As some of you may know, one of my two jobs is game development, or at least that was the case until this morning.
I worked, here in Japan, for a major development studio working on a major platform exclusive title due to be shown at E3 this year, however due to a long standing and growing distaste of the way games are made I chose, last month to hand in my notice, yesterday was my last day at the studio and was spent mostly grabbing contact details of co workers i wanted to stay in touch with.
My extra free time will now go exclusively towards continuing the development of my own game that I have spent the better past of the last year working on in my spare time, I will share more details with you all about it further down the line, but for the time being I'd like to move to a topic i feel very strongly about.
The way we currently make games is broken.
This is something that the more you think about it, the more obvious it becomes, genres are getting tired and same-y, so much time and effort is spent one upping each other on something that is ultimately the same game that the game itself suffers and becomes just another statistic.
A formula is found that at least for a while is popular, that formula is then milked extensively until either the sales decline or other companies have jumped on the bandwagon enough to make competition too crowded, often this becomes less about delivering a strong story and equally strong gameplay and more about pushing a retail priced expansion of the last title.
But the real culprit is that the ones holding the chequebook don't like to stray from these "winning formulas", artists and designers sit with heads full of ideas but little room to expand upon them, an individual designer can have an idea that would blow most gamers away, but the chances of that single idea making it in to a retail game are next to zero.
But even when more creativity is permitted, the very approach designers use is ultimately flawed from the outset.
Starting off on the wrong foot.
For this example, let's think of a random game set on an alien planet or spaceship, what are the most common features you will find in virtually all of these games?, lets see now.
- Doors, with or without panels requiring keycards, codes, etc.
- Standard sized hallways and head clearance
- Computer terminals, often with alien script or pictures, usually in glowing green.
- Windows, Lifts, Stairs and ventilation.
- Projectile weaponry
- Gravity, even on a space ship
Don't you find it odd that all of these features should so obviously be designed to accomodate a human, despite it being alien? it's as if a world is created for the player and then alien-elements such as biological structures or enemies are then created to be put in to that environment.
From a design perspective, that is entirely wrong, to make it absolutely clear, in a game where you are exploring an alien planet or space craft, YOU ARE THE ALIEN, so why must the environment be designed to suit you, rather than the creatures that reside there? Why must computer terminals not only look close to normal but be operatable by a human, or if you want to be more cliche, for a random party member or AI assistant to have knowledge of said aliens language enough to operate it, tell me, if you were slowly learning french from snippers here and there, if someone gave you a computer with a brand new OS that you have never used, but entirely in french, could you understand it enough to operate the computer to override security functions?, no, not at all, so why the fuck are these things possible in games with alien machines.
Scale is the other issue, corridoors just right for you to walk down, floors, ceilings and more importantly, lighting. - we as humans see a limited spectrum of light, is there a particular reason why aliens must see within that same spectrum?, would it be far fetched for example for aliens to have infra red lighting because thats the particular light specrtrum they can see?
Other world environments
I strongly follow the mantra of "If you need to tell people it's not earth, you're doing it wrong"
Moving from the space ship to a planet, blue skies, that's awfully convenient. green grass, rocks and so on, beautiful yellow sand, where is the originality, where is the mindset of creating an alien planet? im sorry but throwing in some not-so-common looking structures and a few little shop of horror plants here and there does not make it an alien planet.
Let's take Halo 4 for an example here:
As beautiful as this is, let's compare it to an alien world in a much older game, for example, dark seed on the amiga.
Even though darkseed makes a vast improvement in creating a world that is so very different from our own, the idea of leaving it that way is just too much to bear, usability and making a game obvious chip in their needs and a path is built, just for you, that stands out from the world around it like a sore thumb, and this path in this very screenshot, represents almost every attempt at an alien world or space craft, in virtually every game thats tried, ever.
