Fallout 3 and Reflection on the Games Industry as a Whole

[0HP]

First, let me say that this is out of character. I read alot of posts and rarely ever comment. But I think that we're asking the wrong sorts of questions here. For the most part, we've been focused on whether or not F3 is a "good or bad" game and a "good or bad" Fallout game.

After playing through the whole thing, however, I've come to propose a deeper set of questions:

Has anyone ever noticed the RIDICUOUS nature of this circus we call video gaming. As faithful fans we sit around reading posts and watching videos and hanging on every scrap of information that development companies throw us. We wait for YEARS ON END, a whole DECADE in the case of Fallout 3. And our activities are largely limited to screaming "let us have a say" to large deveopment companies.

In the end, we're forced to deal with whatever it is that they send us. If it's great, we feel gratified, even though we did practially nothing to influence the game. If it sucks, we all climb aboard the criticism train a la "Brotherhood of Steel". But if a company like Bethsoft sunk millions of dollars into game and hundreds of thousands of man-hours, then packed it up and shipped it off to us, we just consume it, as if we didn't really care about the franchise at all. Love it or hate it, we're stuck, unless Bethesda, in the awesome, God-like benevolence decides to release dev tools (which, incidentally, it looks like they will for F3).

My argument here is that that's just a bad orientation to have. If we love the games, when why can't we just make them and police them ourselves. These are our narratives, after all. Fuck intellectual property rights. They're arbitrary and they force good fans like us to have to deal with the large developer's crap.

I, for one, am just not going to take it anymore. Starting today, I'll be making my very own Fallout pen-and-paper (since I'm not a programmer) RGP from the GROUND UP.

With tools that are already on the internet like the Fantasy Grounds software, we can build and play any Fallout game we want at any point during the cannon we want whenever we want. Unless, of course, you think that narratives are comodities.

In an age with masscommunication technologies fully at our disposal, we'd be stupid to let a simple lack of creativity prevent us from telling the stories that we love. We sure as hell love them more than the folks at Bethesda. A note to those folks: this was never about money.

 

[Pope Viper]

I think you'll find many companies that find intellectual property rights as being arbitrary. Good luck with a P&P Fallout, you'll either find disinterested parties, or a cease and desist from Bethesda.

It's not a lack of creativity, it's a lack of bad planning, mediocre results, and a lack of focus that you'll find in "telling the stories we love."

 

[0HP]

Yeah, I get that. I understand that development studios can actually get things done because they pay people to be their there, whether they want to or not.

But all I'm saying is that it seems really dumb to pay money for something that we A: didn't contribute to and B: don't genuinely love.

And I also understand that, as a community, we're mostly fish-out-of-water with things like IanOut and the like. But why do we turn over the game cannon that we really love to a big developer and then hold our breath and hope that it will all turn out in the end?

 

[Szeder]

One thing we have to keep in mind is that it is never the companies which should be blamed. Companies are usually lead by people who don't give a shit about gaming, it is a company and as such it has to make money, no matter the cost. No matter what Todd says about being a fan, no matter how they claim that the people working on Fallout 3 are Fallout geeks, these are all lies, meant to mislead the public.

How can companies make money ? By satisfying the audience. In other words, it is the mediocre gaming society who should be blamed, a company usually looks around, it nods its head seeing "zomfg kids" then it produces games for the public.

To sum it up, companies are like mirrors. Their products essentially mirror back the intelilgence level of their audiences and it is the gamers of today who should be blamed for having absolutely no brains

 

[Crni Vuk]

One thing we have to keep in mind is that it is never the companies which should be blamed. Companies are usually lead by people who don't give a shit about gaming, it is a company and as such it has to make money, no matter the cost. No matter what Todd says about being a fan, no matter how they claim that the people working on Fallout 3 are Fallout geeks, these are all lies, meant to mislead the public.

How can companies make money ? By satisfying the audience. In other words, it is the mediocre gaming society who should be blamed, a company usually looks around, it nods its head seeing "zomfg kids" then it produces games for the public.

To sum it up, companies are like mirrors. Their products essentially mirror back the intelilgence level of their audiences and it is the gamers of today who should be blamed for having absolutely no brains

Cant agree. I just cant believe the audience is that bad as like it seems. We should not forget we all are somewhat more or less part of this audience. And I see my self pretty much as usual gamer. Frankly, I have with certain games high standarts, like AAA titles. What I cant believe is how hypocritical the gaming media is today, but thats a story for it self.

