A Response to 'The Future of Game Design Part One'

From StoneHome

I tell ya, there's nothing more fun than reading the inane ramblings of a magazine writer about the future of game development when they know nothing about development or the history of games. It strikes me that it's time to take IGN to task: they've been churning out pap like this for years, and someone just has to tell them what's going on.

Morons Shouldn't Have Pens

So, let's see. The general premise is this: game developers haven't been able to do X in the last 30 years, but somehow bigger badder consoles are expected to change that. In a few rare instances that might actually happen: RAM limits on the complexity of the local portion of a level are one arguable point, though even modern handhelds have four meg, which (shocking to most game magazine writers) is more than enough to write a streaming 3D engine with potentially infinite level size.

This entire article reads like a giant biased sample. It's as if game magazine authors haven't yet realized that they don't actually know about every single game ever written by mankind; they make shockingly hollow sweeping generalizations as a matter of course. I would like to make a complaint about how little research IGN seems to do compared to real newspapers, except that real newspapers are beginning to suck just as badly. Nonetheless, the failure of others is not an excuse for the failures of IGN, which pretend to be aware of both the avant gardé and history, so let's review, shall we?

Specific Criticisms

Page the First

... or, How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Diggity.

Haven't you figured out N-Bit Systems yet?

• The jump from 32-bit systems to 128-bit systems did usher in a great new realm of possibilities.

I don't know what makes you think this is true. What exactly do you get out of capping arithmetic at 3.402e+38 instead of four billion? Hint: not a god damned thing. The ability of the old marketing claim of an N-Bit system to survive common sense and criticism from the clueful is nothing short of amazing: people which purport to be professional game reviewers still fall for this one daily. Amusingly, the author seems to think that the current generation of systems is all 128-bit, and that that's the reason modern games are able to sport larger levels and more complex AI - not the higher MIPS count, not the extra RAM, not the new 3D hardware - no, somehow it's because you can add two uselessly large numbers in a single cycle instead of two.

Here's a hint: the X-Box is a standard 32-bit PC CPU, yet most reviews think it's far more powerful than the 64-bit GameCube, which is in turn believed to be more powerful than the 128-bit (sort of) PlayStation 2. See the relationship between CPU bit width and power? No? That's because it's not there.

Revision: An astute reader named Erik Harmon has pointed out that I misremembered the marketroid mumbo jumbo for the Neo Geo, which I've since removed from the argument; Hats off to you, Erik, for catching my error and letting me know.

Misappropriated Invention

• On a side note, I don't think anyone would have predicted that open-design games such as Grand Theft Auto, sandbox games such as Battlefield 1942, and innovative customizable games such as Deus Ex would be such huge influences on the future of game design.

Oh, please. GTA didn't invent the open-ended game, even in modern times. If you can crank your history dial all the way back to the DreamCast, then you might learn about a game called Shenmue, which is more open-ended than GTA. Oh, right: there are also The Sims, SimCity, the various Tycoon games, Civilization, Angband and so on. Amusingly, this thing you're attributing to a PS2 game is actually the design cause for what most people think of as the first graphic game: Rogue.

Oh wait, they're all misappropriated inventions

• There have been little breakthroughs: Platformers now feature enemy AI leaving their little cone of defense and chasing you around an environment

Huhuhuhuhuh. I can name at least five games for every major console in history - including things of arguable majority like the WonderSwan, GamePark, Gizmodo and Zodiac - whose AI isn't map-region limited. Just because you play shallow games doesn't mean all games are shallow. "But I'm an editor at a game magazine!" Yes, and that you're in such a position and still don't apparently know a damned thing about gaming should be worrying. Like nearly every invention in your list, Rogue can claim this as a primary.

There were games before the PS2, you know

• AI recognizes various levels of danger (just watch the enemies in MGS3)

You mean like Escape from Castle Wolfenstein, the Apple //c game from the early 80s? (Yes, there were Wolfenstein games before iD.)

