18 posts tagged “rant”

Please, get rid of the rubber banding in your AI.

It makes no sense, it makes the player feel their wins/losses are arbitrary rather than due to skill or lack there of. A good racing AI should...drive. Yes, drive. With some specific behaviors in mind like boxing players in, stay away being technically excellent(not over or under steering) and other things relevant to the game type.  I could understand rubber banding if you have a combat aspect where the AIs will want to line themselves up with the player.

For a pure racing game where getting to the finish line first is everything? Having an AI roar past me only to slow down is terribly illogical. It's even worse if you have disparaging vehicle stats involved. If I drive a Ferrari Testarossa, I do not expect the AI to suddenly over take me in a Geo Metro. If it does, I'm taking the game out, putting it in its box, getting rid of it and telling all my friends how terrible the game is.

Let's say you find a really simple core loop in gameplay. Let's say, that core loop of a game goes as follows:

player goes somewhere -> enemies spawn -> player lays the smack down on the enemies until all the enemies are gone -> go back to beginning of said loop.

Keep the controls simple, the enemies plentiful and the levels busy with all kinds of interactive objects going off. Get rid of some of the archaic junk like lives and save points in favor of systems friendlier to the player that lets them keep their progress. But sheesh, getting dumped on for lack of innovation when it seems like they just want to see innovation for the sake of innovation?

A few things concerning my "Japanese Mythbusters" type column. I'm at the point where my personal well is dry and I need some user input to find more stuff to bust or ultimately prove true. When it comes to gaming, there are always exceptional exceptions like 78 year old Akira Kitajima who keeps his FPS gaming PC up to spec regularly plus writes Japanese language FAQs/Walkthroughs on his personal website. Hell, he's so die hard he uses an American Keyboard. Browsing his site, he seems like anything but a Japanese gamer geek, having traveled the world, played sports, etc. The stereotype being a Hikkikomori.

>Japan's entire attitude about gaming seems to be going in a look-don't-touch direction, what with Japan's own games >advancing mainly in aesthetics and storytelling and not really in gameplay.
For RPGs, sure. But for other genres? I'd hardly call anything of action and the subcategory thereof "look don't touch."  Though don't touch is a very important principle in Danmaku Hell shooters. Touch a bullet, you're dead! But I know that's not what you're talking about.

>How popular are America's NBA, MLB, NFL, and NASCAR on Japanese TV?
Baseball is pretty popular since some major Japanese aces have been imported by American teams. Matsui, Ichiro,  Daisuke, wow, I don't even like baseball but I know a few names. The rest might show up on some premium sports channel, but they're pretty much ignored in favor of home grown versions. Soccer is a close second behind baseball, and soccer hasn't caught on for squat in the USA. Really, America is a great big soccer island. I'm sure any European readers want to strangle me since I'm not calling it "football." And behind the real football according to the rest of the world is high school baseball. Yes, high school baseball gets on national TV. Arguably, sports is the ultimate war metaphor, so of course there's all kinds of unwarranted pride coursing through peoples and "their" teams.

>Could you write a post about the state of American software translation in Japan?
It's certainly on an upswing with Fallout 3, GTA4, just about every major release on 360 is getting localized to Japan. I wouldn't be surprised if the localization is done entirely in the USA. I mean translation, editing, any necessary programming or in-game artwork is all done here in the US for European releases(at least it was when I was at Lucas Arts.) Likewise, Japanese development teams are responsible for integrating English and other languages when their games get released elsewhere. For more on that specific nightmare, check JC's blog, he's had to wrestle with that far more than I have.

>I read interviews with the producers of Silent Hill and Lost Odyssey who said that one of their problems is that they >want to use cutting edge American tech like Unreal Engine 3, but that it has a ton of documentation that gets late >and poor translation into Japanese, if at all.
This is a huge problem. The overall statement of engine documentation has a lot of choice 4 letter words you can assign to it, but I'll just leave it as "poor." Unreal Engine has 1 master, namely it's creator; Epic Games.

Also, the amount of work required when you start taking an engine and deviating it from the type of game it originally was used to make, goes up exponentially as you deviate. Epic can't even adequately support star Western developers such as Bioware, so I can't even think of how poor they are to Japanese companies. Unreal killed my enjoyment of Mass Effect. Random framerate drops, random pauses to load, the scene going from a bland version of Killer 7 to realistic over the course of 3 seconds, etc. And this is Bioware. They have experience making engines like the Aurora Engine they used for the original Never Winter Nights and Knights of the Old Republic games. Bioware is a company with top tier talents working for them and they still struggle. That's telling.

