Great graphics... but...
After reading a couple of recent game reviews and chatting with my friend Tony Warriner, it struck me that many of today's games are developed with the ephasis the wrong way round.
When reviews say that a game looks fantastic but that the gameplay is weak, badly implemented or too easy, the only explanation I can think of is that the graphics must have come before the gameplay. With publishers constantly pushing for technical innovation, some developers must be creating their rendering engine, deciding on a graphical style and thinking about the effects and physics they can put into the game and doing so as a greater priority than developing the gameplay.
If the gameplay is created after the visuals, it's going to be severly restricting what the designers are able to come up with, which ultimately makes the gameplay experience very dissatisfying. So we end up with games that look fantastic but play badly, or at best are mediocre.
I find it incredibly ironic that with such games their best feature is actually their biggest handicap.
When reviews say that a game looks fantastic but that the gameplay is weak, badly implemented or too easy, the only explanation I can think of is that the graphics must have come before the gameplay. With publishers constantly pushing for technical innovation, some developers must be creating their rendering engine, deciding on a graphical style and thinking about the effects and physics they can put into the game and doing so as a greater priority than developing the gameplay.
If the gameplay is created after the visuals, it's going to be severly restricting what the designers are able to come up with, which ultimately makes the gameplay experience very dissatisfying. So we end up with games that look fantastic but play badly, or at best are mediocre.
I find it incredibly ironic that with such games their best feature is actually their biggest handicap.
posted by Steve | 11:49 AM
9 Comments:
I personally suspect a more likely problem is a total failure for most game developers to actually provide game design either in the strategic planning, or in the development pipeline.
The industry is filled with graphic artists of exceptional talent - but it also blighted with a game design malaise born of a failure to understand game design. Mostly people assume that game design is the same as content design, i.e. deciding what goes in the game. This is a dangerous mistake to make!
The need for play engineers (game designers) is not well understood.
It's not helped by the abundance of game designers who are focussed on one particular aspect of play engineering - namely, the creation of highly ludic and strategic play simulations et al - and are not yet fully cognisant of the needs of the audience (if indeed any of us can make such a claim!)
Basically, art has at least a 40,000 year head start on game design (which is only about 100 years old) so we shouldn't be wholly surprised that they've got their act together and we haven't. :)
Take care!
I think that we're basically saying the same thing, but looking from different viewpoints.
I have no issue with art or the artists creating it, just with projects being led by the art or the technology that uses or displays the art.
Well one of my favourite games - ever (still) - was a certain Broken Sword I and II, and I'm actually put off the new version as it looks more graphicky-than-playable (but I could well be wrong).
I think it's similar to comics - there are some very flashy comics out there with outstanding artwork, but they're pretty shallow in the end without a decent story to back it up.
If you mean Broken Sword 3, it's very playable but some of the gameplay wasn't to everyone's taste. Where it was at it's weakest for me was in the way it was spread a little thinly. If you mean BS4, then I think it's too early to judge based on the few screenshots we've seen so far.
Most of the best comics at the moment seem to be produced by independent creators. One of my favourites in recent years (not counting Bone) is a B&W graphic novel called Blankets.
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