• and AI gangs congregate to slaughter you (Manhunt)

Rogue does this too, though swarming behavior didn't get good in the Roguelike tree until UMoria. Amusingly, the Manhunt swarming behavior isn't as good as the swarming behavior in text-mode games from the 1980s, given that unlike in Manhunt, in most roguelikes swarming gives priority to certain monster types over others.

Realism is a bitch

• AI should react in a way that's believable, with some sort of intelligence.

Riiiight. I wish you were a programmer, so I could explain to you how shockingly difficult realistic agent behavior is; unfortunately, I'm fairly confident you aren't, given your seeming ignorance of basic hardware principles, so I'll just have to point out that even with books like and you wouldn't get anywhere near the complexity of the HalfLife AI. Just to get simple agent reaction behavior is a two-man two-year job; to get what you're suggesting would be more like a ten man job for the engine and at least ten more to write scripts. Do you really think that no game programmer understands this, and that if it were possible with current techniques that nobody would have done it? Just how naïve do you believe we are?

Mistaking a name for functionality

• Ugh, the Emotion Engine. What a disappointment. Sure, I've played games in which I felt intense emotions besides fear, anxiety, rage, and excitement. But not that many.

Oh, for the love of christ. Did you really just say that? The Emotion Engine is a central processing unit. It does math. It has nothing to do with AI behavior, script content, or writing quality, from wherein players gain emotional responses. This is ridiculous. You might as well suggest that you're disappointed in your Spyder for not spinning a web in the garage, that the Reality Engine is on your screen instead of in the room, and that your WavePad keeps breaking in the water. I mean, really, this is just ridiculous. Did you run out of non-absurd filler?

If you had half a clue what you were talking about, of course, you wouldn't be calling the Emotion Engine a disappointment: Sony's shift to matrix computation, bandwidth filling instead of instruction chain filling, and vectorized computation was in fact an excellent tactic, allowing clueful developers to write games for the PS2 whose graphic quality rivalled the three year newer technology of the XBox. The EE was and is a marvel of design, whether or not you want to take a marketing title literally.

Oh, but wait:

• The only thing is, in order to create real emotion in games you have to create characters people care about, write stories that deal with real world emotions (or even science fiction story scenarios that deal with the nature of life and death), and show characters show can convey that emotion like those in Half-Life 2.

And what exactly the hell does that have to do with a CPU?

One which isn't clueless? WTF?

• Shifting direction just a little bit, we need better art direction in our games. Not just more polygons or slicker textures, but games with a better sense of visual style.

Agreed. In fact, had you stopped there, you might have had a point. Unfortunately:

• ... one of the first games ... in this generation of games

What? What ? Let me get this straight: you're bitching that something wasn't invented early enough ... in this generation? What ?

Granted I can't go quite as embarrassingly far back in history with this one as with the rest: graphic power wasn't really available in the 1960s, so art direction wasn't an issue back then. But, even if we ignore obvious things like Alone In The Dark and The Seventh Guest and Myst and Wing Commander 3 and Golden Axe and ToeJam and Earl and Under a Killing Moon and Red Star and Price of Persia 2 (the old one, not the ursurper) and Sands of Time and Ico and FF7 and Serious Sam and The Secret of Mana and Metal Gear Solid and Max Payne and the original Quake and DooM 2 and Xenosaga and Hexen and (my god, I could go on like that all day,) the assertion doesn't make sense. At all. You cannot complain about how long it took to invent something when you're artificially and uselessly constraining the beginning of the time frame. "I can't believe the Renaissance Europeans didn't invent Philosophy until 1700." "I can't believe they didn't invent hybrid modern cars until recently." "I can't believe it's not butter." I can't believe you're still talking.

• Sly, had real character.

Nice grammar. You're a professional writer?

Page the Second

... or, I told you I could get my foot down there.

Microsoft should do things they already do!

• Developers should take tips from Bungie's online methods, and their Website support -- and Microsoft should make these tools available to everyone

They do, jackass. Halo 2 is the testbed for the new networking software. Developers are building on that new networing platform right now.