Anyway. I think companies just try to catch for the lowest denominator cause its cheap to produce. Why trying even to make a ISO Turn based game when you can get sales done with real time and first person which need much less skills to do in comparision. Think about it, to develope a mediocre working TB system needs much more brainpower compared to a mediocre "shooter like" system.

I see somewhat in the same way like AGP that got killed by ATI and NVIDIA in favour for higher sales as it was easier to link 2 cards together with PCI even though you really dont even get so much benefits from 2 cards (micro lags and other issues). Still AGP is not much inferior to PCI, hell you can even pretty easily convert PCI signals to AGP if you care (thats what they did with the GeForce 7800 GS which is based on chips for PCI) but as said ... you cant sell people 2 cards at the same time with AGP so what you do? Just tell the consumer that its "outdated" and "a new system is needed". Just as how they all tell to the people that ISO/TB is outdated. What I mean is. Are the costumers really THAT stupid, or do the companies only tell them what to like? Frankly A lot of people for sure get hyped and buy everything the media slaps great and awesome reviews on, but I think it are not that many people as it might seem like.

 

[Commiered]

Anyway. I think companies just try to catch for the lowest denominator cause its cheap to produce. Why trying even to make a ISO Turn based game when you can get sales done with real time and first person which need much less skills to do in comparision. Think about it, to develope a mediocre working TB system needs much more brainpower compared to a mediocre "shooter like" system.

I see somewhat in the same way like AGP that got killed by ATI and NVIDIA in favour for higher sales as it was easier to link 2 cards together with PCI even though you really dont even get so much benefits from 2 cards (micro lags and other issues). Still AGP is not much inferior to PCI, hell you can even pretty easily convert PCI signals to AGP if you care (thats what they did with the GeForce 7800 GS which is based on chips for PCI) but as said ... you cant sell people 2 cards at the same time with AGP so what you do? Just tell the consumer that its "outdated" and "a new system is needed". Just as how they all tell to the people that ISO/TB is outdated. What I mean is. Are the costumers really THAT stupid, or do the companies only tell them what to like? Frankly A lot of people for sure get hyped and buy everything the media slaps great and awesome reviews on, but I think it are not that many people as it might seem like.

Good analogy with AGP, shovel enough crap about how FPS combat is so much more 'immershunsful' than ISO TB or what have you and people will buy it.

Funny though that from Russia over the last few years we've had quite a few good games that made money using a 3D rotatable ISO camera and TB combat. Silent Storm was the first but not the last. I've been enjoying the new JA inspired game Hired Guns lately with also a ok system of combat(the game is a bit rough but fun with a nice ISO engine, though SS had the best. Would like to save up AP's in Fallout to increase precision or blast through doors and walls.

 

[0HP]

Agreed. When Paul Barnett was making Warhammer Online he had some really good developer interviews. In one of them he hightlighted the difference between "immersion" (which, he said, was the overarching emphasis in U.S. games) which tends to favor high-end graphical productions with a huge need for consumer techno-goods, and "imagination" which has a technological 'need' of practically 0 and, as such, has the capacity to create communities of gamers.

It's like this with Fallout: when it was all sprite-based tech we might have said "this could look better", but the strength of that is that all the little details were things we could work out in our own minds, on an individual player level.

Then, we turn it over to larger developers like Bethesda, who are abolutely addicted to this concept of "immersion" and they work out all the details, saddling themselves with both the responsibility and satisfaction of doing so.

The restult is something akin to the "new supermutants": stuff that we thought was cool originally, when it was all being worked out up in our own brains, but is not so cool anymore because we have to deal with a single company's interpretation of how they look. Not to mention really dumb diologue like: "AAHHH! WOUNDED!"

So, I guess my major argument here is for more "imagination" (groups of folks with their own inside jokes and t-shirts) and less "immersion" (13 year old x-box players who have mental ejaculations over how many body parts they can blow off).

 

[Crni Vuk]

Agreed. When Paul Barnett was making Warhammer Online he had some really good developer interviews. In one of them he hightlighted the difference between "immersion" (which, he said, was the overarching emphasis in U.S. games) which tends to favor high-end graphical productions with a huge need for consumer techno-goods, and "imagination" which has a technological 'need' of practically 0 and, as such, has the capacity to create communities of gamers.
....

