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Nice article on witting in video games
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/game-writing-1.ars/2
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For the longest time I’ve been seriously frustrated by writing in games – or the lack of general story structure for that matter. Consumers are eventually going to get fed up with first person shooters. Only so many technological advances will be made before it completely stagnates. Then gamers will seek depth and variation.
I’ve been playing Fahrenheit recently and I’m gotten so much out of it. It’s so refreshing to play a game that makes you think. As an industry, we really have to ask ourselves where we’re going and are we on the right track.
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For the longest time I’ve been seriously frustrated by writing in games – or the lack of general story structure for that matter. Consumers are eventually going to get fed up with first person shooters. Only so many technological advances will be made before it completely stagnates. Then gamers will seek depth and variation.
I’ve been playing Fahrenheit recently and I’m gotten so much out of it. It’s so refreshing to play a game that makes you think. As an industry, we really have to ask ourselves where we’re going and are we on the right track.
[/quote:cc5c8f4441]Christ, that reads like the intro to telling a class they have to write an essay on the games marketplace.
*shudders*
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…Then gamers will seek depth and variation.[/quote:4dda931f6a] Can’t see this happening myself. Trashy TV, books and films are still being made. The audience hasn’t turned away from them in search of depth and variation – Sometimes (a lot of the time) people like their entertainment to be mindless fun.
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I have to agree with obscure.
Just look at the games of recent times that have really pushed boundaries and tried to be different (Chibi Robot and Okami for instance)…and look at their mediocre sales. -
It frustrates me a lot when the most recent ‘best game I’ve ever played’ isn’t even well known enough to appear on the shelf of my local game store. I grabbed Okami in a video shop second hand a while ago, and I almost cried with happiness.
But though it’s true that trashy films and books are still the centre of the money making industry, there are still classics out there. Cheap to make and easy to sell will always flood every area of entertainment, but that doesn’t mean art doesn’t get made, it’s just harder to dig up.
By the way, Fahrenheit made me sad :( ‘We’re so starved for writing that when we’re thrown a bone with a few scraps on it, we treat it like steak.’
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Cheap to make and easy to sell will always flood every area of entertainment, but that doesn’t mean art doesn’t get made, it’s just harder to dig up. [/quote:5477cdc1ac]
And yet Clover Studio are no more :( -
I get irritated whenever people equate originality and good writing in games to bad sales, yet while they may mention the game, they neatly ignore the fact that Fahrenheit which has both of these qualities got great sales ( http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/9368/Indigo-Prophecy-Races-Up-The-European-Sales-Charts/ )
There’s a vital element that’s missing here, marketing.
When David Cage was making Fahrenheit, he noticed that their current publisher was lacklustre about the game and he foresaw the game the game briefly appearing in game shops on release before disappearing a week later. Deciding not to have his game meet such a fate, he actively looked around for another publisher before finding one that was enthusiastic about his game and promoting it(Atari) and promptly switched.
When I first read this my mind reacted "No, no, this is wrong, David Cage is a visionary, visionaries aren’t meant to concern themselves with petty things like marketing. Visionaries are meant to pour themselves into creating a great work of art taking up much time and effort, and then complain when no one notices it. That’s how it is."
My mindset revealed something about the general industry to me. How many truely innovative, fun and well structured games got marketed properly? I might accept Beyond Good and Evil as I saw a TV add once, but for others like Viewtful Joe and Okami, I wouldn’t have even known about them if I wasn’t on the internet (and Chibi Robot? What the heck is that). To surmise, before you berate the general public for not liking innovative, fun, or well written games, please first examine whether they had the chance to even know such games existed in the first place. -
Way to hit the nail on the head. Best sellers are decided before publishing after all.
This all reminds me of ICO ^_^ Anyone who had hear of it thought it was the best thing ever created. Few of the as there were…
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Agreed, but as for changing publishers…very few developers would have the luxury of being able to do that. Cancelling with one publisher after they’ve put a lot of money into a project isn’t going to be an easy deal to sort out…
Publishers want something they understand so they know how to market it. Show them something new and they invariably don’t know how to market and don’t get it. Remember, marketing probably don’t play the game, all they have are some video captures and screen shots. -
Agreed, but as for changing publishers…very few developers would have the luxury of being able to do that. Cancelling with one publisher after they’ve put a lot of money into a project isn’t going to be an easy deal to sort out…
Publishers want something they understand so they know how to market it. Show them something new and they invariably don’t know how to market and don’t get it. Remember, marketing probably don’t play the game, all they have are some video captures and screen shots.[/quote:33503a9af8]Well, that might be true for some, but not all given Atari. Anyway, David Cage’s account of the publisher switch can be found at the bottom of this page: http://gamasutra.com/features/20060620/cage_02.shtml . A couple of interesting points about how the switch was possible.