• so that other first-party and all third-party Xbox 2 developers can modify, tweak and evolve these brilliant designs to make them even better.

XBox Live is better than PS Online specifically because the developers cannot replace the online components. That's why you can receive an invite for Game 2 while you're playing in Game 1. That's why you're not saddled with primitive online components when a developer underbudgets development time. In many cases, allowing the developer to upgrade standardized components is a Good Thing (tm). In the case of networking, which is all about uniformity, it would be a giant mistake; only a very few developers (iD, Blizzard, Westwood, and Epic spring to mind) have ever gotten networking even remotely right.

Voice Recognition for Dummies

• Wouldn't it be cool if you could talk to a game?

Huhuhuhuhu. You really think that in the face of IBM, Dragon Software and so on totally failing to make useful voice recognition even with hours of network training, that somehow game developers are going to get it right? There have been a few games, primarily first person shooters, which have used rudimentary voice-rec (one word commands, usually) to good effect; there's also a peripheral-toting Pokemon game just like that, and you're going to see a bunch of rudimentary attempts from novice DS developers which don't know better now that there's a pervasive microphone.

Still, here's a hint: if people have invested tens of millions of dollars in a technology outside gaming over the course of a decade and failed, chances are gaming can't do it yet either. Try to request feasible things instead, huh?

• Sure, Lifeline showed us the possibilities and the limitations of such a game.

No, it didn't. Even as far as this could be done, Lifeline didn't do a good job. At all. More spotlight, sir? Your plate seems to be full, but then youv'e shown a pattern of heaping it on, so maybe you'd like another helping.

• What's more, they talked smack to you while doing it.

You mean like Scorched Earth, Civilization, and so forth? Welcome to 1983; enjoy your stay.

• What about a game where you posing different questions to any of the civilians could bring you to the right place or get you into a fight?

Er. Like Ultima 2?

• There is a little work being done with Voice Recognition, but this area could prove to be more than just interesting.

Maybe after a major technological paradigm shift. This is a bit like saying "There is a little work being done with faster than light travel, but this area could prove to be more than just interesting." Sure, once it's more realistic than a wide-eyed clueless fanboyu dream. Meanwhile, back in the real world, it's actually difficult to do things like the candle-blowing trick of Luigi's, given the issues of background noise around the Nyquist Frequency and knowing the difference than a long puff with a low middle and two short puffs. Voice recognition is right up there with fusion, quantum computing, neural networks and antigravity: almost certainly possible, reproducible in experiments, and so difficult and badly understood that it's far too early to put them to any good use. This is something our children will work out. Sit down.

By the way, voice recognition isn't a proper noun; stop capitalizing it, mister professional editor man.

The world apparently began in 1992

• In the early 1990s, PC games used to ship in series.

Also the 1980s, 1970s and 1960s. Ever heard of Collosal Cave, Zork, Rogulikes, Wing Commander, Empire, Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, Pirates!, Maniac Mansion, King's Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest, Dragoon, Lightspeed, et cetera?

• They used to enable players to take their built-up character from one game and use it in the next.

As far as I know that was pioneered by Wizardry 2 in the late 1970s, but there may be something earlier; also, Bard's Tale allowed this, and I'm not honestly sure which of the two came first.

• It's pretty easy to do

No, it's isn't. It's shockingly difficult. Please don't comment on topics you don't know the first thing about. It imposes quite a few strictures on the new game engine to maintain reverse compatability, and means that one has to write a converter tool to whatever the new data structure is which handles every possible player behavior. This requires that the new game support at least everything that the previous game did, plus a way to translate, plus that everything from the old game can be used in conjunction with the new game.

Hell, even in data-abstracted engines with expansion packs that don't require a new engine, you almost never see this behavior, because it's so god damned difficult to implement. Ever wonder why you can't play your Civ3 game in Civ3 Conquests? Here's a hint: it's not because Firaxis is sloppy.

