Development Info GDC 2018 Talks: Michael Cranford, Josh Sawyer, Jeff Vogel

[Terra]

Watched the vogel one and it felt like he's given the exact same talk before not too long ago (or maybe its just regurgitating his blog posts), only with the random cringe addition of "I'm white" and a reference to nu-Avernum 3 with this iteration. While I get the underlying point he's making, he also seems to be leaning a bit too heavily into the ignore criticism, ban everyone echo chamber, which is interesting given he has a planned kickstarter on the horizon. Not much new in his talk tbh.

 

[Ladonna]

This kind of fits the guy though; His games are all similar with incremental changes, so his speeches and thought processes are the same, with small incremental changes.

I wish some of the old game series went the same way to be honest. (Imagines Goldbox games staying similar with small incremental changes over the years)

• .

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Humanity has risen!

Avadon and nuAvernum absolutely butcher charcter progression and gameply mechanics into a very dumbed down version of exile.

Avadon stinks of biowhore influence. His social media was ranting and raving about how great Mass Effect 2 was...

Sure nuAvernum has good exploration going for it; but thats about it.

Geneforge is very different from other Jeff Games and is p. good with a bizarre setting and solid CnC.

But the way things re looking now; I don't expect him to develop the kind of games i loved playing while geowing up; which he used to develop a long long time ago.

Now he is too much of a cuck and massively neutering player agency and mechanics in his recent titles.

Exile 3 was my first crpg and it was glorious. Jeff's days of glory are long gone, so he deserves all the ridicule the codex can throw at him

 

[Darkzone]

I watched the Cranford one. Very interesting, and not a particularly flattering picture of Burger Becky! It was very obvious that he was going after the feeling of immersion and being there, and that the limits of Bards Tale were those imposed by technology rather than choice. He even went as far as to describe himself as 'not a gamer'. I think that if he had stayed in the games industry then the games he produced would have increasingly been ones I wouldn't want to play, like Richard Garriott, and we'd end up getting something like a better Ultima 9 from him somewhere down the line, rather than Bards Tale 4 as it is currently envisioned. Rather too much of the talk was on selling Mage's Tale, a game I'm definitely not going to buy.

Lets face it Burger Heineman made only BT3 and Dragon Wars as games that are remarkable and both games build up on BT 1 and 2 (Cranford's work). Garriott is a typical case of spoiled by success and forgot where he came from while following the moods of the times.
I agree with you that in the end Cranford would make shity games and even currently he doesn't make something that is remarkable. His praise (probably paid by Fargo) for Mage's Tale is showing that he lacks the money from his work (text adventures games) for amazon's alexa.

 

[Urthor]

Vogel's process wasn't just amalgamating other people's good ideas. He also set his quality threshold at the only level better than good: good enough. His formula for sequels was to look for the worst 25% of the previous game and work on improving that. He is "merciless" about reusing assets, code, and engines, and insisted that developers should never let anyone shame them out of being cheap. He estimated that he used the same wolf icon in 15 different games.

Just lul.


Seriously though, one of the biggest changes in the Codex recently is that even the Codex, the last great bastion of grognardom, has started to care about graphics. "Graffics don't matter" doesn't even get lip service anymore.

 

[Infinitron]

Maybe because that was always delusional. Video games are a visual aesthetic experience, the graphics can't not matter.

Seriously, has that ever really been true? Was this forum not initially populated by large numbers of people who were buttmad that their pretty 2D RPGs were being replaced by janky early 3D?

 

[Junmarko]

...those pre-Steam days were tough though. I have a feeling there would be a lot of Rogue-likes on the Top 70 otherwise haha

 

[Grauken]

Maybe because that was always delusional. Video games are a visual aesthetic experience, the graphics can't not matter.

Seriously, has that ever really been true? Was this forum not initially populated by large numbers of people who were buttmad that their pretty 2D RPGs were being replaced by janky early 3D?

Its art direction that matters, not graphics per se, why is that so hard to understand?

 

[Mustawd]

Just lul.

