Wii not taking games Seriously

[vimes]

Well, the citation is a bit out of context because he directly continue with :

Okami and Viewtiful Joe, I think, are wonderful games and because they are wonderful games I think, the job of the director was fantastic. But the producer didn't do his work. The producers work is to make the team make good games and then sell those games.

If the point of Inafune is

1. that director should consider games as art to make them as good as possible
   
2. it is the responsibility of the producer to make this game a commercial success.
   
3. 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.

[brkl]

Come on, it can corrupt the game. The producers cannot have too much power over the product. But I do agree with you. I don't think Stalker would ever have even been finished without that producer guy they got to fix the thing.

[Aussie Ben]

Inafune makes some excellent points and I agree with him, but it certainly is a case of the Pot meeting Kettle due to the atrociously selling Mega Man Powered Up. I mean, it appealled to me, but then again, so did Okami. Who else here bought Powered Up?

Exactly.

[BigJKO]

Is Mega Man Powered Up the PSP remake of the first Mega Man?

'Cause that looked awesome..

[miffy495]

I have it. It's Mega Man, but with style. Awesome.

[SiN]

I don't really disagree with a good deal of what Hecker said.

You need to remember that this was a "rant" session. Obviously, the news outlets are doing a typically shit job of putting enough emphasis on this. The same rant session that Spector last year yelled, "any of you who bought HL2 from Walmart, GET OUT!" (or something to that extent)

What he said about the Wii being "severely underpowered" is spot on too. It is underpowered, and the PS3/X360 will have some fantastic games that flat-out wont be possible to write on the Wii. And it's not developers being "lazy", it's just algorithms getting complicated.

So the PS3/X360 will push the boundaries on AI, and things like animation, seamless worlds, physics, as long as developers are willing to try. It's not just marketing speak, it's reality.

(Witness, for example, Little Big Planet. It's hard to say, but even without all it's graphical flair, I'm not convinced it would work perfectly on the Wii)

SiN

[Aussie Ben]

Yeah, I imagine that people have been doing this at the GDC for quite a while now (ie, being allowed to vent to their fellow developers about how shit some things are at a private conference via a podium), but now that a lot of focus has shifted and it seems to be a bit E Three-ey (ie, non-game developers managing to get into the conference, like journalists), they bafflingly have to be more careful about what they have to say.

It's not for the public, guys! It's a conference for a reason!

[vimes]

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.

[Cigol]

Actually the Wii provides an alternative form of interaction. Comparatively speaking you can't compare the control scheme to the systems processing power. Both the 360 and PS3 offer many different control methods (mouse, keyboard, Wheel, Joystick, etc). These are established methods that are different to the Wii control method, but not inferior.

[brkl]

For the purposes of aiming or immersing the player, they are inferior control schemes.

[Cigol]

I disagree.

For example try playing GTR2 with the Wii controller (impossible I know because GTR2 would never run on the Wii in the first place - but try and imagine such a scenario where it would). Then go and play GTR2 with a Logitech MOMO wheel and pedals setup. The difference is extremely dramatic not just in 'realism' stakes but in the immersion the wheel's feedback provides and how that relates to your ability to drive.

Does the Wii (or the N64 controller in Goldeneye) replace the Mouse and Keyboard as FPS gamers choice of control? I think not. It's different (and no doubt attractive in novelty), but certainly not a replacement. The Wii control method is an alternative, it's no more definitive than any other control mechanism.

[brkl]

Oh, sure, a wheel will work better with any driving game, but we can't have a different controller for every kind of game. As a generic controller, the Wii Remote will work better in a wide variety of games in terms of immersion than any other controller so far.

PS3 and 360 do not have mouse+keyboard as a viable option.

[Nachimir]

Actually, like a stylus, the intuitiveness of the Wii controller will depend largely on the implementation of specific games. It could be mishandled to create an incredibly non-intuitive interface. There's a big difference between motions that come naturally to people and arbitrary gestures that have to be learned and practiced.