Unreal relies on cutting edge hardware, which game consoles may not always keep up. I am not sure if normal mapping and all that dynamic lighting that Unreal has in their tech demo is hardware accelerated by consoles. It sure is on the PC they use to show off the tech to executive bean counters that just like the sounds of those buzzwords.

For those uncertain as to what normal mapping is, it's an "invisible" texture layer that just contains data on what the mathematical normal or "up vector" is for any given point on a model. It lets you add amazing amounts of detail to a model without actually having to sit there and actually push the polys. However, the normal map data is used by the shader so until the lighting kicks in, you won't see the detail. And yay, I just used that linear algebra I busted my brain on at the University. Woo hoo! To see how to make a really good normal map and what it can do, check this tutorial out at CGTextures. Scroll about 2/3s of the way down to see a rock texture rendered with a normal map. No modeling required. Pretty amazing tech no doubt, but it comes at a steep hardware cost.

Now, if Epic provides a complete manual, that places them miles ahead of just about every other game engine out there. A previous employer of mine used Torque Game Engine. The original version of that engine would just...die if you tried to make something other than a corridor shooter. Support consists of trolling Garage Games' forum and praying someone tried to do what you did. A lot of people are trying due to the low price and cross platform abilities that TGE boasts. Their scripting language is basically C# with some variables already set which is another very good thing going for it. C# is so easy, I've been able to use it.

Other middleware could be different. Havok's cloth physics is getting around for making character costumes behave in a life-like manner. Soul Calibur IV and Folklore use it, I'm sure there are plenty of others. Seeing how specialized this middleware is, they can really fine tune their interfaces and make their product easy to implement and properly support it.

To me, Unreal Engine on a console has become a scarlet letter/seal of disapproval and it decreases my interest in the product. I might go back and play all these Unreal engine games when I upgrade my PC when(maybe if) I move back to the USA, but by then I'm sure I'll have forgotten about them or decide not to ultimately buy them due to other PC gaming issues like DRM.

If there's one thing SquareEnix has demonstrated repeatedly in the past, it's that they know how to make something look good without bleeding edge tech.

There are a number of "features" that I'd put in the "defect" category as far as game design is concerned. Yet these things persist, driving me and I'm sure many others, crazy. These are also items that I don't see on the usual lists of this sort. Long cutscenes that have to be re-watched if you botch a boss battle, crates, add some color for the love of light, and making your game longer with lots of empty space.

Rubber Banding in Racing Games. This really kills my interest in racing games. If I do really well in the game, why not let me enjoy it? If I absolutely smoked an opponent by a whole lap or more, I'd really get quite a mental boost since I'm pretty lousy at racing games to begin with. Diminishing the pleasure in winning is just...a really bad decision.
Chances of Persistence: High. Even companies that have the resources to develop better racing game AIs use this. Perhaps some true dedicated racing games will avoid this, but for some cheap licensed tie-in, I doubt it.

Lasting Death Penalties. MMOs, I'm looking at you. Dying itself is a penalty, and then you're going to make players suffer for a long time afterward? If Super Mario Brothers halved the distance of your jump for 15 minutes after you died, you'd give up on Mario pretty quickly, wouldn't you? The player died because their opponent was too difficult for them. Now you want the player to retry the battle, with a nasty handicap? Hardly enticing to continue playing at all. I can understand an immediate death penalty. IE the reward for a certain quest diminishing due to dying. But outside of that quest? Don't have any lasting penalty.
Chances of Persistence: Medium to Low. I think there are designers who understand that people just don't have time to be saddled with long lasting penalties. The rise of casual MMOs that don't even involve combat will help drive nails into the coffin of death penalties.

No Cut Scene Controls. You just met a key NPC in the overall story of the game you're playing. Or you finally beat the final boss so a movie showing what's happening is started. But the phone rings. Or you really need to use the bathroom.
Chances of Persistence: The Xbox360 lets you  "pause" any game by hitting the guide button(the one with the big green X on it in the middle) but as for video controls in-game? Everyone talks about how they want to. But I haven't seen anyone actually taking the steps to do it.

Relative Monochromatisism. This is a step up from you usual tripe of gray, brown and gray-brown as made famous by Gears of War, Call of Duty, etc. The fire planet of all warm reds, the water planet of blues, etc. It's all built around the same color themes.
Chances of Persistence: High. JRPGs certainly seem reluctant to let this trend die.

