Stereotypes of The Escapist Forums

[NotAProdigy]

Too bad no one properly discusses game mechanics, thinking that story and character are the most important ingredients.

Probably because they can (aspire to) write, but have no idea how to program.

:-(

Ho boy. Game mechanics are most of the headache of any game. I've done a couple of little freeware RPGs using RPG Maker (you know, the thing that practically does all the work for you?) and RPG Maker XP (you know, the thing that does all the work WRONG and you have to learn how to use Ruby to make it right again?), and game mechanics are the most underrated thing anyone has ever given me criticism on. Shame, really, since they took me at least three times longer than writing a story or designing a character did.

F**king Ruby...

Ruby's MUCH better to learn than say C++ which has a huge learning curve.
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/

There's a tutorial in there somewhere. After that it's pretty much just using the dictionary of coding till you get the hang of it. It requires creativity, but, hell so does most beautiful artwork.

 

[JonnoStrife]

People who are "1337 HaXOrS ROFLCOPTER LULS!!!!". I dunno if its a stereotype but the majority of these people are either, A. 12 or B. fuckwits.

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

I dislike the stereotype that everyone here is a socially inept nerd that fears women and leaving their homes. Simply isn't true.

Actually, in my experience here, this seems to be a rare thing. Indeed, if most posters are to be believed, the average Escapist sits in a comfortable chair whilst wearing a spiffy smoking jacket surrounded by gorgeous women.

but we all know thats only because yahtzee said it first

 

[Trivun]

I don't like the... I guess you would call them "search bar snobs". Not that there is anything wrong with letting a newcomer know the rules but some people can be such dicks about it.

I agree completely. One of these I see quite a lot, Internet Kraken, and normally he's pretty cool. Trouble is, one 'lack of search bar' and he's up in arms and being really nasty about it to people. Overall it's just the 'search bar snobs' (nice dub, Jon ) and the 'Grammar Nazis' that I really hate. Plus obviously trolls and flamers, any console fanboys here can be pretty bad, but generally that's about it. There are much more decent posters here than there are retards and that's what we need to focus on. Ignore the idiots and only chat to the good (or at the very least the borderline average) people, and there's no problem.

 

[Uncompetative]

Too bad no one properly discusses game mechanics, thinking that story and character are the most important ingredients.

Probably because they can (aspire to) write, but have no idea how to program.

:-(

Ho boy. Game mechanics are most of the headache of any game. I've done a couple of little freeware RPGs using RPG Maker (you know, the thing that practically does all the work for you?) and RPG Maker XP (you know, the thing that does all the work WRONG and you have to learn how to use Ruby to make it right again?), and game mechanics are the most underrated thing anyone has ever given me criticism on. Shame, really, since they took me at least three times longer than writing a story or designing a character did.

F**king Ruby...

Ruby's MUCH better to learn than say C++ which has a huge learning curve.
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/

There's a tutorial in there somewhere. After that it's pretty much just using the dictionary of coding till you get the hang of it. It requires creativity, but, hell so does most beautiful artwork.

Python and Lua are worth a look too. Find what you are comfortable with. You'll probably need to bind with with C code to get any speed anyway, but the main thing is to get a graphical interactive prototype off the ground then you can tune the gameplay balance as you add and remove elements, fix bugs, discover your misconceptions about what you assumed would be "great", have "happy creative accidents", etc.

It would be wonderful to conceive of a game from the point of a protagonist, their characterisation and a compelling thematically-anchored story, but that is rarely possible for technical reasons. The bald fact is that Computers aren't like the Star Trek Holodeck with full-body UI with tactile force-field-feedback, and natural-language authoring based upon near-infinitely powerful processing. Even the mighty video-realistic Crysis suffers from an over-complex keyboard interface, breaking the feeling of immersion gained from all of that fancy depth-of-field/motion-blurred rendering as your fingers scramble to find the correct buttons to do an action you wouldn't give a second's thought to if it were done in Reality with your body. Yet games make you feel disabled and clumsy, or pragmatically restrict their control interface to a commonly used subset of habituated actions (e.g. a gamepad), merely redefining the problem as one of severe inarticulacy. All too often we are disabled by the User Interface of the game we attempt to control. All too often the game makes this 'bug' a 'feature' (e.g. Resident Evil), thinking that it can hoodwink the player into accepting this as an additional challenge.

