Writing college paper about games getting worse due to focusing on graphics and voice acting.

[80Maxwell08]

Just provide a link to SW:toR. Case closed.

It needs to be mostly about computers hence why I'm trying to focus on the technical aspect. TOR's failings have little tech it's mostly design, an absurd budget, horrible PR, and a bad genre to try jumping in at full force.

 

[Telengard]

To actually make a quality correlation, you would need to do something along the lines of showing a man-hour work correlation. How concentrating on one thing pulls work hours from other parts (preferably with quotes about how they were forced to leave sections half done), and then show a trend. Not easy data to get ahold of.

 

[Gurkog]

Sawyer and Avellone have made several statements regarding how voice acting all dialogue makes production difficult in the later stages, especially if a lot of content/story needs to be changed. I am too lazy to dig up links though.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Sawyer and Avellone have made several statements regarding how voice acting all dialogue makes production difficult in the later stages, especially if a lot of content/story needs to be changed. I am too lazy to dig up links though.

I've seen those too and that's why I put VA in my OP. I'll be searching those down either tommorow or over the weekend.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I'll take this as a lesson not to post about school work when I'm already stressed out about schoolwork. Wish I had some time to watch that whole Garriot Matt Chat episode for the quote on interactivity. Also unfortunately I can't get to the tweet from Brian Fargo about him making that comment that their money from the Wasteland 2 kickstarter could add another minute to Blizzard's CGI. Thankfully Larian's blog is there and will probably come in handy once I get the chance to read all of it.

I guess to resummarize for myself I need to write a paper about how focusing on graphics first and having a lot of CGI and voice acting can seriously hurt a game or the studio making it but also point out why completely throwing those out the window isn't always a good idea either. Nier could be a good example for voice acting though I don't know a lot of examples for CGI or strong graphics. Crysis for graphics maybe since that game's faults had little to do with it's tech.

Unless you have really interesting mechanics (like for example in Jagged Alliance 2, ADOM, Command Ops, Armored Brigade, etc.) focusing on graphics first is a very good idea because graphics will be one of the things that make or break your game. And games with really interesting mechanics are very rare.

 

[Mangoose]

One of my thoughts is always about how graphics are used as a crutch to distract attention from un-complex/shallow gameplay.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

One of my thoughts is always about how graphics are used as a crutch to distract attention from un-complex/shallow gameplay.

For example in Fallout or Syndicate or Syndicate Wars.

 

[DragoFireheart]

There's no way to make it work without sounding pretentious. There always was a shitton of shit games made with only milking in mind. Call of Duty today. Gold Box yesterday.

Almost all games from 80s will also play like shit today, just like most games from 90s. And 00s made it possible for any talentless dev to develop a game (which can have bad textures and no voice acting and yet still play like shit) which today is known as "indie scene".

That's because the majority of people like simple games and even so called "hardcore gamers" can and do play them too. This has jack shit to do with graphics. It's all about the demand.

Well no shit.

There has to be some demand, be it shit game or not. Hungry and penniless game developers won't make games.

 

[mondblut]

You don't need to write an entire paper to make it obvious that a necessity to have everything vividly displayed and realistically animated has disastrous effect on the scope of stuff a player would be able to do in the game. And on the amount of content in general.

Just multiply two 48x48px animation frames by 2000 units, then multiply 10k-polygon animated models by 2000 units, compare and weep.

 

[MetalCraze]

Mondblut I doubt that 3D and 2D artists are the ones who also program interactivity in the engine.

To the engine it doesn't matter much if tire textures are HD or Obsidian-quality.