Why is game design not moving forward?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It's been 17 years since Shadow of the Colossus and the first Chronicles of Narnia game came out, and 10 years since Dragon's Dogma released, in which you the player could climb on large monsters and actually fight them sensibly.

It's 2022. The latest big budget AAA fantasy RPG release (and the biggest one since TW3 which was 7 years ago)... still has you slashing at a dragon's ankles like you're playing a tab-target MMO.

Or how about Guild Wars 2, which introduced a unique mount system where each mount had different powers (ie, jumping up cliffs, blinking forward, hovering over liquids, roller beetles that can race, etc), and even implemented momentum based flying that didn't trivialize the world and blows riding in every other game out of the water, and yet pretty much every release since then still has you riding a mundane horse around or flying on a dragon with zero restrictions?

Or Thief's top tier stealth and sound detection systems? Or Mount & Blade's directional swings and blocking? And so on.

... Why? Why aren't devs learning from the successes and failures of other games? It feels like we've had decades of lessons and very few of the right ones are being carried forward. Are professional game designers uncultured? Are they unaware of these great mechanics? Or is there some sort of institutional rejection of the lessons of eld?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Post pictures of typical game designers at AAA studios.

 

[what am i doing]

Mechanics aren't free. Everything you have in a game, has to be implemented, and if it's less conventional then it may take more work. A lot went into Thief's sound propagation system, for example... it doesn't just come with whatever generic premade engine you're using, and today's game programmers are markedly less skilled than those in the past. If a studio implements some sort of good system into their own closed-source engine, it's not necessarily going to be used elsewhere if it's not simple and easy to implement.

Guild Wars 2 was garbage, by the way. I know you're just using a system for it is an example, but wherever GW2 is mentioned I am physically compelled to point out that it's rancid shit and everyone responsible for it should formally apologize for ruining a good series, then kill themselves.

 

[Cross]

Why is game design not moving forward?

 

[Lemming42]

Dork Souls obliterated the medium. Killed it stone dead. People say Half-Life killed FPS games and Diablo killed RPGs, but nothing's ever caused such an unstoppable shockwave of shit like Dark Souls has.

More seriously I think dev teams are all the wrong size now. Something like Thief comes about when a small dedicated team are working together. Most games now seem to be either one person making an indie title (which ends up being shit) or 300,000 people in six different offices in different countries all working together for a big publisher to make the worst shit anyone's ever seen.

 

[Fedora Master]

Culture in general isn't moving forward. It's not a video game exclusive thing.

 

[InSight]

For advance games (advance as more capable, games that provide more), one requires advance developers and players. In summery more advance civilization/culture/conditions(they provide more).

Due to degenerative condition, from ignorance of Yahuha/יהוה/YHWH favor/laws/princples, destruction of the optimal family structure, lower nutrition in food ,addition of poisons and education systems, the advance conditions required would not be met as often as they could have been.

For game design to move forward, it would require a higher/different/greater purpose/objective/goal. Design by itself is a means to end based on its word origin which at times used to simple mark spots/ways on the map, reaching of destination.

design

design (v.)
late 14c., "to make, shape," ultimately from Latin designare "mark out, point out; devise; choose, designate, appoint," from de "out" (see de-) + signare "to mark," from signum "identifying mark, sign" (see sign (n.)).
https://www.etymonline.com/word/design

If one was to present among the highest point of video games capabilities, it would be of world simulation. Simulation as an illusion of a different yet familiar world with our world as a base to compare with, to derive from yet not to the 100% degree but near it or above it. An idealist/attractive world to both the player's and/or developer's perspective.
The examples provided by the topic starter, refer to this. Games that provide more physics that make the world more sensible, a stronger/better illusion, somethings that would appear possible if existed in our world or possible in the world portrayed.

Simulation can go against the aims/designs of the businessmen/marketing/wealthy, who's aim of extracting the most income from player's in the least amount of time/energy/cost, often in the form of cash-shops (which shatter/break the illusion the games could provide). They are opposite goals that clash with one another.

Than there are the other biological mechanism, the lower areas of the brain to consider on which are being preyed/used/abused.
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Why aren't devs learning from the successes and failures of other games? It feels like we've had decades of lessons and very few of the right ones are being carried forward. Are professional game designers uncultured? Are they unaware of these great mechanics? Or is there some sort of institutional rejection of the lessons of eld?

Programming/coding/software design is described to be both hard and tedious. A craft that can often involves/lead to tunnel vision(such as in dungeon crawlers). A narrower view excluding the leafs for forest or vice versa, a cause of ignorance.
One can assume/note that Japanese developers, who due to culture, has more contact/appreciation of nature are more immune or tend to derive/copy more from it and this can reflected in their game design.