So, in my view, the place to start is with the controls. Usually you are not in Shigeru Miyamoto's position of being able to redesign the actual gamepad for the next console, so have to go with whatever is already out there. Let's assume that Mouse and Keyboard is excluded on the grounds of not suiting all platforms (only the 360 gamepad can work on PC, Mac and 360 - it also largely button compatible with the PS3 controller as the clicky thumb-sticks are equivalent to L3/R3), also the keyboard is over-complicated and ultimately breaks player immersion as they have to look down from the screen to check where they are putting their fingers; especially over on the side that they have their mouse. The developer has to make the most of the controls they have and find ways of making them maximally articulate, subtle, comfortable and empowering (in order to overcome the intrinsic disabling aspect of the gamepad which can never be fully escaped from).

A game developed in this way may initially seem too fluid and easy. The character you control may seem God like, despite the measure of skill that is involved in manipulating the controls. The solution is not to make the controls more awkward, but to throw more of a challenge at the player - usually in later levels. Goldeneye 007 is a good example of this.

Games can improve the accessibility of their complex control schemes by not requiring mastery, or indeed knowledge of their entirety, at the outset. Super Mario 64 is a prime example of this. Where the more strenuous acrobatic acts come as a result of harder to pull off pad manipulations. The situations that require mastery of these acts come later on in the game, giving it a graceful learning curve without painful "spikes" in difficulty.

My point is that the controller is fixed, so your control of the game (however that interface is designed) is constrained and a good designer tries to think of gameplay situations that can be conquered with rewarding mastery via this somewhat inarticulate, disabling, interface. If you play a game without cursing the controller, it is halfway to being a success - regardless of all other considerations, like graphics engine and narrative. Yet, the graphics will be constrained by technology (unless you live in the dreamworld of Crytek and, I suspect: Remedy), so you again haven't got free creative rein to do whatever epic story you yearn to. Can you marshall all the art assets that your setting requires? Probably not, so you shouldn't even think about it that way around... You should ask yourself the question:

"What sort of a fun game can I make with this and this, that I will want to replay multiple times after I am done debugging the damn thing?"

Get an answer to that and if you are lucky you may be able to shoe-horn a main character and a theme in at the end, but I suggest you ignore all notion of Story and just let it 'leak' in through the ambience and machinations of your simulated world rather than suck all the vitality out of the whole enterprise by determining the player's path through the game with a pre-determined linear script.

 

[NotAProdigy]

Spoiler

Too bad no one properly discusses game mechanics, thinking that story and character are the most important ingredients.

Probably because they can (aspire to) write, but have no idea how to program.

:-(

Ho boy. Game mechanics are most of the headache of any game. I've done a couple of little freeware RPGs using RPG Maker (you know, the thing that practically does all the work for you?) and RPG Maker XP (you know, the thing that does all the work WRONG and you have to learn how to use Ruby to make it right again?), and game mechanics are the most underrated thing anyone has ever given me criticism on. Shame, really, since they took me at least three times longer than writing a story or designing a character did.

F**king Ruby...

Ruby's MUCH better to learn than say C++ which has a huge learning curve.
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/

There's a tutorial in there somewhere. After that it's pretty much just using the dictionary of coding till you get the hang of it. It requires creativity, but, hell so does most beautiful artwork.

Python and Lua are worth a look too. Find what you are comfortable with. You'll probably need to bind with with C code to get any speed anyway, but the main thing is to get a graphical interactive prototype off the ground then you can tune the gameplay balance as you add and remove elements, fix bugs, discover your misconceptions about what you assumed would be "great", have "happy creative accidents", etc.

It would be wonderful to conceive of a game from the point of a protagonist, their characterisation and a compelling thematically-anchored story, but that is rarely possible for technical reasons. The bald fact is that Computers aren't like the Star Trek Holodeck with full-body UI with tactile force-field-feedback, and natural-language authoring based upon near-infinitely powerful processing. Even the mighty video-realistic Crysis suffers from an over-complex keyboard interface, breaking the feeling of immersion gained from all of that fancy depth-of-field/motion-blurred rendering as your fingers scramble to find the correct buttons to do an action you wouldn't give a second's thought to if it were done in Reality with your body. Yet games make you feel disabled and clumsy, or pragmatically restrict their control interface to a commonly used subset of habituated actions (e.g. a gamepad), merely redefining the problem as one of severe inarticulacy. All too often we are disabled by the User Interface of the game we attempt to control. All too often the game makes this 'bug' a 'feature' (e.g. Resident Evil), thinking that it can hoodwink the player into accepting this as an additional challenge.

