What Needs To Be In (Or Taken Out Of) Video Games More Often?
Hey off-topic chatterboxes! I’m trying to do a little stupid research for a game I’m trying to make. One idea of the game is to appeal to everyone, which is why I need your help.
My questions are:
What do you feel is a cliche in video games that should be taken out?
What do you feel like we should see more often in video games?
Do you think that certain video games have good ideas that should get stolen? (i.e. “The Getaway’s” no-on-screen-indicators, “True Crime’s” branching storylines based on mission success levels)
What do you feel is a bad idea that I shouldn’t include? (And before you ask, no, I’m not making a video game of “Cube,” you’re safe.)
Please reply ASAP, as I want to try and make this game over the summer and it’s a very complex one, so… what do you want to see in a video game?
I wanted to see fewer useless female characters with huge breasts that were put in just to sell a few more units, and I want to see fewer games with crappy story lines that have been done over and over.
i.e. Car chase because of bank robbery.
i.e. Aliens are threatening the human race.
There…thats my input and I hope you find it useful.
i wanna see a car chase BECAUSE of aliens threatening the human race.
Just had to, sorry.
I think a good game is one with a bit of everything thrown in, and it has to have a decent theme. Not just like its a sci fi game, so everything will be like star wars. Make it an original setting.
I believe the atmosphere of the game is very important. Alot of game developers have awesome graphics, story, animation etc but ruin the overall atmosphere by not paying attention to things like the sound. We all know the development of games nowadays are extremely similar to the creation of a big-screen films so I expect that a game that wishes to succeed should have a firm development of music, ambient noise, voice actors and sound effects to convey the main plot of the game.
(takes a few notes) Less big-breasted girls… might I recommend “GTA 2?” It’s got like no girls. Pretty strange.
Original settings… hmm, I’ll have to brainstorm on that one.
Oh crap, I wasn’t planning on including much sound. Just a few things, maybe, but not too much. I was planning on including a few things, like if vampires attack you, you can hear shrieking, for a little atmosphere.
Actually, my game is too random for branches to come into the picture. It’s not linear, so if you’re saying that linear stories aren’t your thing, I’ve already considered that.
BTW: Where can I find free sounds for games? Let me guess… Google.
Cubey I still think you’re going to have a very very hard time creating this game based on the principle you’re thinking of. You’d have to create something that mimicks the cause and effect basis for the events of reality. Thats not possible to do with a conventional programming langauge less you have hundreds of variables to consider, and characters with certain predefined “personalities” that dictate where they go and what they do based on certain criteria. Its going to be way too hard to do. Even video game companies haven’t accomplished this yet, and they have a 10 billion dollar per year industry on their hands. Good luck if you’re going to try it…I mean that…but you should seriously consider narrowing it down.
Trust me, it IS pretty narrowed-down from my original idea. Originally there was going to be a branching timeline thing.
Um… no. (Actually, one of my plans is a fake nude code, that just changes the skin color to your shirt’s color. i.e. pink shirt, pink skin.)
BTW: If you want less clothes on a girl, that’s what porn magazines are for. And besides, why play a naked girl? (“Morrowind” allows you to take your clothes off and walk around in your underwear, but at least one character will get offended by it. Heehee.)
More games should use more original settings. Too many games take place in either a future sci-fi place, or a fantasy midevil world. Why not have games take place in other time periods and places? Howabout a game where you play a 1920’s cartoon character, with the high contrast black and white in a scratchy, splotchy colorless world? I dunno.
I’ll start with a fact: Each year there are published perhaps two games that are worth of their price tags. (same thing with movies and everything else)
At the moment I am waiting for Troikas TOE and that sequal for The Longest Journey.
So, what games need? Well plot, a good one. I am fed up Diablo, brainless FPS etc. like games.
Playability. Without it game is doomed. Let’s take tetris. Perfect playability, addictive game. Poor playability can be found in example from Resident Evil games. That inventory system. Need I say more?
Atmosphere. Important thing. If game lacks atmosphere, it lacks evertyhing, like Quake. Atmosphere is created by combinating plot, graphics and sounds.
Graphics. Thing to realize: Games do not need phototrealism, they need graphics that suits them, like Zelda Windwaker. If the grphical envoirment is constant, i can be judged suitable and thus good, like Arcanum.
Sounds and music. The most important creator of atmosphere. add good music and sounds and you have a perfect game. Arcanum did music good, and so did older Sierra adventures. Longest Journey and Syberia did greatly in all.
hmmmmmm… well, for one, anyone ever play “Half-Life”? wasn’t that a kick butt game? that takes place in our time… there were no chase scenes… um, no girls either… kick butt sounds, and gameplay, and graphics, and physics, and speech, and plot, and um… I don’t think I need go on… think about that-
EDIT:
even though there was no music, there was great atmosphere created by the intense graphics, and gameplay+plot
They’re making a sequal for that? That’s an awesome game, i’d really like to see that.
Yeah, Half-Life is a GREAT example of a great game. There WAS music in there, you just had to have a legal version of it and have hte CD in there all the time, but it was only OK music.
Half-Life created a great atmosphere, so many things that jump out of nowhere, like those hand things, those things made me jump EVERY time. Good graphics (for it’s time) combined with a good story and good gameplay will always win.
I meant that you only heard five minutes worth of music during the beginning of each chapter… otherwise you had to burn the cd, to listen to the music… because for the rest of the thirty minutes, gunfire and killer zombies…
What should be put in is - A more ‘freeform’ storyline, like Deus Ex.
What should be taken out is - The fact that in lots of games, you can get shot whilst playing and it won’t leave a scratch. But when you get shot in a cinematic, you get a huge scar (and you’ll probably die). I really hate that.
Duke 3D was great shooter. It was first FPS to have character with personality. Fact is that FPS games have rarely character which you could give a damn. The genre is just full of nobodies which can be killed without a tought.
But roots… I have a friend, that still likes Wolfenstain3D best, you know, the Apogee’s original.