• and it forces the next game in the series to be more than just a game that fixes all the old problems

Actually, what it forces is that the next game in the series carry over all of the flaws in the engine and data structures from the previous games, including many limitations. If you really think that swapping the data files to make a new game extends a game's capacity, then you apparently don't understand engines at all. In fact, in the wide view of engine-based expansion packs, with the notable exception of games which include scripting languages, it's very difficult to find games which aren't rehashes of the same old damned thing. This goes totally counter to sense, to experience, and to history. Take a look at the Z Machine, SCUMM, the RCT engine, the SSI engine, or god knows how many others if you really can't figure this one out on your own.

Nitpickery

• ... market dominance. But things could always be better.

Man, your grammar is excellent. I can see that IGN's standards for authors and editors are extremely high, and that you put quite a bit of effort into this article. (Amusingly, Microsoft Word catches thirteen errors which seem to have slipped under your radar; did it occur to you to try using a checking tool which apparently is better with grammar than are you?)

Holy Jesus, The Misfeatures

• But things could always be better. For instance, in the latest NBA Live, when a new rookie talks to a coach, you should see him doing it and see the reaction of the team players.

Yeah, because the reason people play basketball games is to watch the facial expressions on 3D models, not to compete in a sport.

• Or, for instance, players should reap the benefits of maintaining a clean football or basketball program with real gameplay features.

Wait. Surely I'm misreading that. Are you actually suggesting that we spend the dirge time trying to keep virtual players off of drugs? What part of that sounds like fun to you? Might as well have a parking simulator for the stadium too, and also a puzzle challenge for roasting hot dogs at the concession stand; wouldn't want to leave out any gruesomely boring details in the quest for uber-realism. (A quick look into any fighting game involving training should quickly disbuse you of this preposterous notion; this has been tried many times, and has always failed. But, as the editor at a gaming magazine, surely you know that already?) Oh, also, in the next first person shooter let's make sure that gun maintenance is an issue, and that you have to gas up your jeep right before you go into battle in whatever WW2 game got released this week. Surely wasting time on boring things is a great idea for a game.

• but presenting them with more visual and visually interactive means is clearly the next step.

Does that sentence actually mean something? "More visual and visually interactive means" could refer to absolutely anything at all.

• let's focus on the off the field experiences.

Let's not and say we did. There is a time and place for everything, and the time and place for things other than sports is not in sports games. Similarly, I don't want to have to paint units in Starcraft, check the mechanics of my jet in After Burner, or make sure that I've got good sponsors in Nascar 2006.

Please think these things through before speaking them in public; it's embarrasing to read.

• There are three games that have had the most influence on this generation -- Grand Theft Auto III, Battlefront 1942, and Deus Ex

As DrgdHmstr would say, I've run out of time for laughing at you, and have pencilled in a second session tomorrow at three. If Deus Ex is the current generation, I can name two dozen more influential games off of the top of my head, and I'm sure my list isn't even remotely close to complete. Ever heard of Quake, Starcraft, Shenmue, Final Fantasy 7, Pokemon, Metal Gear Solid, Everquest, World of Warcraft or City of Heroes?

• Why isn't there some smart developer out there making a better, smarter, faster version of Warren Specter's Deus Ex? Developers! We want you to make it happen!

Oh, as if you'd know about it if they did. I'd love to provide examples of better Deus Exes, but you've really just hung from the game's nuthairs, rather than to specify what exactly about the game it is that you so like. (Of course, you're probably going to insist that being able to follow THREE WHOLE PATHS through the game is somehow groundbreaking, as if you didn't know that Maniac Mansion offers seven hundred twenty such paths no less than fifteen years earlier, and that Infocom games like Planetfall! and Leather Goddesses of Phobos offer so many completion behaviors that they're not realistically countable?)

Page the Third

... or, Scaring the Clueful by Saying Something Un-Dumb

It's getting stupider? How ?

• Why can't we play the cutscenes?

Because then they wouldn't be cutscenes. Of course, far be it for you to realize that many games do in fact allow you to play partially or in whole during pre-recorded filmed scenes, or in fact that there is an entire genre of shooting games which has been functioning in this fashion since the introduction of the LaserDisc.