Lul about what? I think I’m in the minority here, but who cares if he reuses assets?

I never got the hate for this. Like THIS is what you’re complaining about? The assets are completely serviceable across his line of games. It’s the UI that can sometimes give you night terrors. Not the graphics.

EDIT: Wait, did I misread your post? I can’t tell...

 

[thekdawg21]

The Cranford talk was pretty interesting, though I can't imagine most people in that audience would have known or been interested in anything about the Burger Bill thing. It did pretty much finally resolve the Bill Heinemann vs. Mike Cranford battle though, finally, a little closure that Burger Bill was just a nutjob that has delusions of being involved in the greatness of Bard's Tale. (Though BT3 was the first RPG I ever finished, at the age of 13 or so)

 

[Grauken]

...hat Burger Bill is just a nutjob that has delusions...

FTFY

 

[Junmarko]

Lul about what? I think I’m in the minority here, but who cares if he reuses assets?

No one. He emphasised users apparently criticised his graphical style (his community) and that it really got to him, then he talked about strategies to save money and included reusing assets. Why did it bug him that much if it was to save money? Seemed schizo, like a lot of his points. Then at the end he pulled up a big pie graph about "what he has to deal with now" because of Steam - competition. Yes...welcome to reality Jeff...

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Seriously though, one of the biggest changes in the Codex recently is that even the Codex, the last great bastion of grognardom, has started to care about graphics. "Graffics don't matter" doesn't even get lip service anymore.

Its art direction that matters, not graphics per se, why is that so hard to understand?

Graphics have always mattered, past the days of text adventures and Rogue-likes using ASCII characters for graphics. Though, to be sure, the graphical quality of a game isn't defined by it being at the cutting edge of technological development, but rather by how effectively it uses whatever graphical capabilities existed at the time, which is highly dependent on aesthetic sense and art direction. This is why great 2D graphics from decades ago remain great today.

 

[Glop_dweller]

Graphics matter, but they are like the coat of paint on a car. A car first needs to run, and perform well; mechanically... or the paint job is useless fluff.
A nice looking car [game] is a great plus, but I'd take a functional car [game] over a pretty one any day.

(I'd rather drive a Lamborghini with a Pinto's body, than have the reverse.)

 

[Fenix]

Video games are a visual aesthetic experience

Big heap of bullshit.
It's a game experience, not a grafixxx.

I was absolutely fine with first Avernum, and prefer it over nuAvernum aka Pile of Glittering Trash.

 

[Xeon]

Josh's talk was kinda fun, liked his bit about IWD2 the most, I should try it when I get to play it again.

 

[Aildrik]

I appreciated Michael Cranford's comments about graphics and how technology became too much of a focus in game design. When CDROMs went mainstream, we had to suffer through shit games packed with FMV. Devs (thought) they had a lot more tech to hide behind. Good games are timeless.

Also great to hear these guys talk about the old days where it was one guy making the entire game. You think that isn't really possible anymore and then comes Notch with Minecraft. I'm sure there are plenty of other Indie gems.

 

[Aildrik]

Graphics have always mattered, past the days of text adventures and Rogue-likes using ASCII characters for graphics. Though, to be sure, the graphical quality of a game isn't defined by it being at the cutting edge of technological development, but rather by how effectively it uses whatever graphical capabilities existed at the time, which is highly dependent on aesthetic sense and art direction. This is why great 2D graphics from decades ago remain great today.

I always felt that with some of the older CRPGs I played (gold box games, etc) the graphics were enough to give your brain a basic gist of what was going on. Your imagination would always fill in the blanks and the overall effect was a very immersive game. I would even argue that simpler (but well done) graphics in a well done game give your imagination more room to roam.

 

[Kalin]

You know men, I was taken aback just now. They're just so beautiful. Truly high quality graphics right there.

