🚀 go-pugleaf

Don't mind Aaron's yelling and screaming too much.  We've seen it for
years now:  whenever any program doesn't live up to every expectation 
on Joe Fanboy's PC, Joe will say...
 
"This is the fault of LAZY PROGRAMMERS."
 
Now, I doubt even Joe Fanboy really thinks anyone at Origin is lazy.  
What's really bugging Joe Fanboy:  he can see how much Origin is capable
of when it comes to graphics, and sound, and video... so why can't they
be as brilliant when it comes to the _game_ itself?
 
It sometimes seems to Joe as if, having produced a dazzling new look and
feel for the latest Origin product, the team stops right there.  "We've
given them great eye-candy", he imagines them saying, "so why bother
putting in gameplay?  Let's ship it like this."  And so he calls them
lazy, for being satisfied with writing _glitter_ when they could be writing
great _games_.
 
Frankly, Joe's largely right.  Origin has neglected gameplay in recent
years.  Privateer, Strike Commander and Wing Commander III were all very
pretty, but did nothing to improve on the simplistic gameplay design
of the original Wing Commanders I and II.  Bioforge was a beautiful
engine with a poorly designed and too-short game (see my review on the 
Games Domain).  Ultima 8 was a big step down from Ultima 7 in 
gameplay - and Ultima 7 was a dull, linear game that itself
paled in design next to Ultima 5.
 
Joe's frustration notwithstanding, we know the Origin folks aren't lazy.  
So why has Origin neglected gameplay?
 
There are two answers.  The first one?  Blame it on us, folks:  we asked
for glitter, and Origin gave it to us.  In spades.  Look back at the game 
magazine letter columns from several years ago, and you'll see lots of 
gamers asking for games that would use the great graphics cards
and the faster CPUs of their new computers.  Season after season, the
games with breakthrough graphics and glitter have been bestsellers.  "People
are buying glitter, so glitter must be what they want," said the Origin folks,
and - always anxious to please - they kept giving it to us.  Just like we
asked.
 
The second reason Origin neglected gameplay:  they didn't realize what
was happening.  When Richard Garriott, Chris Roberts and the rest 
decided to start exploiting all the neat things they could do with a 486, 
a Sound Blaster, a CD-ROM, and so on, they didn't realize the new glitter 
would leave players jaded and wanting more substantial fare.  When they 
scripted Wing Commander III to make sure the player saw all the video, and 
scripted Ultima 8 to show off their new physics, they didn't notice they 
were crimping the underlying game.
 
After that fact - now that we've had years to watch the glitter-trend and
get sick and tired of it - it's easy to see it, easy to hate it.  But when
Ultima 7 came out, almost all of us were having so much fun with the
beauty of that glitter that we didn't notice the streamlined plot.  That  
realization took months or years for most people.  And if it took us that
long, imagine how long it took Richard Garriott, for whom Ultima was his 
beloved child and a company bestseller.
 
Fortunately, we've reached a plateau for appearances, a limit to glitter.
The graphics level of System Shock [SVGA-CD] or Quake is so high, the
production quality of Wing Commander III so slick, the vividness of Ultima
8's little figures so sharp, that there just isn't much "wow" left in
raw graphics.  Moreover, the Windows 95 Direct3D libraries mean that
graphics algorithms are moving from being a game programmer's job to
a hardware programmer's job.  And the sluggish performance of the P6 means
the Pentium is going to last us for a couple of Christmas seasons to come.
Of course, as long as there are new customers in the market - fresh meat
- there'll be ready buyers for glitter.  But standards are now so high
that glitter alone no longer lets a product stand out.
 
All this, plus our well-developed sense of gamer cynicism, means that
graphics just can't be the key sales point anymore.  Aaron observes that
Terminal Velocity, a startup shareware product, doesn't look that bad
next to Cybermage: that's the proof.  Cybermage will succeed - if it does
- because it plays better than the next action game, not because it
looks better.
 
And, too, Origin has awakened and smelled the coffee.  The continuous
emphasis on gameplay in Origin discussion of Ultima 9 should prove that
fact.

--
Daniel Starr        | "She taught him the hidden dharma of playing catch
dst...@math.mit.edu | with a rubber ball, and the veiled mystery of games
                    | of tag."  -  the Mahabharata

-- 
Daniel Starr           |  Curiosity killed the cat, 
starr-...@yale.edu  |  but LOATHSOME RITUALS brought it back!  
                       | --------------------------------------------------    
 Scuppers. Hosepipe.   |  The proper use of skin is as a target zone.