Video Game Industry

[PicassoCT]

everything went downhill since childhood

Also sorry Licho, but in tschechia still live on the bright side, concerning this. I know some german companys who basically went near bellyup everytime the released (means some cheesetime aka learning software afterwards) - and the trend goes to a sort of big hub-company (mainly programers, gamedesigners, testing, a style-decision basic artistcrew - and then hired contractors for modelling, sound, prefabs, animations... etc...
Its basically a adapting to the same process a hollywoodmovie goes through. Which starts whith a small base team (prototyping), gains momentum (taken over by a studio) hire a big crew for the final effort- and releases again with a small crew of coders (cuter/director/sounddesigners/previewscreen)

[Cheesecan]

Most Swedish game companies either went bankrupt after 1 or 2 fairly successful titles or got bought up by EA. Examples you may know of are The darkness, Escape from butcher bay and Battlefield 1942.
It seems to no longer be possible for small, high-value games companies to exist perhaps outside of eastern Europe(which is now producing a lot of innovative titles thanks to smaller, more creative teams).
Just consider that many games are now advertised on TV commercials and all around town, expensive trips for game reviewers, etc. The small guys have it tough to get noticed.
I don't really see mny desirable things in the game industry from the individual's perspective now as compared to 20 years ago when a kid could write the engine for Duke Nukem 3D in his teens. Now it takes a 300 man team to build games which leaves no room for the individual. You're just a cog in the wheel.

[TheMightyOne]

Most Swedish game companies either went bankrupt after 1 or 2 fairly successful titles or got bought up by EA. Examples you may know of are The darkness, Escape from butcher bay and Battlefield 1942.
It seems to no longer be possible for small, high-value games companies to exist perhaps outside of eastern Europe(which is now producing a lot of innovative titles thanks to smaller, more creative teams).
Just consider that many games are now advertised on TV commercials and all around town, expensive trips for game reviewers, etc. The small guys have it tough to get noticed.
I don't really see mny desirable things in the game industry from the individual's perspective now as compared to 20 years ago when a kid could write the engine for Duke Nukem 3D in his teens. Now it takes a 300 man team to build games which leaves no room for the individual. You're just a cog in the wheel.

What about Minecraft?

[PicassoCT]

Even a lazy cog somewhere has to enter the wheel

[Cheesecan]

Minecraft is the only exception..

[PicassoCT]

Rule 43, no expectations. No matter how funny it is, somewhere, someone is doing it for money and cursing his faith.

[TheMightyOne]

Minecraft is the only exception..

But doesn't it prove how "easy" it is? Couldn't "anybody" do this?

[TradeMark]

if you win the lottery, do you call it easy money?

[knorke]

Take Super Bubble Blob which looks like a techdemo

and Super Meat Boy with all the graphics, music and bla.

Both are plattformers with a character that can stick to walls.
guess which one is popular.

"Anybody" can make something half assed to play with his friends or something.
But to get popular it has to be really polished.

[TradeMark]

But to get popular it has to be really polished.

minecraft was really polished when it got popular? (lol)

[knorke]

I think when it got really popular (as in hundred thousands views instead of some thousand), it was already kind of playable.
There is all this config bla with setting up server, mods, plugins etc but I think for some people even that part is interessting.
It is a different kind of "not polished" compared to some "my first 3d game, use aswd to controll the ball."
And youtube has videos of 6 year olds playing Minecraft so how hard can it be...

[Cheesecan]

Minecraft was quite polished early on in the sense that it had procedurally generated content, quite nice textures for a voxel game, and had some nice gameplay elements like crafting. That was enough for people to get excited about it.

[TradeMark]

you are insane if you call minecraft polished... its full of bugs and textures were a prototype textures just to get some look quickly (16x16 lol)... and i disagree on voxel word... if you call minecraft "voxel" graphics nice, then GTA2 "voxel" graphics would be super epic high quality then. (64x64!! 4 times bigger! 15 years ago!), and if crafting really is all what minecraft has, then its pretty stupid game after all. i dont know why its popular, it just doesnt make sense. its one of these things like the guy who sold 2 million rocks (they were called rock pets or something) in USA at 1975, people actually bought that crap back then.

edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock lul it was older than i thought

[Cheesecan]

Compare minecraft textures to the textures in Ace of spades:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_of_Spades_(video_game)

or Delta force:
http://www.activewin.com/reviews/softwa ... ce_2_3.jpg

[Wombat]

GTA2 - (64x64!! 4 times bigger! 15 years ago!)

oh boi, i got a boner. been a long time...