And of course, I cannot help but immediately compare these lovely screens to the "graphics" of modern Unity-abortions like Expeditions and Numanuma. Yeah, I'm not gonna post their awfulness and sully the glorious works above, but if you're daring enough you can watch such rubbish at your own peril. Suffice it to say that it has no place anywhere except in an updated "Entartete Kunst" exhibition. And yet, it's practically the standard look of the PC-suffocating bloatware turds the big corps push on a daily basis and pass of as "computer games" to the masses. If ever there was a "Dark Age" in human history it would have to be applied to the last decade and a half.

In a word:

 

[Fenix]

Graphics have always mattered, past the days of text adventures and Rogue-likes using ASCII characters for graphics. Though, to be sure, the graphical quality of a game isn't defined by it being at the cutting edge of technological development, but rather by how effectively it uses whatever graphical capabilities existed at the time, which is highly dependent on aesthetic sense and art direction. This is why great 2D graphics from decades ago remain great today.

I always felt that with some of the older CRPGs I played (gold box games, etc) the graphics were enough to give your brain a basic gist of what was going on. Your imagination would always fill in the blanks and the overall effect was a very immersive game. I would even argue that simpler (but well done) graphics in a well done game give your imagination more room to roam.

Perfectly said, so I

 

[almondblight]

I never got the hate for this. Like THIS is what you’re complaining about? The assets are completely serviceable across his line of games. It’s the UI that can sometimes give you night terrors. Not the graphics.

Part of the problem is that post-Exile 3 games have all looked worse, IMHO. Compare meeting a dragon in Exile 3:

With meeting a dragon in the newest Exile 3 remake, Avernum 3: The Ruined World:

People will have different preferences, but I find the Exile 3 picture to be more colorful, with the dragon looking a lot larger and more intimidating.

 

[duanth123]

Was this forum not initially populated by large numbers of people who were buttmad that their pretty 2D RPGs were being replaced by janky early 3D?

Disingenuous, stupid, and some weird form of shill-based Taqiyya.

The far greater concern then and NOW are the concessions made in pursuit of graphical fidelity, concessions with respect to simplified game systems, the pursuit of cinematic experience over the moment-to-moment gameplay, and the re-orientation of assets and resources (including the less frequent hiring of persons intellectually equipped to actually make an RPG) towards some fac-simile of an RPG that can be played by normies and other, non-existent audiences.

This is why you're a shill, Infinicuck. Because no one could remain that stupid on such a simple point after browsing the 'Dex for years.

Go back to your unpaid inten work for POE II

 

[Roguey]

The far greater concern then and NOW are the concessions made in pursuit of graphical fidelity, concessions with respect to simplified game systems, the pursuit of cinematic experience over the moment-to-moment gameplay, and the re-orientation of assets and resources (including the less frequent hiring of persons intellectually equipped to actually make an RPG) towards some fac-simile of an RPG that can be played by normies and other, non-existent audiences.

This doesn't describe Neverwinter Nights.

 

[duanth123]

The far greater concern then and NOW are the concessions made in pursuit of graphical fidelity, concessions with respect to simplified game systems, the pursuit of cinematic experience over the moment-to-moment gameplay, and the re-orientation of assets and resources (including the less frequent hiring of persons intellectually equipped to actually make an RPG) towards some fac-simile of an RPG that can be played by normies and other, non-existent audiences.

This doesn't describe Neverwinter Nights.

far greater concern

As opposed to it being a focal point of criticism, some type of deal breaker, as was implied.
And Neverwinter Nights has plenty of problems, that were pointed out at the time, not only with implementation of rulesets, but also the OC. Graphics were the low-hanging fruit, they looked straight up goofy.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Disingenuous, stupid, and some weird form of shill-based Taqiyya.

The far greater concern then and NOW are the concessions made in pursuit of graphical fidelity, concessions with respect to simplified game systems, the pursuit of cinematic experience over the moment-to-moment gameplay, and the re-orientation of assets and resources (including the less frequent hiring of persons intellectually equipped to actually make an RPG) towards some fac-simile of an RPG that can be played by normies and other, non-existent audiences.

This is why you're a shill, Infinicuck. Because no one could remain that stupid on such a simple point after browsing the 'Dex for years.

Go back to your unpaid inten work for POE II