An interesting article by Paul Sullivan at FiringSquad :

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/features/buggygames/

Step one: blame the OS, even though the MS KB for Directx is pretty sparse.

Step two: blame the hardware, even though actual hardware bugs are unbelievably rare.

Step three: blame the drivers, even though most game bugs that people actually care about aren't related to drivers.

Finally, finish it all off by complaining how hard it is to make a profit, as if your customers care.

'At the same time, consumers need to learn to tone down their rhetoric and try to make their criticism more constructive and less hostile. If we want these gaming companies to survive, we need to stop trashing them so much and start trying to help, or pretty soon there won't even be any buggy games left to complain about over on the PC side of the aisle.'

Maybe he wants us to bake him cookies, or, alternatively, just give him free money. I'm not sure what the hell else would be "constructive criticism" or "supporting the gaming companies." "Eat your buggy game and like it, or you'll NEVER GET A GAME AGAIN, you twelve year-olds."

'There will still be times when developers really bring it on themselves and deserve to be criticized.'

Implying, of course, that buggy games normally aren't the fault of the developers.

There must be a grand total of twelve developers in gaming who actually treat it like the business it is. This guy isn't one of them.

Great post Jason.
It is a business. Consumers don't have to condone, understand or be sympathetic at all. We buy a product, and it's supposed to work. The features listed on the box are supposed to be there. If it doesn't work, and the problems are obvious and widespread, the rhetoric needs to be turned up, not down.

My favorite bit is when he asks that criticism be constructive and less hostile. Boy, that would be nice wouldn't it? I hope he never works in the automotive or baby product marketplace. Criticism tends toward litigation if "bugs" slip through Q&A in those industries. (Not that the stakes are even remotely similar.)

-Andrew

The thing that gets me...who is Paul Sullivan? He's not listed as a contributor at FiringSquad. He doesn't say he works for company A or company B. So he's just some guy. Why should I care what he thinks anyway and where does he get his information from? No references, no quotes, nothing. It's a waste of time.

This strikes me as the same kind of editorial that Adrenaline Vault tries to pass off as informed journalism. In reality, it's garbage.

--Dave

There used to be a Paul L. Sullivan writing about hardware for Avault who recently left. I wonder if it is the same guy.

-DavidCPA

Yeah, the absurd "you aren't nice enough to us" tone of the story bothered me the most. Entertainment industries seem to have a real problem with assuming their customers are their friends.

I didn't bother reading the article because I figured it would be a bunch of whining and excuses, and it sounds like I was right. I'm with Bub - when I pay for a product, I expect it to work. If it doesn't, I want it fixed, pronto. My employers and clients want results, not excuses. The same should hold for game companies. Do it, and do it right, or get out.

I dunno. I'm just a consumer myself but, while I had trouble feeling sympathy for the designer of yet another FPS, he's not saying anything I haven't said to my peers before.

1) The PC is a shitty, patchwork, gaming platform and involves as much or more compatibility testing than actual game designing when creating a project. However we currently don't have an alternative for serious games.

2) Corporate cluelessness can't help bring us better games. Currently we're stuck with it until online distribution and independant publishers can support more creative titles and give their creators time to polish them.

3) Screaming doesn't help. Bring out the facts and help the developers analyze the problem. If there are problems a fanbase can fix, and the game's vision actually inspires a worthy fanbase, then join those guys and fix what you can yourself. Technical issues are a pain but we're stuck with the PC and clueless corporate taskmasters. See #1 and #2 above.

4) The real problem seems to be vision in designing games. I can live with some bugs, if they're eventually addressed, if the underlaying title is something I think is really fresh and interesting. Once a game has that, and the developers are open to their public in a partnership then a community can work together to address the mutual problem of bugs inspired by the mutual love of an idea.

5) A game isn't a refrigerator. I don't care how interesting a refigerator is I just want it to keep my beer cold. For me interesting games tend to be the riskiest in vision and most ambitious in execution. These are the games most likely to have issues I wouldn't tolerate in a fridge.

