Category: Audio&Games

20 years of Doom. It itches. First time I heard and saw it, Joystick Magazine #37, April 1993. Page 118.

Thanks a ton to Abandonware-Magazines and my memory.

Then my PC game dealer –Ze Warez- obviously had it later on. I’m from that older Wolfenstein3D school so Doom was the iteration. What an iteration though. It’s almost like if Nintendo had done Mario and  then, Mario World. In the article it says that it would perfectly run on my machine and I was amazed and skeptical that it would and it fucking did.

Bear with me, I was a kid who after years of playing on mom’s IBM PC some awful CGA games just wanted some cool games on his 386 DX 33, like all those fuckers in the UK on their Amigas and STs or my friends on consoles. Two years later Commodore is dead and I get to play Wolf and Doom, two games that were unique and quite impossible to make on any other platform at that time.

Talk about Revenge of The Nerd.

Also, tons of fun. Tons of customization and first taste of game dev tools. Just passing the language barrier in itself was some work (‘member, no internet, only books). I remember making an audio track of myself dying through the infamous Doom’s chainsaw sounds. The total freedom! It was a degamified game, it was fun being a god or a piece of shit in a room with no ammo.

Doom is important to the game culture because of the focus on technology and 3D. What people very fast forgot is that Doom was also optimized and run well on a large variety of machines. Most developers will not care about performance scaling for the next twenty years (also computer’s architecture evolution made it nearly impossible). Today as Moore’s law is now BS, they have to (or they do 2D).

ID Software made its name doing the costly optimization on its own. Sudden and huge trust and respect from millions of players? Priceless. People forget that aspect. ID cared. You never forget that.

I preferred Duke Nukem 3D to Quake because I didn’t care about more technology at that time. I was good having fun with what we had. Plus it was asking some hardware upgrade, the start of the out of control spiral where things get twice as fast every six months. That gave birth to the “PC Master Race” as Reddit call those guys who play on 7 GHz space shuttles with a keyboard and a mouse, but it also sent people to the super awesomely accessible Playstation so hard that Microsoft had to answer with their own box.

With game development being more platform agnostic than ever, It feels like we’ve seen it all and that now as it should have been from the start, hardware is hardware and the two lessons I’ll keep from Doom are:

– Make the best tech for the best game you want.

– Be nice.

The Smash Brothers, a documentary about Smash Bros Melee’s scene.

Interesting:

Competitiveness in games. There’s something amazing about a non-corrupt state where people respect each other and just have fun, while trying to be the best. It has become so rare.

Wife’s speech skills are way above average. That dude makes you want to buy a GameCube and a copy of SSBM asap.

A scene like that would never emerge in France due to terrible people behavior (stealing, stealing, stealing, everyone shitting on your passion).

Interracial. In the US, seeing interracial stuff is rare so I’m always happy when I see some black white Asian people around a TV. It’s still nothing but it’s still something.

Nintendo’s denial. They didn’t want that game to become competitive but it happened so instead of acting out against it, they should have embraced it. But Nintendo is a very, very conservative company despite being innovative. They are obsessed with mainstream without understanding that competitive and mainstream can totally go together, see most sports on TV? Though I totally understand that trash talk and absence of women in these competitions don’t suit a corporation very well. But they could help, instead of hiding.

I hadn’t had the time to watch the SSBM scene golden era, so it was good catching up.

Just read this article and it made me think that there’s a big problem with Valve’s approach, perfectly resumed in one sentence from a comment:

We will need to have a computer for doing everything else and a SteamBox to play, fragmenting even more the gaming ecosystem.

Which ruins Newell’s argument about making SteamOS an open platform: for people, it’s another silo to deal with.

I can do everything I want on my laptop, like a lot of people. It’s very convenient. Through the past decade we’ve all been going back and forth on using tools that do multiple things at a time and some that just do one thing. To each his own (yes, I still use a small mp3 player with its 22 hours of battery life).

For games though, I think the tendency is to have one machine that does games AND other stuff. Consoles went this way. Tablets too, as PCs always have been. We are in the “good enough” for most people, dedicated machines are for a core audience. Steam is trying to sell software and movies too, trying to widen so maybe they want to compete directly with all the big ones who have larger pockets, already acquired users,  traction, devices etc. Good luck.

Steam, as a cool digital store was fine. A lot could be done to make it less “brogamer” and a perfect destination for more casual gamers, going more experimental, hosting game jam games etc.

If I was Dell or Lenovo or Acer, I’d jump on the opportunity to make those sweet living room PCs though. The PC market is vaguely shrinking because these guys don’t innovate at all or do blindly. It’s sad to see.

I guess that’s why Valve started this Steam Invasion.

Good stuff. There’s only one problem in his talk: TV, like games got structural changes that pushed a couple of companies like HBO or Showtime to go against the trend of syndication and commercial breaks, creating better shows, right?

