TheOneandOnly said:
Apologies for the giant quote, but...
The "toolset designed for non-programmers" which Yahtzee describes sounds rather like the Unreal Development Kit, which I fear is destined to do more harm than good. In his Little Big Planet review, Yahtzee made the point that the average person playing the game is not a creative genius who can make a fantastic level just because they have the right tools at their disposal. Game development has long been somewhat elitist, there being relatively few people capable of making anything noteworthy out of the millions of people with access to current tools and hardware. Personally I feel this is how it should remain. Once you start making it "easy" to make games, you open the flood gates to the talentless hoards who want their five minutes of fame, and devalue the development process of all games.
In metaphorical terms, if you want to build a bridge, hire the trained engineer, not the guy with the DIY toolset who works at the scrap metal yard...
I do not really agree with this notion. At least not entirely.
One of the
fundamental problems with any task that involves programming is
not that someone is capable of designing an algorithm but rather simply
implementing the algorithm. The same is generally true of video games. It is often said that there is literally no shortage of ideas for games (thus why no game company ever actually wants to hear a random fan's idea; they have plenty of their own to work with). Most people who visit this board have, at least in some idle moment, prototyped some system for some theoretical game in our minds and yet most of us have done nothing else to see the idea implemented in any way.
A significant part of the problem, it would seem, lies in the fact that the effort required to do this by someone completely ignorant of any relevant skills is almost incomprehensibly enormous. Further lowering the basic requirements of making
any game, even a bad one, would almost certainly encourage the development of a host of bad games but the potential benefits would dramatically outweigh these problems. Starting at the most obvious, even if most of these games are terrible, at least some small portion of them would be good and some subset of those could even be great. Beyond that, simply making it
easier to make a game would have enormous benefits for the professional industry at large; escalating costs of making games is an area of enormous concern and is often cited as a key reason why the industry is so often risk adverse.
But the real problem I have is simply that the fundamental assertion you made was deeply flawed. The construction of a bridge has
real consequences; when lives are at stake it is generally considered wise to hire an experienced professional rather than an eager amateur. Few lives hinge on the quality of any particular game, especially when they are made as amateur projects. Even with the barrier of entry as low as it currently stands we still find that the
vast majority of games made (by all games I mean everything from 30 million dollar AAA titles to the countless thousands of flash games and so forth) are, quite simply, bad. Yet, somehow, we all manage to spend our time playing games we like rather than floundering through endless masses of awful or simply mediocre games.
What's more, the assertion dismisses the fact that a great many games beloved by millions began their lives as the work of enthusiastic amateurs. The
professionals that dominate the industry today ALL began as enthusiastic amateurs. If you want to know what such people can accomplish, look at things like Counter Strike or Team Fortress or Portal Killing Floor. Each of these games began their lives as the free work of amateurs and hobbyists. Among that list are countless titles worthy of playing made by various independent developers. Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress are but two in that lengthy list and both have made quite an impact on this community.
