I recently discovered that gamers who aren't game designers are exceedingly lame. And I realized that the reason I'm not a gamer is simply because I'm not that lame, and because all the games ever made, all the games anyone could make, will always be lame.
There are damned few games where you get to alter the game world. The only ones I know are Minecraft, Second Life and the old MOOs (I consider Second Life a 3D MOO). And of course, the Reality MMORPG (that one's manual is really inadequate by the way).
In World of Warcraft, you don't get to change the outcome of anything at all. Things move around randomly, events happen, and you don't have any say in them. Only an unreachable deity (the Content Programmer) has any say in it at all.
In Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights and other computer role-playing games, you get a choice of a tiny number (usually 3 or less) "endings" which are barely distinguishable. You win and become evil, you win and become good, you lose and die, so on. There isn't any possible way to get off these plot rails you're stuck on.
And aren't you happy with 3 or 4 destinations? Like I said, I'm not that lame. And although in Minecraft and possibly Dungeon Keeper, you get to craft worlds, you only get to do so on a very superficial level. Like a freaking engineer! I look down on engineers, I don't want to emulate them!
So anyways, how did I learn all this? Well, I read a couple of self-insert fics about computer games. It took me a while to figure out their authors were uncreative hacks who were novelizing the games. Cause yeah, I don't play computer games, I just read about them. And then I started wondering what the fuck was wrong with these people.
And I realized! They're cattle and insects. They don't think of anything beyond their own self-aggrandizement. The "sandbox" in Elder Scrolls where you get to acquire power, prestige (social status), and fortune (wealth) is all they could ever want.
None of them ever want to REMAKE the world, putting down railways and signal towers to keep the Tamriel Empire together. None of them want to build aqueducts, public baths and radically improve coal mining to heat the baths in Athkatla.
I suppose Civilization and Railroad Tycoon let you do that to a small degree. But they were crap, because you got bogged down in repetitive micro-management pretty damned quick. And they were over-simplistic. What you could build was exceedingly limited. The plot rails may have been conceptual but they were still there.
My favourite genre of fiction has always been crossovers with reality. And the first question that always comes to mind is what the trade opportunities would be. I think this rant kinda shows that. Healing potions for steam engines, hmm. Steam engines are nearly always possible so long as something resembling human life lives.
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13 comments:
This is a technical issue, rather than an express lack of imagination with game designers. I'm sure that there are plenty of game designers that have considered sandboxes of the type that you discuss here before they've run into the technical - and to a greater extent, economic - brick walls that keep games from expanding to more imaginative surroundings.
Making games of the scope of today's technology is a more difficult task than you credit it with, and the design aspects are by far the least demanding of the disciplines involved in game design. One of the big problems is that you'll quickly run up against CPU and memory limitations when you try designing games with myriads of opportunities for progression, and it means more testing is required in order to get the game to a state where it's not crashing to the desktop or freezing every twenty minutes.
Now, I'm sure that there are many game designers, programmers and whoever who would be willing to try pushing those boundaries, but they're let down by economic factors. Most of the people heading the big players in the games industry aren't game designers or programmers - they're pencil pushers and business sorts who have little real idea about the technical or artistic details of games.
Unfortunately, your post claims to seek progress, but only succeeds in whining. You offer no real insight into the industry as to how they could implement the sort of details you desire while still caged by the industry's business practices. I'd like to see more open-ended games as well, but then again, I'm the sort of person who would love to see a simulation of Formula One during the 1970s. I'm not indicative of the market as a whole, and if I want that sort of game on the market, I'll have to program it or assist in programming it myself.
Woof, woof, woof. The same old barkings that I've seen from you elsewhere. I've played plenty of Will Wright's games, and hell, I've enjoyed most of the ones I've played. (SimEarth, on the other hand, is a bit shit - not Maxis' finest hour.) At their roots, though, they're just simulations - as easily analysed by an engineer's techniques as any of the cookie-cutter FPS sequels of today. And the last time Will Wright got involved in anything - specifically, Spore - more attention was drawn to EA's restrictive DRM than the actual game content, which was too mediocre to even draw attention to it.
I know that you weren't talking about driving simulations when I posted my comment. That, since you're too quick to yip around like a poodle let off its lead, was a tangential comment rather than a designation of what I see as an open-ended game. The market for a Formula One simulation, as borne out by Grand Prix Legends about fifteen years ago, is about as large as the market for a micromanaged open-ended strategy game, though.
You seem to assume that I care about the contents of my blog. Actually, that's all a load of cast-off rubbish which is only worth writing so that I can see ridiculous Google search results where nobody else even ventures. You do me more credit by wasting your time reading any of it than you could ever do complementing it. It's not good, but then, neither is your material.
Let's be fair here: Do you really think that anybody worth knowing will take your work seriously, given that you seem to legitimately think that the D&D morality system is worth commenting on in real life? What's next, taking your political views from [i]Vampire: The[/i] fucking [i]Masquerade[/i]?
Kindly go to hell and die there. You're incapable of saying anything that I could ever wish to hear.
You're not just utterly incapable of synthesis, you are also a slave totally lacking in willpower. I despise that utterly.
You sincerely believe that judgement and goodness are determined by market share. And you sincerely seek to impose that view on me and shackle me to it.
For that you should die.
So kindly do what all your kind should do: google "nearest abattoir to my house" and report there swiftly to be rendered down to protein. Your organs donated to the local hospital optional.