"Oh but I want the films to change based on what you're doing!" Okay, great: then go back to Don Bluth's crucial Dragon's Lair, which isn't the first example of such, but is almost certainly the first one you can't pretend isn't exactly what you just asked for. Of course, there are all those literally thousands of cheapo film-based choose your own adventure games made back when Hypercard and Macromedia Director were cutting edge, but since you're such an obvious game historian, I probably don't need to point out to you that in fact you've been able to play the cutscenes since (as far as I know) 1988.

• Mr. Kojima has started the trend in his opus Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater by pressing R1 to take sneak peaks at Eva's boobs or zoom into an enemy's activities, but that should be just the beginning.

I guess that's where Mister Kojima goes back in time to invent something that was invented almost twenty years earlier? Amusingly, Hideo actually said that he got the idea from Dragon's Lair when questionned at E3 how he invented something so marvellous by an equally ignorant "game expert" at the E3 wherein that game was shown.

By the way, showing someone's boobs isn't interactivity, it's a puerile easter egg. Grow up, and actually try looking for something before bemoaning that it doesn't exist; there are better earlier examples on the PS2, let alone the catalog of them stretching back throughout history. This principle was one of the early ways in which Macintosh users pretended to have real computers way back possibly before you were born, by the sound of things.

• Developers: Make the medium more distinct, more radical, by making them more interactive.

Reviewers: make your articles more accurate, less disappointing, by knowing what the fuck you're talking about.

• Games in the next generation should feature more interactive cutscenes so you feel like you're actually controlling the events. Not just watching them.

Five grammar errors, an oxymoron, and a normal moron. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to point fingers. Interactive cutscenes indeed. It's as if you don't know what a cutscene is.

• Watching is for old folks who don't get it.

Writing is apparently for young folks who don't get it.

Wow, lots of developers must have time machines

• Peter Molyneux did something spectacular with Fable -- he gave gamers an RPG character that visually evolved throughout the course of the game, partially by means of their actions, and partially through manual customization.

Yeah. Um. Maybe you should familiarize yourself with Koei's Japanese NES library, because I really don't want to ask you to look into Atari racing games, Double Dragon 3, or Ultima: Underworld. Oh, right: I forgot to mention that this isn't even the first time Peter Molyneaux did that. You might want to check out Black and White's avatar, the first-person view in Dungeon Keeper, or Syndicate: American Revolt.

The earliest examples I can think of for visual evolution based on statistics, upgrades and player-controlled elements is an ancient Apple][ game called Car Builder, though I suppose the arguments could also be made for Bill Blass' Pinball Construction Set or Bard's Tale 3.

• Knights of the Old Republic and the most recent Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas do it too.

Also, a variety of SNES and PS1 wrestling games, Create a Fighter, One Must Fall 2092, and so on. Also Diablo. Oh, and Puzzle Fighter. Oh, and pretty much any racing game featuring realtime damage. Also various Quake1 mods, my favorite of which was the Viking mod. Ooooh, and then there's the Beavis, Butthead, Barney and Hitler patch for Wolfenstein 3D.

• Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando did this a little bit with weapons (you saw them visually upgrade)

Yeah, so has every first-person shooter pretty much in the history of first person shooters. Also, the original Metroid for NES. Oh right, also Battle for Olympus, Legend of Zelda, Gradius, Arkanoid, R-Type, Megaman, and arguably even Super Mario Brothers, Zaxxon and PacMan (because if swapping out the picture of a gun at the bottom of the screen to indicate different offense counts, then so do swapping out the pictures of Mario or the Ghosts.) And then there are always all the trainer games like Pokemon, Monster Rancher, and so forth.

• Can you imagine if all games featured this type of growth in the future? Wow.

Yeah, because clearly material evolution would make a huge difference in Tetris, Parappa the Rapper, Dance Dance Revolution and so on.

Grammar Champion Mumbles Falsehoods, Take 73

• But it's hard for developers to make different paths. There are all sorts of variables to figure out. Problems galore.

