The Games Industry thread.

[DrSpike]

Nevar!

[child of Thor]

True - it makes too much business sense to not provide the masses with their opium some of those cases sounded pretty bad though.
I consider myself pretty hard-core, in that i find atleast around 3hrs each day to play. But i've never found my game playing getting in the way of real life or doing all the other stuff an adult needs to do.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by child of Thor
I consider myself pretty hard-core, in that i find atleast around 3hrs each day to play.

What, 3 hours?

/me beats up child of Thor

[child of Thor]

well that was a rough underestimate taking into account the odd day i dont play or holidays etc

today i played 3hrs of Daggerfall and then 2hrs of Morrowind a fairly typical gaming day for me on a work-day. weekends, well they can just get silly

is this a low amount of hours for gaming? maybe i'm a lightweight gamer through the week then? but hard-core on weekends/days off work?

Anyway the point of this is that i often see people from the games industry talking about how games need to be less involved, or take up less time(mainly because they have to work - so dont have a lot of free gaming time), and use this as an excuse to churn out what are to me very disapointingly short and un-involved games.

What i dont get about this approach is that haven't they heard of the 'save game' function before - your not forced to sit down and finish a game in a sitting you know

Heck some of my fondest memmories of Civ were extended campaigns taking weeks or months to finish - a few hours a day, no problem.

Still i think its just an excuse used cause the accountants/suits know their onto a good thing - accountants/suits can suck with stuff like this

Interesting article from Edge magazine:

http://www.edge-online.co.uk/archives/2005/09/cult_of_katamar.php

i seem to share his sentiments in the last but one paragraph:

"The question is not what [new hardware] can do, but what people can do with it. In the end, the important thing is not the hardware, but the software and the thoughts and feeling of the person that put that software there in the first place." He added: "I also worry how I will interact with games that have an almost unnecessary level of detail in them."

amen to those thoughts - technical prowess is most often not the defining aspect of what makes a great game great imho, at least not in my experience.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by child of Thor
today i played 3hrs of Daggerfall and then 2hrs of Morrowind a fairly typical gaming day for me on a work-day. weekends, well they can just get silly

Do you play games on the job? Otherwise how would you find so much time playing games?

[Barinthus]

I'm lucky if I get at least 2 hours a day on a workday.

[child of Thor]

I'm lucky in that i can choose what hours to put in at work(one advantage of being the manager). So either before or after work i can squeeze in a good half dozen hours if i really try
Still i'm working at one day being able to play games for a living, that would be my heaven

I think i'm a game geek

[child of Thor]

latest info on the riseing costs of games console development:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4442346.stm

[DrSpike]

Well, we don't care about them right?

[child of Thor]

...come on and you dont think this wont gravitate towards the pc arena? this is the corporate games industry(EA et all) we are talking about. It effects all of us

[DrSpike]

I don't think it's a given, no. And we can always just download more games if they get too pricey.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by child of Thor
...come on and you dont think this wont gravitate towards the pc arena? this is the corporate games industry(EA et all) we are talking about. It effects all of us

since the BBC article doesnt explain whats driving the cost of development, its impossible to say whether the same trend will effect PC games.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DrSpike
I don't think it's a given, no. And we can always just download more games if they get too pricey.

The issue isnt the price per se - its that the underlying development costs will increase, which will make it more difficult to make games profitably. Middle market games in particular could further decline. Pirating games would only aggravate this trend.

[DrSpike]

Good. It doesn't take a gazillion dollars to make a great game.

[Urban Ranger]

The developers are putting a lot of $$$ in making eye candy. The stupid thing is the more glitter they want to add the easier it is for the game to go wrong - more bugs, IOW. Civ 4 is no exception, I think it's the graphics part that's crashing the game on my box.

I don't mind having less glitter if that means a game with less bugs. 2D graphics, even.