Well the example of Breaking Bad falls flat because it’s from AMC, which has commercial breaks and is subject to government and industry regulations (one “fuck” allowed per season for Walter White and his friends).

AMC has been capable of creating better TV (Mad Men, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad are all critically acclaimed) within classic TV constraints.

How AMC did it? Their history was to broadcast classic films, without commercials. It didn’t work well. They went on full on new IPs, with commercial breaks. Massive success. Also, it took them almost ten years (they started original programming in 2002).

Which means that maybe, you can create better games within F2P constraints, right? Maybe it will take us a decade or more to figure it out.

It will be scary. Games are so much more powerful on the mind than TV ever could be.

Big news in the world of hardware and graphics.

Nvidia just announced a streaming system to play on your TV with heavy graphic computation being done in your office room or basement on loud computers.

AMD announced a couple of weeks ago Mantle, a low level API for its graphic cards.

Both technology are working on current gen. For the very first time since GPUs exist, the new graphic generation is not based on completely new hardware but on software features and enhancements. It was already the case for the past few years but now manufacturers just don’t hide it anymore.

It makes sense now that each of these marvel of technology are in the billion transistors count (7.08 billion-transistor chip for the very last AMD card, it is mind-blowing). Moore’s law is so slowing down (14nm is a bitch, ask Intel about yield).

AMD and Nvidia have to sell more cards that are today absolutely under-used or way too expensive. Even PC enthusiasts don’t upgrade anymore. No one wants to change to Intel’s Haswell as well.

It’s a massive industry shift and I think everyone is going to benefit: users with better app performances and still a wide range of choice, AMD and Nvidia don’t have to rush products out anymore and developers get more market stability than ever.

I sure hope it will push game developers to spend more time on things like AUDIO and INPUT. ‘bout time.

Also manufacturers, slow down on 4K BS. I have yet to see a game programmer happy about 4K textures and the shit storm that will come with managing that asset size just to please a couple of rich dudes out there is not something they’re looking forward to.

Look at all our highly-rated games, look at this embarrassment of riches.  It gives the unmistakable impression that videogames today are basically great.  Even though they’re not.  They’re really not.

Wow. On videogame reviews.

I obviously concur with this. But it goes way deeper than game critic. A recent article with Chris Crawford, a dude who’s been making videogames since 1973 says that he doesn’t need to play games these days to know if a game is good or interesting or none of that. Immediately someone commented that he was stupid and that he should go away. Thirteen industry people agreed.

To me, if one of the oldest computer game designer known is saying that he doesn’t play games anymore because they’re all the same, I just nod. I don’t need to play Bioshock Infinite to get a sense that this FPS makes no sense. A couple of videos and reviews from different people –that is, no professional review-  demonstrate it. I avoid graphic porn because it makes us tech dudes way too soft on what games actually are. So a dude with 40 years of experience designing games yeah, I get that he doesn’t need to play the last GTA. That’s like, duh. But no, people get nasty and immediately dis him.

The lack of humility and respect around and in the game industry is something, man. You’ve got to be a fan for something, hardcore. Expert. I was glad the article brought in Little Big Planet and how it’s been overrated because it’s cute. It was the poster child for “a new era”. Heavy Rain, same. But every time I would criticize those games because they’re not so great, people would jump and think I have a problem or that I’m just a hater because “you use Windows”.

Look at how polarized people are around deities that brands have become. We’re speaking of Sony “community”. Xbox “community”. People buying a Wii U “by loyalty for Nintendo”. Console “wars”. Exclusive games mean you don’t have it, I DO TAKE THIS. There is no adult behavior. It’s embarrassing.

Games can’t mature if society as a whole just keeps getting more childish (remember iOS people going crazy because Instagram was coming to Android? What in the actual fuck).

So we need to step up. We need to stop being so complacent about our medium, hard.

The recurrent thing that I hear with David Cage’s games is that his stories suck. At some point, they suck and Fahrenheit had left me with a sense of WTF like no game before.

The NYT said from his last game:

It would be one of the worst movies you’ve ever seen, even though Ms. Page and Mr. Dafoe give fine performances.

Four games, four times where the main critic is about the story. I don’t know, maybe David shouldn’t write stories, only direct and produce games. Or maybe they shouldn’t spend so much on making believable 3D characters and hire a solid team of writers.

IMO stories in games work better in an “expressionist” way like Kentucky Route Zero or Gone Home. Engagement is triggered by your own curiosity, your own building. When engagement is directed heavy-handedly through a blockbuster movie like experience, it always feels tacky and probably always will. So you’d better have a great, great story.

The sad part is that it underlines how the French, auteur vision of creativity doesn’t work at all. Collaborative work is where it’s at and in ten years, Quantic Dream has shown to the world how the French model is broken as fuck. Motion capture is top notch though.

The great Chris Deleon had a video earlier this year wrapping up how Japanese game development was/is making things differently compared to the West. It’s interesting to see that Japanese companies hire employees right after college and keep them pretty much for life. It means that these companies take care of rookies, who in return become good and loyal, working for the company forever (think Keiji Inafune for Capcom).

