Is BlackOps Really That Bad To People?

[MrGiggles]

Re: Is BlackOps Really That Bad To People?

I'd say creativity often comes at the expense of feeling incomplete when it comes to today's market. Mirror's Edge? Really awesome -- short as hell. Portal? Pretty cool, but I felt it was so underutilized. Most of the time when I hear of something being innovative I can call upon like 10 other sources that did it first and did it better. I find it rare to come across something I think is truly cool and utilized to its potential -- something I felt was much more prevalent in older games when other factors weren't detracting so much.

To elaborate on what I mean: Most indie stuff is usually just novelty and nothing more. Indie games, which are usually framed to be the main pushers of creativity and experimentation, are usually full of shitty ideas and/or hodgepodges of stuff we've seen before (but perhaps dressed up differently). Sometimes you'll get something solid, but for the most part, creativity has shown itself to be more of a "oh cool game well that was a fun 10 minutes" eventuality.

lol ban but you might end up seeing this anyway. I think we're more or less on the same page here though.

On games being more linear, that's mostly an FPS issue, and one most obvious in CoD games and CoD clones. There really weren't a whole lot of FPS's running around until just recently, either, so there's not a huge amount of comparisons to make. Linearity is also a word that has different meanings in different contexts within gaming, but I think I know which one you're talking about. Older FPS's (Doom and even Half-Life) were definitely less linear and more open-ended as a general rule. Other genres I'm less inclined to believe are less linear today.

I'd agree that profit-seeking has a pronounced negative effect on creative games like Mirror's Edge, where EA didn't feel comfortable spending a large amount of money on such a different idea and was therefore unable to make it the game everyone wishes it was. Large superdevs and publishers (EA, Activision, Ubisoft) are very hesitant to spend money on unproven ideas. Portal I'd hesitate to identify as a game where this happened. It's a pretty polished game that obviously had a lot of Valve's trademark care put into it. It's actually a Valve remake of an indie DigiPen game called Narbacular Drop, whose devs ended up being hired by Valve to make Portal and now Portal 2. Narbacular Drop was a prime example of what you mentioned, indie games with a cool concept or gameplay mechanic but shitty execution and little/no polish. A novelty, really, which is distinct from a creative idea only in how well it's executed.

Which probably comes around more now because anyone and their 9-year old kid can make modern games. Ideas are a dime a dozen, but being able to execute them well is the real difficulty involved in making a creative game. Oh, okay, you can shoot two portals you use to solve puzzles. Great, now put that idea in a game that doesn't suck. Harder than it sounds.

I'd really like to see stories like Portal happen more. Having devs scouting indie games and snatching up the ones with promise, hiring their team, and then cranking out Shitty Indie Game 2: Now 90% More Content. I think that's where a lot of really good games are going to come from, and Valve has done this at least several times that I can think of off the top of my head. Portal of course, DotA is on the way, Counterstrike is based off a mod, Alien Swarm.

As for a higher ratio of creative/uncreative games way back when, I guess I'd somewhat agree upon a bit of thought. I'm not really sure though. I think it's important to note that shitty or uncreative old games don't get played anymore, so most people tend to forget they exist or forget there were a ton of them, which I think might be happening here to a degree. However, as games become easier and more profitable to make, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that shovelware and clones get made more often, especially as franchise tie-ins. Similarly, I think creative games are also being produced in larger volume.

tl;dr I think I'd conclude that there probably is a lower ratio of creative/uncreative games today, but not as much as you think. I've recently realized that there are probably more creative and worthwhile games than I could ever play in my lifetime. Or at least, there will be by the end of my lifetime.

edit: hey cool look what i found literally minutes after posting this

http://fpstribe.com/featured/singing-solo-the-problems-of-the-modern-fps-experience/

[Thatskier]

Re: Is BlackOps Really That Bad To People?

I look at games like Super Mario RPG, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, Doom I/II, Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem, Mechwarrior, Zelda, Command and Conquer, Riven/Myst, Donkey Kong Country, Super Metroid, SMB, Commander Keen, etc... games I grew up with and look back on fondly... and in all honesty, I notice that new games aren’t as creative and are fairly linear. The old games still had a primary path to take, but there were so many different ways to get there and tons of side-quests, goodies, and secrets. Something like Black Ops is very one-and-done. Once you play it, you’ve pretty much seen everything. The older generation seemed to have a lot of memorable, creative ways to handle things.

That being said, some older games are just ****-hard. I don’t care what you say — Battletoads, Rockman and Forte, etc — they can make ANY gamer of ANY age weep.

But really, the evolution of gaming is business driven. It’s all about figuring out better ways to monetize things.

In large part, things have moved a lot towards online play. Back in the day, I had to tie up my phone line just to play Red Alert or Duke Nukem 3D with someone. Gaming consoles like the SNES/N64/PSX (let alone the limited online capabilities of PC multiplayer) weren’t integrated with the Internet like the PS3, Wii, and XBox 360 are today. Gaming’s so much more accessible now.