'5) A game isn't a refrigerator. I don't care how interesting a refigerator is I just want it to keep my beer cold. For me interesting games tend to be the riskiest in vision and most ambitious in execution. These are the games most likely to have issues I wouldn't tolerate in a fridge.'

This is one of those things everyone says that I don't get. Could you bring up an example of this "risky vision" that increases the bug count? People say this about Anarchy Online, for example, but there's literally nothing in that game that hasn't been done before.

What are these "risky" elements? Good AI? Multiple monitor support? The ability to alt-tab to the desktop without crashing? *Those* are rare.

I'll give two examples from right off the top of my personal Best Games list. Daggerfall and Falcon 4.0. Both took insanely complex, seemingly impossible, concepts and brought them to bumpy life. Well, years later they're finally up to snuff and I think I'm much happier that they were brought into being than if they hadn't been because someone couldn't alt-tab out.

'Daggerfall and Falcon 4.0.'

What did Daggerfall do that was so "new and complicated"? I played the game quite a bit (and really wish I hadn't), but I didn't see anything all that complex. I never played Falcon 4, so I'm not sure what's going on there.

With the exception of Darklands, which I've never gotten to run on my machine, Daggerfall is the only so-called roleplaying game that came close to realizing an actual roleplaying experience on the PC. It did this by providing a broad and dynamic canvas that the player's character could interact with as he chose. Skill choices, skill and spell development (and creation), environs and decisions about allegiences with any of the numerous factions could each craft a very different experience for a player interested more in exploring various roles than simply mini-maxing the stat system.

Daggerfall coupled this unparalled freedom with a first-person perspective and a massive world to really bring, for the first time, a player into a fantasy setting as the character of his choice with the freedom to create his own adventures and destiny.

Criticisms of this title are valid - meandering dungeons, flat NPCs, repetative graphics but as an experienced roleplayer I looked beyond these shortcomings much as a wargamer doesn't care how much flash is in the graphics of a game. Until I played Daggerfall I had the position that no game could replicate a roleplaying experience with fidelity. Daggerfall falls short on many fronts but in the most important ways it points to where roleplaying games should be heading - giving the players complete freedom to adventure as the character they chose to be, with the goals they chose, in a world that reacts to their decisions and in so reacting crafts a unique adventure.

I called that impossible and was interrupted by a man pointing out that it exists.

Yes, I will tolerate bugs in a game that's trying something VERY innovative. (Darklands, Daggerfall, Ultima 7, UO, X-Com, etc) However, 99% of games have no excuse.

Something I'll be interested in seeing, game companies always blame the PC platform for their bugs, but will X-box games have some of these bugs on 'em too? No patching safety net!

Also the fact that Daggerfall was very easy to get into with its many options. The interface for it was also very good, it had a toggle interface, and full screen view...all this in 1996! And since Daggerfall we only have Morrowind to show for it (and of course its now out yet). Why!?! Well Diablo and BG did change things... Diablo being a knockoff of the nethack rpg genre and BG sorta am RTS version of the Ultima games... Daggerfall was in a class of its own!

With Morrowind, I think they are attempting to basically make a solo complex version of Everquest (handcrafted towns and dungeons)...not exactly Daggerfall (random continent)... which isnt so bad. But I actually liked the random towns and dungeons in Daggerfall... being lost in a Daggerfall dungeon could be frustrating but it also gave the tension to the game. Plus random quests and the guild system made it replayable. I still play Daggerfall now and then as I do Diablo 2.

etc

I stayed with Daggerfall, problems and all, because what I am looking for in an RPG is the freedom. When I feel an RPG game pushing and pulling and forcing me in the "right" directions, it immediately reminds me that I am not a character roaming a virtual universe, I am playing a game in which the designers have predefined what will happen.

