Susan

http://onlinemariogames.net

This is talking like there was a process. Other than software engineering, I doubt most AA or A studios have a process. Or is a process standarized. I could be really wrong, since I am just a random gamer on the internet, I don’t know these things first-hand.

So to me, HELL YEA!, AAA studios and big publishers is what has push forward a “process” and standarization of roles, and definition of such roles.

Why is important that roles are defined and standarized?
Is called “specialization”, and was invented 100.000 years ago at the same time than the farming industry.

KG

I dunno, it just seems to be to be the “right” way to look at stuff for the most part.

Did all the people commenting on it make it out to the conference or is there in fact a place where you can glimpse this wisdom on the internet?

Maybe someone with more in-depth knowledge can correct me but I get the impression that a lot of classic games were created by small teams who produced a strong original idea, but at some point the big corporate interests woke up to how much money there was to be made, went around buying up the rights to everything in sight and started producing ’sequels’ which were designed as ‘classic game X’ but with better graphics and the corners knocked off.

Maybe it was actually always like this and I am being over-romantic about a certain period, but surely the ‘consolidation’ of the industry by a handful of large corporations has had some impact on the process of game (‘product’) design?

Drawing comparisons between game creation and movie making has become increasingly easy. Creativity becomes too risky, established IP is king etc. I’ve got nothing new to add to this argument.

But why I found that line fascinating was because its something that has actually been happening in the music industry. Bands are cropping up who are extremely heavily influenced by older bands that are just that little bit too old for their target demographic to have heard.

Its also kind of sad that as the industry matures (at an alarming rate) it takes on these negative traits. Maybe there’s just no other way to do it.

The industry is changing from about us the designer to about them the player over the last decade or so, you hear it from all corners of the industry and i feel it’s as a result of trying to avoid negative traits rather than what we were doing before, implementing positive features.

This tells me that it is well worth going back to these old games but more importantly that some of the best older British games were made by small groups of people who had an idea then made it work by some secret developer magic. It’s more important to me that Introversion are able to lock themselves away and make their games fun by experimentation than that they knew about Syndicate and Cannon Fodder enough to copy them. It’s more important that they knew about Syndicate and Cannon Fodder so they didn’t make something exactly like these game only worse then say they have made the best game ever.

Now that some people admit “Elite is shit”. Is time for more disclosure.

Pacman was not that good. The right part of the level 256 is corrupted and is unplayable.

Tetris is in a sense a failure. Failure to create a good turn-based puzzle game. Real-time was added out of frustration (note: maybe not historically accurate (read: maybe I am lyiing) ).

M.U.L.E.: graphics, nuff said. Also what about “meta” references like planet IRATA ( Atari backwards).

Historical Revisionism is fun!