Editorial Jeff Vogel on How to be Smart & Cool & Awesome

[Jason]

Tags: Jeff Vogel; Spiderweb Software

Responding to the <a href="http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=200" target="blank">Mother of All RPG of the Decade Articles</a>, Spiderweb Software's <a href="http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-i-saved-gaming-industry-overnight.html" target="blank">Jeff Vogel explains</a> how the game industry can be saved from certain doom if studios would embrace his frugal, engine/asset recycling ways.
<br>
<blockquote>But it's gotten to the point where a company is expected to be ashamed for using the same engine for more than one title and a few DLC packs. The Gold Box games and the Infinity Engine are rare exceptions.
<br>
<br>
This is such an astonishing waste of resources. When I start a new game, I spend 3-4 months rewriting the worst or most dated part of my engine, and then I take that old (but solid) engine and make the coolest story I can with it. It's a small company. Our resources are desperately limited. Thus, I don't spend time remaking things that already work. If my wolf icon looks good, why make a new wolf icon just for the sake of making a new one? Instead, I focus on the story, the one thing that truly needs to be all new and excellent.
<br>
<br>
And the big companies, who make AAA games with these amazing awesome big-budget engines? They should re-use more of them! The Dragon Age engine is very cool. Make ten games with it! And not just piddly Dragon Age DLC either. Make games that are cyberpunk, horror, science fiction, fantasy in a new setting. The budgets will be much lower, and that makes it easier to take risks. And use the same dragon model. It looks really sweet. And, once the engine is a drained husk (in, say, five years), <b>then</b> spend a lot of money making a new one.</blockquote>
<br>
I'm not too proud to admit experiencing semi-arousal at the thought of a string of "cyberpunk, horror, science fiction, fantasy" games on the Silent Storm engine, only to have it wither away when the reality of Jagged Alliance 3 intruded. Erectile dysfunction aside, while I agree that re-using engines is generally better for studios and gamers (particularly fans of niche genres), it's a bit hard to swallow that AAA publishers would see it as a chance to take more risks instead of pumping out more Sims expansion packs.

 

[Norfleet]

But pushing out Sims expansion packs is exactly the sort of thing he's suggesting: Sims expansion packs are all about flogging that same engine for the next 5-6 years.

 

[yaster]

Back in the day, Civ1 engine was taken and fantasy & discovery of America themes were used - therefore there was MoM and Colonization. How can you complain about that?

Also: It's not like AAA publishers doesn't fuck us now and makes cheapest (vs income) product imaginable. All they change in their games is engine and graphics though

 

[Azrael the cat]

But pushing out Sims expansion packs is exactly the sort of thing he's suggesting: Sims expansion packs are all about flogging that same engine for the next 5-6 years.[/quote

Yes, and it's worked great for the Sims. It made a genre that wouldn't on the face of it seem classically profitable - no slomo deaths, no big explosions, no alien sex, etc - and enabled it to become big business. People's familiarity with the engine becomes a bonus, as they know roughly what they are getting and can learn slowly increasing complexity in small steps each game/expansion.

Now try doing that with a game genre that we actually LIKE. Frankly I think this is one of the more accurate things that Vogel has said - rpgs don't need a new cutting edge engine each game. Familiarity with existing engines, plus marginally increased complexity each iteration, plus focus on story/gameplay rather than graphical capabilities and engine-design would be a very good thing for crpgs.

 

[I.C. Wiener]

They already do this. Look at the number of games that use UE3 and havok physics and look and play exactly the same as a result. And everything Activision has made. There are sometimes incremental upgrades as he suggests but they are often much larger than what he has been doing because of the higher budget these companies run on. Hell a complete engine re-write would be implausible for the amount of money that would cost, hence why we get games like Dragon Age and Fallout 3 running on engines that are at least 3 years behind the curve.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Also: It's not like AAA publishers doesn't fuck us now and makes cheapest (vs income) product imaginable. All they change in their games is engine and graphics though

Now they just have to realize that reusing engines is cheaper and easier than creating new stuff.

