vimes

I'm not really into development costs, but I'd say building a honorable game engine is something achievable in maybe 8-12 months by 8 to 10 employees (including engineers) , right ? And the price for UE3 is around $500000 as Mark Rein stated... sooooo, is there a huge difference ?

(EDIT Gosh, I hadn't seen Rado's answer,so I basically repeated the point he made. Damn.) To me, developers choosing morality driven gameplay are doing everything in the wrong order : how can you pretend to make the player conscious of its action when you don't provide a wide range of course of actions. So, there are two things missing to make this kind of initiative relevant : 1) a truly freedom given to the player to complete the task he's assigned or he assigned to himself 2) a 'per agent morality judgment' : Fable and in Black & White's worlds reflect the players action changes as a whole and , while being spectacular, it prevents the idea to go beyond being gimmicky. Developers should try to assign an individual morality filter to each NPC, so that depending on who witness an action and in which environment, the player would be given a certain non-deterministic feedback. Ex : a woman is being assaulted by three young men so you save her by defeating the three guys. Depending on her 'filter' she might fall in love with you, be totally reverent or totally freaked because you just butchered three people in front of her eyes. In this case, the player would still have to decide for himself the morality of its actions because the judgment expressed by the game is one limited by the personality of the NPC it was conveyed by.

A feud ? Gentlemen, I think we need to use it... I know using such powerful tool makes you uncomfortable, but here it is : behold Karimi's All Powerful Wisdom

I would say you won't be able to : in a pre-GDC presentation Molyneux told that Lionhead's developers had just discovered that some testers were throwing the dog ball from near a cliff so that the animal would jump from it to catch the thing... and die in the process. He then said they didn't want that to happen so they implemented a self protection instinct in the dog behavior... he ontinued by saying that he didn't want to waste the dog's death scene; so to me, that means the dog being killed by his master will be impossible.

No, that was bullshit : the demo he presented wasn't designed for the sole purpose of the challenge : it was an internal project for proof testing several gameplay choices of Project Dimitri. What Molyneux did what that he put a stupid justification to make it work within the game design challenge and that really, really got on my nerve.

now, that I read my post again, I can see where the source of your hilarity might lie.

Because, YOU make it look like so. ... would be what I say if I had any clue about what's going

Back on topic : I,for one, would like to get kids in game, just to be able to mess around with them a bit like what everybody did with B&W creature. In a way, it could be an improvment over the old game Creatures mechanism : first you'd get attached because it's helpless and cute, then you'd try to turn it into someone that fits your expectation and then, watch them die as they disappointed you once too many

And anyone who talks about soccer should enjoy a painful death.

First, Playstation Home has been unveiled and it seems like a Second Life clone without all the shit about having to be rich in real life to get an estate and everything. Of course, the Sony Store will be there to provide special item against money, but it's not bound to be as crazy as what I've heard about Second Life. The system seems to aggregate a lot of nice features, but I don't see one of them really standing out, apart from the fact that you're going to be able to make other people listening to your music and (maybe) movies that are on your hard drive. That and the bloom is fucking annoying... plus, stupid people are going to yell because it's potentially a repair for pedophile that can take the honorable appearance of Margaret Thatcher and live in a house made out of candy and trophies from LocoRoco ------------------------------------------------------ Second, and a bit more exciting, is LittleBigPlanet by the guys behind of Rag Doll Kung Fu and, I think, the 'The Room' demo presented by Molyneux at the GDC in 2005. Overall, it's like online puzzle games but for the multiplayer platformer genre: you construct your levels that involve physics puzzle, share them online and people can play them and rate them. The game looks gorgeous with a design that recall Rare, but like Rag Doll Kung Fu, I'm not sure it's going to keep an audience on the long run.

Yeah, damn was he good in these movies!

I suppose it might be from the soft erotica stuff he did back in the 70's, right ?

Four days ago, I wrote somewhere that I was growing tired of Molineux' and Spector's 10 years old speeches, but frankly, it only took me to watch the gamespot video of him presenting Fable 2's dog to fall under the charm again. I just can't resist the guy and to be honest, I don't give a shit anymore whether he's really making the game he's talking about or not . Why ? Because Molyneux is just like Miyamoto, he's one of the guys that genuinely believe in games as a powerful media while retaining their entertainment form. So when Molyneux speaks, it's like when Miyamoto speaks, I really can't help but believe in the vision that he depicts. And no, what he's talking about isn't just about some random high level design bullshit. Not in this case, at least. His proposition is unique because, for once, here's a creator who is not talking about games making you go all emotional over a character because more emphasis was put on writing or because the personality was written so. What he's talking about are fictitious characters demonstrating an illusion of free will; characters which, by seeming real AND in dependents, will give the player the power to choose who he's going to attach to and who he won't care about. And that, to me, is really something new because it creates the opportunity for the player to create/experience emotional side stories in an environment where the only thing written would be the context... hence, you really choose what is YOUR view on the characters. And even if I doubt it's going to be successful the first time around, I think it is a great concept bolstered by actual gameplay elements that makes sense. In the end, I think you've got to listen to Molyneux like you would listen to a sub-quantum mathematicians or space physicists : nothing they say is verifiable but hell, it makes one thinks. [ Bonus Question: when evoking a gamer/player, should I write she/he/it or they? ]

I understand the problem of the budget but why wouldn't it be possible as an episodic project ?