Microsoft continues to utterly confuse me with their treatment of Xbox Live Arcade.

De-listing "poor performing" titles. Making the de-listing criteria based on Media Critic.com scores combined with sales. The Product Management Director for XBLA and the Xbox360 makes an analogy to Amazon.com:
"Think about a book on Amazon. It’s not always going to be featured on the front page of the store."

Sir, do you know how products get to the front page of Amazon.com?
When I'm logged into Amazon.com - and I would be logged into Xbox Live if I'm browsing from my Xbox360 - there are a handful of promoted items, but the majority of items on the front page are shown to me based off of my purchasing and browsing habits. What exactly shows up? Not whatever just came out. Not whatever the #1 best seller overall is. What shows up on the front page of Amazon.com for me will be unique to me and what I personally am most likely to buy based off purchasing patterns of all users. Unless someone out there has the same purchasing habits as I do.

I find the Amazon.com analogy especially ironic because Amazon.com rose to the top by carrying those obscure, under performing books that conventional retailers were removing from their shelves. Publishers loved Amazon for connecting them to customers who wanted books they stopped shipping to stores. Customers loved Amazon for helping them find books they thought they'd never be able to find.

I find it really sad that Microsoft doesn't even have a search page on their Xbox Live Arcade website. I see "Find A Game" and a scroll bar to peruse through the monstrous list of titles. There are absolutely no filters or search abilities whatsoever. The retail disk games catalog which has many more games and genres in it has a standard set of search functionality that I'd like to see done for XBLA. I should also remind Microsoft that Xbox 360s can handle USB keyboards so not having a search by title within the console interface is really inexcusable.

What makes a game "quality" and "fun" is entirely up to the players. With the right interfaces in place, good games will rise to the top while the crud sinks to the bottom.

Bah. Here's a like to an article that explains this issue really nicely.

The relationship between game developers and professional reviewers has been a slightly...cantankerous one. A lot of us are financially hit hard by poor reviews. Even if the sales to review ratio has very little correlation in a strong number of cases, poor reviews can hurt, especially when the reasons for the poor score feel very out of touch.

 Review What is There
Case: Award-winning BioShock actually lost points from some reviewers due to a lack of multiplayer.
Multiplayer is something that has to be designed and developed for from the start. There are plenty of games that shoehorn in multiplayer to appease the "what, no multiplayer?!" score ding, but then, the poor quality of the multiplayer gets slammed. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Gotta love it!

I'm not seeing people get on Team Fortress' case for a lack of a single player story-based campaign.

 Limit the Comparisons
Standing on the shoulders of giants is hardly a new thing. Humanity has been building off the achievements of others since the dawn of time; game development is certainly no different. There are those who just blatantly rip off other games pretty much lock stock and barrel, but then there are those who see that others have paved the way for their own endeavors. The much lauded Resident Evil 4 has won all sorts of praise for it's over the shoulder camera during combat, fast paced and well executed gun play.

 A number of games have taken that over shoulder camera during combat and added their own twist. The size of said twist will determine if the world judges these games as RE4 knockoffs or something that just uses the popular mechanic to make a new experience fun and exciting. Since developers are thinking this way, I'm not blasting reviewers for saying "Game X uses a play mechanic popularized by Smash Hit Game Y."

The irritation starts when the comparisons get out of hand. My case for this point is Dark Sector. Yes, this game borrows a lot of tried and true mechanics from other games, but it does a lot of things differently. Or at least, it executes most of what it borrows better than those it borrowed from. Also, it did borrow from a mix of games, not just a single title.

So, after all the talk of comparisons, ultimately, is the game fun?

 Franchise Correlation(Limit Comparisons, part 2)
This is a no-brainer as to why the comparisons are made, but when reviews replace describing how something works with comparing to how it was in a previous game? You're certainly shutting out anyone who might use the most current release in the franchise as a gateway.

Case in point, Mana Khemia. I haven't played a Gust RPG since PS1/Saturn. I remember the basics of the game and most of what it's about. When a review talks about how the main system has changed or not changed over all the previous games in the series that I managed to miss...Well, thankfully a friend of mine picked this up and I was able to play it and form my own darn opinion.

 So What Am I After?
In closing, I should list an example of a review I found helpful...
Rock Paper Shotgun absolutely dissected a Russian made PC First Person RPG called "Pathologic."
The reviewers' opinions about what works, what doesn't, what happens in the game and lets me ultimately decide whether or not that I want to try, buy or skip this game.

