Rob Zacny

Episode 307: Roguelikes

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This is the theory that you have and it is patently wrong.

Hint: what about a game dev who makes a game without emergent game play and then one with? Did they suddenly become a gamer between the two games?

 

They learned somehow. But you can recognize a non gamer dev instantly because they'll try for one thing, actually achieve something else very different and then will be completely bewildered by it. They have no idea why everyone is doing this other thing and will still believe their game is about the first thing. This process is most transparent with games of the MMO and ARPG genres, as what invariably happens next is they try (often without success) to force their way on everyone instead of letting it happen naturally.

 

It's also very obvious when they just talk about the game, as they will be describing something very different from what its players actually play.

 

Edit: Oh, I thought you were interested in a serious discussion. Nevermind then.

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If you want a serious discussion you'll have to have something serious to discuss instead of laughably uninformed drivel and opinions dressed up as fact.

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I am really curious how a developer who doesn't play games even gets into the gaming industry. It'd be like an author who didn't read, and there are so very few of those outside of Garth Marenghi.

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If you want a serious discussion you'll have to have something serious to discuss instead of laughably uninformed drivel and opinions dressed up as fact.

 

And by something serious you mean what? Empty dismissive Star Wars references and getting my age wrong by at least half? When I was a teenager I was very cheerfully optimistic about games. There were also a lot more good ones. So far I've mostly just seen people responding to one small part of what I said, not even a full sentence worth. If that's all you have then I'm done here.

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It's pretty difficult to prove that the ratio of good-to-bad is any different today than it was in the past. There's a much larger, a much much much larger quantity of games today. Of course you're going to find more junk! The very nature of the industry being bigger today than it was yesterday is what leads to this. More developers means more of everything.

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And by something serious you mean what? Empty dismissive Star Wars references and getting my age wrong by at least half? When I was a teenager I was very cheerfully optimistic about games. There were also a lot more good ones. So far I've mostly just seen people responding to one small part of what I said, not even a full sentence worth. If that's all you have then I'm done here.

If you're theory crafting and I point out a fundamental flaw in your theory you need to modify or withdraw it. I don't need to address the points you derive from your theory if it's wrong; that would be wasting your time and mine.

And without any evidence, you're theory crafting.

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And there's definitely interesting discussion to be had about gamer vs. non-gamer developers - or more specifically around the relationship between high level game play and game development.

It's just the argument you're failing to make is not that interesting discussion.

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The average quality was significantly higher in the past. Yes bad games still existed. My screening process consisted of seeing if the game was in a genre that interested me and reading the back of the box and that's about it.

 

I'll just second osmosisch here, you have some seriously rose tinted glass about the past that you rely on to make some sweeping statements that are just so abrasive at best (the rant about trying to justify piracy) and at worst straight up ignorant (gamer dev vs non gamer dev?  the fuck man).

 

If you want a serious discussion you'll have to have something serious to discuss instead of laughably uninformed drivel and opinions dressed up as fact.

 

It's pretty difficult to prove that the ratio of good-to-bad is any different today than it was in the past. There's a much larger, a much much much larger quantity of games today. Of course you're going to find more junk! The very nature of the industry being bigger today than it was yesterday is what leads to this. More developers means more of everything.

 

Yep.  There is also development of internet and mobile devices that makes it much easier to come across bad games (before we had to physically search for games, not anymore).

 

Not that current industry landscape is all peachy and perfect but the whole "good old days" rants are just as ridiculous imo.

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It's pretty difficult to prove that the ratio of good-to-bad is any different today than it was in the past. There's a much larger, a much much much larger quantity of games today. Of course you're going to find more junk! The very nature of the industry being bigger today than it was yesterday is what leads to this. More developers means more of everything.

 

My complaint is that the ratio is higher. And yes, a small difference would not be proven easily. However a large difference is noticible without any great strength in scrunity. This is also a very practical problem. With older games. developers must get it right the first time. With newer games, there's a release now patch later mentality where later can very well be never. There were also weaker graphics in older games, meaning any mechanical or substance based flaws were more transparent, meaning that the other aspects of the game must be solid or everyone would know the game was bad. Now compare that with almost any modern release in any genre. The game is released at least 6 months early in a shocking number of cases - you can tell because of the massive, often gamebreaking bugs that went live, the huge release day patch, and the numerous patches after that that all either fix major bugs and/or add core features that were not in the initial release. Now you can argue that is the publisher's fault for not letting the developers finish and I'd agree with you easily enough. That is still a quality decline though, regardless of its cause.

 

 

 

I'll just second osmosisch here, you have some seriously rose tinted glass about the past that you rely on to make some sweeping statements that are just so abrasive at best (the rant about trying to justify piracy) and at worst straight up ignorant (gamer dev vs non gamer dev?  the fuck man).

 

I say the past was better because it was. I never said it was perfect. I'm a realist, I call out flaws as I see them.