[Cigol]

The next gen version of Unreal Tournament will ship with full mouse and keyboard support - there was a news release about this not too long ago. I expect Crysis when it gets released to do the same and I'm sure there are many others along the way.

Plug and play mouse and Keyboard support has been supported for a long time now (back to the PS2) but very few games supported it because of the climate at that time. At the very least, the support for these control mechanisms is there and present in several games. That sounds 'viable' to me?

No argument about the Wii controller's potential jack of all trades quality, but it's still no more definitive than any other control mechanism.

[Mel]

Yeah, I imagine that people have been doing this at the GDC for quite a while now (ie, being allowed to vent to their fellow developers about how shit some things are at a private conference via a podium), but now that a lot of focus has shifted and it seems to be a bit E Three-ey (ie, non-game developers managing to get into the conference, like journalists), they bafflingly have to be more careful about what they have to say.

It's not for the public, guys! It's a conference for a reason!

I saw this over at Penny Arcade:

I wasn't there to hear EA/Maxis Developer Chris Hecker call the Wii "a piece of shit," but I think this is related to what I was just talking about. I understand that he apologized almost immediately thereafter, no doubt after having been beaten profusely beneath a single bare bulb by his enraged paymasters. I don't agree with his diatribe, but then, I don't live his life. I don't need to massage any functionality out of the Wii's comparatively meager chip. He's expressing a frustration about something that is an abstraction for most people. Having worked as a dishwasher and a busboy for many years, I have been a part of the machinery that produces meals. You don't want to know what goes on in those recesses - what fluids seep and flow. You really, really don't. Things... happen, back there.

I don't think we're actually supposed to see what happens at GDC, and for the same reasons. It's the Game Developers Conference, not the Media Pageview Generation Conference or any other conference. Sites should probably cover it in the style of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom - from a great distance, with a telescoping lens.

[brkl]

Actually, like a stylus, the intuitiveness of the Wii controller will depend largely on the implementation of specific games. It could be mishandled to create an incredibly non-intuitive interface.

True for any controller. I'm of course talking about the potential the controller has. It'll be a while before we reach it.

The next gen version of Unreal Tournament will ship with full mouse and keyboard support - there was a news release about this not too long ago. I expect Crysis when it gets released to do the same and I'm sure there are many others along the way.[/Quote]

You can't really use keyboard+mouse unless you're sitting at a desk with a monitor a meter from your face. Even a gamepad is better if you're sitting on a sofa in the other end of the room. Keyboard+mouse support is possible on a console, but it's not viable.

[Thrik]

Yeah, totally. I've tried playing an FPS at distance on my 24 inch monitor before (with a wireless combo) and it just doesn't feel right at all. FPS games feel better when you're a proper distance away to reasonably imagine that the arm on the screen is your own; if you're much further away, it just feels... incorrect.

This same issue plagues all console FPS games of course as the whole concept is you're in the head of the character (possibly why Gears of War seems so grounded and like you're in the world as it's third-person), but it seems to be less of an issue with pads as you inherently don't aim around as much with those anyway. I still don't think they feel remotely right though and can't completely enjoy playing a console FPS after playing them on the PC for well over a decade.

[oerhört]

Furthermore, the Keyboard+Mouse combo is, of course, hopelessly complicated as it is. I don't want to drag a 102-key around for playing my games, for obvious reasons. You also lose analog precision wrt. movement, which the Wii gives you.

There aren't yet any really good FPS games out on the Wii, but what the games I've tried (Red Steel, Far Cry, Call of Duty 3) all have managed, is to give me a better, simpler and more direct way to interact.

When someone with the competency to fulfill the potential of the controls comes along, it will be obvious that the Wii is indeed providing the best interface for FPS games to date. It's still not perfect, and the mouse beats the Wiimote wrt. accuracy still, but all in all, I'd much rather grip those ergonomical white sticks than place my fingers at WSAD ever again. If I only had the choice.