Not really. If you design for branch paths ahead of time, they're actually relatively easy to implement: you chop your ending up into a string of cutscenes, and swap out cutscenes based on a few booleans. Did they conquer the sky castle? Then show the Griffon flying triumphantly. Did they fail to save Princess Secondary? Then re-render the celebration at the end without the one king, and run that instead.

• being exactly as they are now? Strict linear affairs with no paths? RPGs that play just like movies?

Yeah, um, you might want to look into the Star Ocean series, the Ultima series, Castles, Shenmue and so forth. The primary problem with lots of endings is storage space: it's hard to store that many video clips prior to CDs. Nonetheless, some extremely old games managed; Alone in the Dark, Moraff's Dungeons, Dungeon Master, ADOM and Pale Horse spring to mind.

• Certainly, there is a room for all sorts of RPGs, but we want evolution.

Stop saying evolution and start saying specific things. It's obnoxious, and besides, that's not what evolution is.

• back to role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons and find new ways to make RPGs with multiple paths.

You know, none of the SSI games except Curse of the Azure Bonds and Eye of the Beholder offered multiple endings, and those two only offered a second ending if you completed all the little side quests. I appreciate that you're finally acknowledging history, but if you're going to do that, please at least be correct, yeah?

• People who play PC RPGs swear that American developers Bioware, the once great Black Isle, and Bethesda did, and are, continuing to do superb jobs at creating the only true role-playing videogames. Ones that permit you to play the game the way you see fit.

Seven grammar errors. You need to read a book, chummer.

Holy crap, one I can't complain about

• You'd finish a mission, hear that congratulatory music and without zapping back and forth to some random headquarters, you'd continue on your merry way. This aspect was easily lost among all the other excellent ones, but it was made painfully clear just how good it was when True Crime: Streets of LA came out.

Agreed wholeheartedly, although Resident Evil might present a more stark example. That said, streaming engines are difficult to write; the generally low quality of software development in gaming (don't waste my time insisting otherwise) precludes this happening in any but AA titles or titles which license engines from other people.

• Games should be more experiential, where you unconsciously enter into mission after mission without it being hammered into your skull.

You mean like Toejam and Earl 2, where you might not be told about a mission until you'd already completed it? See also Shenmue. There is an alternate approach, which is unfortunately largely out of practice: instead of providing missions per sé, provide optional subtasks to a given game segment to which can be returned. The only modern game I'm aware of which does this is Devil May Cry, though there are entire genres I just don't play, so I might be missing out on better contemporary examples.

Page the Final

... or, Thank god, it really does have an end!

Yay for Ignorance

• Games should have more interactive environments. This is an obvious one.

Yep. Another obvious one is that physics systems are fantastically computationally expensive; even with current gaming technology at the PC level, it's difficult to pull of non-rudimentary physics in realtime. You really need to get clear of "why isn't this done" as a lead from "this isn't yet practical." Doom 3's ragdoll physics engine wasn't iD's first attempt at a physics engine; they pulled the same from Quake3 specifically because they couldn't get a level of quality they liked within realistic machine performance for the day. Read carmack's .plan files.

• But then again, why haven't more games done it?

Because it's significantly more expensive to figure out how something falls down than it is to paint it onscreen, even with a machine with no hardware 3D support.

• Trees should splinter when shot, buildings should collapse when bombed, and walls should be graffitied.

Oh, you don't mean real interactivity, you mean swapping resources on simple triggers? Well, hell, son, just go back to Duke Nukem, Red Faction, Descent Freespace, or a variety of Wolfenstein and DooM patches which made "level objects" out of non-moving creatures in order to use creature death code to fake what you're suggesting. Back in the world of actual development, though, a real trend in future gaming might be arbitrary development models in which one doesn't specify event behavior for nouns, but rather for materials, so that level authors' work is all automagically modifiable.

