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Some of you will have opened this address just to laugh. Others just to see the writings of a madman, yet it is my soul belief that unrealism in games is the most powerful and productive thing in the industry. WHAT!? I hear you cry, well the fact of the matter is that it has been pure unrealism within games that has progressed them to the pinnacle at which they are now. Consider this if you will, more quality games have been created due to unrealism than realism. This is true mainly due to one group of people known as ID software.
Games of theirs such as Doom are greatly unrealistic, yet it was possibly the greatest gaming creation of all time. More games are based around one of the Quake engines then any other, and it is this power to make unrealism that has allowed improved realism such as in MOH:AA. The Quake games as well as the Unreal series are two of the biggest if not the biggest names within gaming. These games had unrealistic weapons along with an unrealistic theme which society would never allow (at least Western society) - Death Tournaments. Somewhat different to a good old game of cricket. It is these unrealistic games that are making the gaming industry one of the most powerful entertainment and escapist industries in the world? The Star Wars franchise is the most powerful franchise in the world, and it is based upon an unrealistic setting.
I am not out to ruin these great achievements within gaming, as I myself own a large number of them, I am merely here to show that while everyone in the games industry is harping on about the ‘realism’ within a game, they are forgetting that the realism of it all would not be there if it was not for unrealistic behemoths such as Quake and Unreal and Star Wars and Black & White and Doom and RTCW and Half-Life (need I go on?). You have to see that due to unrealism’s dominance within the gaming industry, it is likely that within the next 5 years, many game designers will stop creating their own engines and just use a Quake engine if creating a FPS. It is not a dried up well, no, but think how many top games use the Q3 engine. If this continues, then the graphics of every game will soon be based around one of 15 or so engines. Originality of graphics will be gone and Kieron will have nothing to complain about on the graphics when writing an interview. The world will be MAD!
Why does everyone use the quake engine? Take the textures of and you will see that quakes environments are actually huge flat sheets of boredom. Why not Unreal, if it was good enough for Deus Ex why not? Lots of games used the Unreal Engine. Lots of games used the Quake, Quake II and Quake III engines. Except for the recent slew of Q3 games, I believe there were more Unreal-powered games than those based on other engines. Now there are several Unreal 2-powered games (the Karma Engine) on the way. Many game designers already stop creating their own game engines. What I’m prophesying has already happened. A game which uses an existing engine is a game that spent that much more time doing things properly - a la Deus Ex, Planescape: Torment, Elite Force, Half-Life all of which were considerably better than the games whose engine they used.
To be fair, I only used Quake as an example, but there by saying how many games use the Unreal engine and the Karma engine, which is now being more widely used. It is just like I said, due to everyone using the same engines; there will no great difference in game graphics. It will all be the same and boring. Because many games use similar engines they will all be exactly the same. Why? How similar is Anachronox to Half-Life, both of which use the same engine? By using the same graphics engine, there will be limits to the differences between game graphics. I am not saying that the games will be the same. I am saying that if the same graphics engine is constantly being used then the creativity within a game will have sunk due to limits within the graphics engine. There are only so many Q3 mods that a man can take (or woman, depending on your sexual view). On the other hand, games will not be boring because they look the same because they use the same graphics engine. They will be better because they don't spend all their time writing a cack imitation FPS engine, which does the job half as well.
Say a new engine comes out called the SR engine. At E3 or any large expo, the game that uses it originally will be big due to the fact that it is an entirely new engine with new capabilities that are an improvement over the older engine. Everyone will start to use this engine and it will become that all games have the same capabilities within the set genre GRAPHICALLY! One of two things can then happen:
- Every game becomes better and more original due to developers having more time to spend on gameplay and special features e.g. SOF2 - the Ghoul 2 code appliance. Gaming will reach a new golden age where the strong survive and the weak quickly fall, and we are taken to a gaming Utopia.
Or
- Developers start rushing out sequel after sequel of rubbish due to them not having to design an engine. Only a few games come out golden and SR is forced to accept Myst 5 as gaming’s crowning achievement (dear god no!).
The latter is a likelihood, but I don't think the situation will be any worse than it is now, where sequel after imitation after clone is rushed out the door with a custom engine which apes Quake or whatever, only not quite as good. With a solid engine behind it, and the usual dross of a plot and what-have-you, the quality will go up slightly. I haven’t really taken into account the way two games with the same engine don't have to look the same. Quake 3 has a very techno-organic look, which I personally can't stand, but this is just the texture they used. As an easy example, look at No One Lives Forever, Shogo and AvP2. The visual style is completely different in each case, and you wouldn't be able to tell by looking that they use the same engine, because they've been careful to make the models and textures appropriate to the environment.