 

Justify piracy? No. I specifically said I wasn't doing that. You can dismiss me for that if you like, but what I was actually saying with that confession is that it's fucking shameful I must go through such great lengths to find a decent game instead of just having a normal set of standards and a normal amount of disappointment.

 

Hell, you could have a meaningful discussion and make fun of me at the same time by talking about how this decline has made seemingly passionate gamers become almost comically cynical, as if purchasing a game were a fucking job interview. But you're not doing that, and I suspect the reason I'm not seeing that sort of discussion is the shoot the messenger mentality. My words make gamers uncomfortable, so you'd rather dismiss me out of hand.

 

Or you could take this guy for example:

 

 

If you're theory crafting and I point out a fundamental flaw in your theory you need to modify or withdraw it. I don't need to address the points you derive from your theory if it's wrong; that would be wasting your time and mine.

And without any evidence, you're theory crafting.

 

I double checked, and he thinks that proving my theory wrong consists of just declaring that I'm wrong, that's it. No proof. That's a dismissal right there.

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Like I said, it's difficult to prove. And unfortunately, you've done nothing to prove it!

 

Also, you cite buggy releases, but, guess what, old games were buggy, too. They were just infinitely less complex, so you could get away with it much more easily, and the bugs that did happen were much less likely to break the game. It's not a quality decline. It's a complexity increase. And the more complexity increases, the harder it is to find bugs. QA is not easy, and it only gets harder every year. If you want to exclusively play simpler games with less potential for bugs, those definitely exist still today, so you can just play those and stop pretending that everything is terrible and gaming is dead.

 

Also if you were able to go back in time and introduce the internet and patches to the NES or even Atari, you'd find that developers of that time would happily take part.

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I double checked, and he thinks that proving my theory wrong consists of just declaring that I'm wrong, that's it. No proof. That's a dismissal right there.

 

 

This is the theory that you have and it is patently wrong.

Hint: what about a game dev who makes a game without emergent game play and then one with? Did they suddenly become a gamer between the two games?

They learned somehow.

I double checked, and he thinks that proving my theory wrong consists of just declaring that I'm wrong, that's it. No proof. That's a dismissal right there.

 

Convenient short term memory problem you have there.

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Like I said, it's difficult to prove. And unfortunately, you've done nothing to prove it!

 

Also, you cite buggy releases, but, guess what, old games were buggy, too. They were just infinitely less complex, so you could get away with it much more easily, and the bugs that did happen were much less likely to break the game. It's not a quality decline. It's a complexity increase. And the more complexity increases, the harder it is to find bugs. QA is not easy, and it only gets harder every year. If you want to exclusively play simpler games with less potential for bugs, those definitely exist still today, so you can just play those and stop pretending that everything is terrible and gaming is dead.

 

I didn't prove it because it was painfully obvious. How many new games lack key features on release now vs 5, 10, 20 years ago? Yes, new games are more complex, that doesn't help things. I'm not debating the reason the average is lowering so much as I am pointing out the decline exists.

 

Old games were actually full of bugs. The difference being, they were not the sort of bugs that would generally manifest in normal play. They were the sorts of bugs that acted as speedrunner/LLG bonuses and were irrelevant if you weren't doing some form of challenge run. Since most of the lasting appeal of older games IS challenge runs, that's actually a positive and many of them deliberately kept these beneficial bugs in remakes/later installments of the series because they, like I am not saying all bugs are bad, just the ones that have a negative impact on the game. Hell, most fighting game metagames are based on bugs/glitches.

 

Now if I were to call out a reason for the decline it'd probably be graphics. High end graphics require by far the most time/money of any aspect of design, and man hours spent on that are not spent elsewhere. So even if you don't intentionally use them as a smokescreen you're still sacrificing in other areas. When you need 5 million sales (or some similar large number) or you don't even break even, what do you produce? Answer: Games for the lowest common denominator. Smart from a business perspective, bad for the end user. Unless you are the LCD in which case you have a target rich environment. Where do Roguelikes come into this: Answer: They aren't afraid to have a smaller core audience. Same for most indie games of any genre. I'm not "pretending everything is terrible and gaming is dead". I'm saying that it's declining very sharply on average (exceptions still exist) and I'm not at all happy about this. Triple A gaming though? Yeah, that shit's cold and dead. RIP.

 

Edit: Oh, we're doing quote wars now? Alright then.

 

This is the theory that you have and it is patently wrong.

Hint: what about a game dev who makes a game without emergent game play and then one with? Did they suddenly become a gamer between the two games?

 

Followed by baseless remarks about my age, followed by a remark that I'm seeing everything in black and white even though I used very gradual language and non absolute terms followed by...

 

 

If you're theory crafting and I point out a fundamental flaw in your theory you need to modify or withdraw it. I don't need to address the points you derive from your theory if it's wrong; that would be wasting your time and mine.

And without any evidence, you're theory crafting.

