Lazy developers / Boring games

[JamesC]

Started a new topic rather than derail the Black Ops 2 thread.

So, lots people are complaining about the lack of development in franchises such as Call of Duty. It seems that everything is just a rehash of what has gone before.

My question is - can games really improve any further this generation?

To me, FPS games have always lacked a level of immersion that can be achieved in something like Assassin's Creed or GTA. I think it's because I never feel in control of a body - just a gun. Navigation - particularly platforming - is too difficult in the FPS view.
It seems to me that the only way to improve on this level of immersion is with better hardware - virtual reality or whatever.
So can lazy developers really be blamed, or is it just the limitations of the hardware?

With any game there is a trade off between one set of mechanics for another. In something like Skyrim, the immersion is strong as far as things like environment and characterisation go but it falls apart during combat. It's all too easy to stand and hack just south-west of the character you're trying to engage in combat.
Is this the fault of lazy development, hardware limitations, a narrow skill base among developers?

I seem to get the greatest level of immersion from multi-genre games.
Sleeping Dogs showed lots of promise. It had RPG elements, an open environment and an excellent combat system.
Where it fell down for me was in the driving/vehicle sections. When I enter a vehicle I want it to handle like a Forza or Need For Speed vehicle. I want proper racing game style controls and a camera that's locked to the rear of the car.
HALO can't even seem to get this right and GTA or Assassin's Creed all have variations on the same problem.

I'm hoping developers have all of these issues on their fix lists.
Games like Star Citizen http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/ and hardware like the Oculus Rift http://www.oculusvr.com/  seem to be heading in the right direction but perhaps it's telling that these are both Kickstarter projects.

[radiator]

I think the problem is interface, maybe a conceptual issue. I don't blame 'lazy' developers - they are only making what the audience wants.

Think about it, between 1990 and 2000, games were advancing and evolving at an incredible rate - the NES to the PS2 in the space of ten years.

How much have games really moved on since then? If you ask me, the main innovation has been online connectivity - pretty much everything has just been polishing and refining pre-existing genres.  For me the main genres seem to be really stagnating, especially the all-powerful FPS - the last leaps forward for that genre were - to my mind - Halo and Halo 2. The jump from the PS2/Xbox era to the PS3/360 was not really that big - I'm constantly disappointed that the emphasis always seems to be on making the graphics look nice on the back of the box, while things like animation and especially the scale of environments, continue to tread water.

I feel like the games market - as it currently stands - is peaking. People are only going to put up with the same old for a certain length of time, and innovation is really needed. The level of control and immersion we have in games is still really minimal and primitive - we're still using essentially the same method of input - the traditional controller/joypad. The range of interaction is still prescribed by pushing buttons and pulling levers.

There needs to be a sea change of sorts - a quantum leap in the level of interaction. I was really hoping that the Wii (and to a lesser extent the Kinect) would be the beginnings of the next step for gaming, but six years after the Wii launched, I'm not sure anymore. I've been following things like the Occulus Rift http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1523379957/oculus-rift-step-into-the-game, but I'm still waiting for something that really represents the next step - I'm very curious to see what the next generation of consoles will bring to the table.

[radiator]

I seem to get the greatest level of immersion from multi-genre games.
Sleeping Dogs showed lots of promise. It had RPG elements, an open environment and an excellent combat system.
Where it fell down for me was in the driving/vehicle sections.

I tend to find those sorts of games to be jack of all trades, master of none. GTA is amazing, but you have to forgive a hell of a lot including the extremely twitchy, weightless controls.

If someone could make a game that had the solid on-foot controls of Gears with the vehicle handling of a pure racing game, it'd be the best thing ever.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

I love the idea of GTA but gave up on III, Vice City and San Andreas because of the endless driving to a mission start, and on IV because the gun control wasn't. (Wasn't control).

[Professor Bear]

The last great leap in gaming was GTA3, as evidenced by the fact that after it, everything had to be open-world level design, and people called open world games "GTA style" for at least five years.