Market it hard enough and even the graffix whores will start praising it

"Alpha Protocol 2 smashes the current barriers of gaming by proving that yes, more of the same CAN be good. Madness? Read the article and decide for yourself."

As a bottom note, I like the idea of reusing everything you can. Any time not spent on making new, buggy shit is time spent refining what already exists and thinking of actual content.

 

[Davaris]

Its a pity they haven't created a generic RPG engine, that can be dropped in to whatever the latest FPS engine is, when they finish scripting their games.

That way the scripters could finish the game and hand it over to a team of artists, who would then make it look just as good as the latest FPS.

Not only would an RPG like this be AAA in terms of graphics, it would use dependable technology as far as the RPG part goes.

 

[betamin]

Don't sponsors like nvidia or ati have some saying in that?

 

[Hory]

Jeff Vogel may also be the world's expert on creating games which look like shit. I hope he develops an interface for blind people to play because they would be the only ones who could fully enjoy the Spiderweb products.

 

[Paula Tormeson IV]

Geneforge 5 (I haven't played the rest) has a very good, different look to it, compared with any other top-down or isometric game I've played. Much better looking than SNES JRPGs, and much better looking than the shiny toy tile packs for various rogue-likes, where the pickables stick out from the environment like they had their own plane of existence. If any of you had your way, Vogel's games would probably start looking like generic shit. Period. Thankfully, he has an actual brain in place of vague subconscious cliche expectations.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I'd probably prefer to play DA on IE engine. It looks better and has lower system requirements.

 

[Mortmal]

I wish he was in charge of one of those big budget game development teams,you say his games looks terrible but imagine what he could do if he could afford a few artists, an avernum with dragon age engine .
I agree the gold box were a perfect example of reusing an engine, its sad they diddnt do the same with temple of elemental evil (better than IE engine in my opinon)or nwn2 .
Now large companies games are less and less interisting , theres not a single upcoming games i am really interested with , except maybe fallout 3 new vegas but i already know it wont be as good as fallout 2 , if only they had reused that old fallout engine and made a sequel, less expensive to produce, and probably more entertaining...
I am looking toward indie games more and more , the latest games i am playing are distant worlds from matrix games and avernum 6 from spiderweb, what i am really waiting for now is that doublebear rpgs, age of decadence, cyclopean.

 

[Elwro]

Avernum 6 does not look terrible (save, perhaps, for the portraits). And if anyone has not played it yet, grab the demo now; it's great fun.

 

[SuicideBunny]

an avernum with dragon age engine

if he used the same artists as bioware, it would be quite a step-down.

Avernum 6 does not look terrible (save, perhaps, for the portraits). And if anyone has not played it yet, grab the demo now; it's great fun.

this.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Dragon Age on Avernum engine.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

i get what he's saying...and it's really the only reason i'm giving Obsidian the benefit of the doubt here, under the ruling fist of Bethtard or not.

 

[Castanova]

He doesn't understand the realities of the mainstream business. Fixed costs are too high: distribution, management, marketing, paying off GameSpot and IGN, etc. It already costs a company $10 million just to entertain the concept of releasing a game, nevermind the costs of actually developing it. Given the high fixed costs, spending an extra 5, 10, 15 million bucks in order to have the shiniest graphics makes perfect sense even if it offends the sensibilities of an indie game programmer.

 

[SuicideBunny]

Given the high fixed costs, spending an extra 5, 10, 15 million bucks in order to have the shiniest graphics makes perfect sense

"shiniest graphics" are obtained by hiring good artists and deciding on a fitting art direction, not by wasting money on an engine you aren't even going to fully utilize.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

^But that's not what the majority of customers think. More polygons = better game.

 

[Sceptic]

Back in the day, Civ1 engine was taken and fantasy & discovery of America themes were used - therefore there was MoM and Colonization. How can you complain about that?

Maybe the problem isn't with the engine being reused but with lack of talented designers to do interesting and unique new stuff with the same engine? or that the engine itself lacks flexibility so that there isn't much you can do with it. That would explain quite a lot.

