Talking to my producer, he had the point that games companies make games that they want to play, which is not the same as what consumers want to buy. We were both agreeing that this ties into the current thinking about the Wii.
Developers are not making games that capitalise on the Wii's market strengths, because they don't think like the Wii's market. And that goes back to a misunderstanding (or mislabeling) of what the 'casual' market actually is. I consider myself to be in that market these days because, being married with two kids, I don't have time to sit down and play through an epic 20-40 hour storyline.
But I don't want to play some game that is just "press the space bar to win". The challenge as I see it is to produce a game that lends itself to an experience that is not time pressured; that I can come back to when I have the time.
Hmm. Hang on. I just read about that point here on next-gen.biz where he talks about the universal pause. That's one of the things that drove me made about Zelda: Twilight Princess. I'd be halfway through a dungeon, only to have to go look after my kids, and would just lose twenty minutes of gameplay.
Making a game that relies on a player being able to dedicate a solid hour of uninteruptible time in order to make progress just comes across as rather self-indulgent to me. Especially when there is not even an in-game justification for the lack of saves. It just feels like an arbitrary decision because (I assume) Zelda games are always like this.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Big sellers for 2008
This list of the top selling games for 2008 did the rounds at work the other day, which provided some interesting discussion points, as will the follow up analysis. It's the usual depressing list of mediocre film tie-ins, licensed IPs and sequels! Who keeps buying the film games? Shrek! Transformers 3! Spiderman 3! I shudder. Maybe there out to be a law about grandparents buying games for presents.
Though as an aside, I overheard a very interesting conversation a couple of months ago between two people of grandparently age who were buying DS games for themselves, and talking about the games that they enjoyed playing with their grandkids. The times they are a-changing.
Interesting that Assassin's Creed did so well. I don't know why, but I just got the impression that it had kind of flopped.
The other thing that struck me about the list is the games that we don't talk about. There are a lot of games tucked away on that list that would have been would have had a very different development process to make (by which I mean - get this out the door quickly and we don't care what it looks like!), but have done quite well.
I've just encountered another example of this today. We're looking at horse-riding at the moment, and got a few of the 'targeted at the tween girl' horsey games.
There were three of us in howls of laughter at how bad the controls were. It was incredible that any game could ship with something that unplayable. Though I think it's the usual explanation: the developers would have become quite accustomed to using them as the controls and game were developed incrementally, without any outside feedback.
The same thing happened to me once when I was the QA test lead on a certain project. To us, the game was ridiculously easy, and we could finish the entire game in under an hour. But new players struggled to get out of the first room. The problem was that we new exactly where each creature was going to spawn into the game world, so they were all killed before they had a chance to fire at the player. If you didn't know where they were going to appear, you found yourself being shot at by a dozen enemies that were all around you, resulting in a deadly crossfire.
I've been a firm believer in rigourous focus testing ever since!
I suppose that this is all relates to this discussion here on gamasutra.com: Why do good people make bad games. It's a risk averse industry that is happy to take the easy money by making a cheaper product that has a guaranteed return, knowing that spending more money to make a better, or more polished game will not significantly increase sales. But the big downside to this is that there are certain markets, such as the teen/pre-teen girl market that just get crap foisted on them that the prestigious titles for the prestigious markets don't get. Sure there are crap shooters, and crap roleplaying games, but there isn't a AAA fashion game!
Though as an aside, I overheard a very interesting conversation a couple of months ago between two people of grandparently age who were buying DS games for themselves, and talking about the games that they enjoyed playing with their grandkids. The times they are a-changing.
Interesting that Assassin's Creed did so well. I don't know why, but I just got the impression that it had kind of flopped.
The other thing that struck me about the list is the games that we don't talk about. There are a lot of games tucked away on that list that would have been would have had a very different development process to make (by which I mean - get this out the door quickly and we don't care what it looks like!), but have done quite well.
- Any of the High School Musical games.
- Hannah Montana
- Imagine Fashion Designer
I've just encountered another example of this today. We're looking at horse-riding at the moment, and got a few of the 'targeted at the tween girl' horsey games.
There were three of us in howls of laughter at how bad the controls were. It was incredible that any game could ship with something that unplayable. Though I think it's the usual explanation: the developers would have become quite accustomed to using them as the controls and game were developed incrementally, without any outside feedback.
The same thing happened to me once when I was the QA test lead on a certain project. To us, the game was ridiculously easy, and we could finish the entire game in under an hour. But new players struggled to get out of the first room. The problem was that we new exactly where each creature was going to spawn into the game world, so they were all killed before they had a chance to fire at the player. If you didn't know where they were going to appear, you found yourself being shot at by a dozen enemies that were all around you, resulting in a deadly crossfire.
I've been a firm believer in rigourous focus testing ever since!
I suppose that this is all relates to this discussion here on gamasutra.com: Why do good people make bad games. It's a risk averse industry that is happy to take the easy money by making a cheaper product that has a guaranteed return, knowing that spending more money to make a better, or more polished game will not significantly increase sales. But the big downside to this is that there are certain markets, such as the teen/pre-teen girl market that just get crap foisted on them that the prestigious titles for the prestigious markets don't get. Sure there are crap shooters, and crap roleplaying games, but there isn't a AAA fashion game!
Zelda has gone back into its box
The chance of finishing Zelda have greatly diminished!
What with being sick over the last two weeks all interest totally disappeared. I've picked up a My French Coach for the DS and am ploughing through that on the train trip to work.
It's not too bad, but I wish that it contained the masculine/feminine articles with the nouns. I've always had terrible trouble keeping all the le's, la's, du's, etc. straight and at the point that I'm at so far (just over a quarter of the way through) it hasn't really helped with that.
Still, it's not a bad system for reinforcing a lot of basic vocabulary, and I'm finding it quite challenging now that I'm approaching the half way point of the lessons.
What with being sick over the last two weeks all interest totally disappeared. I've picked up a My French Coach for the DS and am ploughing through that on the train trip to work.
It's not too bad, but I wish that it contained the masculine/feminine articles with the nouns. I've always had terrible trouble keeping all the le's, la's, du's, etc. straight and at the point that I'm at so far (just over a quarter of the way through) it hasn't really helped with that.
Still, it's not a bad system for reinforcing a lot of basic vocabulary, and I'm finding it quite challenging now that I'm approaching the half way point of the lessons.
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