this post was submitted on 10 May 2024
123 points (95.6% liked)

Games

16690 readers
291 users here now

Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)

Posts.

  1. News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
  2. Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
  3. No humor/memes etc..
  4. No affiliate links
  5. No advertising.
  6. No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
  7. No self promotion.
  8. No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
  9. No politics.

Comments.

  1. No personal attacks.
  2. Obey instance rules.
  3. No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
  4. Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.

My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.

Other communities:

Beehaw.org gaming

Lemmy.ml gaming

lemmy.ca pcgaming

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
nanoUFO@sh.itjust.works
123
Nintendo president: “Game development will become even longer, more complex, and more sophisticated” (mynintendonews.com)
submitted 6 months ago by nanoUFO@sh.itjust.works to c/games@sh.itjust.works
57 comments fedilink hide all child comments
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 56 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I love long complicated games, like breath of the wild, but I think the world also needs more concise games, those 20-40 hour masterpieces that keep you wrapped up without having to memorize 3600 pages of back story to remember where you left off.

What the studios (especially Nintendo) don't understand is you can't charge the same ~$60 for both games. People don't hate shorter simpler games, they just hate paying the same price for less content.

Right now, Nintendo is selling the Switch version of Link's Awakening for only $10 less than TOTK ($60 vs $70). That's right, a remake of a 20+ year old game with a pretty limited story is selling for almost the same as the largest most complex and expansive game Nintendo has ever produced.

I don't know why they're so fixated on matching prices between games that took orders of magnitude different amounts of effort to produce.

[–] rbits@lemm.ee 25 points 6 months ago

the world also needs more concise games

Yeah!

those 20-40 hour masterpieces

...wait, concise?

[–] Mikufan@ani.social 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Its not just Nintendo, fifa/whatever their new name is sells for 70€ (basically same in usd) every year and is almost 90% copy and paste content.

[–] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Oh definitely agreed, just picking on Nintendo because that's what the post is about

[–] Mikufan@ani.social 5 points 6 months ago

Yeah, Nintendo at least put some afford into half their stuff. Others just literally don't and want the same money.

Im basically a Nintendo hater but in that regard Nintendo is among the best of the big.

This is a industry wide shitshow and most publishers should go to hell for what they do to the studios and customers.

[–] hitmyspot@aussie.zone 5 points 6 months ago

Yeah, bit they sell less and less these days. I think one FIFA was on PS+ about 18monyhs after release. The most recent one was less than a year. They can only milk so much.

[–] Titou@sh.itjust.works 41 points 6 months ago (1 children)

"And games will be less fun of course"

[–] I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 15 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Has Nintendo slipped in quality? Their practices aren't the great, but when it comes down to it, they have some of the most consistently high quality games.

[–] JDPoZ@lemmy.world 15 points 6 months ago

They also have some of the longest tenured pros of game design and programming in the industry in its entirety… something sadly far more rare outside of Nintendo… but especially Japan.

Shigeru Miyamoto, for example, has been designing at Nintendo for literally 4+ decades at this point.

Turns out you can master a craft after doing it for a majority of your adult life.

But - in the US at least - the executives at publicly traded game companies would rather shut down literal smash hit dev studios like the guys who made Hi Fi Rush than cultivate a few master class devs of their own over a few decades…

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I thought BotW was pretty mediocre. They basically took the "bigger and better" strategy to one of their iconic games and made it "bigger and worse."

It's an unpopular opinion apparently, but that's my take. Hopefully it's notb the start of a trend of Nintendo following other AAA studio trends.

[–] CoggyMcFee@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

BotW was my favorite gaming experience of all time. Hours and hours of joy for me.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Eh, it was the worst of the Zelda series for me. To each their own I guess.

[–] CoggyMcFee@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

You already explained you don’t like it. But your anecdote and my anecdote cancel out the anecdotes.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

There's one thing they did right that most other open world games do wrong: The map starts blank and it fills in as you explore. Others in the genre, you'll Ubisoft that tower and then it fills in with all the icons of things to do here, so now follow the minimap to them all. In BotW, you Ubisoft the tower, you get the topology map, and now it's up to you to find stuff in it, and when you do you get an icon on the map telling you you've done it.

I'm pretty sure the Rito quest wasn't complete in time for launch so they had to rush to throw something together. The Hebra region is distinctly empty, I'm sure we were going to have to go on an arctic adventure to find Teba's favorite cuttlefish bone or something, but they didn't have time to finish it because the Switch was coming out so they said 'Fuck it, build something that runs and ship it.'