It works hand in hand with the hardware industrie today. Seriously. Its not a babble about "conspiracies", really its not praticularly since they more or less do it all officialy. But to say that you hear all the time about exclusive contracts, supports and "gifts" from hardware manufactures to game developing companies and one should not get the idea about that game developing companies are not inclined to develope games with a much higher focus on "visuals" [like graphic] in the next block buster title?. Its like a perfect interplay.

I mean it that way. If you have to decide now cause of limited resources and time that you have to cut certain aspects of your game which of them either Story, Graphic or Gameplay would you "cut" in the process ? what would you do when you consider that with the right marketing and even slight back up from certain hardware manufactures you can still sell games to a big audience with (almost) impressive visuals only?

And hands down, the "main quest" In Fallout 3 realy feelt extremly rushed and included only cause its a mandatory in games today, particularly RPGs as that is just what people expect from such a game like weapons in a shooter! This is not meant as insult to the story writers, but seriously now if we throw 5 randoom people inside a locked room with a typewriter for a week they could come up with a better plot. Same could be said about the mechanics/gameplay as it was more or less a very watered down SPECIAL (see the thread where one made a video about a character with INT 1, ST 1 and 9% in unarmed and still beeing able to fight like a pro on hard with hand to hand combat ... in Fallout 1/2 this would have meant certain death).

 

[Ashmo]

It's true though. And it's applicable to US (i.e. YOU) as well.

We may care about Fallout 3 being unfaithful, but that's because we have known and loved Fallout 1 and 2 for years.

Think about how many World of WarCraft fans there are. Then consider how many of those only ever played WarCraft III. Then consider how many of THOSE probably only came to the franchise with WarCraft II, which was one of the games that created the RTS hype back in the 1990s. Then consider how many actually stayed with the franchise since WarCraft: Orcs and Humans.

The truth is, I enjoyed WarCraft II. I was alienated by the turn WarCraft III took (IMO, as a means to establish lore for the MMO franchise -- an MMO based purely on WC2 would have been far more limited by comparison as it cut down on many of the Tolkienesque creatures WC1 featured as critters, none of which ever made another appearance in the franchise). But I can't claim to be faithful to the "originals" either: I only played Orcs & Humans once and was put off by the pre-RTS-boom interface.
I played the "original", so I kinda know how that one went, but I couldn't possibly claim to be a "true fan" in the sense I would claim the same title for the Fallout series.

And with more and more games being based on establishing, rebranding and re-inventing franchises these days (a small step from the once-ridiculed "franchise milking" by flooding the market with clone "sequels" year after year -- back when people joked about "Tomb Raider XXI" and "Command & Conquer 6"), the number of players who'll come to a series without having played the "originals" is going to make up an ever increasing number.

It's similar to the small scale phenomen we observed in Fallout vs Fallout 2: fans of the latter playing the former will find it empty, fans of the former playing the latter will find it a travesty.

It's also partially a question of what kind of games you grew up with and what kind of gamer you have become. The indie developers of today probably mostly grew up in a world where modding was more about creating games in BASIC in your bedroom rather than spending long hours in Construction Kits and on IRC.

Many others of the same generation OTOH have become absorbed by the console mindset: jump in, get your dose of gaming in and jump back out. RPGs where you can spend hours getting absorbed into the game world just don't really fit in there. You don't want learning curves and storylines to get in your way. No surprises, please.

 

[UniversalWolf]

One thing we have to keep in mind is that it is never the companies which should be blamed. Companies are usually lead by people who don't give a shit about gaming, it is a company and as such it has to make money, no matter the cost. No matter what Todd says about being a fan, no matter how they claim that the people working on Fallout 3 are Fallout geeks, these are all lies, meant to mislead the public.

How can companies make money ? By satisfying the audience. In other words, it is the mediocre gaming society who should be blamed, a company usually looks around, it nods its head seeing "zomfg kids" then it produces games for the public.

