The lights are on
Here I am with my latest episode of "From Player to Professional - My Quest to Work in the Video Game Industry" - a blog series about my journey to learn as much as I can about video game development with the hope that one day I will be working in the industry. Before I jump into this week's topic, I want to say that eventually I'll get to a point where I cover some of the specific nuts and bolts associated with video game development, but like so many other skills, you don't just jump in with both feet and say I'm going to do this...
Trust me...I've tried that before. I've tinkered with the tools...the level editors, 3D modeling programs, scripting programs...and in each case, I usually gave up. Part of the reason I think is you have to understand the process and the efforts that go into the process before you can just pick up that ball of clay and start molding it.
I'm no expert so I'm just speculating...but I have this vision that when the video game developers congregate to build a new video game, it's a team effort. Be it Valve or Naughty Dog, I think it works like this - the team comes together, brainstorms ideas and finds one they like. They cultivate that idea and see it from inception to production. I don't think there is one person that comes down the mountain like Moses with the Ten Commandments and passes the development team an idea and says thou shalt develop this game.
In other words, I think understanding the creative side of video game development is as important as programming, level construction and character modeling. All the flashiest graphics and set pieces won't mean much if the creative direction behind the game is weak.
So, as I continue to pursue learning the items mentioned above, I'm also focusing on the creative side of video game development and understanding the impact it has on the development of the game. So in this particular blog, I'm going to discuss a comment that I made in yesterday's blog when I essentially said, there is no such thing as a perfect video game.
Yep, it's true. I don't believe anything is ever perfect. To suggest that it is means there is absolutely no room for improvement. Perfect is, well...uh...perfect. I do think near perfect is possible and I even think some games I have played are near perfect. Games like Halo and Modern Warfare and now...Crysis 2?
But imagine if you will...sitting around that boardroom table discussing the concepts for a new game with your development team...trying to build that "perfect game". Which existing games or developers would you emulate? Please keep in mind I am an old school PC Gamer who plays mostly First Person Shooters, so my answers to this question in the following categories is almost certainly going to be different than your answers.
Graphics
Before Crysis 2 was released, I'd say the perfect game could take advantage of the Unreal Engine. So many games have been built using the Unreal Engine and it's been around since the beginning, there's no reason not to use it. But now that Crysis 2 is out flashing all of its eye candy for all to see, I think the bar has been raised pretty high. There are no better, bar none. If I were going to build a game right now, I'd want to use the CryEngine...assuming I could afford the license to use it.
Audio
If I were designing the perfect video game, I would want the audio team to be the same folks who worked on Dead Space.
Dead Space's credits refer to two people for the music composition. Audio director Don Veca was quoted in an interview saying "The music credits read 'Music Composed and Conducted by Jason Graves in Association with Rod Abernethy.' Early on, Rod was involved in initial brainstorming, but Jason actually composed, conducted, and arranged all the music." In 2009, Dead Space was nominated for several awards by the non-profit Game Audio Network Guild (GANG): Music of the Year, Audio of the Year, and Sound Design of the Year. By the voting of GANG members, Dead Space was awarded Audio of the Year and Sound Design of the Year.
Like Crysis 2 is to stunning graphics, there is no better audio and music score in a video game than Dead Space. It doesn't singlehandedly make it one of the greatest games ever, but it certainly helps make it one of the greatest games ever.
Online Play
There are probably a few that could be contenders here, but there is no denying that Blizzard and its iconic World of Warcraft game have mastered online play. This game boasts millions of players and still manages a degree of reliability and availability unparalleled by others. Every developers dreams of having the legacy that World of Warcraft will forever have and the monthly subscription fee by each of those customers doesn't hurt any.
Story
Bioware. Need I say more? Bioware has so many successes under its belt if I were creating the perfect game I'd want a story equivalent to Knights of the Old Republic or Mass Effect. These games have always garnered lots of attention and have earned a reputation as being some of the best story driven games ever. The characters are compelling, the environments captivating and the overall experience, sensational.