 

Except for the part where he never actually pointed out a flaw, he just said I was wrong then declared victory.

 

Now compare that with someone like Twig who isn't agreeing at all either, but unless he starts with the non sequitor insults is actually having a discussion.

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What about a game dev who makes a game without emergent game play and then one with? Did they suddenly become a gamer between the two games?

 

If you can't answer that, then your theory falls apart. And you still haven't answered it.

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I think this guy must be from some alternate terror universe 2010s because the defining thing of this decade in gaming is just how many games in every genre are out there.  A lot of it is rough around the edges, but there's so much choice these days, and if you think the 90s wasn't full of trash(it just doesn't look the same as today's), you must have been in a different timeline than myself.

 

With roguelikes now, developers borrow from them and they borrow from other genres, and you see a lot of cool stuff happen.

 

I mean with the big AAA Event Games yeah you're getting a certain thing but I hope by know you know what you're getting into with them, and some people enjoy that.  If you think those kinds of games didn't happen in the 90s, I can give you many, many examples.

 

BTW, I don't think anyone gets into making video games for the money of it- the people who develop games are there because they want to make games-  in most of the related fields to making a game, there are more lucrative opportunities elsewhere.

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Man, I cannot stress how much disappointment I had in the 80's and 90's after purchases. Back then you could publish a game that just didn't work - I'm not saying that in a hyperbolic way - and there was nothing that you could do about it. That was just on PC and Commodore. The consoles, particularly in the NES era, were full of shovelware garbage-factories like LJN. I'd say there has been a noticeable uptick in quality and variety every decade that I've been around. Part of that, I assume, is that it's easier to avoid bad purchases with the breadth of information out there, but there is also a greater degree of choice that there used to be. 

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I didn't prove it because it was painfully obvious.

I'm sorry, but I'm just not seeing it. I guess my pain nerves are dead! I should see a doctor.

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Man, I cannot stress how much disappointment I had in the 80's and 90's after purchases. Back then you could publish a game that just didn't work - I'm not saying that in a hyperbolic way - and there was nothing that you could do about it. That was just on PC and Commodore. The consoles, particularly in the NES era, were full of shovelware garbage-factories like LJN. I'd say there has been a noticeable uptick in quality and variety every decade that I've been around. Part of that, I assume, is that it's easier to avoid bad purchases with the breadth of information out there, but there is also a greater degree of choice that there used to be.

I had to save up for new Megadrive games for at least half a year, purchasing a stinker was truly heartbreaking. I religiously cross-referenced all the review mags and still bought Cyborg Justice :(

The C64 situation was even worse, ugh.

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I'd love to listen to this episode, but when I download the episode (by right-clicking on "Get MP3" and downloading), the file size is always 0 bytes.

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I'd love to listen to this episode, but when I download the episode (by right-clicking on "Get MP3" and downloading), the file size is always 0 bytes.

 

What browser and version # are you using? I've heard another issue from someone who couldn't get the episode using Firefox.

 

I put the episode in my public Dropbox folder and you should be able to download it using this link in the short term: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2d04hzb88acwgxr/ThreeMovesAhead307.mp3?dl=0

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Loved this episode! I think I saw Rob tweet that it was the most downloaded show they've done? Crazy.

 

I've not had a lot of time for proper roguelikes lately, but I've been playing a lot of Pixel Dungeon on my phone and it's pretty fantastic for what it is. I'm also kind of surprised Desktop Dungeons wasn't brought up. To me it felt like that and Spelunky were a one-two punch that really injected roguelike mechanics and design into the minds of a lot of the general gaming populace, but that could just be my own bubble of experience.

 

Anyway, I've had a thought in my brain for a while now that Dota is sort of a competitive team based roguelike at heart. I realize it doesn't fit entirely, but I get a lot of the same feelings when playing that I can't help but draw the comparison. Both require commitment and learning the language and rules of the game and what it expects from you as a player. You never carry over progress from game to game except for what you as a player learn. Of course, there is no randomization to speak of, although it could maybe (maaaaaybe) be argued that that comes in the form of other players choices (hero selection, item builds) to keep you on your toes.

 

I should probably try to flesh this out some more when I'm not drunk.

 

Great cast everyone.

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What browser and version # are you using? I've heard another issue from someone who couldn't get the episode using Firefox.

 

I was using Firefox. I've just tried it in IE now and it's downloaded OK! It seems no browser is good at everything...

Thanks,

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Loved this episode! I think I saw Rob tweet that it was the most downloaded show they've done? Crazy.

 

It's up there! The day we launched this one is the second-highest spike in terms of daily downloads, coming in only after the XCOM show we did in 2012 with Jake Solomon. That episode also remains the most downloaded of all time. People like their XCOM.

 

 

 

 

 

I was using Firefox. I've just tried it in IE now and it's downloaded OK! It seems no browser is good at everything...

Thanks,

 

Great!

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