Luckily, there's a theoretical limit based on the arrangeable colours, but it's of the order of the number of the atoms in the universe, so I don't think it'll be a problem any time soon about running out of textures. The only similarities you will see are thematic similarities, which are intentional. For example, Team Fortress looks on the whole exactly the same as Half-Life because it re-uses all the terrain textures, and those textures have a VERY distinctive style to them. If you went and took your own photos of somewhere like the Grand Canyon and used them in a Quake III or even Half-Life powered game, it would look completely different - and I could go to a different part of the Grand Canyon, use different lighting, and again create something which looks completely different.
Back to the original argument, I would rather play through a lot of well thought out levels and enjoyable gameplay than play a game with a new engine and few levels and even if enough development time has been allowed and their are a sufficient number of levels (and level of gameplay) the engine may not be as good Quake 3 or Unreal 2. Why bother spending so much money developing your own engine when the chances are it’s not as good as an existing one? If it were better then you would have spent a hell of a lot of money and could only re-coup it by getting other companies to use your engine, which brings around the loop. This is one of the major problems with gaming, over films. There is no standardised format for either a console / pc, or for engines. I realise that a standard engine would be impossible but I am taking this example to one extreme. If there was one then developers could spend more time on the actual gameplay, giving better games.
Thanks for reading,
LF
Games of theirs such as Doom are greatly unrealistic, yet it was possibly the greatest gaming creation of all time. More games are based around one of the Quake engines then any other, and it is this power to make unrealism that has allowed improved realism such as in MOH:AA. The Quake games as well as the Unreal series are two of the biggest if not the biggest names within gaming. These games had unrealistic weapons along with an unrealistic theme which society would never allow (at least Western society) - Death Tournaments. Somewhat different to a good old game of cricket. It is these unrealistic games that are making the gaming industry one of the most powerful entertainment and escapist industries in the world? The Star Wars franchise is the most powerful franchise in the world, and it is based upon an unrealistic setting.
I am not out to ruin these great achievements within gaming, as I myself own a large number of them, I am merely here to show that while everyone in the games industry is harping on about the ‘realism’ within a game, they are forgetting that the realism of it all would not be there if it was not for unrealistic behemoths such as Quake and Unreal and Star Wars and Black & White and Doom and RTCW and Half-Life (need I go on?). You have to see that due to unrealism’s dominance within the gaming industry, it is likely that within the next 5 years, many game designers will stop creating their own engines and just use a Quake engine if creating a FPS. It is not a dried up well, no, but think how many top games use the Q3 engine. If this continues, then the graphics of every game will soon be based around one of 15 or so engines. Originality of graphics will be gone and Kieron will have nothing to complain about on the graphics when writing an interview. The world will be MAD!
Why does everyone use the quake engine? Take the textures of and you will see that quakes environments are actually huge flat sheets of boredom. Why not Unreal, if it was good enough for Deus Ex why not? Lots of games used the Unreal Engine. Lots of games used the Quake, Quake II and Quake III engines. Except for the recent slew of Q3 games, I believe there were more Unreal-powered games than those based on other engines. Now there are several Unreal 2-powered games (the Karma Engine) on the way. Many game designers already stop creating their own game engines. What I’m prophesying has already happened. A game which uses an existing engine is a game that spent that much more time doing things properly - a la Deus Ex, Planescape: Torment, Elite Force, Half-Life all of which were considerably better than the games whose engine they used.
To be fair, I only used Quake as an example, but there by saying how many games use the Unreal engine and the Karma engine, which is now being more widely used. It is just like I said, due to everyone using the same engines; there will no great difference in game graphics. It will all be the same and boring. Because many games use similar engines they will all be exactly the same. Why? How similar is Anachronox to Half-Life, both of which use the same engine? By using the same graphics engine, there will be limits to the differences between game graphics. I am not saying that the games will be the same. I am saying that if the same graphics engine is constantly being used then the creativity within a game will have sunk due to limits within the graphics engine. There are only so many Q3 mods that a man can take (or woman, depending on your sexual view). On the other hand, games will not be boring because they look the same because they use the same graphics engine. They will be better because they don't spend all their time writing a cack imitation FPS engine, which does the job half as well.
Say a new engine comes out called the SR engine. At E3 or any large expo, the game that uses it originally will be big due to the fact that it is an entirely new engine with new capabilities that are an improvement over the older engine. Everyone will start to use this engine and it will become that all games have the same capabilities within the set genre GRAPHICALLY! One of two things can then happen:
- Every game becomes better and more original due to developers having more time to spend on gameplay and special features e.g. SOF2 - the Ghoul 2 code appliance. Gaming will reach a new golden age where the strong survive and the weak quickly fall, and we are taken to a gaming Utopia.