I've read a few reviews and it's funny how when the number scores and the words tell different stories. At least, the sections where reviewers are actually stopping to describe what goes on rather than their opinion of it. I am well aware of the fact that a review is an evaluation, which means the content will contain an opinion and not purely descriptive.
I guess it all boils down to a dissonance between what is described and what is being felt about the games.

Oh Xbox Live Arcade. You had so much promise which is now...I wouldn't say totally gone, but unless something drastic happens, all I can say is it *had* so much promise. I am an Xbox360 owner. I have purchased about 10 games on XBLA. I've tried about a dozen beyond that at the very least. I've used the Xbox Dashboard on a near daily basis so I know what I'm talking about when it comes to what I dislike about the whole deal. Heck, my Xbox 360 is idling RIGHT NOW AS I TYPE THIS!

Irritation 1: Interface
How many menus I need to go through to get to the games I want to play will get a rant on its own, but the Marketplace for games is terrible. I mean, just freaking terrible. I love how the highlighted color of the text you've selected becomes unreadable. I selected the Spotlight in the Marketplace and "Games" is in this warm grayish white color that's barely legible on the light vermilion background. It certainly doesn't stand out compared to "Top Games" and non-selected options.

I'm looking at a list of games. Full Game - DOOM is selected now. On the right side of the screen is just the name of the game, the rating and a bunch of text scrolling by faster than I can care to read it. Yeah, that really makes me interested. No, it doesn't! What about a few screen shots? A genre? As a consumer, I'm lazy and I'd like to see cool features outlined quickly. *Online Co-op. *Competitive Death Match. *OVER 9000 LEVELS!!!!!! *Smokin' 3D Graphics. You get the idea. I figure everything has been remastered in HD and 5.1 sound so stop wasting your electrons scrolling that.

Say, some of that stupid text actually got me to hit the A button and learn more. I see a link to the demo, full game and any extra crap gamer pictures or whatever if available. At least they finally list the price of the dang thing here. Oh. Do I get any new info on the game? NO! Same lame text from above. The only new info I see is the developer or publisher. Most likely the publisher.

I perused the video interface. Wow. The preview text is a lot shorter. Like, 1, or maybe 2 sentences! Plus I can see a 30 second video preview. I'd like to see a game trailer like that, rather than go to a separate trailers category. Videos get a "Top Videos" list but do games? NO! The games page gets advertisements for TV shows. I guess I see where the money is being made...Quality certify video: make a tester watch it once. Certify a game? You have to pour over the interface, check it for general stability bugs, etc. It's not nearly as easy. You need a tester that really knows what he or she is doing.

Irritation #2! COMMUNITY!
I have an inane confession to make. When cellular phone plans cost $50/month and you had 10 minutes of non-peak time, I used Xbox Live to voice chat with my best friend who was 500 miles away. It was win. People on XBL build clans, teams, you name it for the games they play.

Integrating the community into the marketplace was a revolution that Amazon.com gets a lot of credit for. They introduced a system where you could see the sales ranking, but the biggest boon was you saw what else purchasers of the book you were currently looking at also bought. Free advertising at its finest.

Here's another thing that bugs me. Release slots. Xbox Live Arcade only releases 2 new games a week. I understand this. They want these 2 games to have a full week of being in the spot light and have a chance to sell. Yeah, I know. It doesn't end up working that way due to the clunky interface burying the game. So there's 52 weeks in a year, 104 XBLA games released a year. A lot of developers are upset over how hard it is for them to get their game out.

What better way to get people involved and democratize some of these release lists! Every month, we players pick from a pool of whatever XBLA game has passed certification and is ready for release. Honestly, I'd like to vote for green lighting games too. Let's see here, a port of another game I don't care about or a cute happy co-op dungeon crawling RPG that has a good camera! *Votes* Heck, I'd vote several times a day and try to stuff the ballot box if I really saw a game concept that appealed to me.

I almost missed Omega Five because I saw it, I got excited about it, and then weeks passed before I came out and I forgot about it. Maybe a release reminder would have helped me there. Notify RandomEncounters whenever a game that's cool gets released. Or a 2D shooter. Or some other genre alert.

Irritation 3: Separate the Retro Stuff
They do this with Xbox Originals already. Most developers of original games don't want their products lumped next to buggy ports of 10+ year old console or arcade games.

Countless people I've spoken to want to see this happen. I understand that porting a console game to XBLA is a much bigger endeavor than barfing it up on Wii Virtual Console. Xbox ports get network play functionality, leader boards, achievements, tutorials, demos, etc. Still. Separate please. Thanks!