[TradeMark]

Compare minecraft textures to the textures in Ace of spades:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_of_Spades_(video_game)

or Delta force:
http://www.activewin.com/reviews/softwa ... ce_2_3.jpg

yeahhh, compare a non-voxel game to a voxel game. good job man...

voxel = volumetric pixel. it does not have a texture on it! its just one pixel just like in any ordinary 2d image, but in a 3d form!

stop being such a minecrap fan.

[TheMightyOne]

if you win the lottery, do you call it easy money?

Poor comparison. Lottery is pure luck. Now I'm no programmer and I'm really far from gaming industry but I'm pretty sure a handful of people on this forum could have been the makers of Minecraft (maybe I'm thinking too highly of you guys )

if crafting really is all what minecraft has, then its pretty stupid game after all. i dont know why its popular, it just doesnt make sense.

Oh, it's a lot more than that. It's 3d LEGO. And people love LEGO. You can build stuff, anything you want. And there is a whole world and it looks different every time, you can be an adventurer and just explore it and try to get tons of valuable stuff. It offers much, much more freedom than a lot of commercial sandbox games out there. I'm still waiting on RPG modes based on Minecraft, and I'm 100% sure people will make them and they are going to be awesome ! Imagine this world with finished cities, NPCs... Hell, it could become the new WoW.

its one of these things like the guy who sold 2 million rocks (they were called rock pets or something) in USA at 1975, people actually bought that crap back then.

edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock lul it was older than i thought

That is VERY different. The actual product was worthless, who needs rocks? But the marketing was genius. It gave the product value. You could say its a scam but you got exactly what you paid for, what counts is how you perceive the value of the product. This is nothing new btw. Its the same with expensive clothes, a T-Shirt costs 1$ or 100$ depending whether its a noname product or Dolce&Gabbana. Now the actual value of the product is very low in both cases but your own percepience of the value is different. The important thing is that it doesn't apply to games, in the end its the actual product that counts. Good marketing can get you nice sales numbers in the first weekend but they will drop fast.

[TradeMark]

if you win the lottery, do you call it easy money?

Poor comparison. Lottery is pure luck. Now I'm no programmer and I'm really far from gaming industry but I'm pretty sure a handful of people on this forum could have been the makers of Minecraft (maybe I'm thinking too highly of you guys )

good enough comparison IMO. both (Notch and the lottery guy) didnt know that their numbers would have given 20millions in return.

Notch didnt plan it to be that popular, and it got popular for the wrong reasons too: the game wasnt intended to be like that, that was just the pre-alpha test version which lacked all the intended gameplay features which he was planning in the first place. he even admitted it himself that he was quite surprised that it got so popular since it was just some stupid test pre-alpha version with retarded block editing and monsters he thought to add just because there wasnt anything else to play with yet.

what happened to minecraft was similar to what happened to the http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com (anyone remember that?) which also got popular once it got on the news somewhere. while minecraft also got its spike in sales after getting on news about paypal freezing the account.

That is VERY different. The actual product was worthless, who needs rocks?

Who needs minecrap? i mean, i dont. i can go to woods if i want to get lost in randomly generated terrains. much more better gfx too.

[zwzsg]

i can go to woods if i want to get lost in randomly generated terrains. much more better gfx too.

And then kill yourself when you're truely lost and want to get home?

[Cheesecan]

Compare minecraft textures to the textures in Ace of spades:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_of_Spades_(video_game)

or Delta force:
http://www.activewin.com/reviews/softwa ... ce_2_3.jpg

yeahhh, compare a non-voxel game to a voxel game. good job man...

voxel = volumetric pixel. it does not have a texture on it! its just one pixel just like in any ordinary 2d image, but in a 3d form!

stop being such a minecrap fan.

I'm really not talking about the technicalities, in fact it would be more accurate if I had said graphics in that post, my point is simply that Minecraft has nicer voxel-style graphics than any previous game of its kind.

To tell you the truth I'm not really a big fan of minecraft either, the gameplay is too shallow for my attention span(also I outgrew LEGOs in childhood), but like many others I initially found it interesting and appealing enough to buy. Not sure why you hate so much on notch and minecraft, why not be glad instead that an indie game dev finally had some luck? It means that in this day and age you can still make a game on your own and have success, something which to me is a pretty cool thing.