EA mans up on its share of what it calls "Creative Downfall"

[Darth Alec]

Originally Posted by Juno

The skill or time it takes to make a good look as good as COD4 or not so good anymore like Oblivion probably isn't very different. It's just a matter of what you are aiming for.

It's quite a difference. It's the details that are hard, not the big sweeps.

Well, it didn't have to get worse in comparison over time it's just that gaming moved on and now games require more in them to get better scores. Hence why more people are needed as to keep development cycles the same

Of course games have moved on. But so have devs. What might once have been hell on earth is now nothing. Animations can be done by machines or taped. Physics can be done through Havok etc.

I think it's well possible to have blockbuster games deved by small crews. You just have to have a steady aim to hit the mark.

[Fyrus]

Unless you make games, I don't think you can say how it is to make games.

[Darth Alec]

I've tried.

I may not know it all, but making Goldeneye today would be significantly easier today then it was back then.

[Fyrus]

I tried using the NWN2 engine to do some shit but i'm to lazy.

[2pro4show]

Originally Posted by Juno

Maybe it's a honeymoon period but since this new CEO took over EA has been completely different. The newest FIFA is better than PES, they've had several good games out recently and there's some promising ones still coming.

/thread .

[Sim88]

The days of small developers creating blockbuster games are largely at an end, Riccitiello said. Games that once took 25-person teams to develop now need 200 to come to fruition, and 700 MB disks have given way to 25 GB Blu-Ray disks.

Nintendo Wii says Hi?

[Icemage]

Originally Posted by Darth Alec

I've tried.

I may not know it all, but making Goldeneye today would be significantly easier today then it was back then.

If you wanted to make Goldeneye look like the original Goldeneye, you're correct - it would be... somewhat... easier to develop Goldeneye today than it was when it was first published.

But Goldeneye, as it was made then, if it were a new game on today's market, would be laughed at, and rightly so.

Not every game needs cutting-edge graphics and physics - this is very much true. But it's also true that many games have travelled down that path, because there's a lot of creative freedom in that direction. There are certainly people out there who would be perfectly happy playing games that look like the original Super Mario Brothers forever, but I don't think anyone can ignore what's happening to the Wii's 3rd party support from major games, or rather the lack thereof.

It is NOT an accident that games like Soul Calibur IV, GTA4, Devil May Cry 4, Ghostbusters, etc. aren't coming to the Wii in their original forms, and if you think these titles are exceptions, then there sure seem to be a lot more examples of exceptions than rules.

[Power666]

Originally Posted by Icemage

If you wanted to make Goldeneye look like the original Goldeneye, you're correct - it would be... somewhat... easier to develop Goldeneye today than it was when it was first published.

Yes and no. The bulk of development isn't in coding a game but rather its assets. Games from the PS1/N64 era had to be worked into the amount of memory those consoles had. So a case can be made that you could get better than N64 content for less, especially with the better content tools available today. After a certain point as developers approach the realm of state of the art graphics, costs here start to surge with more man power and money spent on content. Ultimately what I think the result would be is a title that'd look like a Dreamcast game or slightly better with the same level of investment. Far from the quality level of this generation but at a level that'd certainly be functional for the game.

As far as coding goes, it is still yes and no. There are a few relatively easy ways to increase image quality with little coding. Anti-aliasing, better texture filtering and higher resolution output are straight forward and simple ways of improve graphics in the code. The PS3 and Xbox 360 support multiple threads running simultaneous and somethings are easy to spin off like audio processing for an easy performance gain. Heavy optimizing here for performance is a very tedious and expensive process. Though for a game of GoldenEye's level, you have to ask is such an investment even worth it? I will say that money would have to be spent on adding networking code to the game as that is a feature pretty much demanded by the market nowadays.


Originally Posted by Icemage

But Goldeneye, as it was made then, if it were a new game on today's market, would be laughed at, and rightly so.

It'd be laughed at by the hard core graphics crowd certainly but it'd still manage to get sales due to game play. Offer it as a downloadable title with a decent price and it'd sell. Look at the demand for the XBL version of GoldenEye. I will say that a lot of the demand stems from nostalgia of players who have already enjoyed the game a decade ago.

Originally Posted by Icemage

Not every game needs cutting-edge graphics and physics - this is very much true. But it's also true that many games have travelled down that path, because there's a lot of creative freedom in that direction. There are certainly people out there who would be perfectly happy playing games that look like the original Super Mario Brothers forever, but I don't think anyone can ignore what's happening to the Wii's 3rd party support from major games, or rather the lack thereof.