Oh and insect? You're the one that's spending time reading my blog. I strongly recommend you stop. I myself didn't spend even 30 seconds on your blog in total. I already knew I despised you utterly and only needed to know why.
Correction: you're incapable of saying anything to me that can produce any emotion from me but indifference.
I already know you take your philosophy (all thoughts really) from others. That's why I'm indifferent to you, slave.
I don't engage insects as equals, I don't talk to them. Nor do I care about their feelings or what they think of me. I crush them.
Oh no, Mr. Hard Man! Don't crush my crunchy chitinous outer shell!
You're just like a twelve-year-old who just discovered the internet, only with fancier words. What's the matter, Hard Man? Did somebody kick dirt in your face when you were a kid and now you want to swear revenge on the rest of the world? Actually, scratch the twelve-year-old bit - you sound like a hackneyed villain from a dime-store pulp comic book.
BTW, you've bypassed the whole pantheon of other roleplaying games and are now drawing influence from the likes of these:
http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Worst_RPGs_ever
Come at me, brah.
Gameism is fucking lame, next of kin to Escapism and Fanboyism.
What do you believe would be achieved by your hypothetical ideal "perfect game"? Would anyone learn anything? Would the world change in any way, shape or form? NO! Games just entertain, amuse and titillate.
As you admitted yourself, the best which games can achieve is to fellate someone. And while there's plenty of room for all the whores in the world to give lamers handjobs at their little conventions, the oldest profession in the world is hardly what anyone wolud call a noble or ambitious endeavor, is it? If whores could make the world a better place, we wouldn't fucking have epidemics and warfare and disease ten thousand years later, would we?
So gamers are lame and the people who cater to them are even lamer. When is the last time a game designer has created a place for people to fall in love? Or find compatible life partners? Or learn real life skills? Or expand their minds? When has a game expanded consciousness? Or increased anyone's lifespan? Games aren't the fuck Spice but mere fleeting moments of pleasure. And that might be enough for a lamer like you but not for me!
Games are a divertisement. It's right there in the name: diversion. A path AWAY from better, more important things. Keep your Matrix, I prefer living in the real world.
>> What do you believe would be achieved by your hypothetical ideal "perfect game"? Would anyone learn anything?
YES! Yes, they fucking would learn something, you sanctimonious bell-end! The only reason people aren't learning things in modern games is because of ignoramuses like you, who allowed, who fucking PERMITTED game developers to not only release their game titles glorifying the Second World War, but make them best-selling games.
>> When is the last time a game designer has created a place for people to fall in love?
Love? LOVE? Ha ha ha ha ha... oh, wait, you're serious. Let me laugh even harder. HA HA HA HA HA.
Do you seriously, legitimately think that ROMANTIC FUCKING LOVE is something we should be promoting, not only in games, but in any part of life? Have you ever actually fallen in love? Do you have ANY FUCKING EXPERIENCE of how it feels? Romantic love is a disgusting, malefic cankersore on the human species. It is an abominable, grotesque, vile infestation. It is among the most foul and horrific things imaginable, a punishment which gives one the mere illusion of happiness, when really, all that exists within the emotion is pain. I believe in it the same way I believe in war, chaos and death. That it even exists in any sort of form at all is one of the most upsetting things about the human race.
I, contrarywise, have experienced love. It was the single most painful experience I have ever had, a sensation which felt like poison seeping through my body. I would rather have every single other pain that I have experienced inflicted on me all at once than experience another second of it. The very fact that you somehow think this is something that games should be promoting shows how little you have evolved from the primordial beings to which you owe your lineage. Actually, given that they do not experience love themselves, you have regressed.
>> the oldest profession in the world is hardly what anyone wolud call a noble or ambitious endeavor, is it?
I would have thought you'd be more complementary about it, given i) you still seem to seriously, genuinely believe that romantic love is worth anything but sheer and utter derision and ii) it would appear to be the only place where you could receive even a vestige of companionship.
>> Or find compatible life partners?
Various MMO games, including World of Warcraft. But see above for my thoughts regarding this.
>> Or learn real life skills?
Is this a joke? Is this meant to be some sort of joke, you putrid piece of foetid pond scum? The existence of an ENTIRE FUCKING FIELD dedicated to teaching real-life skills with game UIs should be evidence enough, but if you want some examples - since you're clearly too addled to do the faintest bit of research - here goes. X-Plane. VBS 3. Capitalism. iRacing. And don't make the mistake of thinking that this is all there is in a limited collection of games, lackwit.
And here I was expecting you to write something intelligent! I certainly have learnt my lesson. Don't bother replying. You've already demonstrated that you can offer nothing of intellectual merit.
Right, you talk about regression when you honestly believe that shelling out cash and forking over money is the proper role of superior intellects in changing the world. Regression? Talk about complete stagnation. You can't see beyond the roles capitalism has assigned you.
Then you propose MMOs as legitimate places for people to fall in love even though your personal experience of it was excruciating and you clearly fell for someone whom you weren't in the least bit compatible with. So, the effectiveness of your proposed solution reaches negative 100% and you still propose it.
Then for games teaching life skills, the only thing you have to resort on is pathetic simulations of nauseating and execrable jobs glorifying psychopathic motivations. Yeah, you are completely worthless. Next you'll be proposing "how to be a serial killer" as a game that promotes life skills.
You lost me on "minecraft"
Sounds like you'd like to play Super Mario Maker
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