Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking; not another one about game developers. Well, here's what I'm thinking: This is me blogging, not you, shut up!
So anyway, with quite a few high profile releases having come out over the past couple of year that illustrate all the highs and lows of video game development, let us have a look at the big do's and don't's of the industry!
First of all, there are a number of things that add up to a complete video game, from a developer's standpoint. There is the story, the gameplay mechanics, the coding, the graphics and the sound department. Now, unsurprisingly enough, the big cruncher in actually making a game is how well the developers manage to balance the different factors into an end product.
If you look at any modern gaming catalogue, you'll find games with highly variable balance in this respect; there are games that are extremely well coded, but have gameplay that amounts to no more than a shit'n'chips sundae. Conversely, that are games that are so pretty any gamer will instantly want to have children with it, but is so badly coded that you run of the risk of causing a time-altering paradox destroying the universe, and crashing the game, if you so much as use the quickload button at the wrong moment.
Now, I'm not saying there must always be an absolutely even balance between them, because I'm not, and if you think I am you are clearly incredibly thick and shouldn't be entrusted with going to the lavatory by yourself for fear of you somehow drowning in the toilet! Rather, developers that try to achieve perfect balance is going to end up in that ninth level of hell that belongs to "People who make games that does everything poorly and nothing fucking well". As I've said before, alot can be made of a finely crafted plot that ties everything together and where everything makes sense without feeling predictable, but if you stick that into a game where the fun is derived entirely from running over old ladies while surfing on top of a car and shooting a rocket launcher at innocent bystanders it's just going to make you look like a fucking pretentious prat, which you are!
Case #1: S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl
The game looks more gorgeous than that classmate you always had a crush on, and has more atmosphere than jupiter, but there's just something odd about the game, namely the fucking atrocious coding. A game that constantly crashes and in which enemies can't decide if they love you or should ejaculate lead straight into your bloodstream in the middle of firefights is not bloody good! I don't know about you, but I've grown slightly tired of the old Oblivion-finger, namely that physical deformity that comes as a direct consequence of having to quicksave every .0 seconds for fear of losing progress when the game all of a sudden realizes that you're playing and decides that it's gonna have none of that, no siree!
Case #2: Saint's Row 2
Yet another game with coding that is simply a fucking pile of steaming garbage, but this time with developers who know what it is they are trying to accomplish. The story is at best a shallow and irrelevant necessity that you use to distract you inbetween butchering innocent bystanders and clearing out entire fortresses of goons with just your extremely overpowered pistols with infinite range, ammo and auto aiming (Yes, that's right, auto aim, even in the PC port), and at worst a shallow and irrelevant necessity that smells. Thing is, the story seems to be aware of that you're not expected to give a shit about it, and thus decides to take the scenic route by having you mow down an extraordinary number of enemies at every turn without all the action being hogged up by cutscenes (Yes, I'm looking at you, Metal Gear Solid...fuckers...). It's neither a smart game, nor a sophisticated one, but it's not trying to be! It's trying to be mindless fun, with things like jumping in front of cars for insurance money and riding around town hosing it down with feces to lower property value! Mindless fucking fun! Which brings us to...
Case #3: GTA IV
Here we're looking at something with the potential of being one of the best releases of the decade, expanding upon all the things that made the GTA series great and making full use of the current hardware to deliver an experience that amounts to nothing less than the gaming equivalent of an orgasm!...or possibly not just the equivalent...
Problem? It doesn't.
It's just one of those games that doesn't deliver at all. What made the previous GTA games good? As I've said countless times; Mindless fucking fun! What did not make the previous GTA games good? Trying to woo a boring middle-aged housewife and constantly getting phoned by your cousin to go play darts with him!
Quite clearly, Rockstar knew perfectly well what it was that made GTA III great, managed to distill it down to the pure essence of awesomeness, and then poured all of it down the drain in favour of a bland, dull and brown mess that had none of the appeal of it's predecessors. Largely, it boils down to that Rockstar somehow forgot all about the point of the series, that elusive Mindless fucking Fun, and instead opted for a more realistic depiction of life in a big american city seen with the eyes of a disillusioned immigrant. Who the fuck wants that?! Who wants to play a game wherein the main character has a life that is no better than yours or mine, and is boring as all hell to boot?
Sure, you can watch television and take your cousin out for drinks and drive home drunk as a lord, but who on earth would ever want that out of a game? Games are played for escapism, people don't play games to experience the very things people desperately want to run away from in real life, dammit!
The world would be a much better place if developers could simply get it into their immensely thick heads that the primary objective of any game is fun, and it shouldn't be fucking compromised by realism, or anything else that they ought to know doesn't belong!
tisdag 11 maj 2010
onsdag 5 maj 2010
Religion!
Now is that most special time of year; the time when I decide to say nasty things about religion and religious people.
First of all, what is religion? It is something that is very suitable for the large parts of the human race that favour bandwagons, hating those who are not on the bandwagon, and following ridiculous arbitrary rules and limitations. Also, and this is the part that bugs me, there existing no vertical discussion whatsoever.
Let's look at a piece of the Bible, that I find to perfectly illustrate the lack of critical thinking involved in religion!
Once upon a time, much earlier than last wednesday, there once was a man named Saul. He spent his days, merrily and gayly persecuting christians. In essence, he tried to kill them all, and since I've never been known to be above the odd dick-joke, I say it was because he was compensating for something...you know what!
