Technoholism

[Deutus]

Found this one on Gamasutra's Soapbox section, 29th December 2004:
Technoholism - A 12-step Recovery Plan

... and think it's a good description of what's wrong with the gaming industry since many years, and in particular: what to do in order to improve the situation.
I've had the luck to see many home computers, beginning with the good old Sinclair ZX 81. Judging from this experience I think the article's author Tadhg Kelly hits the nail on the head. He's designer at Lionhead Software, London, and has been involved in games and game design for the last ten years.

[Coyote]

I started reading this article with a very favorable bias - but the very first point turned me off.

Many studios made the leap from PlayStation 1 to PlayStation 2 development without stopping to think whether it was a good idea... Responsible businesses would not have made the leap instantaneously.

Tadhg Kelly should know better. Remember the switch from 16-bit to 32-bit in 1995? Or even the 8-bit to 16-bit revolution? A lot of people bet on the existing install base, rather than switching development over to the new platform. They lost their shirt.

It was a strange phenomenon that baffled some analysts. Towards the end of the life of the machine, EVEN BEFORE THE NEW CONSOLE WAS OUT, people quit buying games for their old systems. Maybe they were saving their money for the new machines & new games. Maybe they did what I do and pick up used copies of hit games from 2 years ago. Maybe the stores are just being very conservative in their orders when they are planning on making space for the big new sellers, which are sure to sell TONS because people are so anxious to build up a library for their new box. Whatever the reason - those who relied upon that huge existing user base to support them ended up losing their shirt.

I don't know if that happened to anyone during 2000 - 2001, but businesses learned from the experiences of the past, and no doubt expected that trend to continue. Unless some fundamental shift in customer purchasing habits takes place, it's still going to be a problem in 2005. If you plan on shipping a PS2 game in 2006, expect sales to be dismal.

Customers don't, on the whole, need the most advanced technology in their games in order to buy and enjoy them. They just need good games, need to know that they exist, and find them appealing.

Yeah, they don't NEED them. But try telling THEM that. The customers vote with their wallets - and I've been burned for being on the wrong end of the technology spectrum when I was working for a major publisher on retail games. But the driving factor in consumer sales in the 'core' retail market has been GRAPHICS. The eye-candy is what gets them in the door - beautiful screenshots, interesting vistas, cool special effects, and of course sexual titillation and gratuitous violence is usually a draw. Things like gameplay, story, characters - that might keep them playing and talking about your game, but it's the graphics that gets them in the door.

You really have four choices:
1) Write your game for the early-adopter set, showing off their cool new hardware
2) Write your game for maximum compatability - it'll run on almost anything, but it looks like crap compared to the competition
3) Try to go to the middle-of-the-road - something that looks 'okay' but not great on the top-end machines, but still has a reasonable amount of compatibility for lower-end tech
4) Try to achieve both #1 and #2 by having a hugely scaling graphics system (which effectively means twice the effort, as much content will have to be re-done from scratch to make the most of the limitations and capabilities).

#4 is pretty ridiculous, though it has been tried. More often, though, it morphs into #3 part-way through development.

#1 cuts off out everything but the high end from your market, and as the article states, it's hugely expensive. The advantage is that the market you are keeping is the market that has HISTORICALLY (that's changing now, thank goodness) had the most money to spend, and has proven their willingness to throw great gobs of money towards games that allow them to show off their latest hardware.

#2 cuts out the high end - whether you like it or not. Sure, they can play your game, but 99.9% of them won't give you the time of day. It takes a really stellar game to make them look past it. And to come off sounding really harsh, but it's the industry's attitude - you are selling to the cheapskates who won't even fork over the cash to buy a new videocard. Hey - that's me... I'm still running a 2 gig box with a GForce 4 --- an antique by 'core' gamer standards. HOWEVER - this market is proving that once you can actually find them and market to them, they will buy games. Lots of 'em. So the problem is starting to go away. But we're not there yet.

#3 gives you all of the problems of #2 without much of the associated advantages. You really run the risk of being in the 'worst of both worlds.'

It's an ugly situation. I think I'm happier to be an indie right now not trying to go after the really big bucks (not that I'd complain if I stumbled into 'em). However, times are changing - so are these problems.

First of all, the 'casual' audience is growing by a huge amount - the more we can start catering and marketing to the low-end, the less pressured everyone will be to stay at the bleeding edge. Including customers... I think.

The other thing is that I believe that each succeeding generation of hardware is less impressive than the last, even for the most hardcore gamer. This means we're going to be coming up against the law of diminishing returns, which may finally allow us (as an industry as a whole, I'm not really talking about indies here) to throttle back a bit on our supersonic trip to increase development costs. When tools, engines, & pre-generated content options have a chance to catch up and mature, you are going to hit the point where the average customer has a tough time telling the difference between games that had budgets that were an order of magnitude apart, we will have arrived.

