I have to admit I have a weird desk fetish, where seeing orgainization (or the lack thereof) somehow connects a couple of pleasure pathways in my brain. I've even posted a picture of my desk on Flickr and sent it to a couple of groups.
Today, Kotaku posted a gallery of pictures of not only desks, but game developer desks. Games and furniture. I <3 U.
It was popular belief, and still probably is in this still maturing video game industry, that used game sales hurt everyone except the entity selling the used games. The developer and publisher loose a potential game sale on a new game because of being undercut by players that sell games that they either don't like or finished. It's a winning situation for a gamer looking for cheap games, a collector or someone looking to get into something different.
The car industry and housing/construction industry has been surviving with used sales for quite a long time. No one complains about it now. Used car dealerships are a dime a dozen and flipping houses is the new Avon. They've enabled buyers who can't afford the prices set by the manufacturer to buy something that is older and more affordable because of depreciation over the years.
Most developers are probably complaining about lost sales, being undercut by Gamestop and eBay and whatnot. That might be true in some cases, but that should also tell them that there is something wrong with their price point. Another fact of the matter is that used games are opportunities to create brand loyalty and franchise loyalty. I'll occasionally buy a sports game used to figure out if the games have changed enough to my liking. Used games are how I found Forza Motorsports and jumped the Gran Turismo ship from Sony.
I think it's more up to the gamers themselves to realize that if they are positive that they want the next Call of Duty because they love the developer and the games they make, they need to buy the game brand new and make sure the developer gets their money. But it's also up to the developer to realize that they can loose respect and change peoples minds about their games and give them the ability to get some of their money back from other channels. Unless they want to start refunding money for video games (which no store will ever do because of people ripping games and stealing them) then developers need to get over the used game sales and let buyers make their own choices.
The problem with having a new born is that light sleepers sleep even lighter. And for me, half the reason I sleep light is that I can't turn my brain off when I want/need to (the other half of the reason is that I can't turn my ears off, so I hear everything). So tonight, I started thinking about "open ended" sand-box style games that really aren't and how they could be fixed and probably not nearly be as fun.
The Grand Theft Auto series is supposed to be the leader in open world gaming. You can do anything you want, whenever you want. But in reality, the game has confines that funel you toward an end. Sure, you can stop interacting with the other characters in the game and just drive around and do stunts and collect things, but that's hardly fun. Grand Theft Auto is like a really awesome movie game. You get back story, you work through the multiple storyline arcs and then come to the final conclusion/resolution. But what if the game had endings that might not ever happen or be so insurmountable that we realize that we need to keep playing to find an ending that suits us.
I feel like the main problem with games like this is voice acting. Trying to add production quality to video games like this ultimately holds them back. If you didn't have to write dialog for every situation, you could have even more situations and then not feel pressured to actually manifest them. GTA IV had hundreds of pages of script (closer to a thousand?). Why not proceedurally create the game using a system more built for the purpose: classic role playing games.
In an RPG like Dungons and Dragons, heros build characters based off of categories of statistics and a pool of experience points. By rolling dice, they give each attribute a value and base instances in the game off of them to determine the outcome. But what if every primary and secondary character in a video game had that.
Let's take GTA IV as an example. The game would give you the same backstory of imigrating illegally to America to meet your cousin and start a new life. Your back story as gangster determines your character statistics (i.e. you have a high percentage of shooting accuracy, high speed and strength and agility, etc). Everyone else in the game has statiscs that are created when you initiate a new game save. The problem here is figuring out every type of statistic you need to make the game have it's own story arcs (or not!). For instance, one of your cousin's new buddies could have a high probability to let you have a car from his dealership, but also have a high gambling probabilty. He could also suck at it. At the close of the local casino, anyone with unpaid debt has a problem and if one of them knew you, they might call you for help where you could, as a player in the game, decide whether or not to help and if "helping" includes using a gun.
By running the game off of percentages and character attributes and tying that with activities that already exist in the games (racing, gambling, flying planes, shooting pool, strip clubs), you would basically have a program that is acting as a the "dungeon master" and crafting an experience specifically for you, making sure that not too many instances happen at the same time, that as time moves along maybe things happen to more primary characters, and, with a high probability, one of a few huge event trees happens that lead you to a satisfying game end, not necessarily a story end. If we decided that our friend in the casino who's knee caps are about to be shot off, we could come to the rescue, kill the gangster owner and take over the place for ourselves. We win. But if we want more, we stay in the game, sell the casino and that tells the game we want to keep rolling the dice and see what comes up next.
How does that differ from GTA IV now? There are lots of small story arcs that we could leave the game anytime after succeeding, but we bought the game because we know there is a big finally ending that triggers the credits. If we keep playing, we eventually have to come to that ending. We could just try dating women in the game and play as a dating sim, but there is no final event there. In Fable, a game where you can get married and have kids, you get an experience and resolution, but it's based off of meeting requirements. Anyone who tries it and learns the rules will succeed. There's no chance or probability, leaving the "mission" on a single track. GTA, nor Fable, have stopping points where your telling the game that you want to continue and to keep generating instances of events of varying difficulty or probability of success.
Games like Dungons and Dragons have a players working in an enviornment where the dungon master has crafted an experience and feeds players a main story arc and choices. It's a relationship that requires the will to continue to meet goals predetermined by the dungeon master. Keep the character building of Dungeons and Dragons and use the abililty of a computer to generate days worth of content and you have yourself a truly open ended game where the content only stops if everyone the player can interact with dies off or moves out of town.
That all being said, I never said that a game like this would sell or be any good. It's 2:45 in the a.m. and "sand-box style" was the phrase that entered my head back around 1:30am.
Don't let a video game developer license one of your songs for the into/load screen of a game. The people who play that game on a regular basis will learn to hate your song. You'll be associated with waiting. Waiting for fun.
Yes, I'm talking to you Guns 'N Roses and Criterion (Burnout Paradise). And Lil' Jon and EA (Need for Speed: Underground).
Instead, be the end credits. Be the happy moment.