My personal theory is that once things went from 2d to 3d, there wasn't really anywhere else to go and all that would happen was we'd see more impressive versions of what went before, ie: Sonic the Hedgehog, Jumping Flash, Tomb Raider and Mirror's Edge are all essentially the same platforming gameplay, just with a different presentation.

[NapalmKev]

I think a lot of Developers have become lazy over the years.

When I started gaming (many many moons ago) it was still a very niche market, and people were genuinely trying to be new and innovative. Now that games have 'mass appeal' we see endless rehashes of crap like 'Zumba dance' or sports simulators. I play games for escapism and enjoyment, if I want to dance I can go to a club, or football can be played outside with real people. Pandering to the mass market will ultimately lead to rushed, poorly developed/executed titles.

And as for CoD; yes they are good games, but with the amount of money spent on them still have ever-present glitches and people hiding inside scenery or on invisible platforms in the air. I afraid this reeks of lazy/poor development!

Cheers 

[JamesC]

I seem to get the greatest level of immersion from multi-genre games.
Sleeping Dogs showed lots of promise. It had RPG elements, an open environment and an excellent combat system.
Where it fell down for me was in the driving/vehicle sections.

If someone could make a game that had the solid on-foot controls of Gears with the vehicle handling of a pure racing game, it'd be the best thing ever.

Yes it would be fantastic but it would need to be marketed properly too.

It's a big risk for a studio to get a team skilled enough to do this properly and spend the vast amounts required to make it work and make it finacially successful. 

If the game was to be the next installment of Gears then you know people are going to complain 'racing games suck - I just want a shooter'.

If the game was going to be a whole new franchise then it has to be marketed very specifically to a demographic that enjoy both shooters and racing games. Once that's done you have to make sure that the game actually delivers.

On top of that you'll get people comparing it to other games that feature driving and shooting sections (GTA) and complaining that it's not open enough!

It's an absolute mine field.

It makes me wonder if the best thing to do would be to take a universe and build it up with various games in different genres. So COD is traditionally infantry based gameplay but maybe you could have COD AIR FORCE, COD AMOURED CAVALRY or COD NAVY but with stats, a campaign and characters that you can carry into each iteration.

[Molch-R]

I've yet to come across a 'lazy' developer. What you tend to find is that developers like to get paid so that they can afford food, clothing and a roof over their heads, and there are examples aplenty of studios that got too ambitious and tried to create The Best Game Ever, only for it to either fail or bankrupt them. There's also a tendency within gaming circles to play 'Wouldn't it be great if...', so yeah, it'd be AMAZING to have a MMPORG based on Dredd's world, but unless you have several hundred million dollars to throw down the drain, it ain't gonna happen. Games naturally have to constrained by the need to make enough money to pay for themselves, otherwise there's no point working in development.

[Richmond Clements]

And relax...

[radiator]

COD AIR FORCE, COD AMOURED CAVALRY or COD NAVY but with stats, a campaign and characters that you can carry into each iteration.

I think they tried something similar with the Tom Clancy franchise a few years ago - a series of games spanning different genres and platforms, tied together with a single narrative.

I've been playing a lot of Halo 4 recently, and the thing that bothers me about these sorts of games is the lack of stakes or risk. Every single person playing the game behaves like a reckless moron, constantly charging into battle with no consideration for their 'life', jealously grabbing all the best weapons, turning on their allies if there's a lull in the game etc. I mean, what's the point in ending a game with 24 kills, if you've died 23 times yourself in the process? Same with CoD - everytime I dip my toe in, it just seems like complete and utter chaos - and going at such ridiculous speed that it feels like you're watching a Michael Bay film on fast forward. That kind of instant gratification is maybe fun for a few hours, but gets dull quickly, like having ice cream for every meal.

I'd really like to see a next level of immersion in these games, where there is some kind of real risk involved, so people feel genuinely cautious and multiplayer becomes more like how singleplayer games play.