A position akin to navigator, an idea men,visionary, the designer that hold the principle/goal of world creation(somewhat separate of our social ranks/order) in esteem/priorety, while handling the demands of the financiers is required or lacking. For coding is a hefty craft by itself, and based on the existence of terms such as code monkey's, its a rare quality among developers/programmers.

The programming is often obscured, not shared and the ability to copy and copy well is a higher capability skill that most do not have.Just because one is aware of it, doesn't translate to the ability of performing it, instantly. Copying of advance things is difficult.

 

[Fedora Master]

Take your meds, schizo.

 

[luj1]

Why is game design not moving forward?

Because it peaked during the Rennaisance (1996-2004)

 

[Roguey]

That takes a lot of work and you pretty much have to design the entire game around it e.g. https://store.steampowered.com/app/494430/Praey_for_the_Gods/

 

[KateMicucci]

Why is game design not moving forward?

Wasting the player's time isn't good game design. Yeah, the guy who walked in a circle for an hour is an idiot. But everybody is going to take that right turn because you don't know that it leads you in a circle. Ok, you've now made the player walk back to where he started. Ok? What was the point of that? Was that supposed to be fun? If there was a puzzle element it would be different, but this hardly qualifies.

 

[agris]

Why is game design not moving forward?

Wasting the player's time isn't good game design. Yeah, the guy who walked in a circle for an hour is an idiot. But everybody is going to take that right turn because you don't know that it leads you in a circle. Ok, you've now made the player walk back to where he started. Ok? What was the point of that? Was that supposed to be fun? If there was a puzzle element it would be different, but this hardly qualifies.​

Wasting the player's time isn't good game design. Yeah, the guy who failed the quest is an idiot. But everybody is going to fail the quest if you don't know that it leads you to failing. Ok, you've now made the player reload to before he failed the quest. Ok? What was the point of that? Was that supposed to be fun? If there was a puzzle element it would be different, but this hardly qualifies.​

When you view any form of difficulty this way, you rapidly approach the conclusion of console popamole corridor cover shooters. How can you post here and not see that. The "puzzle" in the half life commentary is using enough brain cells to not go in a circle over and over and over. The reason you don't design linear corridors everywhere is because you want the player to think about where they are in relation to space, and you want to generalize that kind of player engagement (thinking) to other aspects of your game so that you can implement systems and challenges in a way that are rewarding for the player to overcome, not spoonfed to them while it dribbles down their cheeks because anything short of a quest compass and flashing indicators on the screen is too much out of the box thinking.

Maybe you're part of that group who loves that shit, but such thinking has resulted in such a dearth of quality games that it makes me sad to see such short sighted, infantilizing comments.

Humans used to live in caves and rub sticks together to make fire. Now we travel space and can communicate instantaneously around the world. I think the species can handle a fucking branching corridor.

 

[samuraigaiden]

I happened to come across a quote from Steve Jobs about why Xerox didn't become a tech giant despite having pioneered the development of several technological innovations at their Xerox PARC facility - including, for example, the graphical user interface, way before Apple and Microsoft.

While it doesn't directly apply 1x1 to this topic, I found extremely pertinent to this discussion. He poses an interesting question. Who influences success in a company that keeps making the same product over and over and doesn't focus on innovation? Not the product development people, but rather the marketing and sales people.

I time stamped the video to start the exact moment when he talks about it.



You don't have to extrapolate a lot to see how this assessment relates to the business practices of the biggest publishers in the gaming industry. What products make the gaming industry giants successful? They are addicted to a minimal risk strategy. We've reached a point in the gaming industry where innovation is always external to these companies. Nobody at Epic pioneered the battle royale concept, they saw the success of PUBG and reacted. In the past decade, every single new trend in the industry can be traced back to an independent game, a small studio, a mod or something along those lines.

These companies are in a business deeply rooted in technology and innovation, and yet all they seem to care about is monetization models and how to scale profitability.

It's not too surprising that one of the biggest technology trends of gaming in recent years, VR, has yet to produce a single truly compelling software product. The big companies have been breeding an internal environment that stifles innovation for the longest time and it's reached a point they are unable to actually step up to the plate and take those big steps ahead nobody else has the R&D budget to take. VR presents several steep barriers of entry for independent developers and smaller studios, so the likelihood of a runaway indie hit - for the big publishers to promptly ripoff - is low.

Now, circling back to the original question. If we were to try and define the event that triggered decline, it would have to be directly related to the ascension of marketing and sales people as the de facto leaders of the gaming industry.

At it's earliest, the gaming industry leaders were developers and investors. As cutthroat as somebody like Nolan Bushnell may seem, he was at some point directly involved in the process of making software. Today, almost every one of the giants in the gaming industry is spearheaded by a person who comes from sales and marketing, often having built a career completely unrelated to video games before being picked for the position. When did this change take place -at an industry wide level - and what motivated it? To answer this question is to define the true starting point of decline.