As for the comments on what made Falcon 4 "out there", I think the answer is not that it was so revolutionary in doing something previously undone, but the depth and complexity it attempted to bring to the genre. Tom Chick was given hell for his review when the game was new, but it really was a great idea poorly executed when it came out. And I'm not sure how much reverence we would afford the game if not for all of the massive user-created modifications. But put Falcon 4, Red Baron 2 3D (plus mods,), EAW (plus mods), and EECH on your hard drive and you can remain in flight sim bliss for the next 5 years .

>I stayed with Daggerfall, problems and all, because what I am looking for in an RPG is the freedom.

Yeah, in that respect (which I agree is very important for "role-playing"), Daggerfall is perhaps the best RPG ever. Playable for literally years, it provided the role-playing opportunities and world size of a massively multiplayer game, with a more dynamic world and an overall plot (and free of the annoyances of MMORPGS).

I'm really excited about Morrowind - I thought it was the best RPG of the E3. It retains a lot of what made Daggerfall great, and although it features a scaled down world, the construction set it ships with should allow for some really interesting additions to the game (which can interact with the main plot). It also features the 3D, interactive world that Ultima 9 should have offered.

Stefan

But.....but.....Daggerfall was just a very large collection of:

a number for each faction
a number for each stat
Simple equations for changing them.

It's very, very easy to just throw in a bunch of stats and the like, the same way it's easy to generate a game the size of the real-world Earth if you have a good random map generator and a lot of free time. By contrast, when I think "innovative" I think "absolutely convincing AI," or "a war going on in the background that dynamically changes the world as the game progresses." Daggerfall just struck me as a very, very large spreadsheet.

'providing a broad and dynamic canvas that the player's character could interact with as he chose.'

The only permanent interaction you have with the map is which guards you've angered enough through quests/actions, and what prices the various factions of shopkeepers sell to you at. Maybe I'm not remembering the game correctly, but the above two things are literally the only lasting effect you have on the game world.

The one thing I think Daggerfall actually did do that was innovative at the time was the depth of the character creation system - every single ability had a gameplay use, down to the languages. This led to all sorts of amusing tricks for spell use in dungeon play, and the game hands-down was the most kleptomaniac friendly of any RPG (I'll fill up my wheelbarrow with your goods, thank you).

Now, back to "innovative games like this push the envelope so much they're awfully buggy": I don't see how this is the case. I dug up the 1.07.3213 readme for the game, and the bugs fixed in the patch progression are:
-----
Save-game related (corruption, not restoring state correctly, ship/house item storage)

Various world interactions causing crashes (pulling levers causing a crash, implying a problem with the random dungeon generator hooking up levers to their affected objects)

Lots of broken quests (curing lycanthrophy, vampirism, sequential issues, timing issues in days)

Invalid random item generation/effects

Invalid world associations (clicking on non-random NPCs crashing the game because their dialog file isn't hooked up)

Dos API issues (memory management)

Bad 3d engine (falling through floors, etc)
-----

Really, the only forgiveable bugs in that list are the Dos API and 3d engine ones - writing either of those from scratch back then was hell. If you look at the other ones, though, they're either generic RPG bugs (quests) or related to the randomness of the game (items, world setup).

Basically, their random generators were broken, and that was both the chief selling point and the buggiest part of the game. It did manage to spit out "The Loincloth of Personality" for a friend of mine, though, which was a +30 CHA codpiece. I thought I was going to choke to death from laughing at that.

Look at Diablo, alternatively: random item generator, and random map generator. Little or no bugs here, though; what was the big difference? Just the number of modifiable attributes for the items?

Here are a couple factors I'll put forth as context. If creating Daggerfall was so easy why hasn't it been done since? If Daggerfall is nothing special then why does it still have an active newsgroup, with new members all the time, and a small but dedicated modding community?

I'm not a coder so I couldn't tell you how things render down in reality, behind the curtain, but as a member of the audience I am keenly aware of why Daggerfall has such a powerful hold.

Daggerfall empowers the imagination.

Every game is ultimately a spreadsheet with random variables (I borrowed this observation from the AntiELVIS) it's a question of what that spreadsheet does, whether juggling textures and moodlighting or handling the subtle political and economic manuevers of European nations.