To wit, with this ridiculously short sighted reductionist view of scene malleability, you're falling well within the domain of UMoria from the early 1980s, which is the first game I'm aware of wherein the player can alter the level during play (IE, not as a level author, and not as part of the level design.) There may be earlier examples; that's just the first one I can think of. There is also a reasonable argument for Zelda, wherein one could burn bushes like an Elven Jesus.

• You should be able to punch and make a hole in a wall

You can shoot bullet holes in walls in Duke Nukem 3D, and you can actually blast holes in walls in better portal-based engines such as Red Faction. On the other hand, certain game designs specifically preclude level editing; the amount of added sophistication one needs to follow an event tree out correctly in the case of a game where players can blast their way through simple limiting factors like walls is massive.

• or break through it while in an action game (somewhat like what's happened in fighting games)

Action games did it first. Depending on how strict you want to be about altering the level as a side effect of play, this can be ascribed as a first to R-Type, Strider or Rise of the Triad.

• You should be able to bust open a street and drop down into the sewers, set fire to a city, or flood an enemy compound by controlling the water pipes -- and not in cutscenes either.

The first one is realistic, though I honestly think it's pretty stupid; nonetheless, if someone put a sewer in many FPSes, that would indeed be possible, and in fact you have exactly that opportunity in Red Faction 2 in more than one place. The second one is also realistic, though more difficult; even using a simplified contagion model for fire spreading, it's hard to get the progress on something like that to appear realistic. Still, we're agreed: that would be kind of cool.

The final one is totally unrealistic. Flood fill is expensive in 2D, let alone geometric 3D; with careful level design one could make it an issue of a simplified water table, which has been done in dozens of games (the earliest one you've played is probably Sonic the Hedgehog, but earlier games like Thexeder do this too.) However, if you want realistic flooding, you're in for trouble: you need to be able to slowly rise a localized table, then spill it when a spigot line is found; you need to be able to model tracks and fissures; you need to be able to degrade materials; you need to have a 3D model of the entire goddamned level at once; et cetera. Arguably, this may be more expensive than a proper physics system for most forms of 3D engine. There are cheats one could use in a portal engine to make this less horrible, but the upshot would be unsatisfying in the extreme.

• And you should not only encounter totally interactive environments, but they should react with more realism. When an enemy shoots at you while you're hiding in a wooden house, the bullets should pierce through the wood.

A message for the Lord High Arbiter of How English Works: there are quite a few games which do that. I've already named half a dozen, and explained why doing this in a pervasive fashion isn't realistic on modern hardware without major hackery and game design specifically to support such a thing.

As an editor, you should probably know better than to start a sentence, let alone a paragraph, with a conjunction.

• So, we all craved the ability to play cooperatively and online through the story mode in Halo 2. What's stopping developers from doing this on next generation systems? Why not enable say three or four players to play through the story-mode of a first-person shooter as a team or clan?

Uh. Most networked FPSes offer cooperative play. DooM is the first well-known example, but there are earlier examples such as OMF2092. Moreover, this is available in many other kinds of game, from RPGs (modern D&D themed games, Star Ocean) to fighting games (Tekken Force.) What's stopping developers from doing something they've been doing for ten years? Nothing at all. A better question might be what's stopping you from doing research before claiming that something doesn't exist. Just because Halo 2 fails to do something doesn't mean all developers are magically prevented from doing the same something. Halo 2 doesn't run tetris! What's stopping people from porting tetris to the new systems?

Genre Maturity; Writer Immaturity

• But I love good stories, and I love adventure games. And I crave playing an RPG like Knights of the Old Republic in full action. Why isn't there a game like that now?

Hey Eternal Avatar of Grammaticus (five errors in the above three sentences,) it may interest you to know about things like City of Heroes. I'm getting tired of the gigantic lists of the same damned games over and over again, so I'll just point out that this is every MMO in history, every gothic-themed FPRPG, the entire MGS line, the newer Prince of Persias, and so on. I do find it amusing that after asking why something doesn't exist, you provide two very low quality examples of it actually existing.

• Why aren't there role-playing games that seamlessly blend action and role-playing?