So, in my view, the place to start is with the controls. Usually you are not in Shigeru Miyamoto's position of being able to redesign the actual gamepad for the next console, so have to go with whatever is already out there. Let's assume that Mouse and Keyboard is excluded on the grounds of not suiting all platforms (only the 360 gamepad can work on PC, Mac and 360 - it also largely button compatible with the PS3 controller as the clicky thumb-sticks are equivalent to L3/R3), also the keyboard is over-complicated and ultimately breaks player immersion as they have to look down from the screen to check where they are putting their fingers; especially over on the side that they have their mouse. The developer has to make the most of the controls they have and find ways of making them maximally articulate, subtle, comfortable and empowering (in order to overcome the intrinsic disabling aspect of the gamepad which can never be fully escaped from).

A game developed in this way may initially seem too fluid and easy. The character you control may seem God like, despite the measure of skill that is involved in manipulating the controls. The solution is not to make the controls more awkward, but to throw more of a challenge at the player - usually in later levels. Goldeneye 007 is a good example of this.

Games can improve the accessibility of their complex control schemes by not requiring mastery, or indeed knowledge of their entirety, at the outset. Super Mario 64 is a prime example of this. Where the more strenuous acrobatic acts come as a result of harder to pull off pad manipulations. The situations that require mastery of these acts come later on in the game, giving it a graceful learning curve without painful "spikes" in difficulty.

My point is that the controller is fixed, so your control of the game (however that interface is designed) is constrained and a good designer tries to think of gameplay situations that can be conquered with rewarding mastery via this somewhat inarticulate, disabling, interface. If you play a game without cursing the controller, it is halfway to being a success - regardless of all other considerations, like graphics engine and narrative. Yet, the graphics will be constrained by technology (unless you live in the dreamworld of Crytek and, I suspect: Remedy), so you again haven't got free creative rein to do whatever epic story you yearn to. Can you marshall all the art assets that your setting requires? Probably not, so you shouldn't even think about it that way around... You should ask yourself the question:

"What sort of a fun game can I make with this and this, that I will want to replay multiple times after I am done debugging the damn thing?"

Get an answer to that and if you are lucky you may be able to shoe-horn a main character and a theme in at the end, but I suggest you ignore all notion of Story and just let it 'leak' in through the ambience and machinations of your simulated world rather than suck all the vitality out of the whole enterprise by determining the player's path through the game with a pre-determined linear script.

First, go make a thread about this. It's much too intricate and worthy to just 'be a post' off of some random tangent. Though, if you do, I wouldn't expect much from this community. It just seems to me that people at The Escapist are less interested in higher subjects like the fallacies in videogame developing and would rather talk about their first kiss, gurl gmrs, or some perspicuous bullshit that no one but them cares about but themselves, so they can stroke their ego by filling in their own two cents and feel like someone will give a damn in which their post will ultimately get ignored. I mean I've seen posts that repeat themselves over and over again because the thread is so infantile and appealing to knee-jerk responses and posts like Healthcare and Media Consolidation get- hrm . . . anyway.

Secondly, I don't really relate to what you're trying to get at with the controller business because I've never ran into this problem. I think the WASD + Mouse or a few buttons is plenty comfortable, and I think most programmers agree. I don't see a reason why to go beyond that. The immersion is only broken when some pretentious dreamy eyed programmer who thinks that complexity is the best thing to happen since Warhammer 40,000 gets a little carried away. And really, I haven't seen too many games who do that TOO badly. Time Fcuk, Castle Crashers, Many turn-based RPGs (how many buttons could you use?!), Braid, Trine, etc. Maybe what you're saying is all based on something like Hearts of Iron or some other gauche game.