Games like the New Super Mario Bros. on the DS say 'hi'. That game sold because of its familiar game play not graphics. I agree that you don't need cutting edge graphics but a little extra polish goes along way. Graphics shouldn't be neglected, but rather a compliment to good game play.

I will say that Nintendo isn't looking at graphics when they approve games for the Wii, for better or for worse. Right now with the 3rd party support, it certainly has made a turn for the worse graphics wise and unfortunately in the game play department as well. I suspect as the Wii's library becomes more vast, the graphics department will be as varied as it is today but I do believe that 3rd parties will pick up in the game play department over time.

[Icemage]

Originally Posted by Power666

Yes and no. The bulk of development isn't in coding a game but rather its assets. Games from the PS1/N64 era had to be worked into the amount of memory those consoles had. So a case can be made that you could get better than N64 content for less, especially with the better content tools available today. After a certain point as developers approach the realm of state of the art graphics, costs here start to surge with more man power and money spent on content. Ultimately what I think the result would be is a title that'd look like a Dreamcast game or slightly better with the same level of investment. Far from the quality level of this generation but at a level that'd certainly be functional for the game.

Fair enough. But the point is that, in the heavily-populated shooter genre today, a title like Goldeneye would be very hard pressed to hold its own on the market, even with some of the easier spit and polish techniques that developers have access to today.

As far as coding goes, it is still yes and no. There are a few relatively easy ways to increase image quality with little coding. Anti-aliasing, better texture filtering and higher resolution output are straight forward and simple ways of improve graphics in the code. The PS3 and Xbox 360 support multiple threads running simultaneous and somethings are easy to spin off like audio processing for an easy performance gain. Heavy optimizing here for performance is a very tedious and expensive process. Though for a game of GoldenEye's level, you have to ask is such an investment even worth it? I will say that money would have to be spent on adding networking code to the game as that is a feature pretty much demanded by the market nowadays.

We're talking more in terms of hypothetical than actual. Releasing Goldeneye with multiplayer would be a major boon, but how does a title like that compete with, say, the upcoming Metal Gear Online, or even something more mundane like Warhawk?

It'd be laughed at by the hard core graphics crowd certainly but it'd still manage to get sales due to game play. Offer it as a downloadable title with a decent price and it'd sell. Look at the demand for the XBL version of GoldenEye. I will say that a lot of the demand stems from nostalgia of players who have already enjoyed the game a decade ago.

The point is that it IS nostalgia, though. Goldeneye was a fantastic game for its time, but very few games hold their own compared to newer iterations. You can't really point to a lower priced download and conclude that a game of that calibre could carve out a proper niche in the current environment; it's got a totally different price point, and it's an open question whether it's selling on the strengths of its gameplay, compared to pure nostalgia factor (and if you don't believe me, go look at Nintendo's Virtual Console download figures - many, many of those games sucked horribly even when they were first released, let alone when looked at today).

Games like the New Super Mario Bros. on the DS say 'hi'. That game sold because of its familiar game play not graphics. I agree that you don't need cutting edge graphics but a little extra polish goes along way. Graphics shouldn't be neglected, but rather a compliment to good game play.

The topic under discussion is whether or not current generation console games need higher levels of polish to maintain their edge. New Super Mario Brothers on DS doesn't compete against 720p or 1080p competition in its own marketspace, so using it as an example of "simplistic" graphics in a competitive market environment is extremely dubious.

Graphics, frankly, don't really matter that much on the handheld market, because even the PSP doesn't really have that much resolution.

A better example would be Super Paper Mario, which has very simplistic graphics that even a GameCube could handle. It doesn't really suffer from the lack of graphic prowess.

The problem is, of course, that you just can't make every game look like that and get away with it, because with modern consoles, the power really is there to make games look much, much better, and that's a huge marketing tool.

I will say that Nintendo isn't looking at graphics when they approve games for the Wii, for better or for worse. Right now with the 3rd party support, it certainly has made a turn for the worse graphics wise and unfortunately in the game play department as well. I suspect as the Wii's library becomes more vast, the graphics department will be as varied as it is today but I do believe that 3rd parties will pick up in the game play department over time.

Ninjabread Man (and the upcoming Ninjabread Man 2) says hi.

[2pro4show]

Originally Posted by Icemage

Ninjabread Man (and the upcoming Ninjabread Man 2) says hi.

2nd time's the charm?