Nowadays when you buy games like Black Ops or MW2 or Halo, you breeze through an easy single player mode and then you spend most of your time playing others online. That’s ultimately where the money is, and so that’s how games will be built. There’s less money to be made in making something too hard in single player mode. You don’t want people spending months trying to beat it when they could be online instead. At the same time you don’t want to simply do away with single player altogether (it’s great fun and you’ll experience plenty of spillover effect, and you also don’t neglect your market). The goal is to move people to multiplayer as soon as possible.

When we were young, had time, and were faced with limited online gaming access, we could therefore we could get away with having plenty of insanely hard platformer games that tried to kill us at every turn possible. That sort of dynamic just doesn’t seem to play out as well in today’s gaming climate.

With a broader market, you’re also going to have more unskilled gamers than skilled, so you have to adjust. Usually, MOST people that begin the first level of your game don’t make it to the very end. The return on investment experiences diminishing returns as you start to look at money spent towards the endgame. So in order to make that ROI worth it, you either have to shorten the game or make it easier so more people reach the ending.

The arcades have an influence here, too. Tons of games were also ported to the physical arcades, which were designed to be tough so you’d spend more money to continue. But with the increased access in home gaming, there’s less incentive to pay to play games in the arcade when you can get the same experience at home (while also being able to play others).

So yeah, I find the lack of difficulty depressing. I wouldn’t say that gamers are getting dumber, necessarily. I would say that the frontier of gaming itself has changed to become more profit-minded such that there is less reason to make your single-player game insanely tough. I just get annoyed when I am playing Black Ops and someone is literally telling me "Shoot the lock ahead!" as a lock glows gold and makes my next moves all the more obvious. There's no mystery or headscratching involved when the game is practically its own walkthrough. Black Ops is nice to look at... but I can't explore it very much. It's pretty much "Kill everything here, move into next area, watch scripted event, repeat." Snore.

Your expectations are to high. We are not living in the past we are living in the now. According to many models.... innovation is slowing down as time progresses.

[MrGiggles]

Re: Is BlackOps Really That Bad To People?

oh my god did i really just type that much on an ffr thread about videogames holy shit adderall

sorry about that

[ddr_f4n]

Re: Is BlackOps Really That Bad To People?

Your expectations are to high. We are not living in the past we are living in the now. According to many models.... innovation is slowing down as time progresses.

Nah his expectation are right on what everyone else wants. Problem is gaming industries are too scared to actually tackle something full on, and we become even more careful as the world becomes more critical with everything around it. They're too afraid to make that huge leap of faith that could either make or break games.

[benguino]

Re: Is BlackOps Really That Bad To People?

There is also the fact that many things have already been done already. As time progresses, doing something "new" and innovative becomes harder because there are less and less ideas available.

[MrReincarnatix]

Re: Is BlackOps Really That Bad To People?

MrGiggles: I'd agree that the linearity problem is especially prominent in FPS games. I have just seen this strongly-correlated trend between shitty FPS single-player missions and the existence of Multiplayer. In games like Duke Nukem, Doom, Wolfenstein, System Shock, Deus Ex, Half-Life, Goldeneye, etc -- the single-player mode was still linear in the sense that you had a start and end point to each level, but the world was still your oyster. You could complete levels in different ways, employ various strategies, utilize a wide array of interesting weapons, stumble upon hilariously memorable fights and/or easter eggs or secret areas, leverage stealth vs. head-on attacking, and so forth. I could go on and on about all the cool things these games did correctly.

But when I look at present-day games, the worlds are certainly large, but your path is more or less set. There's little incentive for exploration. It's pretty much "Do this, then do this, then do this, end level," typically interfused with a billion cutscenes and in-game handholding.

And while I'd say Portal was definitely a success, it ultimately felt like a novelty concept to me. The game was too short and the puzzles weren't variegated enough for the game to feel full-fleshed to me. The puzzles requiring tricky momentum gimmicks were cool, but for the most part, the things were fairly straightforward and the game was over before I knew it. Still a solid game, but I just wanted a bit more from it. Portal 2 looks promising and I think Valve was more willing to invest in it this time, so I am really looking forward to a fuller game.

I still maintain that earlier games were more creative. That isn't to say there aren't present-day games that are excellent -- Amnesia was a breath of fresh air as far as interesting, creative FPS-minus-the-S-technically games are concerned. Likewise with Bioshock. But there are just too many games I can call upon that are chock-full of awesome things you just don't find today in similar densities. When you do, the game's just too short to get much pleasure out of it. You almost have to hope that a larger dev swoops down and nurtures it to maturity.

There is also the fact that many things have already been done already. As time progresses, doing something "new" and innovative becomes harder because there are less and less ideas available.