Cough Diablo cough World of Warcraft cough Evercrack cough Clueless Author cough.

Eep.

• Vivendi Universal and Starbreeze had it right. They created a game based on an existing universe but purposely did NOT make their game, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay on the movie. And THANK GOD.

Nine grammar errors, two conjugative errors and two forms of just tacky writing, all rolled up into three little sentence fragments. That's got to be a personal best.

• Use your imaginations, build something new, tell us a new story, and create games in the universe but not directly on a particular movie or TV Show.

Golgo 13 ring a bell? No? Then how about one of those four LotR games for the PS2, where you were shooting orcs with barrels of black powder on their backs, when not only did no such scene exist in the movie, but wherein black powder was unheard of and where Saruman was deploying a single instance of a unique new weapon? Oh, or wait, there are always the Simpsons games, the TMNT games, the Batman games, the Superman games, the X-Men games, the James Bond games, the (snore) oh god I fell asleep because my giving of painfully obvious examples was so boring.

In short; in long; inside out

• In short, there are dozens of ideas we assuredly share when we think of improving games.

Not those of us with clue, thanks. Nearly every suggestion in this list is either technically unrealistic or was in place by no later than the early 80s. When you're done catching up, let us know.

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Let me be the first to lambast IGN, as well as the rest of the reviewing industry, for whining about a problem which is entirely their own fault. The plaintive cry "why won't developers just give us the Sun and the Moon?" is not aggravating solely because it's utterly clueless, nor because of the generally bargain basement quality of the writing-tripe and observational-tripe entailed. What you don't seem to grasp is that the stagnation in gaming is entirely the fault of the reviewing industry. Sure, sure, blame it on the publishers, the developers, the distributors, the stores, the technology, the foresight, the invention, the resources, the storage space, the quality of writers, whatever the hell you want to. Occasionally one or more of those processes really is at fault: there are a few bad developers out there; there are publishers which won't take risks; there are developers who screw up; there are stores which refuse to carry certain content; et cetera ad nauseum.

Back in meatspace, though, that's got approximately one half of nothing to do with anything. Y'see, the reviewers have the gaming industry by the balls: there's so much redundant crap out there and the advertisements and blurbs are so far from honest that gamers tend to go to the magazines in order to get opinions and insights. Problematically, the magazines don't leverage this power in order to develop the industry. Rather, they give out 7/10 ratings to crap games which advertised with them; they review only the gigantic budget titles; they never complain that a game is the same goddamned thing warmed over once again. Sure, they complain that all games are repetitive, but far be it for a reviewer to actually be critical of one of the games they've reviewed. Everyone plays the party line, reviews the big boys' titles, et cetera.

There are tons of excellent, novel games out there. I've never seen Chronic Logic written up in a magazine, even though their very first game addressed no fewer than six of the "points" given in the "article" being responded to. I'm not going to waste time rattling off my personal opinions of games that the reviewing industry has just totally missed the boat on; there are too many, I've done that too many other places, and people may disagree with my list (often for good reasons.)

Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up.

Every single whining little magazine bastard has the chance to change this trend. Start reviewing the small developers. Start reviewing promising amateur games. Take a look at SpriteAttack, PDRoms or any of the platform development sites. If you can't see games you like, start looking fucking elsewhere. This is much akin to the police whining about crime, the courts about justice, the newspapers about public awareness, or any other such thing.

You dumbasses are the only people which can foster novel development. Publishers do not publish games which the public doesn't know about. If IGN, EGM, GameZone, GameSpy, or any of you other jackhats would get down from your faux-ivory towers and mingle with the lowly amateur developers, you might find things which aren't the same regurgitated pap that the major publishers continue to crank out. You are the only people with the attachments to the public purview which can fix this. Quit whining and do something about it, god damnit.

God, but do I hate reviewers which fail to understand their place in the machine. Between your knowledge of gaming, your insight into future approaches to gaming, your wisdom regarding development, and the near Strunkian quality of writing herein, I tend to wonder how the hell you got your job.