazines?

11. God I hate crappy camera angles, especially when they happen to be throwing enemies at you. There are some times when it's okay to have characters running at the screen (some chase scenes). Just not very many.

12. I can identify with the Goldeneye story, and he's still right. Huge levels where you have now idea where to go, while very impressive, are annoying. There should absoloutely be no insta-kill anything in games.

13. I think it's necessary to build up to better stuff, I just think it should be done quickly. Jak 3 is an excellent example of this done well. You start off with some nifty abilities, then learn some more as you progress.

14. But, but....I like boxes!

15. Patenents? Who knew? We have a screwed up legal system.

16. Ah, for a world without patches...yeah. I'm with the PS3 filled with crap idea.

17. Well, I do like being able to do stuff like play CD's and DVD's on my PS2. It just makes it more versatile (and saves me money on a DVD player).

18. Yeah, suddenly, that sounds really annoying. I guess there's a reason most MMORPG's don't support the real-world cash thing.

19. Yeah, this is a problem, but I think some games (eg. Metroid Prime) pulled it off alright. Sometimes, it is necessary for the character jump. For immersion, to use his own term against him.

20. umm...ok...if it's vertical, though, my game might fall....

10.