This circles us back to the end result, we're so limited by what is considered understandable and straight forward that removing those walkways would mean potentially large portions of end users would become stuck and frustrated, and there in lies the rub, that's a huge nono, we must assume at all times that the majority of end users are thick as pigshit when it comes to the main story
That is why, to this very day, almost every game has to baby you through the steps of using basic controls such as duck, jump and crouch. we have to assume you start a game not understanding what a controller actually does, and if we do not make it clear to you, you may just try to eat it or stick it up your backside, it's perfectly fine to throw in sideplots and quests that can be as hard as you want, but the main story? if it isnt retard friendly its rarely accepted, unless of course your franchise is known for it's difficulty, then you have yourself a free pass.
Dah Future.
Moving away from the alien theme we find outselves in the "future", where much of the same assumptions are made, much of the same "designed around the player" tint to things - would it be all that strange to invisage a world where either through environmental change or outside influence that the form and function the the average human had evolved, or are we going to spend out time trying to convince people of evolution, then conveniently decide that the form we possess right now is the end of that line.
Bioshock tackles this somewhat, with the use of perks and mods, but for the most part, being in the future would seeminly just mean that architecture got a whole lot more boring with concrete and glass, and using solid flat colors is the in thing, worldwide.
But, to each their own as far as perceptions of the future go, so i'll leave this particular section of topic open for discussion with this final thought, I just wish these visions of the future didn't all feel so much like the same person did them all.
Horror, or, how many ways can we use a jumpscare before the player gets bored.
One of the first major productions I was involved in was Silent Hill 3 for the PlayStation 2, a really nice thing about back then was that even if the end resulting game didn't show it, everyone on the team was well versed in a wide range of materials from horror movies, to common books all the way to somewhat obscure ones and various elements of these different media worked their way in to the series over the years, some things about these games are still being uncovered even now.
Even though we had a somewhat set formula going, the sense of freedom and exploration with ideas was a real turning point for me. These days that prior knowledge and exploration and appreciation of such works is all but gone and horror simply means "look its dark and scary, wooo", a bunch of scripted events and screams/moans/growls later and you're done - one only needs to look at Daylight for evidence of this - Daylight has so much potential but ultimately it ended up being a rather.. no.. a completely shitty game.
The process of building an attachment between the player and the game world, then gradually strengthining that attachment while dragging the player out of their comfort zone seems like its now a lost art, why have multiple layers of mental fuckery and mind games when you can have a woman appaear, pull a funny face and float over to you, eh Daylight?
Another element painfully exploited is the use of zombies with far too many studios dipping their toes, and the toes of their existing franchises in to the bloodies waters, none of these really do anything to expand on the genre of do something different with it.
With new technology comes new capability - we just aren't using them.
Each console generation and major technological advacement in PC hardware brings with it the opportunity to break free of the mold that in the past set these restrictions up, games of old were limited in scale and scope, alien worlds had to be suited to the player because the hardware powering these worlds was too weak to explore the ideas and imaginations of their designers, these limitations took a step forward in the move from 2d to 3d giving game designers a wider range of tools to create their worlds, but something of those limitations of old stuck around and has done ever since.
The new consoles, all three of them, have the capability to explore new ideas and game design, but instead we push for the same shit with better textures, more detailed meshes and resolution - this push drives up the time required as well as the cost so you ultimately end up with the same game, just prettier and a shitload shorter.
The the speed and ease of modern engines to stream in new data, it is possible for example to build an open world that is 30 square kilometers in size, even larger if we want, the size and scale is limited only by the time and manpower behind the studio creating it, we are beyond a point where lazy shotcuts such as blocking zones or invisable walls should be needed, yet virtually all games still use them, be it a fenced area around a play map, a 2cm high kerb at the edge of a track stopping you from driving on to the beach or having your squad commander tell you that going down that alleyway is not where you should be going and if you dont get your arse back to the play area you'll be in to a reaming (or more appropriately, forced respawn)
So whats the big deal?