Gameplay
As much as Modern Warfare (1 or 2 or Black Ops) drives me crazy from a multiplayer perspective, there is no denying the gameplay is as much fun as it is addictive. The singleplayer action is intense, always developing and evolving ideas from version to version; the multiplayer action is insanely popular and always experimenting with new modes or adjustments to old ones. The glitches and hackers might have run me off from the series, but I always appreciate the effort and vision the developers approach the game with.
Tools
Well, since Crysis 2 and the CryEngine unseated Unreal in the spot of perfect graphics, it's only fair that the Unreal Editor and the support that comes with it unseat Crytek's Sandbox Editor. The frequent updates to Unreal Editor and the amount of developer support that comes available, all for free, clearly makes Unreal the best pick for the perfect tools. If I were designing the perfect game and wanted to include mod tools (at least for the PC gamer players) I'd copy Unreal's approach.
Support
It's hard to argue that Valve is one of the best when it comes to support. Valve is community oriented and has taken so many casual gamers with vision and raw talent and made them superstars. Just look at Counterstrike. Valve offers so much to the community in terms of support the growth and expansion of the community, I can't think of another company that is more supportive of the players. They include so many opportunities for the community to contribute content that is included in their games they would definitely be an organization I would want to mirror when developing the perfect game.
Imagine a game that was created with or by each of these in mind. Sure, it's not as simple as this and no cookie cutter solution to video game development exists, but when you consider the various elements that make a game good (or bad) certainly there are some organizations and games that are better than others.
So, what about you...if you were creating the perfect game, which games and/or companies would you emulate or strive to be like?
Hmm, interesting! Your choices are all very valid, and it makes me wonder what companies I would want at the helm of my "perfect" game... I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head with everything, although I may have chosen Nintendo for gameplay... With their lineup (Zelda, Mario, even Pokemon!), I think it makes a very convincing argument...
I totally agree with KotOR for story, except that even when I was evil, I wasn't allowed to kill Carth, so upsetting.
So when you mentioned one person saying this is the game and it shall be so, some of that did happen in Naughtydog. I cant remember her name but there's an author who writes all the story lines and came up with the idea of Uncharted..I think.
GANG so there GANG Members?...Did they try to find words to make that acronym or where they just that(Un?)lucky...
Great blog Saint.
Great blog like always Saint. Agree with you on all but game play, not exactly a big CoD fan especially after MW 2.
As for engines I'm looking forward to seeing how DICE's new engine looks on BF 3.
"I don't think there is one person that comes down the mountain like Moses with the Ten Commandments and passes the development team an idea and says thou shalt develop this game."
-Clearly you've never head of Peter Molynuex.
Playing Crysis 2 I can't help but feel that the footage shown for Battlefield 3 looks just as good. Only Frostbite 2.0 has full destruction. I feel that is the big thing missing from Crysis is indepth destructibility. But I'm playing 360. For all I know the PC has it. I also think about Far Cry 2 and how amazing the fire foliage destruction was. We can't even cut down a tree in Crysis 2.
In all honesty I think I'd want Bungie to head up development for my perfect game. It would not end up being the most visually impressive game on the market but their infrastructure and flexibility with their engine is tough to beat. Also I feel they have the most reliable and secure network code out of any console developer. I don't play wow so I can't compare them with Blizzard. And even though I completely despise the MP for REACH I would want my game to have a robust multiplayer editor along with flexibility for users to change up game modes.
Yeah you notice some design schools advertise and push which programs they teach- you don't want to go to a 20K+school and learn to use software, by the time you get where you're going the software will be either totally different or at least updated vastly. You want a school that teaches you the rules and theories of design, which are universal to the field and don't apply only to one software program or another.
Like you say, with any such endeavor, one should have spent a huge amount of time on learning design before they sit down to learn any one of the specific tools. That's all design side though- Now if you want to be a programmer, you should take courses on C/C++ but, in that case go ahead and start messing with the tools, as unlike design/visual software, programming language is much more static, even over decades.
I think for story I'd go with Quantic Dreams, that would be the only real difference with my list...Heavy Rain was too well written, even with the numerous different possibilities present, not to ignore in terms of story...