Or
- Developers start rushing out sequel after sequel of rubbish due to them not having to design an engine. Only a few games come out golden and SR is forced to accept Myst 5 as gaming’s crowning achievement (dear god no!).
The latter is a likelihood, but I don't think the situation will be any worse than it is now, where sequel after imitation after clone is rushed out the door with a custom engine which apes Quake or whatever, only not quite as good. With a solid engine behind it, and the usual dross of a plot and what-have-you, the quality will go up slightly. I haven’t really taken into account the way two games with the same engine don't have to look the same. Quake 3 has a very techno-organic look, which I personally can't stand, but this is just the texture they used. As an easy example, look at No One Lives Forever, Shogo and AvP2. The visual style is completely different in each case, and you wouldn't be able to tell by looking that they use the same engine, because they've been careful to make the models and textures appropriate to the environment.
Luckily, there's a theoretical limit based on the arrangeable colours, but it's of the order of the number of the atoms in the universe, so I don't think it'll be a problem any time soon about running out of textures. The only similarities you will see are thematic similarities, which are intentional. For example, Team Fortress looks on the whole exactly the same as Half-Life because it re-uses all the terrain textures, and those textures have a VERY distinctive style to them. If you went and took your own photos of somewhere like the Grand Canyon and used them in a Quake III or even Half-Life powered game, it would look completely different - and I could go to a different part of the Grand Canyon, use different lighting, and again create something which looks completely different.
Back to the original argument, I would rather play through a lot of well thought out levels and enjoyable gameplay than play a game with a new engine and few levels and even if enough development time has been allowed and their are a sufficient number of levels (and level of gameplay) the engine may not be as good Quake 3 or Unreal 2. Why bother spending so much money developing your own engine when the chances are it’s not as good as an existing one? If it were better then you would have spent a hell of a lot of money and could only re-coup it by getting other companies to use your engine, which brings around the loop. This is one of the major problems with gaming, over films. There is no standardised format for either a console / pc, or for engines. I realise that a standard engine would be impossible but I am taking this example to one extreme. If there was one then developers could spend more time on the actual gameplay, giving better games.
Thanks for reading,
LF
if you like unrealistic games, go for burnout 2 or wipeout. a bit to fast but still very cool
Some of you will have opened this address just to laugh. Others just to see the writings of a madman, yet it is my soul belief that unrealism in games is the most powerful and productive thing in the industry. WHAT!? I hear you cry, well the fact of the matter is that it has been pure unrealism within games that has progressed them to the pinnacle at which they are now. Consider this if you will, more quality games have been created due to unrealism than realism. This is true mainly due to one group of people known as ID software.
Games of theirs such as Doom are greatly unrealistic, yet it was possibly the greatest gaming creation of all time. More games are based around one of the Quake engines then any other, and it is this power to make unrealism that has allowed improved realism such as in MOH:AA. The Quake games as well as the Unreal series are two of the biggest if not the biggest names within gaming. These games had unrealistic weapons along with an unrealistic theme which society would never allow (at least Western society) - Death Tournaments. Somewhat different to a good old game of cricket. It is these unrealistic games that are making the gaming industry one of the most powerful entertainment and escapist industries in the world? The Star Wars franchise is the most powerful franchise in the world, and it is based upon an unrealistic setting.
I am not out to ruin these great achievements within gaming, as I myself own a large number of them, I am merely here to show that while everyone in the games industry is harping on about the ‘realism’ within a game, they are forgetting that the realism of it all would not be there if it was not for unrealistic behemoths such as Quake and Unreal and Star Wars and Black & White and Doom and RTCW and Half-Life (need I go on?). You have to see that due to unrealism’s dominance within the gaming industry, it is likely that within the next 5 years, many game designers will stop creating their own engines and just use a Quake engine if creating a FPS. It is not a dried up well, no, but think how many top games use the Q3 engine. If this continues, then the graphics of every game will soon be based around one of 15 or so engines. Originality of graphics will be gone and Kieron will have nothing to complain about on the graphics when writing an interview. The world will be MAD!
Why does everyone use the quake engine? Take the textures of and you will see that quakes environments are actually huge flat sheets of boredom. Why not Unreal, if it was good enough for Deus Ex why not? Lots of games used the Unreal Engine. Lots of games used the Quake, Quake II and Quake III engines. Except for the recent slew of Q3 games, I believe there were more Unreal-powered games than those based on other engines. Now there are several Unreal 2-powered games (the Karma Engine) on the way. Many game designers already stop creating their own game engines. What I’m prophesying has already happened. A game which uses an existing engine is a game that spent that much more time doing things properly - a la Deus Ex, Planescape: Torment, Elite Force, Half-Life all of which were considerably better than the games whose engine they used.