The spreadsheet in Diablo only manifests in ways that allow the mind to get around very simple ideas with very simple goals. If you start wondering, wandering, outside the very narrow premise of Diablo you're not playing Diablo anymore. It caters to the 'whittling' syndrome - stat building and artifact gathering as a pleasure in itself (to borrow from the Grumpy Gamer). Diablo does this very, very well.

Daggerfall's complex spreadsheets and randomization engines, broken though they may be at times, tell the gamer "Okay, here's a world. It's yours, it's vast and it's watching. Do what you will." If the imagination is a sail then that sort of approach to game design is the most powerful gust one can offer it. As long as nothing conflicts with this premise, the player will collaborate in his own deception and want to suspend his disbelief. I think a main difference between the design of Daggerfall and that of Diablo has to do with the size of the sails of those who play them and the wind it takes to fill them.

Anyhow, the faction relationships could manifest in unique ways in particular adventures. The later, more complex ones, are scripted to take into account the player's relationship to the different factions involved. It shocked me when I first encountered this. There's also the matter of all the little subtexts and surprising encounters going on in the world with the various factions (Vampires anyone?). The ability to buy or magically enhance just about anything added to the flexibility of the engine. In fact, I can't think of another game where I'd walk into bookstores to hunt down specific texts just so that I could relax under a virtual tree ('d' for duck) for a bit of light reading.

To a real roleplayer this level of immersion is a godsend. Far from perfection but it has to be considered if the form is ever going to improve in substantial ways.

Brian, that's the best summary of the draw of Daggerfall that I've read. It was quite a bit more than random quests and random dungeons. Rather than forcing you to adjust to the world, it attempted to have the world adjust to you.

I think gamers today are so used to being spoon-fed a story and directed down the storyline that they wouldn't quite know what to do with a new Daggerfall.

That is a great summary! Also, like Desslock and Lackey said, its the freedom/free-form/open-ended aspect that is the best feature (and hasn't ever been emulated).

About the infinity engine games... i dont feel like im playing an rpg sometimes with them (theyare still great). There is an rts aspect to them that doesnt make it feel like an RPG, though the infinity engine games do provide more strategic battles than the avg crpgs released.

I'm really hyped for Morrowind. And Arcanum. And NWN, all for the ability to modify the games. Though of all of them MW beats it all since it has the groundwork of a great crpg character system (like Daggerfalls), and the graphics look the best of the bunch! If it is at least semi easy to do a passable module in MW, expect MW to be almost as big as Half Life...modwise i mean... not sure about sales (though it could be a hit if its releasd with all the features advertised with little bugs...)

etc

So, the very large set of possible outcomes simulates a realistic game world? I can't really argue with that, though personally it didn't seem like everything was interconnected that much.

Anyway, I still don't see how that leads to the bugginess from a programming standpoint. ;0

Again, I'm just a very interested outside observer but my conclusion is that time is finite.

You can spend time fleshing out concept, working on code, squashing code bugs and then have to deal with the ins and outs of the OS and possible driver and hardware configurations.

The more complex the concept, the more convoluted the code, the more difficult the testing of that code, and the less time there is overall for compatibility testing.

This isn't a free pass from my perspective for some of the awful bugs and stupid oversights I've encountered but, if the concept and the realization of it are innovative enough, I'm more likely to be understanding of problems.

How can you possibly be understanding of a game like Daggerfall? I wish I'd never *touched* the game. It was actually buggy enough that I never finished the blasted thing, and I feel like every second I spent screwing with it, hoping it wouldn't crash every five minutes like it did last night, was an incredible waste of time.

Sure, I can see being forgiving of *some* games, but Daggerfall? Didn't it take them three months to get that final patch out, too?

What are my options? Ream out guys who obviously did the best they could for a labor of love and discourage anybody from taking throwing the dice on risky designs? I don't personally know the contributing factors so I don't feel comfortable trying to judge the situation. If it can all be chalked up to incompetance and mismanagement then, yeah, I'll call that but I still will respect the work that went into the product they did manage to produce.

