my dream for the future of video games.

[adoomgod]

Based on Darktail's thread on "why are so many crappy games being made given their cost?"

I see two reasons:
1. Their cost - developers have this mistaken concept these days that all games should be high definition with fancy physics engines etc. These cost a lot to make. Torchlight 2, made by 33-37 people right? Imagine it with Diablo 3 graphics, a secure server, and physics. Much more costly.

Yet Runic knows they don't need said frilly things to make a great game.

I WISH more AAA companies would follow suite. I imagine a golden age of gaming where companies invest more money on the fluidity, writing, and aesthetic appeal of a game as opposed to advanced textures, physics, etc. Imagine if Blizzard focused on making a game like Torchlight/2. With 200, give or take, people working on bosses, itemization, monsters, areas, art, randomized events, story, epic in-game moments.

I'm sure there'd still be a profit to be made.

Problem 2 of course is the business. Why innovate when you can copy an already successful game and print money.

[civilian]

Kidz these days. With their Cods of Duty and their Rims of the Sky. Back in my day we were lucky to have a box of matches to play with. And we loved them matches. They were prized above all possessions. We made them last quite awhile too. Ha, I remember one time we locked Jimmy in the bathroom at my mom's house and he took a bottle of lye and...

Wait what?

[JoystickMonkey]

I don't think they would be AAA Games without all of that additional polish. Presentation in general is necessary to sell your game. It's pretty difficult to prioritize what gives you the best bang for buck when you have hundreds of people who all work on the same thing - it makes you a lot less resistant to feature creep.

[UncleJim]

Kidz these days. With their Cods of Duty and their Rims of the Sky. Back in my day we were lucky to have a box of matches to play with. And we loved them matches. They were prized above all possessions. We made them last quite awhile too. Ha, I remember one time we locked Jimmy in the bathroom at my mom's house and he took a bottle of lye and...

Wait what?

Mark is that you? We used to make a box of matches last a 2 weeks at least. And that pore turtle was never the same after you locked me in the bathroom. Who knew turtles didn't like lye in their water.

[Zidders]

Kidz these days. With their Cods of Duty and their Rims of the Sky. Back in my day we were lucky to have a box of matches to play with. And we loved them matches. They were prized above all possessions. We made them last quite awhile too. Ha, I remember one time we locked Jimmy in the bathroom at my mom's house and he took a bottle of lye and...

Wait what?

Mark is that you? We used to make a box of matches last a 2 weeks at least. And that pore turtle was never the same after you locked me in the bathroom. Who knew turtles didn't like lye in their water.

I remember the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say.

Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...

[Arlian]

A nickel you say? Back in my day, a nickel could feed your family for a month, pay off your house, get you a haircut, and allow you 10 heads of oxen to use on the farm. A quarter is rich blood, they were hard times, when a penny is your weekly wage working 80 hours at the sawmill, a nickel was hard to come by...

Oh, that's right, you came from that big city of Hendersonville, which they later renamed to Morganville. It's beyond me how thirty-six people can live in that cramped city so well.

[kaosweilder]

Reminds me of this Monty Python sketch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

[EdgeDamodred]

I used to think all games must adhere to my view of how games should be. People say AAA should do this instead of that and so and so forth. What they conveniently forget is that AAA are not the only ones making games now. The explosive growth of the industry as a whole over the last decade alone is almost incomprehensible. We have so many platforms for games, 2002 to present saw the console platforms manage to have 3 viable contenders when they had been stuck at most 2 for 18 years(Nintendo vs Sega, Nintendo vs Sony, I would say the 3 way race would have started with Nintendo vs Sega vs Sony. but Sega rapidly dwindled due to numerous factors and stopped being a serious competitor hardware-wise when the original PlayStation hit its stride). Sony managed to at least chip at Nintendo's handheld market with the PSP(while considered a "failure" by some it managed to stay on shelves and continued to produce games for several years unlike other handheld platforms. For a "failure" that's quite a bit of success). While Nintendo went sideways with the Wii this generation, they're attempting to jump back into the "hardcore ring" with the Wii U and at least attempting to bring some of their casual market over. The PC platform has managed to hum along as it always did despite the sayings of doom and gloom and such.