I'm quoting myself from a post in the When did decline start? thread.

I believe this is the right answer to OP's question.

Game design evolved when the focus of the gaming industry was innovation. Now the focus of the industry is profitability, so everything else will stagnate while all the R&D money is put into figuring out new and better ways to maximize profitability.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

The increase in computational performance doesn't necessarily translate well into increased activity of the human brain pleasure center.

 

[seco]

Why is game design not moving forward?

Wasting the player's time isn't good game design. Yeah, the guy who walked in a circle for an hour is an idiot. But everybody is going to take that right turn because you don't know that it leads you in a circle. Ok, you've now made the player walk back to where he started. Ok? What was the point of that? Was that supposed to be fun? If there was a puzzle element it would be different, but this hardly qualifies.

Half Life is at least partially responsible for the modern cinematic FPS. At no point in time was Half Life, or its mods, or its expansions ever good.

 

[tritosine2k]

They underestimated how much less advanced game development is than cinematography or sound studio work. Also have severe abundance of absolutistic (or even worse) game devs. Publishers are right on the money not financing this. Prob. this sunk me:andromeda more so than backlash it's an interesting case nevertheless.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Relevant factors:
1) An exponentially larger (and therefore inevitably more stupid) audience
2) Design by committee due to spiraling development costs
3) Extreme risk aversion
4) Dangerhairs having taken over the medium, to the detriment of engineers, which were interested in pushing boundaries

In sum, femoid cluelessness and relentless agenda-pushing has ruined yet another industry. I'm not too concerned, though, there's plenty of good to great old games to last me for the rest of my life and then some. Fuck modern games.

People throw around that Steve Jobs video a lot, and it makes a lot of sense, but I personally feel this snippet by Zappa sums up the situation better:

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Chronicles of Narnia game

Honestly I think you're taking piss, but fuck it, I'll give a quick reply anyway...

Dragon's Dogma released, in which you the player could climb on large monsters

This is by far the most undercooked and dull mechanic of DD's combat system

Thief's top tier stealth and sound detection systems

Improved by Chaos Theory, in every way

Mount & Blade's directional swings and blocking

Actually M&B wasn't the first game to feature it - as at least "Die by the Sword" already had done that in '98
Also it's not really a great mechanic
It overall suits M&B, and sure it can fun when done right (i.e. Jedi Knight and Mordhau) - but not really something that can compete with the greats of melee combat

Are professional game designers uncultured? Are they unaware of these great mechanics? Or is there some sort of institutional rejection of the lessons of eld?

While the Western AAA scene, and all those that aspire to belong in it, as indeed declined hard since 2005
I think it's fair to say that based on most of the examples you provided, what you're really asking is not what happened to good design, but rather what happened to "original" game ideas/mechanics. Novelty not quality.

In that regard I would say the following.
Videogames have existed for 50 years. In that time a gargantuan amount of game concepts have been tried (obviously some have been much more explored than others). Nowadays though, if want novelty your best bet is indies.
Also unlike other mediums, videogames change based on technology used - and by this I don't just mean something like the engine the game was built, but even something as simple the type of input used (think arcades, or more recently VR)
Finally novelty isn't a requirement for good game design - and alot of indie trash does prove that novelty doesn't mean shit without the former. Proper use of even the most old and simple game mechanics are enough to make a good game and even provide distinct experiences depending how they are set (even changing something as simple as the jumping arch in a platformer, can wildly change the experience of said platformer)


Also fuck "Shadow of the Colossus"

 

[gurugeorge]

What's the incentive? If they make lowest common denominator shit it sells anyway, why go the extra mile to make something that's actually good?

Buyers need to be more discriminating.

 

[fork]

What's the incentive? If they make lowest common denominator shit it sells anyway, why go the extra mile to make something that's actually good?

Buyers need to be more discriminating.

But they're not.
They're retarded.

 

[KateMicucci]

What "improved game design" do you even want?

 

[darkpatriot]

I want to climb on more big monsters in more games.

 

[Viata]

Because modern games sells a lot. No reason to improve if my shit game #23321312 is selling like water in the desert.

 

[Roguey]

I want to climb on more big monsters in more games.

Hope you played Praey for the Gods then

https://steamdb.info/app/494430/graphs/

428 all-time peak 3 years ago

Appears the giant-climbing genre doesn't exactly set the world on fire.

 

[Outlander]

Lack of talented devs + normies not caring at all about good games.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Why is game design not moving forward?

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/bli...ing-makaiya-brown-deandi-and-development-lead

Introducing Makaiya Brown, DE&I and Development Lead

Hello, Blizzard community! My name is Makaiya Brown, and I’ve been Blizzard’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I), and Development Lead since September 2021. With International Women’s Day coming up, I thought what better time to share some thoughts on this role and how our work at Blizzard is progressing so far.

Video games?