May 30th, 2005

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Games
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A Gamer’s Manifesto

Via Slashdot, here’s some very sound thinking on how the average video game could be improved:

The crate has long been held up as a symbol of lazy game art design, a crutch that game level decorators have been falling back on for fifteen damned years. Come to think of it, have you ever actually seen one of those wooden crates in real life? And did you smash it to see if there were bullets and medicine inside?

Number of real world crates I’ve opened: 0. Number of gameworld crates I’ve busted up: 3.7 million. That’s just one of a few dozen well-observed points. I’d like to read an incensed response by some game developer.

Comments: 2 Responses so far

Andy
May 30th, 2005
10:23 pm

I’ve unpacked IBM pSeries (i.e. POWER4 & 5 CPUs) servers from crates. The complaints are about as cliched as the problems. I mean, ooh, Matlock the game.

[Reply]

Chris
May 31st, 2005
10:47 am

Most of his points are good, but the crates I’m not too worried about. I mean, where do you usually see crates in games? Warehouses and such. I mean, I’ve never hit a crate while driving down a road in GTA, or tripped over a crate while killing orcs in Final Fantasy, or kicked a crate while playing street fighter.

Comparing things to real life isn’t necessarily fair either. I mean, I haven’t killed any hookers in real life, nor have I shot people, ran them over, or hurled magical fireballs at them.

Also, I found the AI point a little naive. Sure, having non-stupid AI would be good, and some games achieve it. However, he asks for very smart AI, which is still basically an unsolved problem. There are loads of researchers with Ph.D.’s working on this problem, so expecting every game studio to solve is asking a bit much.

For scathing game developer responses, check the slashdot thread (browse at +5). I was only a game developer for 4 months, so I hardly count ;)

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