- Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment... Great games were developed at Black Isle, kind of games not easy to see today on the shelves. Some of them sold great, as Baldur's Gate. Do you believe would it be still possible to develop similar games to those today?
I guess it depends on how similar they need to be. In terms of mechanics, I think a lot of gamers wouldn't accept the controls or conventions of those old games. In terms of content, I believe it's still possible to do, but it's harder now.
Based on what? The industry really hasn't put out a decent effort since Troika died.
The threshold of simplicity that a hardcore gamer will accept is a lot lower than the threshold of difficulty that a mainstream gamer will accept.
Based on what? If the question is sales then EVE Online does pretty well and it has a pretty brutal difficulty curve. Developers and publishers never test their nightmarish fantasy about gamers not buying complicated games. If complex games were successful in the past then it's fair to assume that they would be successful now.
A hardcore gamer may accept an automapping tool but scoff that in "the old days", he or she had to write things out on graph paper. A mainstream gamer will probably not accept the absence of an automapping tool. He or she will stop playing the game and tell everyone they know that it is terrible.
That's the complaint of idiots, automapping is identical to hand drawn only the computer does all of the work for you, as it should. It would be like someone complaining that they don't have to consult a seperate book for all of the dialogue like Wasteland, it's not something worth listening too and it's not something which a significant portion of the "hardcore" crowd is asking for.
I think it's important for developers and publishers to start recognizing the differences between hardcore and mainstream gamers and include different gameplay elements for the two groups. Having a difficulty slider that shifts numbers around doesn't really solve the problem. Hardcore gamers want an additional level of engagement that mainstream gamers absolutely do not. And just to be clear, I don't think this is because hardcore gamers are a sophisticated elite group of super geniuses and mainstream gamers are drooling morons. Hardcore gamers devote an enormous amount of time to the games they play and are incredibly well-versed in the conventions of the genres they enjoy. What presents a challenge to a bright but ignorant new player simply does not stimulate most "veterans".
Not sure what the hell he's trying to say, make a game that you can turn off half of the mechanics if you so choose?
Would you say videogames can be compared, emotionally speaking, to cinema or literature at this level?
I dislike labeling things as art/not art. Ultimately, I believe the most important goal is to communicate what you want to communicate. I think game developers should be less concerned with how people label their work and more concerned with what they want to say and how they want to say it. If people think the final result has artistic merit, they will let you know.
Ah yes, now that you're on the third question which does so and don't want to answer the real question, you evade it by talking about the label of art (which is a pretty irrelevant label anyway given that a dead shark in a tank formaldehyde is considered art these days).
I think developers have to lead the way: we need to make games that are enjoyable as games and also have mature themes to explore that complement the gameplay.
Now if only there were a genre of video games which have done this in the past and is very good for narrative tasks...
I only did a bit of design work on the Dark Alliance games, but I think it was good for Interplay and Black Isle to work with Snowblind on those projects. Black Isle consisted almost entirely of PC RPG developers and it gave us a narrow focus. I think working on console titles helped open up some of the developers (myself included) to look at other input systems and gameplay styles.
...They are Diablo clones so the gameplay and underlying systems of those games were not somehow linked to the platform.
Yes, it would have been better for us to focus on refactoring the renderer instead of rewriting it, optimizing data instead of bloating it, and making our pipelines simpler and more error-proof instead of harder and more error-prone. Changes of this nature would not only have limited our own risk, but it would have kept the game more accessible to a larger audience of players, builders, and modders.
Yeah... too bad you guys didn't think it through well enough before going into it. Did you learn the important lesson from this, spend more time in the concept and design phase so that you don't fuck up the build phase?
Most console piracy in the past was rampant only in a few geographical areas. Specifically, some Asian countries had 90%+ piracy rates for popular console games. PC gaming piracy seems to be much more global of a phenomenon, making console titles a safer bet in many markets.
Key phrase there is "in the past", it's becoming ever more prevalent internationally.
- Very few game developers are placing their bets on GNU/Linux or other operative systems. Is it so difficult games programming for Linux or this is just an economic issue?
That one's easy, every (minus a sliver) gamer who has Linux also runs Windows so it's pointless to create more work for yourself.