To sum it up, companies are like mirrors. Their products essentially mirror back the intelilgence level of their audiences and it is the gamers of today who should be blamed for having absolutely no brains

I actually agree with this very much. Business is amoral by nature, and no one should expect it to be anything other than amoral. Also, as the popularity of gaming has increased, the percentage of dumb people who play games has increased. When I was a kid, people who knew how to run computers and played games on them were a definite minority and considered nerds. The audience for computer games was flatly more intelligent (and more nerdy) than the general public. Today any idiot can buy a console (or have his parents buy him a console), so the gaming audience is vastly bigger and significantly dumber. At some point, the dumb people began to outnumber the smart people. Now smart games are mostly a niche market, while the big games are full of things that attract dumb people: shiny objects, flashy graphics, and shallow stories with a quick payoff that cater to short attention spans. The game only needs to please for a number of hours sufficient to get the player to buy it. If interest burns out quick, that's for the better, since the player will be hungry for his next fix.

That's the world. Get used to it.

 

[Ausdoerrt]

^ In short "The world's shit, all people are pigs, and the sun is a fucking lantern". =))))

Companies should not be blamed, game developers should be blamed. When a writer publishes a crappy book, it's him who gets smacked on the face, not the publishing company to the same extent.

 

[Commiered]

It works hand in hand with the hardware industrie today. Seriously. Its not a babble about "conspiracies", really its not praticularly since they more or less do it all officialy. But to say that you hear all the time about exclusive contracts, supports and "gifts" from hardware manufactures to game developing companies and one should not get the idea about that game developing companies are not inclined to develope games with a much higher focus on "visuals" [like graphic] in the next block buster title?. Its like a perfect interplay.

I mean it that way. If you have to decide now cause of limited resources and time that you have to cut certain aspects of your game which of them either Story, Graphic or Gameplay would you "cut" in the process ? what would you do when you consider that with the right marketing and even slight back up from certain hardware manufactures you can still sell games to a big audience with (almost) impressive visuals only?

How true. Well you can see this symbiosis between game publisher and hardware manufacture with almost every big game these days, what with the 'Plays better on NVIDIA/ATI', 'Runs best on Intel' etc. propaganda when loading a game. This is also evident when a game runs better on a particular type of graphic card and not the rival one. I'm sure that they all have a hand in how a game presents itself. The hardware companies probably even invest a bit into the game, and pay for particular games that show off their new card features to be included in a bundle with the latest Geforce OMFG2000X video card.

 

[0HP]

I'm not saying that there's not a place for graphically awesome games. If it weren't for a graphics card war over lighting effects, we might not have the Thief games, which are pretty damn cool, and practically invented the "stealther" genre.

There is, however, a definite price to Moores Law applied to video gaming: specificity. The greater the capacity to render a story, the narrower the audience. Now, we've got Bethesda rendering the universe we love so much in about a million different shades of COOL GRAFIX!!! and the appeal has become exactly that narrow (in terms of audience perspective, obviously not absolute number of consumers). Oddly enough, even as philosophical perspectives on games narrow, consumer audiences widen. What gives?

 

[Ausdoerrt]

^ There is definitely a place for graphically pleasing games. One thing I don't get is, why is it that so many people seem to assume that quality graphics and quality gameplay/story are mutually exclusive? It just does not compute.

 

[Holocausto]

The gaming industry as a whole? LOL, I laugh at them nowadays. IMO people who get involved in the game industry but more importantly the companies which hold the agenda should put ART & PASSION before profits. Yes I know that is a rarity nowadays and I fully expect PC games to devolve further and further. But if it were up to me and I had the reins of a game co I would use it to execute my vision and that of artists who take their work seriously and that making boatloads of money was not even in their thought process. Hey, I know integrity and a willingness to sacrifice personal fortune for something immensely more important is most unlikely but I can still pretend there are still some out there who haven't sold their souls to the almighty God Dollar. The most enjoyment I've had from most recent games has been when they are modded by passionate people who get paid nothing and do it in their free time and often make the creators of the game look like inept children. That about says it all about the current state of the "industry" for me. It's pathetic.

 

[Yoshee]

Would you pay $500 for a really good game? Just the game, no hardware or what not... just 500 bucks worth of content with lots of passion behind it.

There is a reason games are not developed like art. They require teams, they are sold at too low a price, and they must appeal to a very fickle gaming public that usually doesn't know what it wants until after it plays it (and thats the portion paying attention, the rest are omfg!!!NUKLEAR BOOMBOOM!).