Ultimately, we stand on a middle ground between baby a player through life or lick the solid wall of progress and hope nobody notices, while i complain about these limitations, the limitations do have their place, however small that place is becomming - for me the issue isn't that games like these arent being made but that game development as a whole is too scared to branch out in any way towards exploring these issues, and thats a depressing thought because while the unknown paths these issues open up can be daunting, they create opportunities for new and refreshing gameplay, gameplay we may never experience unless someone steps forward to explore beyond the spoon fed do-it-for-you gameplay and empty pats on the back for making it through a game having killed 4000 enemies and not so much as scuffing your knees.
Expanding on these themes
While it's easy to say "but if we did that then the game wouldnt be as accessible and would only appeal to a niche", two points id like to make are if you're looking to establish a new IP, niches are great things, you essentially have a solid and dedicated group of people that will expand as long as you continue to build upon what youve made, that niche then eventually becomes a fanbase.
Secondly, the process of designing a new world and then finding new and interesting ways to craft gameplay to suit the new world is what slams a stake in the ground and marks it's territory in new gameplay mechanics.
Thinking beyond the surface is an important process that is sadly overlooked, returning to my experience with the silent hill franchise, during the PS2 era, our team put in a lot of effort to make obscure references to real world books and film, even if they were niche, it explored various theories and scenarios giving gracious nods to the pioneers of such theories along the way, in doing so it established layers within the game that for those wanting to make the most of it, to find endless amounts of interesting material and indeed extend those interesting finds beyond the game itself.
There is no reason why a small portion of a games budget cannot be used to do the same, instead of simply slapping some gooey textures on a rock and calling it a day, the extra step would be to ask yourself, okay we have a planet with a gravity of X, the atmosphere is Y and the crust is made up of Z, the rock then will be porus and consisting mostly of volcanic material, from that sort of process on various major surfaces we can deduce the fauna, and create it to match the environmental conditions, weather patterns and so on.
Then we have ourself an alien creature, rather than make something vaugly resembling a pig, we ask, okay we have a somewhat harsh environment how does this create eat, drink and live, what sort of feet would it need, what appendages, is it a predator or prey, if prey how does it avoid the hunter, if the predator how does it hunt the prey, and from there we and up with a create that, however otherworldly it may turn out, fits the environment.
Then we have story elements that could be expanded upon - we have aliens, a particular species of which is obviously intelligent enough for space travel, does this alien species then come from nothing and all the buildings in the world they live are fresh? because that is more or less how most games portray it - did that species just happen to go from nondescript dumb animal to highly intelligent creature without any line of progress?.
Wouldnt it make more sense for the alien species to have a range of aspects that show it's progression, from old factories, labs and buildings up to the newer more advanced tech and buildings?, things like these arent even bound by making extravagant changes to a games mechanics, but ultimately the background work in doing such research in to the world youre creating almost always goes without any effort made at all, and thats depressing because theres so much opportunity there to extend both the life of the game and build a world you can eventually come back to and expand upon any particular element you originally worked in, and extend the game in an interesting and unique way.
Take for example if the first game in a series had particular incriptions here and there, nothing that stood out especially, but were there all the same - and in playing you happen to find yourself a camera, lets say for example you decided to take pictures of these inscriptions along your travels - but the game never actually cares about it, and doesnt use them - then you come along and release a new game somewhat linked to the originals world, you access a computer terminal and IF you have photo data in the previous games savedata present on your computer/console present, the computer terminal ingame can access them - and if you were diligent in collecting pictures of the inscriptions throughout the previous game, looking at those inscriptions in the new game allowed you to have the computer terminal translate them, what you end up with is a way to expand upon the previous story from the new game, and a reason to buy/rebuy/replay the old game to find more.
All this would need is the production of some textures and a camera item.
There are so many unique and interesting things that can be done, but it seems development these days is about turning a fast buck on the back of some pretty graphics, a hype train or mass advertisement, who cares if you complete the game in under 6 hours, who cares if once you beat it theres no reason to play it again, so long as youve parted with your cash to begin with, it doesnt matter.
Its a dangerous attitude that many a publisher has, and ultimately that attitude and unwillingness to focus resources and funding on making a game more engaging and thought out is what is fast pushing this industry to potential collapse.