Jeff Lackey points out many flight sims which are excellent examples of games with brilliant premises that didn't seem that brilliant when they first stumbled out onto the street in a hazy stupor. It took years of therapy, much of it from fans who could see what the deeper potential of these titles were, to get them into good, even breathtakingly good, shape.

I'm willing to wait if the result of my patience is a game I'd never have otherwise and one which dwarfs its safer, smaller, cousins in scope and achievement.

"Ream out guys who obviously did the best they could for a labor of love and discourage anybody from taking throwing the dice on risky designs?"

The problem is your assumption that developers avoid "risky designs" because they are somehow more likely to be buggy. I doubt that's true. Falcon 4.0 and Daggerfall were buggy for the same reason--they both tried to do too much stuff--and that reason has very little to do with why they were innovative. Or at least why Daggerfall was innovative (I liked Falcon 4.0, but as a design it didn't really do anything that hadn't already been done before).

The real reason "risky designs" don't often get made is because publishers can't easily predict how marketable they will be (and thus refuse to fund them). It has nothing whatsoever to do with bugs or customer bitching.

Thanks for stating it better than I did, Ben.

Also, half the reason gamers get buggy games is that they're.....well, "understanding" of buggy games. If everyone was screaming and threatening to burn down EB every time a Daggerfall was released, we'd see a lot less of them. We get such shoddy quality product due to a) everyone still thinks it's a kiddy market, and "they'll buy anything," and b) we actually do buy anything. Daggerfall probably didn't do too bad, financially; what kind of market incentive is that? Ditto for Falcoln 4.

Which part of "I'm glad I have Daggerfall" doesn't translate? I don't want less of them I want more of them (with less bugs if possible).

"I doubt that's true. Falcon 4.0 and Daggerfall were buggy for the same reason--they both tried to do too much stuff--and that reason has very little to do with why they were innovative. Or at least why Daggerfall was innovative (I liked Falcon 4.0, but as a design it didn't really do anything that hadn't already been done before)."

Ben: Daggerfall's magic was that it attempted in a very limited way to give players the illusion of being a free-willed character in an autonomous world. You can expect this kind of game to try to do too much stuff. An even better game would build on that and do even more. As for Falcon, I think it really broke some new ground in bringing together a very involved and realistic dynamic campaign and groundwar together with a highly realistic flight simulator. Not only that, kind of like EF2000 on steroids, but it offered (a still not entirely functional) Tactical Editor which allows control of ground forces during engagements and LAN/online cooperative campaign mode. Recently, and this got very little press that I saw, a squadron comprised of players from all around the real world flew to completion a cooperative internet campaign (using a human AWACs module and various user created enhancements). Man, that's gotta be worth something. ;)

No, I think being understanding is the best way to get better product when you're talking about something that's as much an art as a technical expertise or a business.

However, you do make a good point about expected sales being the main issue when talking about cutting edge product. If it's never been sold before why even put it out there?

That actually scares me.

There is a big difference between innovative and ambitious.

Innovative includes new ideas and new ways of looking at old ideas.

Ambitious tries to be innovative without proper scheduling, budget and upfront design.

I always want to be innovative. I'm always worried about being ambitious.

"If everyone was screaming and threatening to burn down EB every time a Daggerfall was released, we'd see a lot less of them."

Actually, I doubt that's true, either. Publishers care very little about how much their customers bitch. They care a lot more about whether or not they open their wallets. So if you really want to protest buggy games, don't buy them.

"You can expect this kind of game to try to do too much stuff."

I disagree. It's not difficult to envision a game that just simply "let's you do anything." That's not good design, or even innovative design--it's unrealistic and impossible to implement. A better (and more difficult) design is one that aims give the player the illusion that they can do anything they like while actually limiting their freedom in ways that aren't immediately obvious. The Fallout games did that really well. Privateer did it. Arcanum does it. Daggerfall didn't.