Or maybe I'm just playing the wrong games?

[JamesC]

Online co-op is far more interesting to me than multiplayer deathmatches but it's horses for courses.

Xcom is supposed to be excellent and features the permanent deaths of playable characters - hopefully it's something that will catch on.

[Jon]

I've yet to come across a 'lazy' developer.

I dunno, I have my days...

The trouble with developing cross-genre stuff - apart from the horrors of rising costs and development times in an industry less willing and able to invest - is that it actually tends to reduce your target market. You don't get people who like race games and shooters, but rather a significantly reduced sub-set, regardless of the quality.

It's hard enough as it is to get publishers to back anything other than tried and tested franchises with serious money. Still, new hardware generation imminent, and that's normally when new innovation breaks.

I think a lot of Developers have become lazy over the years.

When I started gaming (many many moons ago) it was still a very niche market, and people were genuinely trying to be new and innovative. Now that games have 'mass appeal' we see endless rehashes of crap like 'Zumba dance' or sports simulators. I play games for escapism and enjoyment, if I want to dance I can go to a club, or football can be played outside with real people. Pandering to the mass market will ultimately lead to rushed, poorly developed/executed titles.

And as for CoD; yes they are good games, but with the amount of money spent on them still have ever-present glitches and people hiding inside scenery or on invisible platforms in the air. I afraid this reeks of lazy/poor development!

Cheers 

I worked on two Zumba games at the last studio I was at. We made them because there was a clear market for them, and the publishers and creators were prepared to back them. In terms of quality a/ we put a shed-load of effort into the art and animation, to the highest possible standards the budget allowed and beyond; b/ the X-Box version uses the Kinect in a really solid and satisfying way. The Dev team worked evenings and weekends to get it out on time; far from lazy.

It's not my kind of game either, I agree, but for those who want that type of game, it's a good, high-quality game, especially within the budget it was made for.

The Zumba games consistently sell in their millions, therefore more will be made until that is no longer the case. It's not rocket science. If you want more innovative games, buy those that come out that are trying to be. They mostly die out through lack of interest.

[radiator]

Online co-op is far more interesting to me than multiplayer deathmatches but it's horses for courses.

Me too, by a long way. But unless you happen to have a friend or two that a) own the same console as you b) like the same game as you c) are around the same skill level of said game as you and d) have the same free time periods as you (unlikely once you are no longer a child or student)...

You end up playing with strangers, who routinely act like complete dickheads (nick all of the best weapons/shout at you for picking up the wrong weapon/tell you how to play the game etc), suck at the game and play recklessly (squandering all your lives), betray you, and/or impatiently quit the game if you get stuck on a hard section for more than 30 seconds.

There's also the issue with something like Halo, where the player characters are so insanely overpowered that there is simply no challenge when playing co-op, else the developer has to compensate by stacking the odds against you so much that you routinely die randomly through no fault of your own, because all of the enemies are now carrying rocket launchers. Spartan Ops in Halo 4 is a huge let down for this reason - there's no element of challenge - your only strategy is to keep throwing yourself against the hordes of enemies in suicidal attacks.

[IndigoPrime]

Games naturally have to constrained by the need to make enough money to pay for themselves, otherwise there's no point working in development.

This is precisely what I hear from most developers. In part, technological evolution also makes matters worse. In the 1980s, tech was simpler and so games teams were smaller. You could experiment, a publisher knowing full well that it could take a few hits if need be. Today, games for TV consoles can cost more than movies, so it's no wonder we usually see relatively small iterative leaps, often centred around known properties or long-running series. It's a brave/foolhardy developer today that slaps down tens of millions on something that's truly original.

I'd argue things are different in the mobile space. There at least there's the potential for devs to experiment a bit more. However, there are still limitations, especially in any titles that require any kind of free-reign immersion or high-end assets. Despite being relatively simple, Infinity Blade still cost a ton of money to put together, for example.