Really though, you speak a lot truth when you say that gameplay mechanics are broken and somewhat glib in a lot of games. I feel like a lot if indie people who make the games don't actually sit back and immerse themselves with the character, but this could be said with a lot of mainstream games as well. A lot of elements are missing and really it just makes the game seem so . . . drab. Y'know? When I play a mainstream game, I often can feel the ones which went through committees and bureaucracy and shit and in other games I can just feel the passion and emotion that went into it. Persona 4, Fable, Bioshock, Zeonic Front, Left 4 Dead, etc. I can feel the level of detail and entanglement that went into it, which I often see a lot of games just don't have.

From my experience, I feel like disempoweredment and elements where the game actually forces you to master a specific trait is when its most enjoyable. I believe that's why FPS's are so enjoyable, simple to learn but difficult to master. But think about it when you play, let's say, MGS3 in europe mode: Where you are actually forced to use stealth or you die. It forces the player to actually play the game instead of running through it like an inflight movie or something: Boring, drab, boring, etc.

Anyway, I realize how easy it is for me to criticize other people and yet not do any of the work. But even were I a programmer for a game, I would rather be judged by this stigma than any other. If it's good, then give it praise! If it's not, fuck it! Mercy for no actual merit is not how the world should work (even though it does) Q.E.D. Halo 3.

 

[Jedamethis]

He is ten leave him alone.

That was me! I said that! Yay me!

I think there is a stereotype of stereotypes. As in people will pretend to be stereotypes, It happens a lot

 

[Captain Pancake]

That everyone will follow you if you say, "I killed someone once". See MaxTheReaper for example

I totally agree with you there. He just seems like another teenage video gamer to me, so what's the big deal? he acts condescending towards us other posters, so that means we should adore him?

He's just a man, and a very jilted one at that.

 

[Anarchemitis]

Upon reflection maybe I should've omitted dates and names.

Well, yeah. As it stands, your post is basically insinuating (although not deliberately, I'm sure) that everyone who isn't named in your list is someone who is not contributing to the quality of the place and is therefore partially responsible for its decline. Which isn't really fair, especially on the people who don't make very showy, obvious posts and therefore wouldn't necessarily get noticed enough to be in a list, but might make the occasional very intelligent contribution. You're also effectively putting up yourself as the arbiter of who is and isn't a "worthwhile contributor", and there are also implied value judgements with being on one part of the list as opposed to another. I'm sure none of this is deliberate on your part and you had the best of intention - but naming names of other users who you think are good, bad or indifferent is extremely dangerous territory. It's the sort of thing that moderators might discuss in a private part of the fourm perhaps but I don't think a public discussion of this type of thing can really help anyone.

In my defense I am not insinuating anything against or for anyone. The names stipulated I just though were people of those days, the majority of people held in regard as "They're Awesome". Insuch, Yahtzee probably could've been on all eras, even though I really don't care for him.
And I especially would not like to instigate myself as a superior or dictator of what is and what was, it's more like perception. Subjective and all that mash.

 

[chronobreak]

What do you mean users like me?

Don't get me wrong, I didn't mean to offend or anything, I just mean other people that are not blind to the waxes and wanes of The Escapist community, and are not afraid to speak out when they see The Escapist becoming something less than what it was.

 

[Arbitrary Cidin]

After some time on the Escapist, I've noticed a few repeating themes in threads. Let's talk about what typical scenarios in the forums we've seen on the Escapist.

One example would be the "So terrible, people start looking at the persons profile" thread. Occasionally, someone makes a pointless thread with terrible grammar and features of inadequacy that simply blow your mind. Almost immediately, the subject changes to the quality of the post, and soon after you begin to see references to their profile. Example [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.147471]

This is why everyone is asked to make sure their spelling and grammar is up to scratch before posting. I can't really see what the point in your post is, you haven't come up with a list of Escapist stereotypes nor expressly asked people for their thoughts.

Umm, because this is a discussion not a list and this thread is me asking for their thoughts? I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

 

[JanatUrlich]

Dude we're on the internet. I think it's pretty safe to say that we're all assholes

 

[Uncompetative]

Spoiler

Too bad no one properly discusses game mechanics, thinking that story and character are the most important ingredients.

Probably because they can (aspire to) write, but have no idea how to program.