Daggerfall attempted to actually *allow* the player to do whatever they wanted by trying to model everything that they might want to do. Not surprisingly, it didn't really work very well, and the game was chock full of filler and uninteresting randomly generated content. As pie-in-the-sky ideas go, it's pretty compelling. As a realistic game design, it stinks.

Re: Falcon, the dynamic campaign has been done before (Longbow 2 did it just as well, if not better). The biggest thing it added was lots of detail, but again, the project was far too ambitious for the market that it aimed to capture (a niche market, at best), and it didn't help that it went through several teams and at least one total redesign.

Sims are yet another example of where the "more stuff" design mantra has failed. In this instance, it's killed off an entire genre of gaming. Sims just got too complex and too intimidating for the average player, and people stopped buying them.

Well put Kevin.
Somewhat related, I always think of that Jurassic Park line: "You got all excited when you found that you could do it, you didn't stop to think if you should!"

Or something like that. I think a lot of games fall prey to that problem (aka Feature Creep) it's why I'm suddenly nervous that all kinds of shooters are adopting Max Payne's "Bullet-Time" feature.

-Andrew

'"If everyone was screaming and threatening to burn down EB every time a Daggerfall was released, we'd see a lot less of them."

Actually, I doubt that's true, either. Publishers care very little about how much their customers bitch. They care a lot more about whether or not they open their wallets. So if you really want to protest buggy games, don't buy them.'

Well, that's what I meant. As long as people keep buying buggy games, they'll continue to get buggy games.

I'm got a benchmark proposal for determining whether a game is too buggy to purchase:I thought up:

"Is it buggier than Fallout Tactics?" That game was about as far as you can push it, I think; it's possible I'm being too nice, but I think anything *worse* than FO:T is certainly defective.

I don't want more bullet-time, I want screens of bullets flying at me in real-time and be able to dodge and weave through them while blasting hordes of something or other.

The greatest space shooters of all time all featured more bullets than you could reasonably dodge 99% of the time. But for that brief moment when you dodge every last one and smash every enemy shooting at you, all at the same time, you know that you're a god. I wish more FPS games would give you that kind of feel.

But back to the topic at hand. It's a lousy editorial and Ben and Jason are right. Sure, it's great to see developers try to do new things, but if the execution is such that the game is bug-filled and virtually unplayable, there's really no reason to support it. Gamers don't want excuses, they want functional software with minimal or no patching. Most of the best sellers really need no patch (Age of Kings, RollerCoaster Tycoon, The Sims...) and the ones that come and go usually end up with a bunch of them.

--Dave

It seems there are two different schools of thought about how to approach design. "If you're not making mistakes you're not trying hard enough." responded to by "Yeah, but can the kids dance to it?" Self-serving oversimplification perhaps but that's a bit how it looks.

Kevin: Well put. I wish that was how the designers of Falcon 4.0 and Daggerfall (among others) went about things. Still, these games are my favorite games and I'd never have encountered them if the plug had been pulled because ambition outstripped pure innovation. These are both games that "go to 11" and I really, deeply, appreciate that.

Ben: Daggerfall didn't let you do everything you might want. The only way to advance was combat. The only real measure of advancement was levels and wealth. This is a pretty shallow simulation in some ways. However it did try to support that simple model with a wrapper that gave meaning and context to the endless combats and more importantly, for a roleplayer, you were the one with the power to decide what form that meaning would take. I agree that a focused design gives more coherence to a project but what if that project is the realization of a virtual fantasy world? I think Bethesda managed to avoid including do-it-yourself bakeries and to focus on those aspects players would really enjoy.

As for sim complexity killing off the genre, well, I do feel very bad about that but a Falcon in the hand is worth two Jetfighters in the bushes. If the only way to keep the genre alive was to keep it from realizing its potential then I think the right choice was made. On that note, the lack of commercial flight sims has encouraged a rabid and dynamic fanbase in developing their own sims. We'll see what comes of it. I'm certainly hoping for another home grown "Combat Mission" surprise.

BTW, I may sound very confident about my opinions but I'm very aware they are just that. I'm learning quite a bit from everyone here.