To be fair, I only used Quake as an example, but there by saying how many games use the Unreal engine and the Karma engine, which is now being more widely used. It is just like I said, due to everyone using the same engines; there will no great difference in game graphics. It will all be the same and boring. Because many games use similar engines they will all be exactly the same. Why? How similar is Anachronox to Half-Life, both of which use the same engine? By using the same graphics engine, there will be limits to the differences between game graphics. I am not saying that the games will be the same. I am saying that if the same graphics engine is constantly being used then the creativity within a game will have sunk due to limits within the graphics engine. There are only so many Q3 mods that a man can take (or woman, depending on your sexual view). On the other hand, games will not be boring because they look the same because they use the same graphics engine. They will be better because they don't spend all their time writing a cack imitation FPS engine, which does the job half as well.
Say a new engine comes out called the SR engine. At E3 or any large expo, the game that uses it originally will be big due to the fact that it is an entirely new engine with new capabilities that are an improvement over the older engine. Everyone will start to use this engine and it will become that all games have the same capabilities within the set genre GRAPHICALLY! One of two things can then happen:
- Every game becomes better and more original due to developers having more time to spend on gameplay and special features e.g. SOF2 - the Ghoul 2 code appliance. Gaming will reach a new golden age where the strong survive and the weak quickly fall, and we are taken to a gaming Utopia.
Or
- Developers start rushing out sequel after sequel of rubbish due to them not having to design an engine. Only a few games come out golden and SR is forced to accept Myst 5 as gaming’s crowning achievement (dear god no!).
The latter is a likelihood, but I don't think the situation will be any worse than it is now, where sequel after imitation after clone is rushed out the door with a custom engine which apes Quake or whatever, only not quite as good. With a solid engine behind it, and the usual dross of a plot and what-have-you, the quality will go up slightly. I haven’t really taken into account the way two games with the same engine don't have to look the same. Quake 3 has a very techno-organic look, which I personally can't stand, but this is just the texture they used. As an easy example, look at No One Lives Forever, Shogo and AvP2. The visual style is completely different in each case, and you wouldn't be able to tell by looking that they use the same engine, because they've been careful to make the models and textures appropriate to the environment.
Luckily, there's a theoretical limit based on the arrangeable colours, but it's of the order of the number of the atoms in the universe, so I don't think it'll be a problem any time soon about running out of textures. The only similarities you will see are thematic similarities, which are intentional. For example, Team Fortress looks on the whole exactly the same as Half-Life because it re-uses all the terrain textures, and those textures have a VERY distinctive style to them. If you went and took your own photos of somewhere like the Grand Canyon and used them in a Quake III or even Half-Life powered game, it would look completely different - and I could go to a different part of the Grand Canyon, use different lighting, and again create something which looks completely different.
Back to the original argument, I would rather play through a lot of well thought out levels and enjoyable gameplay than play a game with a new engine and few levels and even if enough development time has been allowed and their are a sufficient number of levels (and level of gameplay) the engine may not be as good Quake 3 or Unreal 2. Why bother spending so much money developing your own engine when the chances are it’s not as good as an existing one? If it were better then you would have spent a hell of a lot of money and could only re-coup it by getting other companies to use your engine, which brings around the loop. This is one of the major problems with gaming, over films. There is no standardised format for either a console / pc, or for engines. I realise that a standard engine would be impossible but I am taking this example to one extreme. If there was one then developers could spend more time on the actual gameplay, giving better games.
Thanks for reading,
LF
Games of theirs such as Doom are greatly unrealistic, yet it was possibly the greatest gaming creation of all time. More games are based around one of the Quake engines then any other, and it is this power to make unrealism that has allowed improved realism such as in MOH:AA. The Quake games as well as the Unreal series are two of the biggest if not the biggest names within gaming. These games had unrealistic weapons along with an unrealistic theme which society would never allow (at least Western society) - Death Tournaments. Somewhat different to a good old game of cricket. It is these unrealistic games that are making the gaming industry one of the most powerful entertainment and escapist industries in the world? The Star Wars franchise is the most powerful franchise in the world, and it is based upon an unrealistic setting.
