Astute Gamers Will Eliminate Badly Made Games, Says Resident Evil 5 Producer

Logan Westbrook

Transform, Roll Out, Etc
Feb 21, 2008
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Astute Gamers Will Eliminate Badly Made Games, Says Resident Evil 5 Producer



Buggy, half-finished games will one day be a thing of that past, according to Capcom's Jun Takeuchi.

Jun Takeuchi, producer of Resident Evil 5 [http://www.amazon.com/Resident-Evil-5-Playstation-3/dp/B0012N94WO/ref=sr_1_1?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1285858284&sr=8-1] and the manager of Capcom's production division, believes that in the future there will be fewer games released in a year, not more. In his opinion, poorly made games will have no place in the videogames market, as consumers become much more selective about what they buy.

Takeuchi thinks that the market will stop being characterized by a new game grabbing all the attention and that it will split into distinct groups. On one side, you will have games made for a small group of hardcore gamers, and on the other you will have games that will target a wider audience and focus on delivering a sense of entertainment. Takeuchi uses the Resident Evil series as an example of the kind of mass market games that he's referring to.

The secret to success in the future, he says, will be to cultivate the elements for both types of games, and more specifically for Japanese developers, to better understand the Western market in order to maximize each game's potential there.

If Takeuchi is correct, and the quality of a game's construction won't be a concern anymore, it's going to be be interesting to see how that affects the way that people buy games and how we decide whether they're good or bad. A game can be damned because of the flaws in its construction, but it can also be great despite them. Personally, I don't think that we're ever going to eliminate low-quality shovelware designed to make a quick buck, but it's not that much of a stretch to imagine a future where gamers are increasingly less willing to accept a broken product.

Source: Capcom [http://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/interview/2010/vol01/04.html] via Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-09-30-sharp-eyed-gamers-to-eliminate-bad-games]



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vxicepickxv

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Sep 28, 2008
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You don't really hear too much about broken games in the past, because it was so difficult to fix them, and the developers knew this. They used to not put out broken games anywhere near as often. Then easy patching showed up, and now their quality control is slacking off again. There's only one way to reject broken games now, and that's not buy them.
 

Rawle Lucas

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Aug 19, 2010
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I'm not optimistic that buggy games will stop. There's always someone, somewhere who wants to make a quick buck from a video game.
 

MorteSphere

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Jul 8, 2009
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We're talking about the demographic that made Halo a billion-dollar franchise. We're too dumb to improve ourselves, sorry.
 

teh_Canape

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May 18, 2010
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good luck with the "astute" part

it could only be achieved if parents stopped buying little kids xbox 360's, ps3's and damn "Mature" and "Teen" games, because that's the point of the rating, right?
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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The guy is full of it.

One of the problems with video games is that it's nearly impossible to tell if a game is really broken until you've already purchused it. With the current policies for software returns and the like it's pretty much impossible to return a game and get your full money back. What's more what is broken with a game might not be readily apparent, for some gamers it could take weeks, or months, to reach a point in the late/mid game where things are unplayably broken.

What's more, the mainstream being involved in gaming means people are going to be less astute when it comes to the quality of software, not more so. The lowest common human denominator is very low indeed. The result is going to be more shovelware, not less, and indeed a lot of shovelware being passed off as a quality product.

To put things into perspective, I recently got talked into trying facebook. The various games there more or less remind me of old BBS door games (Barrens Realm Elite, etc..) with a microtransaction system thrown in. We're talking a 20 year old gameplay running through web browsers. Yet the money being spent on these things by the mainstream gamer is absolutly legendary, and is affecting the sensibility of game designers as it is. I can say first hand now exactly what the quality of these games is like.

As far as less titles coming out in a year, I suppose that might be true as more companies merge togethr and there are simply less producers out there. The biggest obstacle is of course going to be greed. The price of video games to the consumer means that people simply can't buy a ton of games each year. Reductions in current purchising trends however have a lot to do with the economy. If the economy picks up, and game producers lower their prices by $10-$20 per unit I think we'd see a lot more sales.

The biggest problem we're looking at though is going to be shovelware being passed off as quality products. I can virtually guarantee there are people looking at games like "Farmville", "Mafia Wars", and other games and drooling over the possibility of charging people $60 a pop to play something like that.
 

Jared

The British Paladin
Jul 14, 2009
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Well, its going that way anyway - With the increase in oprduction costs and teams it takes to play games - it wouldnt bea surpruise at all
 

Killerbunny001

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Oct 23, 2008
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As more investors see the possibility of making money out of the gaming scene more shovelware will appear. I don`t think the number of half finished games reducing any time soon.

As for the splitting up between the "hardcore" and main stream, I think that is already happening. I don`t know if it`s a good thing or not but it`s out there in the minds of most developers.
 

Sixties Spidey

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Jan 24, 2008
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Maybe, yes. Right now? No. We're relying too much on the idea of DLC and patches to get a game through the window. If a game's broken, OH WELLS. Send out a patch that automatically fixes it!

Until developers understand that, we're not going to get any further.
 

Xanthious

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Dec 25, 2008
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As long as there are people that own and support the Wii there will always be people to keep feeding money to companies that produce badly made games.
 

Prof. Monkeypox

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Mar 17, 2010
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I'm touched by his optimism. I'd like to see that happen now, but the consumer first has to be more selective about what they buy, and the rest will happen in time.
 

Harker067

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Sep 21, 2010
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Yeah if you reverse it for any other medium you can see the problem. Astute film goers will lead to fewer bad movies released in a year (for example). All the efforts into reviewing and critiquing movies and yet theres still plenty of poor movies coming out each year. Makes me very doubtful this will happen.
 

tlozoot

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Feb 8, 2010
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Yeah, hopefully we'll be at least astute enough to not tolerate pay-for DLC which is actually already on the disc. I'm looking at you Resident Evil 5 multiplayer...
 

Carlston

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Apr 8, 2008
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Resident Evil has always been a badly made game...story, control mechanics...

But some reason that campy damn little game had a aura when it was survival horror...


Now...just another boring action game...

So this mean heading back to the less ammo/health survival bit? Or just means you guys will clean up the dialog and give us a crap game? I rather have a campy fun game with lines like "I want a jill Sandwhich." Than another boring title like re5
 

_Cake_

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Apr 5, 2009
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Yeah like buggy AI companions *cough*RE5*cough*

Fallout 3 has lots of bugs and it's my favorite game. It's such a huge game with so much to do there has to be bugs. I have a strong feeling games aren't going to get smaller in scope.
 

Digikid

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Dec 29, 2007
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Here let me fix the subtitle for you.

Buggy, half-finished games will one day be a thing of that past, according to Capcom's Jun Takeuchi....creator/producer of the buggiest games ever called Resident Evil...5 being the worst
Fixed!!!

Jun you are so full of it it is not even REMOTELY funny.
 

cobrausn

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Dec 10, 2008
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vxicepickxv said:
You don't really hear too much about broken games in the past, because it was so difficult to fix them, and the developers knew this. They used to not put out broken games anywhere near as often. Then easy patching showed up, and now their quality control is slacking off again. There's only one way to reject broken games now, and that's not buy them.
Ahem. X-Com:Terror From the Deep begs to differ. Couldn't even beat the game without a patch.

If you are referring to old console games... yeah, less buggy. But PC games have always had bugs, and probably always will. It's somewhat endearing, and endlessly frustrating at the same time.