E3 2005 -- a-z everything goes here

**ziggyjuarez** · 05-22-2005, 11:14 PM

bleed

**Busyman** · 05-22-2005, 11:34 PM

That's a damn shame. A good thread actually turned into a spam thread because it was moved to the Lounge.

Can someone please make another E3 thread? I ain't doin' it.

This thread was pretty good too.

**asmithz** · 05-22-2005, 11:39 PM

Originally Posted by Busyman

That's a damn shame. A good thread actually turned into a spam thread because it was moved to the Lounge.

Can someone please make another E3 thread? I ain't doin' it.

This thread was pretty good too.

No real reason to, E3 is over. It should have been unpinned and closed, but what ever.

**Busyman** · 05-22-2005, 11:42 PM

Originally Posted by asmithz

No real reason to, E3 is over. It should have been unpinned and closed, but what ever.

Oh damn, I didn't know that when E3 closed, the discussion did as well.

Good point.

We should do the same with the Star Wars thread since the movie came out already.

**asmithz** · 05-23-2005, 12:18 AM

Originally Posted by Busyman

We should do the same with the Star Wars thread since the movie came out already.

Probly wont happen till the hype is over.

**3RA1N1AC** · 05-30-2005, 06:04 AM

just to balance out the wow factor of sony & microsoft's inflated performance measurements ("twice as powerful as this, thirty times as powerful as that, a gazillion and a half terrabogoflops") and the first-party development toadies going "omg hands-down THE BEST PLATFORM that i have ever tried to write a game for," some dirty laundry that was aired a couple of months ago by programmers/designers at the GDC (game developers conference):

as reported by gamespy.com

Greg Costikyan: "My Friends, We Are F--ed."

Probably the best speaker of the afternoon was Costikyan, whose original notes are posted on his blog if you want a complete transcript. Costikyan has been in the industry from the earliest days and approached the topic from a historical perspective: he said that every major success in gaming has come from bursts of innovation followed by imitators. It was true for board games, for RPGs, and ultimately for gaming.

"But it's over now," he says.

The reason is the escalating costs. Companies are estimating the cost of next-generation games will be over $20 million per title. Publishers don't want to take risks with that kind of price hanging over their heads. Without risks, there's no innovation. Without innovation, the industry chokes on itself.

Costikyan says that the Microsoft Keynote Speech made his flesh crawl. MS talks about big bucks, big bucks ... but none of it to be made by game developers themselves. MS gave away HD monitors at the end of their keynote: "Was your allegiance bought at the price of a television?" Costikyan asked.

The Nintendo keynote didn't win Costikyan over, either. "Iwata says he has the heart of a gamer," he points out. "What poor bastard did he carve it from?" Costikyan railed against Nintendo's premise, asking "is our idea of innovation blowing into a microphone?"

The industry, he concludes, is too terrified to take risks. The answer? Revolution! The game development community has choices. He asked the room, do they want to work in some sweat shop cranking out car models for some crappy Gran Turismo racing game sequel that has the same basic gameplay as Pole Position? Or do they want to "defy the machine?" He encouraged people to set up independent studios, to support shareware and digital distribution, and to start making creative games today.

There's been subsequent followup and discussion on Costikyan's blog, if you're interested in more reports from the front line.

Chris Hecker: "Sony and Microsoft are About to Screw Your Game Design"

Hecker took a more technical look at the industry. He says that 'back in the day,' game code was balanced: you had equal emphasis on graphics, physics, and gameplay. He demonstrated this in a Power Point presentation showing a geeky skinny guy. The way the industry has evolved, game code has been very lopsided: a picture of a modern game showed a skinny guy with one massive, muscular arm representing graphics.

He observes that game engine code is very straightforward, whereas gameplay code is typically sloppy, adjustable, and "crazy." This hasn't been a problem in recent console generations, for hardware reasons. Recent processors allow out-of-order code execution, so that "even crappy code" would work fast. But the next-generation Xbox and Sony's Cell processors are all in-order execution chips. That's great for high-speed graphics, but it makes fast gameplay code MUCH harder to write.

Hecker didn't provide any solutions, he just wanted to vent. Maybe Nintendo will come up with something better. Or maybe developers should all go back to making PC games. He also suggested crying. But Hecker didn't have the answers.

the gist of all that: contrary to sony & MS's claims, the gameplay and AI on ps3 and xbox 360 will be not be any better, more complex, or more innovative than the older systems. according to these guys, the chip designs are lions when it comes to graphics code and kittens when it comes to game code. and in order to create the kind of graphics that the new systems emphasize, development teams are going to need to be HUGE because of the sheer number of polygons, textures & effects that will need to be designed. and with the increase in development time + costs, nobody will risk developing unusual, experimental new-school games. all of that extra money and labor will just go to creating a prettier version of the old-school stuff that everyone's already played.

also. anyone notice how many ugly games have been released for ps2 and xbox over the past few years, which look nowhere near as good as the pre-launch demos did? heck, a lot of ps2 games have been worse than dreamcast-quality, as far as graphics go. they promise total progress, then deliver product that actually performs worse than an older, weaker, but more efficient & programmer-friendly system. i'm willing to bet that the ps3 and xbox360 are both going to see a lot of games that are way way way below the graphics quality of the 2005 E3 demos, despite the hype about how close to photo-realism it's all supposed to be.

i am not expecting the new systems to totally suck. obviously they will not totally suck. but i'm skeptical about how necessary they are, considering the GDC complaints that sony and MS's new systems will push graphics far ahead, yet leave gameplay behind. and maybe i'm just blind and crazy but the ps2, xbox & gc's games still look pretty good to me? yeah yeah i know, it's all about the $$$. but nevertheless. so far the new stuff ain't lookin' THAT much better than the old stuff, to my eyes.