I would mind seeing Ultima Online minus the online. I love so many thing about UO -- and, ultimately, the part that there are so many other people is not all that high upon my list. Sure, it's a lot better than any AI could be. But with decent AI playing the part of the other characters, I would love that game just as much. And, if you took out the online part of it, your character could have more lasting impact on the world. But I LOVE the character customizability. I like being able to do whatever you choose to make money. That's the real kicker, to me. As a role-player, I want to be able to make my character as detailed as possible. The world interaction is naturally going to be somewhat limited -- but it doesn't have to feel that way.

Anyway -- that seemed relevant when I started...

"If you're not making mistakes you're not trying hard enough."

Everyone makes mistakes. Only incompetent developers publish them.

Daggerfall: I should have been more specific--I was actually referring to the game world, not character advancement. They tried to create a world that was just too big--a vast sprawling setting that they set you loose in. The idea was to give you the impression that you could go anywhere, do anything. And you could, but 95% of the game wasn't worth seeing, so it didn't really matter. They would have been better served by focusing on the impression of complete freedom rather than the reality.

"As for sim complexity killing off the genre, well, I do feel very bad about that but a Falcon in the hand is worth two Jetfighters in the bushes. If the only way to keep the genre alive was to keep it from realizing its potential then I think the right choice was made."

I dunno. Some of my favorite sims are still the oldies--Red Baron, Gunship (and especially Gunship 2000), Wings of Glory... none of those were especially complex, but they were all great games. I think it's the same problem that Daggerfall had--developers confused complexity with verisimilitude. The latter is desireable, the former is not. Sometimes you have to have a little of the former to get the latter, but flight sims got to the point where the primary goal was to make them as complex as humanly possible, and for me (and apparently a lot of other people), a lot of them stopped being fun because of that.

As for the genre's "potential," I guess you mean its potential to limit its appeal to only a very small handful of people. It reached that potential handily, and now the genre is all but extinct. Personally, I'd rather have a few (or many) casual sims mixed in with my Falcon 4.0's than have no sims at all.

>I would mind seeing Ultima Online minus the online. I love so many thing about UO -- and, ultimately, the part that there are so many other people is not all that high upon my list.

I completely agree. I'd love to see that game world, intact, with even a rudimentary RPG storyline, as a single player (or 6 player multiplayer) game. I loved just booting around in Ultima 7's world, and Ultima Online is the only game to offer a comparable world since in terms of interactivity, etc.

Stefan

Ben: I think I see what you're getting at with Daggerfall. You look at the redundant graphics, the flat NPCs, and meandering dungeons and wonder if the effort invested some other aspects of the game couldn't be better spent creating unique locales and more developed NPCs? So, Morrowind might be more along the lines of something you'd enjoy? I can agree with this, to an extent, but I think it's difficult to know where that line is between giving the player enough rope to vest himself in the illusion of a game's reality and the point where he's just playing another game. Could Daggerfall have done with less? There's very little to compare it to that I've played. However give me some references of titles that do this sort of thing better and I'd love to check them out.

I'm not sure the goal of Falcon was to make it as complex as humanly possible and I'm certain I don't see the ultimate 'potential' of flight simming in that light either. Again, from my point of view, the most potent and unique attribute of computer games compared to any other entertainment form is the ability to create immersive experiences that bring you right into whatever role the designer has created for you. To experience that role, or play that game, you need to be experiencing the same sorts of decision making processes as (what you'd imagine) your real counterpart would be making. If you have alot of experience with a subject or a very vivid imagination it's going to take more detail to get you to suspend disbelief. Also the world around the technical simulation of a craft should be just as involved and challenging as the craft itself. The encourages you to use realistic systems in realistic ways rather than finding 'gamey' solutions to problems.

If this makes for a complex game that doesn't surprise me. If alot of folks can't understand or appreciate this, that doesn't surprise me either.

What does cause me to wonder is the idea that somehow poor hardcore sim sales could affect light sim sales. If light sims are popular in the first place shouldn't they get a different segment of the public to 'open up their wallets'?

verisimilitude: the quality of depicting realism.

