Response 2 – JaysonV FrankO IsaacS

During discussions in the Lab over the problems there have been, and where I am a gamer, there are points of which Game Development go a bit too far with it. The development of industry games is starting to drop in quality due to poor game play or functionality, mostly focusing on graphics to get them by, and due to this, Indie Games are becoming more quality than the industry giants could ever hope. Not to mention certain indie games have better server side optimization as well as following what I like to call the Game Triangle Instrument. Even some indie games, however, are beginning to tank so finding a good game is like finding a needle in a haystack, very difficult. Some games attempt to correct these through hot fixes, others do this through Downloadable Content which is essentially ‘pay to make the game better’. This more often than not leads to more bugs. The ‘too long didn’t read’ version is simply this: Game Design has changed for the worse, and how can we make it better?

First off the Triangle which I mentioned earlier I believe suits this situation. So imagine the triangle that you would play as an instrument. How it has that small gap so it rings and does not get caught on its self. That is essentially how Game development should work. The first side, is Function. Function allows the game to be some what playable on a small scale, this is usually the side of the triangle that is tapped the most and is the most important one. The next side is Game Play, a game can be bare bones wireframes and blank models, or even polygons and can still be amazing, so long as game play and functionality is there, but there should still be some aesthetic. The final side is, with obvious reason, Aesthetics. The look of the game should usually match the gameplay and let the function do its thing without fail. If you have function and aesthetic, then what do you have? What is the player going to do without knowing how to play the game? IF you have game play and graphics, you usually end up with something like /Ride into Hell: Retribution/ where everything is broken. However if you have just the function and gameplay, then you have a decent game to start with, though you will not get that nice chime that a triangle usually has. That’s where the graphics come in. The key to a good game is to have all three of those things balanced out so it fits snugly with the game.

One of the downfalls of games is due to the ever changing technology. Consoles that let us have greater graphic capability, faster game play, bigger game size, etc. So it would seem that industry is upping their game (pun very intended) to keep up with the graphics quality which still has many players in awe at the graphics that they normally do not look at the gameplay, or that they throw function to the wind. /Sonic ’06/ is an example of this. The Graphics were great, the game play would have been, but the functionality was just … well there was no function. This then happened again in /Sonic Boom/ and many other games. The game play gets much more simple, to compensate for looking nice and sleek. This normally kills the experience and so we are left with the games that we enjoy already instead of going to find new ones. There are even games though that are not inclined for graphics but still forget how to make the gameplay exciting or fun. I, myself, am a huge fan of /The Legend of Zelda/ series, and comparing to the first Zelda to the second one, it was obvious they were experimenting with the game play. So /Link to the Past/ came out and was amazing. Then the N64 came out and /Ocarina of Time/ was just as amazing due to how they made the translation from 2D to 3D. It still had function, gameplay, and graphics which made it a great game because it all matched up with the feel of the game. After /The Wind Waker/ ,though, time went on and they slowly got worse and worse as far as gameplay goes.

Indie games are no different. There are some good, some bad, but all made by fewer people than Nintendo,Sony, or Microsoft. Let’s take /Minecraft/ for example. Solid gameplay, solid functionality, with very interesting aesthetic which gives the game its charm. Overall a really fun game for all to enjoy. It is usually the more popular games that the community attempts ways to improve the gameplay even further, rather than trying to improve upon the other games.  The MineCave project was one of those ways. It used exterior components not in the game to improve gameplay experience. After watching the video, I really want one. Though this made me really think: why aren’t there people doing this for other games that are not so fun to play? If someone were to remake /Sonic ’06/ but make it function, it could be a good game (aside from the story anyway). Same goes for fixing any flaws that an existing game has, popular or not. 

An effective way of changing this is to either remake games better than the original, or make an original game using the triangle that i described with the function set as priority. I could accomplish this by either writing an instructional guide, I could attempt to make a rom hack of an already existing game or remake it from the ground up. This would be for the gamers out there who want a better experience and would hopefully gain online influence by gaming forums and the like.