:-(

Ho boy. Game mechanics are most of the headache of any game. I've done a couple of little freeware RPGs using RPG Maker (you know, the thing that practically does all the work for you?) and RPG Maker XP (you know, the thing that does all the work WRONG and you have to learn how to use Ruby to make it right again?), and game mechanics are the most underrated thing anyone has ever given me criticism on. Shame, really, since they took me at least three times longer than writing a story or designing a character did.

F**king Ruby...

Ruby's MUCH better to learn than say C++ which has a huge learning curve.
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/

There's a tutorial in there somewhere. After that it's pretty much just using the dictionary of coding till you get the hang of it. It requires creativity, but, hell so does most beautiful artwork.

Python and Lua are worth a look too. Find what you are comfortable with. You'll probably need to bind with with C code to get any speed anyway, but the main thing is to get a graphical interactive prototype off the ground then you can tune the gameplay balance as you add and remove elements, fix bugs, discover your misconceptions about what you assumed would be "great", have "happy creative accidents", etc.

It would be wonderful to conceive of a game from the point of a protagonist, their characterisation and a compelling thematically-anchored story, but that is rarely possible for technical reasons. The bald fact is that Computers aren't like the Star Trek Holodeck with full-body UI with tactile force-field-feedback, and natural-language authoring based upon near-infinitely powerful processing. Even the mighty video-realistic Crysis suffers from an over-complex keyboard interface, breaking the feeling of immersion gained from all of that fancy depth-of-field/motion-blurred rendering as your fingers scramble to find the correct buttons to do an action you wouldn't give a second's thought to if it were done in Reality with your body. Yet games make you feel disabled and clumsy, or pragmatically restrict their control interface to a commonly used subset of habituated actions (e.g. a gamepad), merely redefining the problem as one of severe inarticulacy. All too often we are disabled by the User Interface of the game we attempt to control. All too often the game makes this 'bug' a 'feature' (e.g. Resident Evil), thinking that it can hoodwink the player into accepting this as an additional challenge.

So, in my view, the place to start is with the controls. Usually you are not in Shigeru Miyamoto's position of being able to redesign the actual gamepad for the next console, so have to go with whatever is already out there. Let's assume that Mouse and Keyboard is excluded on the grounds of not suiting all platforms (only the 360 gamepad can work on PC, Mac and 360 - it also largely button compatible with the PS3 controller as the clicky thumb-sticks are equivalent to L3/R3), also the keyboard is over-complicated and ultimately breaks player immersion as they have to look down from the screen to check where they are putting their fingers; especially over on the side that they have their mouse. The developer has to make the most of the controls they have and find ways of making them maximally articulate, subtle, comfortable and empowering (in order to overcome the intrinsic disabling aspect of the gamepad which can never be fully escaped from).

A game developed in this way may initially seem too fluid and easy. The character you control may seem God like, despite the measure of skill that is involved in manipulating the controls. The solution is not to make the controls more awkward, but to throw more of a challenge at the player - usually in later levels. Goldeneye 007 is a good example of this.

Games can improve the accessibility of their complex control schemes by not requiring mastery, or indeed knowledge of their entirety, at the outset. Super Mario 64 is a prime example of this. Where the more strenuous acrobatic acts come as a result of harder to pull off pad manipulations. The situations that require mastery of these acts come later on in the game, giving it a graceful learning curve without painful "spikes" in difficulty.

My point is that the controller is fixed, so your control of the game (however that interface is designed) is constrained and a good designer tries to think of gameplay situations that can be conquered with rewarding mastery via this somewhat inarticulate, disabling, interface. If you play a game without cursing the controller, it is halfway to being a success - regardless of all other considerations, like graphics engine and narrative. Yet, the graphics will be constrained by technology (unless you live in the dreamworld of Crytek and, I suspect: Remedy), so you again haven't got free creative rein to do whatever epic story you yearn to. Can you marshall all the art assets that your setting requires? Probably not, so you shouldn't even think about it that way around... You should ask yourself the question:

"What sort of a fun game can I make with this and this, that I will want to replay multiple times after I am done debugging the damn thing?"

Get an answer to that and if you are lucky you may be able to shoe-horn a main character and a theme in at the end, but I suggest you ignore all notion of Story and just let it 'leak' in through the ambience and machinations of your simulated world rather than suck all the vitality out of the whole enterprise by determining the player's path through the game with a pre-determined linear script.