There isn't much variety in the enemy types, a lot of encounters are monotonous, a lot of the systems are so basic that they're easy to break, and they were so afraid of telling a story out of order that the game doesn't have a story of its own; "Link fucks around all over Hyrule for awhile then decides to defeat Ganon." Meanwhile it tells you a different, somewhat related story.

Then there's TotK, which they tried to make a sequel to BotW out of BotW's bones, and it didn't work as well.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Fair, they succeeded by not screwing up. It's really not much different to show a thing on a map based on proximity vs collecting a McGuffin.

Then again, I actually appreciate AC showing me all of their nonsense because they don't reward exploration. Every street looks samey (at least in the games I've played), and traversal on rooftops is more fun than at street level anyway. That's not an issue in BotW because the map is so empty that it's easy to pick out the interesting bits.

BotW is a pretty decent open world game, I just think it's a solution in search of a problem. I don't really like open world games, but if that's the best way to tell the story, I'm fine with it, so I've played my fair share (I loved GTA: SA, GTA IV, Morrowind, Red Dead Redemption, and a few others, where "open world" really fits). That wasn't the case for BotW, not even a little bit. Pretty much every Zelda game has exploration and "stranger in a strange land" type feel, yet they're able to weave together a sensible main quest with interesting dungeons. In BotW, they're like, "defeat ganon. If you don't wanna, you can defeat ganon in these divine beasts first. It's just ganon all the way down."

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.ca 20 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Anyway...Have y'all tried Animal Well?

[–] Corr@lemm.ee 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's on my list. Finishing inscryption first. Is it good?

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.ca 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm only an hour in, but I'm getting masterpiece vibes

[–] Corr@lemm.ee 2 points 6 months ago

That's awesome to hear. I'll have to check it out

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 18 points 6 months ago

It has never been easier to make A Game. The only thing getting harder is meeting shallow expectations imposed by empty suits. What a small team can accomplish in a few months keeps expanding, and unless you chase some zillion-dollar trends, what they can do is plenty.

Shareholder puppets like Microsoft should figure this out - they demand instant turnaround. They own enough studios to have several of them try cranking out six games in two years. If you want it to happen faster, use fewer people. I dunno, build a friggin' pipeline for indie devs to slap together a killer idea that gets fixed-up, art'd, and polished by different teams. Then you can sell more things to more people for more chances to trip into a brand new trend. You don't have to perform ritual sacrifice when a decade-long project makes a shitload of money! You can still get angry when the actual profits are less than the number you made up in your head! Just-- put money behind cool things that cost $20, instead of constructing situations where people have to spend $140 each or you lose. It's like a fuckin' Mad TV skit. Spend less, sell more.

[–] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 17 points 6 months ago

What he's saying is that major studios are locked playing chicken with each other, and that the industry is going to remember the 1983 crash fondly in comparison with what's going to happen.

[–] ringwraithfish@startrek.website 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

There are too many breakout indie hits developed by one person or a small team that prove this isn't true across the industry.

AAA development may be that way because there are higher expectations, just like blockbuster movies invest heavily in special effects and A-list celebs. But at the end of the day gamers just want to be entertained.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I think that one could also say something similar about Hollywood, though there maybe I'd agree that scale is more important.

Terminator II was, for its time, pretty expensive. I'd be sad to not have Terminator II -- it was a pretty good movie.

But Twelve Angry Men is a pretty good movie too. It has essentially no special effects. The costumes are mostly everyday business casual. Most of the movie takes place in a conference room, with a very small part in a courtroom and a bathroom. I don't know what its budget is, but it has to be simply tiny in comparison.

[–] ringwraithfish@startrek.website 2 points 6 months ago

Exactly! I especially like your point about T2. I don't think it's wrong to put a lot of money behind a AAA game, but there needs to always be a balance weighted toward the creative/entertainment value (whether it's innovative game mechanics or story driven).

Once that balance shifts to the business side by focusing on recouping the investment is when a project is at risk for not being received well.

I think all gamers are ok with studios making a profit on their games, but don't try to fleece us.

[–] grrgyle 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

We have to go back

[–] Fitzsimmons@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

"I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I'm not kidding 😎"

Indie games are kind of this, but it's hard to make the "paid more" work consistently at scale. Largely because there's a shitload of people making really good indie games and I can only play so many of them.

[–] steeznson@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I think in this context the original poster was lamenting the loss of AA gaming.