Less routine in the dialogue, brilliant Max charaterization, awesome teaser for next episode : I'm as happy with this one as I was disappointed by episode 03, which is to say : a lot. And because this game was so good - and because I've been replaying a bit of GTA3 lately, a crazy Sam & Max idea began to grow in my head. BEWARE - PLAYER FANTASMA AHEAD Wouldn't it be great if you could play in a Sam & Max GTA clone with you playing as Max and a friend playing as Sam (or the contrary)? When looking at the environment, one of the player would choose a line from several choices and the other could reply with another and so on, scoring 'points' in a weird system [tongue slamming abilities or whatever] as they chose more or less accurate dialogs. When interacting with characters the rule above would stand plus one player could decide to hand the interrogation to the other whenever he/she wants... and cooperation would be needed to solve dialog puzzles. Investigating would give Max a more active role as each of the character could only manage to solve certain parts of the problems and not others. Small mischiefs would be generated dynamically on the street and new cases building an über plot would be made available to players via episodic updates. These updates would be downloaded as background task, the game warning you of their availability by having the phone ring at your office and the duo being given a case by the commissioner. With each updates the city environment would be expanded (ala GTA 3 island unlocking system) and between releases, the player could roam the city in your car to trash it, create link with contacts and whatnot. You could even tune your car and your office. God, am I the only one to wish for this game ?

Heh, speaking of innovation , there is a nice theory which is called something like "heuristic memory" which states that in the history of mankind innovations and discovery were made around the same time at totally different places : the wheel, use of iron, 0 in Math, and so on... so why not 2D/3D gameplay shifting ?

Yeah, a few months back I listened to the 2005 rants and I enjoyed them very much ( particularly, Hecker's tech intervention, weird, heh ?) even though I didn't agree with some of the things that were said. It was fine because , even though those were rants, there never were mindless bashing... which Hecker's intervention seemed to be. What I find even more ridiculous is to see the guy make an apology : for godsake, this kind of conference are usually prepared so don't go and say that what ALL you said was due to the heat of the moment.

Hey, Crush !

The guy is the result of a takedown between a truck of Awesomeness and bus full of Extract of Retard. Let's reminisce for a sec: Perry lead the greatest platformers ever at Virgin Games, then founded Shiny and gave birth to the beloved Earthworm Jim saga and MDK. All of a sudden, he blows Wild 9 and more surprisingly Messiah, which features a genius gameplay concept. The guy seems dead but the unexpected Sacrifice is released and its a bloody masterpiece. A few years later, he's entrusted the Matrix license by the Wachowski siblings and makes a mess out of it. To make it worse, he begins to put his nose in the MMO sector, the most dangerous genre since WoW began to roam the internet. Nobody thinks he's gonna make it out of it. ... And now, he just brought collaborative development and outsourcing to the extremeby opening the development of its upcoming MMO to 100 freakin' 000 people. It's like Eclipse for video games : this might not work, some might say it's completedly retarded...but to me, it's a stroke of genius.

Well, the citation is a bit out of context because he directly continue with : If the point of Inafune is that director should consider games as art to make them as good as possible it is the responsibility of the producer to make this game a commercial success. hence, the producer should consider it as a product whose image, contrary to art, can be ethically shaped to attract the majority then I agree with him. I mean, it's true that if the producer thought like that while helming Okami - which had no intrinsic qualities that made him unfit for the mass market - then it would surely have been a success. And it's the same story for Psychonauts : of course the box art was wonderful, but marketers could have made it so more people would have been attracted to it. And don't tell me that such thing corrupt the game or the creator's intention; it's just meant to take the most out a particular market environment.

There was a comment on otaku that makes sense :

I'm watching it and I wonder : why isn't Nintendo providing other 1st party or 3rd party studios with the same 3D engine? Then surely, people would stop bithcing about Wii games being graphically atrocious.

Well, at least most of the experts say it's where interfaces are going : they don't pretend it's going to replace 2D interface in every cases, they just say that it's going to be the next field of experimentation for a bunch of researches related to usability and user centered interaction... and that their result will provide guidelines for the proper use of 3D interface.

Well, the usability of 3D Interface is one of the most under-researched field of HCI even though everyone agrees it's the future. So, it's not that it doesn't work, it's that it wasn't researched properly and efficient paradigms have yet to arise.

It really takes some huge balls to bullshit that Nintendo (or any console manufacturer in this matter) is to blame for not pushing Video game as an art form: video games are not suddenly going to turn into art because of console manufacturers creating more powerful machines. one doesn't make art easier by providing cutting edge technologies. if someone is responsible for game not being artful, it's the developers... the Wii isn't powerful enough for AI? That makes all gamecube games being shit in this domain, right ? I don't think so. if art is going to happen in the video game, it won't be done by having designer or manufacturers talking about it, it will just happen. interactive digital art is already existing and it's doing fine without the 'help' of the video game industry