Comments on: Develop 09: When A Creative Director Attacks!

By: George Alumbaugh

George Alumbaugh — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 19:33:54 +0000

Whoa! For a nice and searching search engines for hours just for this and that i as a final point found it listed here!

By: Robin Ginolfi

Robin Ginolfi — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 10:12:28 +0000

Awesome piece of writing, well written I have to admit.

By: Susan

Susan — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 07:53:13 +0000

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Susan

http://onlinemariogames.net

By: Tei

Tei — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:04:47 +0000

TeeJay .”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?”

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.

By: Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 21:00:37 +0000

I don’t think there’s a recorded version. Which is a shame, as it’s a bit of performance and the above is more of a response to a tiny fraction of it.

By: RobF

RobF — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:08:49 +0000

Yeah, I’d love to give this a watch/listen/read in full, sounds absolutely fascinating and I love the way Barnett looks at the universe of games.

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

By: David

David — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:18:34 +0000

Eh, I guess this talk doesn’t exist on the internet anywhere. I’ve been looking for it for a while either in text, video, or audio form and I can’t find anything.

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?

By: TeeJay

TeeJay — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:53:58 +0000

I find it wierd that games series are moved around between developers. Has his always been the case or is it the result of the mega-publishers buying up vast numbers of independent studios?

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?

By: qrter

qrter — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:43:54 +0000

I’m starting to think Barnett isn’t really half as interesting as RPS seems to think he is.

By: fleacircus

fleacircus — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:21:52 +0000

The line “New Ideas when no fuck’s played them” was interesting to me. Not new, but interesting because it shows the gaming industry once again becoming more like the other media industries.

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.

By: The Sombrero Kid

The Sombrero Kid — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:02:25 +0000

Playing too many good games, leads you to follow them blindly into the abyss, playing a bad game, if you make games should lead you to question why it isn’t any good and ultimately arrive somewhere near an answer and a ‘what to avoid’.

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.

By: Sinnerman

Sinnerman — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 09:46:16 +0000

I re-played Wizkid for a while yesterday. My head was spinning to think that Sensible Software could put that game together that way seemingly with no reason or plan and that it could work so well. Even today.

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.