I couldn’t agree with this more. Unfortunately…

Our small studio recently released a moderately well-received Xbox title. When we were searching for a publisher, and subsequently applying for approval from Microsoft for the title, we were told in no uncertain terms: as an unknown developer, if there isn’t a sizeable online component, forget it. You will not be approved.

So, we were forced to divide our single player team in half, and do a full online mode.

As a small developer, you want to do one thing, and do it really well. This is the opposite of what the product approval people at console manufacturers want: they want either high profile, high budget games, or lots of bullet points on the back of boxes. Preferably both.

Suddenly PC development isn’t sounding quite so bad

Very true. But I’m afraid that in the first wave of mainstream online games (especially on the Xbox 2), developers are going to put too much emphasis on the online part to the detriment of the single player gameplay. I hope I’m wrong though, because I don’t have a network connection in my living room or plans to put one there any time soon. So any effort towards online-aware titles is going to be totally wasted for me (and, as it stands right now, 90% of the US console players?)

One of the things that shocked me when they presented the architecture of the cell is how much the machine is geared towards number crunching.

I don’t believe that we have reached yet the point of diminishing returns regarding graphics (and certainly not physics) but we’re getting there. Some people have said that players can’t tell the difference between two games even if one can draw twice the number of polygons of the other, and I think it’s true most of the time.

But the hardware, Nintendo being the exception, is encouraging exactly that kind of race. Throw more polygons and more flashes, put more spinning boxes and ragdolls. I am racking my brain trying to find ways to build better AI and new player experiences. I don’t think that having less (comparatively) memory, with more latency issues, but more vector operations is going to help much.

Another thing that concerns me is that the new generation is going to put even more pressure on small studios. I work in Spain and it’s already difficult enough to build games for current generation. I hope that we can keep working on video games in our country.

I disagree with your assertion that only the games that exploit every graphical advantage will succeed…the Grand Theft Auto series has proven that gamers WILL accept a game less graphically advanced if the result is more content (and boy does GTA:SA have content…)

Personally I think we should have figured out procedural content and streaming for 3D games years ago…I guess it’s just natural human laziness to put it off until you HAVE to do it. But I’m glad it’s happening. I just don’t want to see it only used to create a small amount of gorgeous content – I’d be much happier with a very large amount of merely pretty content.

I think you are contradicting the point of your article with this comment. Normal everyday people can’t really tell the difference between the latest tech and the previous tech. All that matters anymore is art quality. [Well, that and gameplay, but we all know that doesn't sell a game.] That means a rock’n art pipeline and rock’n artists (as your article states).

That’s very true. I was purely talking from a technical developer point of view. Which I guess begs the question, should we bother taking full advantage of the hardware given how painful is going to be? I still think we have to. The games that do are going to stand out technically, and a lot of developers can’t afford to stay behind.

“No, actually, games with great artists are going to make games with great art.”

About that, we must have very different experiences. We’re not talking paper sketches anymore. In my experience a good artist with a bad pipeline will make a model/texture/level that looks reasonably OK in the content-creation tool, and looks totally bland in the game. An average artist with a great pipepline will be able to make a good-looking piece of art in the game. Guess which one the players are going to like best.

Maybe that’s even more important with designers. Nobody (that I’ve seen) can think of all the subtleties of a level and AI in their head and make it work in the first (or second, or tenth…) pass in the editor. They need to create it, play it, tweak it, play it, etc. The better the pipeline, the more they’ll be willing to try complex things too.

Of course, if you combine both talent and pipeline, then you’ll end up with amazing content in the game, which is what we all want.

If manufacturers pick up on this and other things that could save us from tech requirement purgatory, I bet we’d all be in a better position to tackle the technical challenges of the new platforms. To Microsoft and Sony I say… “Please?”

Actually I think in general, at least from the player’s point of view this transition is going to be much much smaller. We’ve already seen that as beautiful as Half Life 2 is it’s really not that much of a new experience from Half Life 1. 5 years passed, generations of hardware and we have the same game just prettier. I’m sure there will be a few breakout games but 95% of the next gen games are most likely going to be the same games as today with prettier graphics.

>The games that are going to stand out from the crowd from the point of view of visuals and polish are the ones with really good asset pipelines that allowed their content creators to iterate over and over and come up with something very close to what they were thinking

No, actually, games with great artists are going to make games with great art. A great artist with just a pencil will make great art. A bad artist with the best tools in the world will still make bad art. That’s not to say that the best pipeline won’t help but if you actually check the games you think have the best art and the games that have the best pipelines there is very little correlation. No that I also have your affinity for trying to make the best pipeline to help my artists but my point is, hire the best artists if you want the best art.

>Console manufacturers and publishers seem to think that broadband penetration is what’s preventing more people from jumping online. Have they considered that maybe most people don’t want to play online?

Korea has shown that it is possible that the problem is broadband penetration. In Korea you are considered a geek or outcast if you DON’T play online games. For men, 80% of the population plays online games. It’s the topic of discussion at bars and social gatherings such that if you are not playing you will not be able to be a part of the average conversation. Whether other countries will follow that trend remains to be seen, few if any other coutries have close to Korea’s ULTRABAND penetration. Note: What Korea and Japan have should NOT be called broadband because what they have is 8 to 100 times faster than what most American providers call broadband. They are categorically difference experiences and it’s insulting and misleading to think that 1 to 3meg connections in the U.S. for $30 to $60 a month are anything like to 24 to 100meg connections in Japan and Korea for $20 to $40 a month.

As for mutliprocessers I’m still not convinced they are going to make much difference to the “game”. Sure, some library programmers are going to have to figure out how to use them to process polygons, draw effects, simulate phyics or run A.I. but those are library issues. The actual “game” programming will most likely stay about the same.

I’m a bit dubious that outsourcing in a custom way will take off much (ie. paying someone outside the dev team to make a few models), but rather I would expect that predone ‘packs’ of content will be sold, somewhat like http://soundfx.com/librariessfx.htm, except for textures and models.

I also reckon that content generation programs will get more sophisticated and tuned to tasks that are needed for creating content specifically for games.