Nintendos already figured this out - except their solution was to create new gimmicks to replace flashier graphics. Maybe they are right, but I like to think they are wrong. After all, they were wrong before... back when they thought that catering to their install base would be far more lucrative than keeping pace with technology. Maybe this time the tide will finally turn.

In the meantime, this article is great in theory, and represents ideals I'd love to see happen, but doesn't have much grounding in reality.

[Anthony Flack]

I do think we've pretty much reached the point where good graphics and sound aren't really a function of the hardware anymore, though.

I've played some pretty tasty looking games on the Dreamcast, and some pretty horrible looking ones too... and more than any other single factor, the difference seems to be in how well the texture artist understands colour harmony.

If the "low" end hardware is not imposing any noticable technical limitations on what you're trying to do, then nothing can be gained by ramping up the requirements any further. Your best bet would be to make sure your code is portable.

It's an interesting idea to suggest developers try simply not jumping on board the next hardware generation when it comes. But I think a better idea would be to support it, but not go crazy trying to fully exploit the power of the new hardware just for the sake of it. Because it's starting to get ridiculous, and yes, they're hitting diminishing returns now.

Keep budgets under control by being a bit smarter with your game design, and making sure you get the most bang for your buck. And if your game looks great, and runs just as well on the PS2 as the PS3, then surely it's win-win for you?

[Dan MacDonald]

I think World of Warcraft is a pretty great example of this. Their polygon budget honestly doesn't seem any bigger then it was in Warcraft3 but everything looks so amazing. This is largely due to amazing texturing and good thematic color choice.

[Abscissa]

I like "Step Nine: We realize the need for a common format" a lot. That's something I've been saying for quite some time. Can't see how it would happen though.

I also like "Step Ten: We learn that there are more numbers than one and zero". That's particularly applicable to us Indies, it's a large part of the basis on which we operate . Who needs to sell a million copies when there's just a couple employees, some freeware tools and no office space to rent?

And these are well put:
"Videogames, once the most amazingly creative medium in the world, have become a hole of relived glories, movie tie-ins and the odd manufacturer-sponsored success."
"There are only so many layers of textures that you can apply before you have to squint to notice the difference"

Although, I don't think I'd single out games as the only medium loosing creativity. It seems like half the movies out there lately are all remakes and ressurected-from-the-dead franchises. Not that I'm ranting or anything, I just found it to be a relevant similarity.

[impossible]

I think World of Warcraft is a pretty great example of this. Their polygon budget honestly doesn't seem any bigger then it was in Warcraft3 but everything looks so amazing. This is largely due to amazing texturing and good thematic color choice.

WOW is definitely pushing a lot more polygons (not that that's a great marker of visual or technical complexity and quality) than Warcraft 3. There are also a few pixel shader tricks in WOW and other visual stuff that WC3 did not do. The minimum requirements for WOW are also about doubled from WC3. Sure it runs on pretty low end machines, but so do HL2 and Doom3 if you turn enough stuff off.

[Anthony Flack]

The point remains though - if it looks good, it's more down to the skill of the artist than the power of the technology. This has always been the case to an extent, of course, but these days it's gotten to the point where the the technology is almost irrelevant. 90% of retail games running on the latest hardware still have quite ugly artwork and crap music, IMO. Better hardware won't fix this.

I like "Step Nine: We realize the need for a common format" a lot. That's something I've been saying for quite some time. Can't see how it would happen though.

Of course, it's not going to happen. So substitute "cross platform development" for "common format".

[Teq]

Even where a common platform is used it doesn't mean you can develop for all of the devices within that platform without modification, I'm sure the MIDP developers here will agree with me I wonder if a common format would suffer the same fate? I remember the days of the MSX and the developers of which trying to push that as a common format, but I know my Toshiba MSX couldn't run half of the software designed for the MSX, ahh well, I guess we can dream

[Deutus]

Even where a common platform is used it doesn't mean you can develop for all of the devices within that platform without modification

Java (J2SE) does the job for multi platform development and deployment on desktop computers. Without modifications.
Ask Cas and some others.
My current indie game (in its early state due to lack of time) uses Java and runs without any single byte of modification on all major desktop platforms: Mac, Win, Linux, ...

So: Tadhg's mentioned "Step Nine: We realize the need for a common format" is already reality. He just doesn't know it. :-)

Although Tadgh doesn't intend to speak for the indie devs with his article, I think that in fact most of his points apply already nicely to the indie market. Because we can't compete with those playing the hardware battle, like Doom3 etc, we've to focus on the content/gameplay and target the normal PC user who usually has got modest hardware. There's big potential, in case we mind: "The challenge is now depth. It is in taking the instruments that we have, learning to play them well, and making all kinds of beautiful music."

Tadgh: well done. Although I think you address a different audience than you thought. ;-)