First, go make a thread about this. It's much too intricate and worthy to just 'be a post' off of some random tangent. Though, if you do, I wouldn't expect much from this community. It just seems to me that people at The Escapist are less interested in higher subjects like the fallacies in videogame developing and would rather talk about their first kiss, gurl gmrs, or some perspicuous bullshit that no one but them cares about but themselves, so they can stroke their ego by filling in their own two cents and feel like someone will give a damn in which their post will ultimately get ignored. I mean I've seen posts that repeat themselves over and over again because the thread is so infantile and appealing to knee-jerk responses and posts like Healthcare and Media Consolidation get- hrm . . . anyway.

Secondly, I don't really relate to what you're trying to get at with the controller business because I've never ran into this problem. I think the WASD + Mouse or a few buttons is plenty comfortable, and I think most programmers agree. I don't see a reason why to go beyond that. The immersion is only broken when some pretentious dreamy eyed programmer who thinks that complexity is the best thing to happen since Warhammer 40,000 gets a little carried away. And really, I haven't seen too many games who do that TOO badly. Time Fcuk, Castle Crashers, Many turn-based RPGs (how many buttons could you use?!), Braid, Trine, etc. Maybe what you're saying is all based on something like Hearts of Iron or some other gauche game.

Really though, you speak a lot truth when you say that gameplay mechanics are broken and somewhat glib in a lot of games. I feel like a lot if indie people who make the games don't actually sit back and immerse themselves with the character, but this could be said with a lot of mainstream games as well. A lot of elements are missing and really it just makes the game seem so . . . drab. Y'know? When I play a mainstream game, I often can feel the ones which went through committees and bureaucracy and shit and in other games I can just feel the passion and emotion that went into it. Persona 4, Fable, Bioshock, Zeonic Front, Left 4 Dead, etc. I can feel the level of detail and entanglement that went into it, which I often see a lot of games just don't have.

From my experience, I feel like disempoweredment and elements where the game actually forces you to master a specific trait is when its most enjoyable. I believe that's why FPS's are so enjoyable, simple to learn but difficult to master. But think about it when you play, let's say, MGS3 in europe mode: Where you are actually forced to use stealth or you die. It forces the player to actually play the game instead of running through it like an inflight movie or something: Boring, drab, boring, etc.

Anyway, I realize how easy it is for me to criticize other people and yet not do any of the work. But even were I a programmer for a game, I would rather be judged by this stigma than any other. If it's good, then give it praise! If it's not, fuck it! Mercy for no actual merit is not how the world should work (even though it does) Q.E.D. Halo 3.

Ok. I don't want to give the impression that I hate Mouse and Keyboard, although they do give me cramps. A game like Braid doesn't use a lot of keys, so is fine. What I was referring to was a game like ARMA:

bigger via link: http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/kk58/Krayzie_333/Album/Random/Random/GameSpot_Random/armacontrols2vh3.jpg

Now this game is due to come to the 360 at the end of this year. I want it, but fear how well the controls will adapt. Will it get dumbed down? Might it even be a better game for being played via a less distracting interface? It will be interesting to find out. Hopefully, Bohemia will make use of Quasimodes - which are when you get a different interface from holding down a button/trigger (just like you get CAPITALS when you hold down the Shift key on the keyboard), they could do stuff with the Back and Start buttons for example held down by the thumb of one hand whilst the other hand operates the face buttons or the D-pad. All sorts of complex things are possible and acceptable, provided that they are not used for the simple stuff you have to master early on in the game - Team Orders for example can come later on and require all this extra sophistication.

Of course, given the cost of making games these days, publishers want to make them multi-platform, so it would seem inevitable that the PC will come to follow the consoles both with its releases and the emerging requirement for a 360 gamepad. This extra expense will upset many, but the argument for adoption would be that PC gamers could join 360 players on the same servers given that there was now a level playing field and one-side didn't have the advantage of mouse-look.

It perplexes me that so many people on these forums talk about games as if only story and characterisation matter. Maybe that is putting it a bit strong... perhaps, they see deficiencies in those areas in the games they play (especially when games aspire to be "Cinematic Experiences" these days and have comical voice acting, cliched plots and syrupy muzak). As writers and perhaps artists, they want to contribute to the medium they consume, yet are frustrated from participating (except in isolated exceptions, like Little Big Planet, Halo 3 Forge and the modding community). Many don't have the money to get involved in Second Life, or aren't inspired to design shoes for visitors of a glorified chat-room.