^But that's not what the majority of customers think. More polygons = better game.

WoW, the Wii and a few others beg to differ. Let's face it, the "more polygons = better" mentality is limited to a specific demographic. They may be very vocal and loud and obvious but the biggest money made in gaming in the past few years has not been made from tailoring to this demographic.

 

[mondblut]

Somehow Goldbox and IE games looked and played by far more different from one another than Spiderweb ones.

Sticking with the same engine and art assets is one thing, sticking with the same setting along with it takes it too far. Garriot was wise to change the Ultima engine every game, and to pick a wholly different setting everytime he didn't.

 

[cutterjohn]

Personally, I enjoy how he whinges about the "cost" of engines.

WTF?!

GarageGames has EXCELLENT deals for their Torque engines for indie devs, as do a few other commercial engines.

There are several OSS game engines available, e.g. OGRE which has been proven by Torchlight and several other commercial games.

Art/models/effects can't be all that expensive, e.g. Minions of Mirth licensed most of their textures/models/art/effects along with commissioning some out to an artist in Europe, although they did get the soundtrack free IIRC.

Jeff is just too set in his ways to survive. His engine is creaky and his graphics leave something to be desired. I think he's deathly mortified to go beyond a 1 person project team. Hell, he probably couldn;'t handle it, but given his pricing he's got to do something.

FFS Drakensang was $2 more than his most recent games and they, apparently, did well enough to get a sequel through while doing it on what amounts to a miniscule budget. That game was EAISLY better than ANY of Jeff's even discounting graphics and comparing base story/mechanics as if they had both existed in the 90s when he started with Exile.

(Especially kills me how he "forgot" about re-hashing 5 of his games: Exile I-III -> Avernum I-III (not many changes, just new engine and crappier mechanics), Blades of Exile -> Blades of Avernum, and the Nethergate re-write, which I have to say is my favorite game of his. (Never much cared for the Exile world or Geneforge. Geneforge always just made me say blah while I could play Exile for a while.)

Parting shot:
Funny how he mentions goldbox. You know what Jeff? At the time that goldbox came out they had pretty decent graphics and BTW they DID get updated graphics and new tilesets. Too bad Jeff's games some 10+y later still look like goldbox and arguably not nearly as good.

Infinity Engine: snicker, well people could actually mod IE and again, every DLC/expansion came with new graphics and tilesets.

Graphics: Yes SOME re-use of artwork is fine, especially things like architecture for areas that are set in the same or similar geographical locations, but there's a limit to re-use. Also, yes, things like monsters etc. could be re-used but come on toss a bone here add a little variety once in a while, especially with NPCs.

Bottomline for me is that he's priced himself out of Indie while NOT offering the goods that his pricing scheme demands. I think the biggest problem is really his engine, and all he'd have to do is hire/license some models/art and get dug into a modern OSS or commercial engine. Hell in the long run it'd probably save him dev time and DEFINITELY would give him a better scripting engine to work with.

 

[Paula Tormeson IV]

Bottomline for me is that he's priced himself out of Indie

He's been living on debt for the past twenty years. Never made any money. He just wants to make games.

 

[Elwro]

FFS Drakensang was $2 more than his most recent games and they, apparently, did well enough to get a sequel through while doing it on what amounts to a miniscule budget. That game was EAISLY better than ANY of Jeff's even discounting graphics and comparing base story/mechanics as if they had both existed in the 90s when he started with Exile.

Why? Care to offer some arguments? How is Drakensang better than Avernum 6 or, heck, Geneforge 1?

Too bad Jeff's games some 10+y later still look like goldbox and arguably not nearly as good.

Check the screens for Avernum 6. Jeff's games are now in a different league graphics-wise.

 

[mondblut]

Why? Care to offer some arguments? How is Drakensang better than Avernum 6 or, heck, Geneforge 1?

Well, Drakensang has much better ruleset. But that's about it (other than graphics).

Check the screens for Avernum 6. Jeff's games are now in a different league graphics-wise.

Sad thing, Exile 3 looks way better than anything he's done in isometry.