The problem is that it induces a massive secrecy in the industry, the good thing is that it creates stability, which triggers cohesion, which triggers high quality output. Japanese games are usually tight, it comes from this culture. Western game development on the other side… We’re all mercenaries. Inside Ubisoft or through multiple companies we’re trying –like Chris says- to show what we can do for the next job more than make great games. I guess it kind of worked as long as we had a stable market with consoles.

It’s no longer the case. There is no stability, there’s chaos. How many platform you can ship your game on, today? It is so crazy that even Japanese game development took a toll: Mega Man creator left Capcom after 23 years, kickstarting a game that looked a lot like what he did there. Nintendo, the black box where no one knows what’s going on inside, doesn’t know what to do (and the first sign of that was announcing the 3DS and immediately say “it plays Netflix!”, that’s where I knew).

People associate Japanese development greatness with Japanese culture but I don’t think it’s typically Japanese. It’s a culture that values good design, that’s all. As the video demonstrates, it makes sense to start designing a video game directly with the hardware, not by making artworks. It’s good production design and yet, I’ve seen that once in my career in the West. Once.

The key for game developers is to be able to sustain their creativity through iteration and for that, a large platform is required. A great team is required. A vision is required. Some freedom is required.

It’s a very difficult equation these days.

I played dozens and dozens of shoot’em ups this summer, starting end 80s, when enemy patterns become interesting and fun and when music and sfxs start getting much better and lovely.

Yesterday I went through Radiant Silvergun, 1998. Connoisseurs know. Chant du cygne. One of the most amazing shooter ever.

I love them all for so many reasons.

Nostalgia is obvious. I remember having our bikes stolen in Brittany because we were playing Raiden with my cousin’s cousin and were hooked. The coin-op, the stress of losing money for nothing…

Second and I think it’s something that I’m good at: avoiding, dodging. Analyzing patterns and acting accordingly in real time, staying out of crashes. Keeping calm. Playing music is very close to that, so is being a black dude in a white world. I always loved the possibility of avoiding things, so much more powerful than straight conflict. You know, the all Judo thing.

Shoot’em ups are all about that, so much pleasure being alive after a massive wave of missiles, energy beams or simple bullets. Isn’t it life?

But more pragmatically, I love how those games are crafted. 1990s Japanese game development. In ten years, in a very strict and narrow style of games we go from boring pew pew to holy fuck how did I even make it through that OMG THAT BOSS AND THAT DIVINE MUSIC AM I DEAD.

It’s beautiful how looking at what works and what doesn’t, designers slowly improved those games. Very pragmatically, if an enemy pattern works and is smart, all developers copy it. I love that, I love the fact that they are all more concern about making a game that works than being pricks with over-inflated egos. Remember, Japanese game development is super secretive so these guys were probably analyzing competitor games or maybe reverse-engineer them.

All this for us, guys. Other example with sound effects: early 90s, all developers are trying different ways to make the “add credits” sounds but quickly when they find the good ones, they immediately applied them on every system that runs that audio chip (usually some Yamaha FM synthesizer). Plus, it becomes as important as the logos (Neo-Geo, Capcom intros!).

Keep. It. Simple. And. Invest. Wisely.

It’s all about fun efficiency. Let’s copy and slightly improve! And so forth from controls speed to the number of stages (I did one with 32!!! They all go down to around 7 at some point), the bosses, bullets colors, from how many layers in parallax scrolling before you can’t see anything to designing the lonely tank somewhere who’s going to hit you because you though it wasn’t a threat…

So yeah by 1995 all shoot’em ups kind of feel the same, but they’re all pretty great and feel good. Variation comes from how designers want you to play it: more tactical at the bottom of the screen or more aggressive moving toward the top, more “pure” (classic upgrades + bomb) or more complex (charge mode or lock on). When you start playing one, you know what you will have. You will have some fun, let me tell you.

Today even within genres, even with nice features or more interesting mechanics than these relics, so many games just don’t have a nice feel. And it’s all because we don’t make games this way anymore.

See you in the next episode, I’ll explain…

Ex-LucasArts staff describe Lucas as someone who cared deeply about telling stories, but didn’t know much about the game development process—every Lucas-mandated story change meant shifts in every department: the design, the art, the programming. How could that not be frustrating?P

“One of the problems of working in a film company—[Lucas] is used to being able to change his mind,” said one source. “He didn’t really have a capacity for understanding how damaging and difficult to deal with these changes were.”

Yeah. I’m telling you, calling computer games video games makes them look like they’re movies. Video is like film, it must be easy to change things around!

No. Not at all. I guess you need years in the trenches of game development to understand that computers are powerful and yet so limited.

Always the same story, upper management not understanding anything. It’s comforting to see that it happened even in a place where I thought it wouldn’t. Comforting and depressing are not mutually exclusive in this case.