But, see, his chosen line of profession had run into some difficulties; the christians were getting awfully numerous, and as any great persecutor will tell you, times are not necessarily good to you, if the persecutees outnumber the persecutors ten to one.
Thusly, all of a sudden, literally out of the blue, he had an epiphany! A, literally, blinding light struck him, and god told him to stop being such a fucking tosser to his babies.
Afterwards, he went and met with some of the people who he had been trying to butcher. He told them that he had received a vision from god, but that it had unfortunately made him blind as a bat. Here comes the funny part though; the idiots actually believed him. More stunning is, after them having prayed abit for him, he proclaimed that he could see again! What a bloody miracle, you don't find it at all a tad too convenient that he suddenly appeared to have gained absolution, a most fitting argument as to why they oughtn't lynch him?
If it had been me, I would have been slightly wary of Hitler suddenly walking into my living room, telling me that god had made him see the error of his ways, at a time when his chosen direction in life would have meant he'd most likely be hanged.
You don't suppose, just maybe, that Saul was feigning the blindness, and then claiming to have been cured by prayer, when he in fact had 20/20 vision all along, just so he could claim he had in fact been forgiven by the lord?
Of course, the problem with this line of reasoning is that it is contrary to doctrine, and ultimately, priests like sticking with doctrine, and equally ultimately, religious people will side with the fellow in the frock, if things get to a head. The example I have brought up, is just one bit where maybe the reader shouldn't be so utterly naive to believe every single word written, and perhaps not take something that can't possibly be verified scientifically, as gospel (pun intended).
Now, christians can sometimes shift their position, and decide that parts of the Bible are only metaphorical, and do not represent reliable historical facts. But surely, that's just a big cop-out, after all, if the Bible truly was the eternal word of god, surely he'd be able to put a note in the margin, regarding whether or not particularly silly bits are metaphorical or not.
Here's what I wish all religious individuals would do; read their respective holy scripture, and after every sentence just stop for a moment, to reflect on how that would have worked in practical terms, what the logic behind it is, or whether or not what is written is clearly silly. Read the part about Moses parting the Red Sea, and wonder how on earth they could just walk across the sea floor for miles and miles without the egyptians catching up until just after they had all passed it, or how it would have affected the surrounding area, that obviously was not exactly built to accommodate a huge corridor in the middle of the Red Sea being magically dried out.
Think, dammit, think!
First of all, what is religion? It is something that is very suitable for the large parts of the human race that favour bandwagons, hating those who are not on the bandwagon, and following ridiculous arbitrary rules and limitations. Also, and this is the part that bugs me, there existing no vertical discussion whatsoever.
Let's look at a piece of the Bible, that I find to perfectly illustrate the lack of critical thinking involved in religion!
Once upon a time, much earlier than last wednesday, there once was a man named Saul. He spent his days, merrily and gayly persecuting christians. In essence, he tried to kill them all, and since I've never been known to be above the odd dick-joke, I say it was because he was compensating for something...you know what!
But, see, his chosen line of profession had run into some difficulties; the christians were getting awfully numerous, and as any great persecutor will tell you, times are not necessarily good to you, if the persecutees outnumber the persecutors ten to one.
Thusly, all of a sudden, literally out of the blue, he had an epiphany! A, literally, blinding light struck him, and god told him to stop being such a fucking tosser to his babies.
Afterwards, he went and met with some of the people who he had been trying to butcher. He told them that he had received a vision from god, but that it had unfortunately made him blind as a bat. Here comes the funny part though; the idiots actually believed him. More stunning is, after them having prayed abit for him, he proclaimed that he could see again! What a bloody miracle, you don't find it at all a tad too convenient that he suddenly appeared to have gained absolution, a most fitting argument as to why they oughtn't lynch him?
If it had been me, I would have been slightly wary of Hitler suddenly walking into my living room, telling me that god had made him see the error of his ways, at a time when his chosen direction in life would have meant he'd most likely be hanged.
You don't suppose, just maybe, that Saul was feigning the blindness, and then claiming to have been cured by prayer, when he in fact had 20/20 vision all along, just so he could claim he had in fact been forgiven by the lord?
Of course, the problem with this line of reasoning is that it is contrary to doctrine, and ultimately, priests like sticking with doctrine, and equally ultimately, religious people will side with the fellow in the frock, if things get to a head. The example I have brought up, is just one bit where maybe the reader shouldn't be so utterly naive to believe every single word written, and perhaps not take something that can't possibly be verified scientifically, as gospel (pun intended).
Now, christians can sometimes shift their position, and decide that parts of the Bible are only metaphorical, and do not represent reliable historical facts. But surely, that's just a big cop-out, after all, if the Bible truly was the eternal word of god, surely he'd be able to put a note in the margin, regarding whether or not particularly silly bits are metaphorical or not.
Here's what I wish all religious individuals would do; read their respective holy scripture, and after every sentence just stop for a moment, to reflect on how that would have worked in practical terms, what the logic behind it is, or whether or not what is written is clearly silly. Read the part about Moses parting the Red Sea, and wonder how on earth they could just walk across the sea floor for miles and miles without the egyptians catching up until just after they had all passed it, or how it would have affected the surrounding area, that obviously was not exactly built to accommodate a huge corridor in the middle of the Red Sea being magically dried out.
Think, dammit, think!
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