Jeez, Ben.

---

Quote:

What does cause me to wonder is the idea that somehow poor hardcore sim sales could affect light sim sales. If light sims are popular in the first place shouldn't they get a different segment of the public to 'open up their wallets'?

---

Hang on a minute Ben:

"Everyone makes mistakes. Only incompetent developers publish them."

Developers don't publish games. Publishers do. That's a very important distinction for most. Most can't afford a "when it's done" philosophy. They must have a "when the money runs out" philosophy. The guy that pays the piper calls for the tune.

I'm not defending shoddy development practice, far from it. I'm also not blaming publishers for all the bad games. Publishers feel it when a game tanks more than the developers do. There is plenty of blame going around, so let's spread it in the right places.

Dave: Still, there would seem to be a market for real lightweight sims assuming that such a thing is even desireable. In fact, there are sims that can appeal to both casual simmers and (reasonable) fidelity nuts - I'd suggest Red Baron 3D is a pretty good example of this. There's no electronic instrumentation, no radar modes, or, heck, even a radio for flightnards (like myself) to freak about. Hop in and enjoy the fight. But it still has deep elements that are transperant enough for a newbie to take for granted that a more dedicated simmer appreciates like smooth online play, and a random but believable campaign structure with almost roleplaying elements. A hardcore simmer can download additional mods to make it truly something special. Can't this sort of game be a decent compromise? I admire Falcon immensely for bringing this level of immersion to a modern aerial battlefield but that's not the only setting available.

This point of view about the power of usenet, if it's accurate, would tend to refute my belief that shouting doesn't help. Shouting did create the atmosphere that made something as involved as Falcon 4.0 possible, if this is right. I still don't feel terribly bad about having my dreams answered here.

"You look at the redundant graphics, the flat NPCs, and meandering dungeons and wonder if the effort invested some other aspects of the game couldn't be better spent creating unique locales and more developed NPCs?"

Yep, that's pretty much it.

"Again, from my point of view, the most potent and unique attribute of computer games compared to any other entertainment form is the ability to create immersive experiences that bring you right into whatever role the designer has created for you."

I agree, but good designers realize that you don't have to simulate every bit of the minutae of Real Life in order to deliver that experience. That's why fiction writers only relate the parts of the story that are interesting. That's why computer RPGs don't force you to manage mundane tasks such as eating and using the toilet (at least, they don't any more). It's why the Fallout games let you travel across the game world via the map window instead of forcing you to trudge across 500 miles of barren landscape.

"I'm not sure the goal of Falcon was to make it as complex as humanly possible..."

The original design, I've heard, allowed you to punch out of your plane, parachute down to the ground, and then make your way back to your base on foot, armed only with your sidearm. That's a "more stuff" feature that almost approaches Battlecruiser 3000AD in its absurdity. Of course that got trimmed out in a redesign, thank god.

"If alot of folks can't understand or appreciate this, that doesn't surprise me either."

I think they understand it. The difference is that while many people might want to play a game that lets them imagine that they are crack F-16 pilots, only a very small number of people want to have to actually LEARN as much as a real F-16 pilot has to learn in order to do it. If I wanted that, I'd just join the Air Force.

Of course there's nothing wrong with niche games. I happen to like some complex flight sims. The problem is that the hardcore simmers had absolutely zero tolerance for anything that failed to fit their narrow views of "what a sim should be," and that very vocal minority of players harrassed developers into making games that didn't sell, and thus (ironically) helped to kill off their own favorite genre. It would almost be funny, if I didn't like sims.

I have to wonder if the developers didn't just make the games they really wanted to play and used that vocal minority as an excuse to get it done. Nobody can make a designer do anything except a publisher and that rarely results in better quality titles.

I dunno, I think it really comes down to a question of prioritization. Bugs come in many flavors, with varying levels of impact. Not to be *too* critical, I think there are a lot of technically excellent people in the software field who can't prioritize properly. That's my experience anyway.

- Alan