Don't blame companies for their inability to create art, we are pretty much actively encouraging mediocrity in our society all the time. If you can ship a million units with a certain strategy you are going to do it in this day and age.

If you want games that are works of arts, find a new business model or an audience (preferably both) and start a company.

 

[k9wazere]

This is true. We also (we being the collective game-playing public) need to stop being such graphics whores.

Especially kids. The first thing any of today's gen gamers talk about is "wow, cool grafix!" or "brah, those screenies suck".

You show a game to a kid today and the only thing you will hear is whether the game looks good enough for them to start playing it.

Sad truth.

 

[Holocausto]

Would you pay $500 for a really good game? Just the game, no hardware or what not... just 500 bucks worth of content with lots of passion behind it.

There is a reason games are not developed like art. They require teams, they are sold at too low a price, and they must appeal to a very fickle gaming public that usually doesn't know what it wants until after it plays it (and thats the portion paying attention, the rest are omfg!!!NUKLEAR BOOMBOOM!).

Don't blame companies for their inability to create art, we are pretty much actively encouraging mediocrity in our society all the time. If you can ship a million units with a certain strategy you are going to do it in this day and age.

If you want games that are works of arts, find a new business model or an audience (preferably both) and start a company.

Art & passion does not require a big budget. It requires alot of time and effort and if you make something that appeals even to a comparatively small amount of people you will have succeeded because obscene money should never the foremost objective in art. It's like a musician who writes the songs HE wants to write because it is an INSPIRATION or expression of something or an idea or a vision he has. He isn't doing it to get rich he's doing it to produce "art". And he doesn't necessarily NEED a whole team to help him.


I totally agree that it is also the fault of the gaming public who either consciously or out of sheer ignorance accept/demand certain kinds of games which don't ask much of the player. But unfortunately if someone is waiting for the general gaming public to demand better they will be waiting forever because that ain't gonna happen anytime soon, if ever. Most people just play games as something to fill their free time and don't give much if ANY thought about how to improve or to suggest/demand better.


If a game is dumb & boring they simply stop playing and go find another one or do something else and the path is clear for the next mediocre title to sucker them next time around (maybe this one will be better). So the cycle of "mediocrity" will never be broken by casual gamers. It's basically how serious do people want to take their games? If they treat them like a chew stick to mindlessly knaw when they are bored don't ever expect a gourmet meal to come from the kitchen.

 

[Corvin]

Stupendous post, Yoshee.

... I believe that folks will pay if somebody actually puts in the effort you refer to on something, Holocausto... I'd say Satoshi Tajiri would be a good example of pretty much a lone guy and a small team pulling off something that became a huge and eventually degraded franchise with the early Pokemon games. That sort of effort is still possible. You can't expect every game to be the result of that sort of effort though.

Let's face it... the folks who wanted Fallout 3 to be that sort of effort lost back when Black Isle broke up and Interplay went downhill. You just have to make the best of it. I think the setting and ideals and dialogue potential of Fallout are still there (and I loved them much better than the system, which is much less impressive than the folks who did play it and the folks who never even played it originally come here and 'remember' it to be).

They're what matters. Rather than killing yourself comparing Fallout 3 to 1 and 2... people should compare 3 to BOS and see it as something better... and do what they can to help make the MMO actually entertaining rather than a failure in budget (where most MMOs fail to WoW's 50 mil) or creativity (where most games fail to things like A Tale In The Desert and Puzzle Pirates...which have both found their own measure of success).

That and modding the crap out of Fo3.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Would you pay $500 for a really good game? Just the game, no hardware or what not... just 500 bucks worth of content with lots of passion behind it.

Why do you ask? I know its stupid. But you do know ... a few bought either the X-box only cause of Halo 3 and others the PS3 cause of Metal Gear Solid 4.

Of course its a bit to simple (Its not like those games are the only one you can play so you you did not REALLY payed all the money only for the games), but it shows that people are willingly to consider to pay more for certain games. Make out of that what you want.

to say that though. Of course for a REALLY well done game, I would pay more. Definetly. Without any doubt. It works with cars the same way, and noe one is bitching. YOu cant expet a Ferrari to be on the same level in price and quality with a compact car. But you would as well never use a Ferrari for the same thing. Fallout 1 was a Ferrari. Fallout 3 is a motorbike with training wheels