If you were, somehow, to build a game from concept through character into story, then set the necessary ideal scope and parameters of their world and build an engine to render this, you would still have to have geographical/temporal/systemic "pinch-points" to constrain and direct the path of the protagonist even if it was an open world, otherwise all challenges could be circumvented. Designing the controls/controller, or keyboard-layout (in the case of a PC-only game), last would be an absolute nightmare as you would be forced to put most of the interesting actions taken by your protagonist into non-interactive cut-scenes (where, at best, you might be able to manipulate the camera; or do some story-advancing contextual action... but only when prompted to do so). So, unfortunately imagination-first design fails even in theory. What does work is technology-first - i.e. the N64 innovates and has a controller with an analogue stick, now this presents an opportunity to be more articulate in games: better steering in racing games, first-person shooters, etc. but I think it was originally designed with Zelda and Mario 64 in mind. That is a nice position to be in. Designing a new interface alongside the conceptualisation of the fundamental actions you can perform in a given gameworld. However, many of todays genres are only possible because technology is ready to support it. Pac-Man is the way it is because they only had an arcade stick and bit-mapped graphics. Developers worked within the confines of that technology and played to its strengths. When you get a second stick you can do Robotron:2084 and so on.

I suppose I'd just like to see some grasp of what is impossible (and consequently self-censorship) from the writers on here.

A lot of them would be better off working on screenplays. I did one once and it was a lot of fun.

 

[dududf]

Despite that, I'm almost ready to say this is one of the worst threads I've seen in a long time. With no offense intended to the original poster, I can't help but feel like this thread will have a higher likelihood of stereotyping Escapists than a thread on any other topic. Instead of a community building exercise, or barring that, a discussion that everyone can get involved in passively. Instead, we have such wonderful quotes as:

Please don't mix me in with the hounds? Please?

Erm I can't tell if you're insulting me or something else, mainly for quoting two other people who had less then positive responses...

So before I get a personal hate-on can yeah clarify if you mean by "Wonderful Quotes".

 

[mshcherbatskaya]

In my defense I am not insinuating anything against or for anyone. The names stipulated I just though were people of those days, the majority of people held in regard as "They're Awesome". Insuch, Yahtzee probably could've been on all eras, even though I really don't care for him.
And I especially would not like to instigate myself as a superior or dictator of what is and what was, it's more like perception. Subjective and all that mash.

*lower lip quivers, tears well up in eyes* People used to think I was awesome, y'know. I even had a harem.

 

[Anarchemitis]

In my defense I am not insinuating anything against or for anyone. The names stipulated I just though were people of those days, the majority of people held in regard as "They're Awesome". Insuch, Yahtzee probably could've been on all eras, even though I really don't care for him.
And I especially would not like to instigate myself as a superior or dictator of what is and what was, it's more like perception. Subjective and all that mash.

*lower lip quivers, tears well up in eyes* People used to think I was awesome, y'know. I even had a harem.

I thought of you, but didn't know if I should've/could've classified you by my opinion, nor did I know when you joined.

Man, NewClassic is right.

 

[mshcherbatskaya]

In my defense I am not insinuating anything against or for anyone. The names stipulated I just though were people of those days, the majority of people held in regard as "They're Awesome". Insuch, Yahtzee probably could've been on all eras, even though I really don't care for him.
And I especially would not like to instigate myself as a superior or dictator of what is and what was, it's more like perception. Subjective and all that mash.

*lower lip quivers, tears well up in eyes* People used to think I was awesome, y'know. I even had a harem.

I thought of you, but didn't know if I should've/could've classified you by my opinion, nor did I know when you joined.

Man, NewClassic is right.

My Joined date is right under my post-count, underneath my userpic, as is yours. And don't worry about it. My ego is made of toothpicks and tissue-paper and thus easily glued back together. It's kind of funny, because I remember when AlmightyUltrajoe showed up (omigod he was such a troll at first), and Darth Mobius, and NewClassic.

I don't know why I'm recounting this. Nostalgic, I guess. Which is probably another stereotype, the "I Remember When" Oldbie.