I am not out to ruin these great achievements within gaming, as I myself own a large number of them, I am merely here to show that while everyone in the games industry is harping on about the ‘realism’ within a game, they are forgetting that the realism of it all would not be there if it was not for unrealistic behemoths such as Quake and Unreal and Star Wars and Black & White and Doom and RTCW and Half-Life (need I go on?). You have to see that due to unrealism’s dominance within the gaming industry, it is likely that within the next 5 years, many game designers will stop creating their own engines and just use a Quake engine if creating a FPS. It is not a dried up well, no, but think how many top games use the Q3 engine. If this continues, then the graphics of every game will soon be based around one of 15 or so engines. Originality of graphics will be gone and Kieron will have nothing to complain about on the graphics when writing an interview. The world will be MAD!
Why does everyone use the quake engine? Take the textures of and you will see that quakes environments are actually huge flat sheets of boredom. Why not Unreal, if it was good enough for Deus Ex why not? Lots of games used the Unreal Engine. Lots of games used the Quake, Quake II and Quake III engines. Except for the recent slew of Q3 games, I believe there were more Unreal-powered games than those based on other engines. Now there are several Unreal 2-powered games (the Karma Engine) on the way. Many game designers already stop creating their own game engines. What I’m prophesying has already happened. A game which uses an existing engine is a game that spent that much more time doing things properly - a la Deus Ex, Planescape: Torment, Elite Force, Half-Life all of which were considerably better than the games whose engine they used.
To be fair, I only used Quake as an example, but there by saying how many games use the Unreal engine and the Karma engine, which is now being more widely used. It is just like I said, due to everyone using the same engines; there will no great difference in game graphics. It will all be the same and boring. Because many games use similar engines they will all be exactly the same. Why? How similar is Anachronox to Half-Life, both of which use the same engine? By using the same graphics engine, there will be limits to the differences between game graphics. I am not saying that the games will be the same. I am saying that if the same graphics engine is constantly being used then the creativity within a game will have sunk due to limits within the graphics engine. There are only so many Q3 mods that a man can take (or woman, depending on your sexual view). On the other hand, games will not be boring because they look the same because they use the same graphics engine. They will be better because they don't spend all their time writing a cack imitation FPS engine, which does the job half as well.
Say a new engine comes out called the SR engine. At E3 or any large expo, the game that uses it originally will be big due to the fact that it is an entirely new engine with new capabilities that are an improvement over the older engine. Everyone will start to use this engine and it will become that all games have the same capabilities within the set genre GRAPHICALLY! One of two things can then happen:
- Every game becomes better and more original due to developers having more time to spend on gameplay and special features e.g. SOF2 - the Ghoul 2 code appliance. Gaming will reach a new golden age where the strong survive and the weak quickly fall, and we are taken to a gaming Utopia.
Or
- Developers start rushing out sequel after sequel of rubbish due to them not having to design an engine. Only a few games come out golden and SR is forced to accept Myst 5 as gaming’s crowning achievement (dear god no!).
The latter is a likelihood, but I don't think the situation will be any worse than it is now, where sequel after imitation after clone is rushed out the door with a custom engine which apes Quake or whatever, only not quite as good. With a solid engine behind it, and the usual dross of a plot and what-have-you, the quality will go up slightly. I haven’t really taken into account the way two games with the same engine don't have to look the same. Quake 3 has a very techno-organic look, which I personally can't stand, but this is just the texture they used. As an easy example, look at No One Lives Forever, Shogo and AvP2. The visual style is completely different in each case, and you wouldn't be able to tell by looking that they use the same engine, because they've been careful to make the models and textures appropriate to the environment.
Luckily, there's a theoretical limit based on the arrangeable colours, but it's of the order of the number of the atoms in the universe, so I don't think it'll be a problem any time soon about running out of textures. The only similarities you will see are thematic similarities, which are intentional. For example, Team Fortress looks on the whole exactly the same as Half-Life because it re-uses all the terrain textures, and those textures have a VERY distinctive style to them. If you went and took your own photos of somewhere like the Grand Canyon and used them in a Quake III or even Half-Life powered game, it would look completely different - and I could go to a different part of the Grand Canyon, use different lighting, and again create something which looks completely different.
Back to the original argument, I would rather play through a lot of well thought out levels and enjoyable gameplay than play a game with a new engine and few levels and even if enough development time has been allowed and their are a sufficient number of levels (and level of gameplay) the engine may not be as good Quake 3 or Unreal 2. Why bother spending so much money developing your own engine when the chances are it’s not as good as an existing one? If it were better then you would have spent a hell of a lot of money and could only re-coup it by getting other companies to use your engine, which brings around the loop. This is one of the major problems with gaming, over films. There is no standardised format for either a console / pc, or for engines. I realise that a standard engine would be impossible but I am taking this example to one extreme. If there was one then developers could spend more time on the actual gameplay, giving better games.
Thanks for reading,
LF