Things in games that need to stop.

[pyrosaw]

-DLC pisses me off. Especially since they'll sell the game later with the DLC for an even cheaper price.

-I think we need stop making America the country who are the heroes. It's really annoying. I respect Red Dead Redemption a lot more at the ending.

-Stop spending so much freaking money on graphics. Seriously, no one cares. Aesthetic. Even then, I'm not really picky.

-I don't mind cover-based shooting, and since we're moving away from it, that's good.

-Game length. When I played Painkiller and Serious Sam, It took me days to beat. They had crap tons of levels. Now I can beat FPS's in a couple hours, or even just one sitting.

 

[ArcaneFyre]

Wow, I'm very pleased with how much discussion this thread has generated. A few rather blunt rebuttals here:

On motion controls:
The fact is that the Wii (and consequently the Kinect and Move) had their chances to impress me, and they failed. As such, I was not convinced that motion controls are at all the direction games need to be going in. I've been a by-the-books, standard controller gamer for most of my life, and I honestly think we need to move on.

On 3D:
I'm not saying stop making 3D games, I just mean don't make it into a big thing, because when that happens you get things like Drive Angry and Clash of the Titans. I don't want to see that happen in games, so I think 3D should be kept as a minor addition to some games that could actually be impoved by them, perhaps a Tempest-style space shooter or something.

On the use of real countries in war games:
Boy did this ruffle some feathers. First of all, I wouldn't consider the Korean War to be against the North Korea as we know it today, as the Korean War was fought during the country's infancy. Times have changed and North Korea has changed, albeit not by very much. But in general, I think it's much better when war games take place in the past or using a fictional enemy, for one reason: In the age of Fox News, I really don't want to be playing games that want to make me fear another country when I shouldn't. I know that North Korea is a major concern and all, but there hasn't been a major incident with them (I'm talking on the scale of the Korean War, not minor skirmishes) for a long, long time. Same with the Russians, I don't think they are to be feared and demonized, I think they should be respected like any other country. If we treat other people like they are savage villains, what might they think of us? Show any Russian person a synopsis of Modern Warfare 2 and I'll imagine they'd be pissed.

I'm losing track here... The bottom line is that these are touchy subjects that really shouldn't be speculated on with a game. Some people have said they serve as a handy "what if?", but I'm not really convinced that's a healthy mindframe to have. If a game that featured North Korea as a villain took place during real events with real attrocities that they committed, I'd be all for it, but if it's not accurate than I just see it as paranoid American propaganda. Just sayin'.

 

[LittlePineWeasel]

I have a better idea:

Make gamers more like actual human beings and less like morons who would massacre everyone at a virtual funeral in complete disrespect of the real dead person it's for.

/facepalm

people actually gave a shit about that?

The funeral was dedicated to a person who died in real life. I'd be pissed too if someone did the same at a funeral I was intending.

the idea of a video game funeral just makes me laugh. sorry dude, it's a game, now if you talk about a real life funeral, that's a whole different story

I'm really kinda torn on that WOW funeral story.

I rather hate all parties involved. I think everyone who had anything to do with that story was stupid, or a douchebag, or both.

The people who put the thing on were stupid. Not in their intent, weird as it might be to hold an in-game funeral, they meant to honor a friend who passed and I'm cool with that. Where they fail is that they decided to have it in a place where people were able to come along and fuck them and up. Then they called attention to the fact that it was going to happen there by announcing that they would be doing it there and asking people to be kind enough not to be grief-tards. I'm not sure which part of that is worse, asking people not to be greif-tards, or having decided to do something in a risky place, announcing it so that people are faced with the choice of being greiftarded or not... If it was on the QT maybe they coulda snuck it in. Or why not talk to "GM"s? I once ran a personal event in EQ, it was in a PVP area, people who needed to know knew, and I had a GM on hand to keep the peace, untill after when the planned giant celebratory brawl broke out...even if we hadn't been able to get a GM, only people who knew were people who were supposed to be there, if anyone wandered past and decided to make trouble there were probably 50 or 60 players there who would have made short work of any asshats.

The people who were so happy to shit on the other players events are equally douchey if not more so. Yea,I know you can use the lulzsec logic of going to pvp area = begging to be raped... but yea its still kinda lame... I think the worst part though, was how they put out a video trumpeting the deed. It was like they were saying "ooh look at us and tremble at what huge dicks we are!!"... when in actuality all they did was ambush some other players in a pvp area and put it to music. Really not all that dickish because it was just in a game... I mean, had they actually gone to the real funeral, in life, and started beating on people or pissing on her casket or something, THAT would be real dick material. This was just pimply neckbearded basement trolls wanting so badly to be the bully instead of the object of bullying, pretty pathetic really.

So yea, I can't decide which side I dislike more. Fuck WoW anyway.

 

[snowpuppy]

Swearing in videogames. It annoys me that writers think that an M game needs to have a ton of F-Bombs in order to be seen as "mature" Seriously is there any real need for it? Let's look at Resident Evil 5 as an example, it has an F-Bomb totally out of nowhere and wasn't needed at all.

Reading this I looked back at Mass Effect a series full of violence, some graphic gore, overall a lot of mature themes, and to my memory no one ever swears.

Or they were inserted so well you hardly notice.

 

[Tanis]

Agree with the 3D - it's stupid and it hurts my head.

QTE - They're fine in moderation, but most of the time they're just there to force the game length to be longer.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

I think you're misunderstanding this a little bit. By cutting costs he means putting money where it matters, currently the game industry pours so much money into making everything realistic and marketing the hell out of it. We need to pour more money into every other aspect and make graphics a lower priority.

I would still disagree with that. Graphics are an important part of games, whether they're 2D isometric RPGs or 3D first person puzzle games, if you have a low graphics budget then you may turn out with a game that no one can bare to look at. I'm not saying that we should pour money into realistic graphics and I'm not saying maximise costs; I'm saying that we should be looking to make games that are high quality because they had enough money.[footnote]For lack of a better word, I'm using 'we' to represent the gaming industry, despite my lack of involvement as a developer.[/footnote].

You'd be surprised how good things can turn out when developers have limited budgets or toolsets, you can take 8-bit tunes and indie games as a solid example. Not to mention having a low budget puts less at risk, and means more risky games can be created.

I can't disagree with you there, however I maintain that AAA games can still be innovative if management weren't so paranoid about it not selling. This is entirely what marketing is for, they make sure that a concept or a product is wanted in the world. If that means contracting a small team of developers to try the concept out in a game then so be it. The AAA market is headed by a bunch of scared children from where I stand.

Also indie games are largely well-developed because they're not in it for the money. There's no higher ups holding their paychecks and saying "we need this game in X weeks and just how we like it". And because little or no money is at stake they can make their ideas as risky as they want - again the benefit of lower budgets.

That's exactly what I meant with the final point of my earlier post and with the second point of this post. Management can't do anything that isn't according to plan and a safe bet that it'll sell well when it's released. There needs to be far less involvement of businessmen that can't take risks and it wouldn't hurt for them to see how bad games can turn out when they get too pushy with deadlines.