Sunday Thoughts: 01/11/09
The missing piece of modern gaming.Published 01/11/2009 at 20:00 by nofi
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I’ve moaned about how games aren’t nearly as good as they were in The Good Old Days of 48k limits and rubber keys many a time here on TSA, and I’ve often wondered as to why that actually is. It’s not the graphics, because as much as I loved the Spectrum’s massive 256 x 192 resolution, it is rather blocky. It’s not the sound, either, because back in the 8-bit days you were lucky if making sound didn’t actually pause the processor whilst it farted out whatever bleep you’d asked it to. The controls? Well, things were simpler, too, but then you never got to grips with a small plastic record deck in the 80’s, either, unless I’d missed out on something rather spectacular back then.
I’ve figured it out though: it’s the ability to write your own programs. I’m serious, too, and probably in the minority, but I love being creative, and I think that’s why the games these days that let you make your own content – LittleBigPlanet, Gravity Crash – are the ones I enjoy the most. In-game develoment tools aren’t nearly as powerful as a built-in version of BASIC, though, and whilst I can’t remember for sure I’d say that the majority of my time spent on the Spectrum and the Amiga was in designing and coding my own games. The Spectrum had Sinclair BASIC built in, and the Amiga played host to several versions of the almighty AMOS, and a brief search on Aminet shows some of my ‘work’ is still around…
True, I was never really that good at making games – the ideas were all there and the graphics weren’t a problem, but it was just in seeing things through to the end that I generally let myself down. I’ve made puzzle games on the Speccy, platform games on the Amiga and, via Lua, a two player shooting game on the PSP (called Wedgewars – check it out) and even tried to create something on the 360 via the wicked Indie Games scheme (although I’m blaming Michael for the death of that one) – none of which were really very good but it’s just something I love doing. The 360’s way in is a nice idea but the sheer amount of rubbish on the Marketplace is staggering and probably rather tricky to stand out amongst, especially when your game wouldn’t be much better anyway.
I don’t want to make games for the iPhone – I quite like having buttons in my games, but the PSP minis dev kit is incredibly tempting. If it wasn’t for buying a new house and saving for Nofi Jr I’d probably be saving up the thousand Euro entrance fee because as far as I’ve heard the minis are selling rather well (in Europe at least) and I’d quite like a slice of that pie. I don’t think SCEE are pushing minis as well as they could be but self promotion seems to work well for the few successful iPhone developers so I’d just shove massive adverts at the top of TSA for whatever half finished project I’d decided to focus on anyway, so that wouldn’t necessarily be a problem.
The best thing console manufacturers could do though would be something like YaBasic on the PlayStation. A closed shell with next to no low level access but a powerful enough chunk of the processor to make simple ideas possible – keep the community ratings that the Indie Games label uses and let developers build stuff on the consoles themselves and publish them to some kind of central repository for others to play. Yes, they’d never be the sort of things that would worry Insomniac or Naughty Dog but it would give me one less reason to be so disillusioned with the deluge of me-too identikit games that are currently flooding the market. They’d need to bundle in some kind of image editor, music creation package and 3D sculpture tool, mind, but things like Kodu have told me that there’s a market for something.
Even if it’s just me.
Comments
Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.« Previous 1 2
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Broonba | 02/11/2009 02:43
Member
114 TSA Points | Member since: Mar 2009
Great article mate. It took me right back to my early teenage years…….sifting through issue upon issue of Crash just to find the right copy that had the POKES that I was looking for. *wipes tears from eyes*
kevhardy | 02/11/2009 07:45
Member
167 TSA Points | Member since: Feb 2009
Nice read Alex. I agree totally. I love games with level editors and Little Big Planet was a joy. I just have a rather limited attention span and it’s not long before I’m looking for something different.
and in the 80’s was always half way through a text adventure clone – Anyone remember Zork?
Although back in the 70’s I did write a Battlefield rip-off in Basic in three days with no sleep
Now those were the days
hazelam | 02/11/2009 07:56
Member
3950 TSA Points | Member since: Feb 2009
why have sony not set up some sort of development system for small or one person developers?
ms has xna but sony were the first company to really offer anything like that with yaroze on ps1, i remember playing some of those games on opm coverdiscs.
isn’t it about time the ps3 has something like this?
money_man | 02/11/2009 08:47
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142 TSA Points | Member since: Mar 2009
Spent a lot of time on the sensi soccer clone. Was very playable.
JamboGT | 02/11/2009 08:45
Member
429 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
Thankfully my uni just got some PSP devkits, looking forward to playing some of my own games on the wee machine.
BadBoyBoogie | 02/11/2009 11:01
Let There Be Rock
2689 TSA Points | Member since: Mar 2009
I used to love creating games on a Commodore Pet when I was at school using BASIC.
Good times!!
Manorhowze | 02/11/2009 11:10
Driving God
2032 TSA Points | Member since: Dec 2008
I see myself as a creative person which is why I love games that give you an option to make things. Notably LBP, the MUSIC series on PS1/2 and even PES. I do find myself more drawn to games that include creative elements.
I was never any good at coding on my Speccy, didnt stop me trying but I never made anything that was any good.
zb100 | 02/11/2009 13:44
Member
545 TSA Points | Member since: Aug 2008
Repton Infinity anybody?
TheShepanator | 13/11/2009 17:41
Member
562 TSA Points | Member since: Nov 2009
I remember a little reactions game I made on basic… I had big plans but then I discovered women…