[–] grrgyle 2 points 6 months ago

Fitzsimmons actually got it even better than my kind of brainless appeal to nostalgia. That's what I want

[–] RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It doesn't have to though. Tools are so easy to use now and the gaming industry will never have a shortage of people trying to get jobs in it, there is no reason that so many games need to be spending 5+ years in devepopment.

[–] blargerer@kbin.social 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Have you ever worked on a game?

[–] RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yes, I have. A small team can launch a small/medium size game in less than two years using current tools. Game jams, albeit almost never ending up with complete games, last for usually one week and the end result is basically a vertical slice of a game nearly always built by a single person.

Again, there is no reason a game spending 5+ years in development should be considered average or normal.

Even in the past, AAA studios could complete successive games in a shorter amount of time. Metroid Prime 2, Star Wars Battlefront 2 (the good one from 2005), and Legend of Zelda Majoras Mask were all developed by reusing code and assets from the games that came before them, and game development tools were not as easy to work with then as they are now. Metroid Prime 1 was developed in 3 years, Ocarina of Time was developed in 3 years, and Battlefront 1 was developed in 2 years. All of these were developed with AAA funding and took less than 5 years on tools with less accessibility than modern tools.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Some of the games I like the most -- some roguelikes fit into this camp -- had very small teams working for a long period of time on a game, spending a long time iteratively refining the gameplay.

I'm not so sure that I prefer the "wide" model of many people for a short period of time versus a few people for a long period of time. Certainly there are things that the "narrow" model can and has done well that the "wide" model hasn't.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Among the games I've recently played and enjoyed:

  • Nova Drift
  • Rule the Waves 3
  • Dominions 6

Those are all one- or two-man efforts.

I also like some games with much larger teams, but I'm not sure that things are simply getting bigger.

[–] mynachmadarch@kbin.social 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

They're definitely getting bigger, but not with anything meaningful. I'm playing through Cyberpunk 2077 and it definitely feels like a lot of the side missions are unnecessary filler to pad out an excuse for the major names they got involved. I'm guessing other AAA are the same, "we need to do more than last time" whether it's impactful to the story and experience or not.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

You look at the credits to a lot of games these days and notice that the vast majority of people are in the various art departments or management with, like, 3 people programming it all and the same or fewer people in QA. And it can take upwards of an HOUR to get through all the credits because there are THOUSANDS of people working on it.

Small teams deliver more concentrated quality, IMO.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I don't know if I can reduce it to the programmers making the game, though. Like...yeah, the most-replayable games I've played rely heavily on the code, and less on the assets.

But there are also games where the art is pretty critical that I enjoy. Like, imagine games in the Myst series without the art and sound. Like, none of the code is particularly impressive. The puzzles are...okay, I guess. You play a game like that for the art and sound.

Or Lumines. I mean, yeah, they had to get the gameplay loop right, but technically, it's a very simple game, just a falling-blocks game. But the audio and to a lesser degree, the appearance, is important.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bboWlUppp-s

Rez is maybe a little fancier codewise, but it's just a rail shooter. It's really about experiencing the art and music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZLHB5e90pU

And I definitely did enjoy those. In the case of the latter two, those were not AAA games, didn't have huge teams creating assets, but it was still really the assets that made the game.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] NegativeLookBehind@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Sooooo

Phisticated

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 months ago

how about no?

[–] Tylerdurdon@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Just as long as they don't hop onto the procedurally generated bandwagon. While I appreciate the attempts at making unique gameplay while focusing less on level generation, those types of games end up making me feel like a hamster on a wheel.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I think that many roguelikes or Minecraft wouldn't really work without procedurally-generated worlds, and that they work fine there.

I think that it's more that procedurally-generated world still isn't a substitute for handcrafted world. You can't just get infinite handcrafted world for free with procedural generation.

[–] Tylerdurdon@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

I agree on Minecraft. For that play style, it works.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago (3 children)

A roguelike without procedural generation is like Tetris where the order of the pieces is the same every time. Some roguelikes let you save the seed and replay the same run but this is generally referred to as cheating and done for recreation/research purposes, not for seriously attempting to win the game.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] autonomoususer@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Because they ban us from changing the source code: that's what they won't tell you.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago

What does one have to do with the other?

[–] Mikufan@ani.social 1 points 6 months ago

Oh no they would have to finish games before selling them for 70 to 100 bucks? Naaaah. They won't. Big gaming is just about money nowadays.

load more comments
view more: next ›