And now we have the rise of the "independent" developer. Now there seems to be two different types of independent developer. There's the developer who works in the AAA section but isn't tied to any specific publisher(like Obsidian), and then there's the "Indie" developer who is usually a lone developer or small team who just creates a game with the resources on hand. Things get a bit fuzzy with the Indie developer because some are trying to make money and others are just doing whatever they want for their own self interests. The internet along with the major mobile app development wave has boosted the "indie" developer into more of the spotlight. We're now heading into the higher quality browser based gaming with the Unity plugins, Flash's greater support for 3D and the greater updates to HTML(HTML5 still is lacking but it definitely shows the direction).

Between the AAA's, the Independents and Indies the amount of games that actually make it to market is stupidly high! Yet there still persists the idea only the AAA's make games. And we cry when those guys aren't making the games we want, completely ignoring everyone else making games. So here's the thing, let AAA do their Hollywood Style blockbusters and their Iterative shooters and sports games. If you don't like what they're offering, bring up Steam, Gamersgate, Direct2Drive, iOS App Store, Google's App Store, Amazon's App Store, Google searches in general and find something you do like. Believe it or not some people don't want regular TV and movies anymore and actually turn to YouTube channels for all their entertainment and are quite satisfied.

[JBeck]

I used to think all games must adhere to my view of how games should be. People say AAA should do this instead of that and so and so forth. What they conveniently forget is that AAA are not the only ones making games now. The explosive growth of the industry as a whole over the last decade alone is almost incomprehensible. We have so many platforms for games, 2002 to present saw the console platforms manage to have 3 viable contenders when they had been stuck at most 2 for 18 years(Nintendo vs Sega, Nintendo vs Sony, I would say the 3 way race would have started with Nintendo vs Sega vs Sony. but Sega rapidly dwindled due to numerous factors and stopped being a serious competitor hardware-wise when the original PlayStation hit its stride). Sony managed to at least chip at Nintendo's handheld market with the PSP(while considered a "failure" by some it managed to stay on shelves and continued to produce games for several years unlike other handheld platforms. For a "failure" that's quite a bit of success). While Nintendo went sideways with the Wii this generation, they're attempting to jump back into the "hardcore ring" with the Wii U and at least attempting to bring some of their casual market over. The PC platform has managed to hum along as it always did despite the sayings of doom and gloom and such.

And now we have the rise of the "independent" developer. Now there seems to be two different types of independent developer. There's the developer who works in the AAA section but isn't tied to any specific publisher(like Obsidian), and then there's the "Indie" developer who is usually a lone developer or small team who just creates a game with the resources on hand. Things get a bit fuzzy with the Indie developer because some are trying to make money and others are just doing whatever they want for their own self interests. The internet along with the major mobile app development wave has boosted the "indie" developer into more of the spotlight. We're now heading into the higher quality browser based gaming with the Unity plugins, Flash's greater support for 3D and the greater updates to HTML(HTML5 still is lacking but it definitely shows the direction).

Between the AAA's, the Independents and Indies the amount of games that actually make it to market is stupidly high! Yet there still persists the idea only the AAA's make games. And we cry when those guys aren't making the games we want, completely ignoring everyone else making games. So here's the thing, let AAA do their Hollywood Style blockbusters and their Iterative shooters and sports games. If you don't like what they're offering, bring up Steam, Gamersgate, Direct2Drive, iOS App Store, Google's App Store, Amazon's App Store, Google searches in general and find something you do like. Believe it or not some people don't want regular TV and movies anymore and actually turn to YouTube channels for all their entertainment and are quite satisfied.

You'd love our Art panel at Emerald City Comicon Saturday at 5PM! http://www.emeraldcitycomicon.com/panels/
That was almost a too subtle bit of pandering and plugging, wasn't it?

[EdgeDamodred]

Believe me, if I was anywhere in the neighborhood(if you could could count 200 mile radius a neighborhood) I'd be there! Sadly I haven't been out west in a long time.