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VERY rare case it sounds like…
Especially as these days a lot of IPs are acquired by the publisher, so an IP would no longer switch publishers, but switches developer – ie Tomb Raider ;)
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This all reminds me of ICO ^_^ Anyone who had hear of it thought it was the best thing ever created. Few of the as there were…[/quote:90cfee5708]
According to here it sold about 650,000 which isn’t bad and was before the European re-release which I believe sold pretty well (at least according to a guy behind the counter).VERY rare case it sounds like…
Especially as these days a lot of IPs are acquired by the publisher, so an IP would no longer switch publishers, but switches developer – ie Tomb Raider ;)[/quote:90cfee5708]
Boy, so first we demonstrated that innovation isn’t a death knell for video games, now you demonstrate that reusing existing IP can be a bad thing. Wow, next thing you know we’ll demonstrate that top quality graphic isn’t the single most vital thing for a game to have! (I apologise for my optimism, I haven’t yet fully entered the industry) -
Boy, so first we demonstrated that innovation isn’t a death knell for video games, now you demonstrate that reusing existing IP can be a bad thing. Wow, next thing you know we’ll demonstrate that top quality graphic isn’t the single most vital thing for a game to have! (I apologise for my optimism, I haven’t yet fully entered the industry)[/quote:8e3a1fdc74]
That’s not a very valid point, a video game on any platform can be both innovative and graphically mesmerizing. And this can sell a shameful amount but still be an amazing game, and even if they made a sequel in the series it would probably still sell awfully. Games such as Okami ( was the marketing for okami just a bit dodgy or something? It didnt even sell well in Japan) and Psychonauts. even if sequels for those games were made they could potentially sell less then their predecessors.
The problem with writing in games isn’t the originality, in my opinion it is ‘cash-cow’ licenses flooding the market with games. Such as…this summer some of the best sellers will be: Shrek 3, Fantastic 4: rise of the silver surfer, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, spiderman 3.
Shit shit shitty shit shit, don’t buy those games!. what we need is not these middling B level crappy ps2 shitty garbage ports that simply have higher specular levels. although an insane amount of people do buy them, and ignorantly so, and therefore miss out on quality games. Lame! I know the marketing of such titles is immense and the format is drilled into people on such a vast scale, but it’s not fair on the consumer even if they don’t know what is happening. And this should change. But such is every product at the moment I guess.
I know I’m being harsh because I am "a hardcore gamer", but this money making trend needs to stop a bit just to allow these high-quality games to filter through. Even slightly. If they did, and they made money, and publishers such as EA etc saw this, they’d jump on new highly original IP’s. Not going to happen though. And I partly blame the Wii for that (and EA, those annual title loving fiends), Because games that are dead to …ahem…"hardcore gamers"…are now being re-used for the Wii console to consumers who were alien to the concept when it originally surfaced, even if it did come out 4 years ago or something., and this just means putting the whole process back a good while. A monumental, albeit unnoticed step in the wrong direction.
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…but this money making trend needs to stop a bit just to allow these high-quality games to filter through.[/quote:5bea00db08]
And which publicly floated multinational company would you recommend sacrifice their profits to release some good games first? And why do you suggest that the latest harry potter, spiderman or fantastic 4 game cant be good? Lego starwars was crap I hear, and that used 2 brands!Dave
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I never said that those games can’t be good. Spiderman really isn’t that bad, and pirates of the Caribbean 3 is a truly lovely looking game, they are just unoriginal and ultimately flawed or just plain broken and unfinished. And they are the better ones.
I’m just having a good rant!
I know it’s impossible to expect such things, but one can only dream -
Shit shit shitty shit shit, don’t buy those games![/quote:4f37fcee6a]
Heheh somebody’s been listening to the Hotspot.I think it’s the same as the movie industry; publishers wouldn’t have the capital to fund the more interesting, riskier games if it wasn’t for the licensed crud that doesn’t do anything more than cash in on the name. It’s a necessary evil, and one that’s never going to change.
And hey, somebody must be enjoying these games, right?
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Boy, so first we demonstrated that innovation isn’t a death knell for video games, now you demonstrate that reusing existing IP can be a bad thing. Wow, next thing you know we’ll demonstrate that top quality graphic isn’t the single most vital thing for a game to have! (I apologise for my optimism, I haven’t yet fully entered the industry)[/quote:d2dea77c3a]
1. Innovation make it harder to market as its something new for marketing, something they may not understand.
2. Re-using IP can lead to stagnation…hard to keep a team making the same game over and over and keep them interested. Re-using it well can be a good thing though, especially as its something marketing continuously understand and know how to deal with and improve.
3. Top quality graphics are not vital, casing point "Katamari Damanci" -
If you look at the sales figures for current and previous generation titles, many of their top selling titles [not all] have had strong writing in them, so I would have to think that good writing is already apparent in modern titles and is one thing that the gaming public must equate with a quality titles of specific Genres.
I do think there is much room for improvement in the writing and genres of games and also how narratives are approached.
Is there companies that specialize in writing for games and if so does anyone know if they are successful? It might be a niche market that somebody from a country famous for its writers could leverage :D
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Is there companies that specialize in writing for games and if so does anyone know if they are successful?[/quote:054be512c7]
Just Tom Clancy i think! :wink:
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Isn’t there a case for who it’s being marketed for? I often see a mixture of sports games and kids games on the charts in my local shops. I don’t know for a fact, but I suspect there are a lot more parents buying games for their kids than there are adults buying games for themselves… sadly most gamers grow out of it all… though the same could be said for much of the (pop) music industry.
Anyway, it seems that kids will put up with fairly basic narratives compared to what adults want. Cartoons suffer from being marketed at kids much more than games of course…
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I I often see a mixture of sports games and kids games on the charts in my local shops.[/quote:d0a1899f81]
I’m pretty sure, at some GD shindig, someone told me that publishers pay a certain amount for a certain position in the charts and that it’s built into their marketing costs when they start a game. Is this really true?
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No, you pay for shelf space, not chart positioning.
With the coming off online distribution, this marketing ploy will hopefully become less of an issue. Although, I guess you’ll just pay for advertising on the distribution site instead…
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