Irritation 4: Game Rep & User Reviews
I know this should have been in Irritation 2, but it's important enough to get its own section. I really think they're necessary. I don't know of any major American games website that doesn't let the users post their own reviews alongside their staff reviews. If storage and bandwidth is too much of a problem, let us give a game reputation like players get it.  I can prefer or avoid a player. When I avoid the player, I can list a reason from obnoxious behavior to leaving early, etc. So let us rank games.

Conclusion
These are all changes I'd want to see just as a gamer. I'd heard about a vicious restructuring of royalties from some very irate XBLA developers, but I personally don't know and can't comment on that.

I've been following this issue on Kotaku.com which has been doing a marvelous job posting updates.
A brief summary of the debacle:
A Fox News story on Mass Effect was full of statements ranging from misleading at best to down right lies about the romantic subplot in the game. The "reporter" for Fox slammed the game's "nudity" and the psychologist brought on was spouting nonsense on how sexist Mass Effect is when it's clear that all she has seen is a brief video of the "sex scene." Geoff Keighley of Spike TV makes a solid attempt at delivering the actual facts but he is drowned out by the incessant yelling of the other 2 women. Neither the anchor nor the psychologist played the game. The anchor "watched trailers" to learn about the game, but

EA, which now owns Mass Effect's developer, BioWare, has released a letter pointing out each and every inaccuracy in the Fox News story. EA even signs off on its letter to Fox News "This isn't a legal threat; it's an appeal to your sense of fairness. We're asking FNC to correct the record on Mass Effect."

They're asking for an apology, not demanding it. So far, Fox News has purportedly offered EA an opportunity to get on the air and set the record straight themselves. I find it very disconcerting that Fox News won't take responsibility for errors they made by setting the record straight themselves. Now you may think I'm some "gamer" ranting about game related drivel that has no impact on the rest of the world, but I beg to differ.

Fox News' treatment of this story makes me strongly question how they deal with more serious and complex issues such as rising tensions with Iran, tribal chaos in Kenya or global economics. Or even the upcoming Presidential race here in the US.

Not that I've ever watched Fox News with the intent of being informed.

I thought about leaving the games industry, especially since I've been having a terrible time getting a permanent position. I spoke with a recruiter from NextGen Talent that gave me some advice and I hope, some job leads. I know most games people look down upon recruiters. I was approached by a shady woman who gave me no last name, no company she represented. No call back number, no email address either. I guess she got my info off Monster and who knows what. Sheesh, I'd better make sure this person isn't about to go stealing my identity or something...

I had an interview for a QA position outside of games. It pays nicely in the corporate software world. Supposedly, there is less nonsense that typically

Although there is a bit more money in it, software outside of games is still marred by the troubles I somehow thought games seemed to have the corner on:
-Horrible hours.I would have looked at some 60-70 hour weeks. Company seemed to have no interest in doing anything differently as far as releases went. Do your annual release with some minor updates.
-Documentation? Durrr...I really don't understand..Spend a bit of time to do that and you'll make things easier down the line.
-Ease of use of tools. When you sell a service to produce something digital or whatnot, why not care about ease of use? When some of my level design tools just had interface bugs and issues that made making maps highly inefficient, I brought the issue up. Having a shoddy tool can hurt your bottom line. Am I nuts for wanting to take the time to make a good, solid tool set?

Stability was one thing this company did have above game jobs. Back to looking for game design positions.

One of the toy products I worked on shipped out and can be bought in stores. I looked on the packaging and whoa. The box is littered with spelling errors and inaccuracies. I feel really insulted.

I am sure there are those who are out there that feel as though processes can be choking. For a while, I too felt unnecessarily bogged down by procedures and standards of operation that felt rigid and superfluous. Want know what can be even more suffocating?

A complete lack of processes.

Yes. You can be mired in not knowing what to do mighty easily. But when you've got a few conflicting orders, it's really irritating. It's one thing to go over and redo your work because you made a mistake. I have no qualms with that. But to redo everything because I was given the wrong orders? Today, I sat there playing Etrain Odyssey until I got a straight answer as to what I was supposed to do. ((On that tangent, I must say that the Dark Hunter has really surprised me. My female Dark Hunter with the Drain sword skill has become my new tank.)

When you work in a team, you need to be able to be spontaneous enough to be agile and adapt to new situations. On the flip side, you need enough predictability to know what to expect. Especially when it comes to procedures relating to problem resolution, bug fixes, etc.

I really don't know who to talk to any more.