It's tough to be original, but it's not like ideas get sucked up. You can take ANY given game and trace its origins in other inspirations. It's a mantra of troping, really. The fact that something uses an already-used idea is not the problem. The difficulty is in taking ideas and making them your own -- and making them fun and interesting. Older games simply did this much better.

[MrReincarnatix]

Re: Is BlackOps Really That Bad To People?

Nothing?

[MrGiggles]

Re: Is BlackOps Really That Bad To People?

yeah i assume you saw me browsing da thread but I had class and couldn't respond

There's not a whole lot for me to say, I still agree with you on most points really, especially about FPS games. I think maybe I don't consider length to be as important as you do though. I would agree that Portal needed more puzzle variety, though the end-game switch from pristine lab environment to decrepit factory helped a little. I think it went way beyond being a novelty though. I certainly put more hours into it than I did with several triple A titles, including Bulletstorm. My steam page only records 7.9 hours though, I bet I played a lot in offline mode or something.... fake edit: and some of my achievements are missing god DAMNIT steam not again

Anyway, I'd still contend that creativity is alive and well in modern games, but that argument contains somewhat subjective elements. Some people view innovation and creativity differently. A lot of people I've talked to found Minecraft to be intensely uninteresting, for example. Recently I've been playing a lot of smaller games and far less mainstream titles, and so my view might be skewed because of that. Minecraft, Recettear, Machinarium, Dwarf Fortress 2010, and Super Meat Boy are all pretty recent games I'd consider pretty creative that I've played in the past month or so.

Granted, these games are all also short. Except for DF. I have a fortress I've been working on since DF2010 release now. But like I said, I don't place as much value on game length, I can usually come up with my own ways of extending the game, generally through self-imposed challenges (like the Kobold Kamp mod for DF).

[.Gazelle.]

Re: Is BlackOps Really That Bad To People?

been wanting to try out CS but have no wtf i need to get could anyone give me a list?

[fido123]

Re: Is BlackOps Really That Bad To People?

been wanting to try out CS but have no wtf i need to get could anyone give me a list?

- Computer (133MHz w/ 24MB of RAM)
- Mouse
- Keyboard
- Internet connection
- Counter Strike

[.Gazelle.]

Re: Is BlackOps Really That Bad To People?

- Computer (133MHz w/ 24MB of RAM)
- Mouse
- Keyboard
- Internet connection
- Counter Strike

well i just realized how awfully i worded that i meant servers and such do i need to sign up for a certain account in order to play or is it f2p

[gta0004]

Re: Is BlackOps Really That Bad To People?

No i like it. Some dont because its a game that has changed little form cod4 yet everyone loves it. people have different opinions

[fido123]

Re: Is BlackOps Really That Bad To People?

well i just realized how awfully i worded that i meant servers and such do i need to sign up for a certain account in order to play or is it f2p

You buy it off Steam for $10: http://store.steampowered.com/app/10/?snr=1_4_4__13

After it's downloaded and installed you just hop in and pick a server like COD5.

[PriestREA]

Re: Is BlackOps Really That Bad To People?

we're bringing up points as to why cs is better in our opinion, no need to get all butthurt. if you look at big gaming tournaments, the main fps has consistently been cs 1.6 (eswc, wcg, cpl, esl, esea, etc) and the largest prizes are usually in the same game.

Exactly right, kommi. All the people I talk to about video games care about one thing and that's about graphics. It honestly drives me insane when people talk about graphics. Oh, the graphics are so bad, that's why I don't play.

Black Ops has many good aspects to it along with the good graphics (which don't really weigh much in this argument):
Large playing community
Good game to play casually
Fun for beginners
PUG are usually fast-paced

Problems though are the fact that almost NOBODY plays the objective, and that drives me to the point where I would love to smash the game. But I still like to play it once in a blue moon, so I didn't. In 1.6 or Source, people play the objective. Although, I prefer source, due to playing in many LANchamp tournaments, 1.6 is definitely the better game. I mean it has a larger playing community, requires skill to play and usually the people are friendlier. Being someone who goes in Source, gets a 100-3 score, gets me banned from servers. That's usually because you have randos crying about how you hacked and how you're walling. "You have an aimbot." "You use wallhacks." All the live long day you hear this, and it's like "Just shut up. Please."

Kids get extremely butthurt about dying, which brings me to the next point. Kids on Black Ops who cry about everything. "My game lagged (whine)" "Oh, no fair, he's hacking." "I usually don't do this bad." True signs that a kid doesn't know how to play, and one of the main reasons I refrain from playing Call of Duty games often. They don't deserve to be played in tournaments. But in terms of casual play, the franchise is one of the best FPS to date. Otherwise, it ranks pretty low.

[elitestrrts]

Re: Is BlackOps Really That Bad To People?

people who call themselves hardcore gamers and play cod and halo3 errday are posers just sayin

Couldnt agree more