Just to note: Gordon Walton, Rich Vogel, and Damion Schubert doesn't make for a "Studio without experience."
Yes, that's what I meant. I just didn't find a good way to explain.
Basically those guys bring the "old" where the "new" was instead welcome. While in that team I don't see much of Bioware, which is where the "old" (as a standard of quality) was instead welcome.
Basically I'm advocating for a Bioware studio that is indeed Bioware and NEW to the genre. Instead of a Bioware studio that of Bioware only carries the name and behind which instead hide just the same old faces.
Same guys wearing new hats? I don't buy that.
Are we in the entertainment business, or the technology business?
Entertainment through technology, imho. I like a lot new technology when it is aimed at something. I don't like instead technology without a purpose.
If you remember that last comment you write you know how I really don't care about "cutting-edge", because I consider WoW cutting edge, as I explained. Because it serves a purpose wonderfully. And because they have the most polished engine, despite you and other people dismiss it as trivial just because you think the models have a low polycount.
I can understand if a small company takes that "shortcut" because or you go down that path, or you just sit and stare (actually 90% of the smaller companies are made just of tech guys who have no clue about how to make a game but just finish to develop technology for years, till they give up). But for a bigger studio I think that investing to build your own technology and tools is *required*, not optional. Technology is an "enabler". You can do nothing without it.
So we are always in the same scenario: "I wish this would be possible, but it isn't."
Games should also bring forward that goal. Make possible today what yesterday wasn't. This ALSO happen through development at a low level. As a designer you WANT things to happen. You can workaround the limits to an extent, but this is a race to lower the bar, not to rise it. You continue to amputate your ideas just because you know that things aren't possible with what you have available.
Take my idea on the server distribution. That's just not possible if you don't push the technology yourself. I thought it from the design perspective, to achieve PURE design goals and not to show pretty effects on screen. But it's still not possible if you buy an engine developed by someone else and don't work on that technology by yourself. Take Guild Wars and the way it is built, the whole server infrastructure, the streaming technology and all the rest. That game just couldn't exist if they were going to buy an engine.
To not consider that the great majority of games built on non proprietary technology finish also to be very buggy and with an awful performance because the programmers have no deep knowledge about it and have to adapt to those problem (the original memory leak in DAoC that corrupted the graphic is a perfect example).
In particular for a mmorpg project that is planned to last, not having a direct control over your technology and what is possible to do with it, is already a quite consistent limit. The technology that you develop is a capital, the technology you buy is just an expense.
So you can take the shortcut and arrive sooner to the point. But this also means that what you can do with it is also strongly limited and the technology will become obsolete soon, along with your game. Or you can take the longer and harder path and develop all you need from scratch, tailored exactly around your needs, like a progressive investment that will only show its value in the longer term.
I can see how often you don't have that choice. But I would also assume that the bigger studios have a bit of more freedom.
Re: Bioware takes the shortcut
Just to note: Gordon Walton, Rich Vogel, and Damion Schubert doesn't make for a "Studio without experience."
Yes, that's what I meant. I just didn't find a good way to explain.
Basically those guys bring the "old" where the "new" was instead welcome. While in that team I don't see much of Bioware, which is where the "old" (as a standard of quality) was instead welcome.
Basically I'm advocating for a Bioware studio that is indeed Bioware and NEW to the genre. Instead of a Bioware studio that of Bioware only carries the name and behind which instead hide just the same old faces.
Same guys wearing new hats? I don't buy that.
Are we in the entertainment business, or the technology business?
Entertainment through technology, imho. I like a lot new technology when it is aimed at something. I don't like instead technology without a purpose.
If you remember that last comment you write you know how I really don't care about "cutting-edge", because I consider WoW cutting edge, as I explained. Because it serves a purpose wonderfully. And because they have the most polished engine, despite you and other people dismiss it as trivial just because you think the models have a low polycount.
I can understand if a small company takes that "shortcut" because or you go down that path, or you just sit and stare (actually 90% of the smaller companies are made just of tech guys who have no clue about how to make a game but just finish to develop technology for years, till they give up). But for a bigger studio I think that investing to build your own technology and tools is *required*, not optional. Technology is an "enabler". You can do nothing without it.
So we are always in the same scenario: "I wish this would be possible, but it isn't."
Games should also bring forward that goal. Make possible today what yesterday wasn't. This ALSO happen through development at a low level. As a designer you WANT things to happen. You can workaround the limits to an extent, but this is a race to lower the bar, not to rise it. You continue to amputate your ideas just because you know that things aren't possible with what you have available.
Take my idea on the server distribution. That's just not possible if you don't push the technology yourself. I thought it from the design perspective, to achieve PURE design goals and not to show pretty effects on screen. But it's still not possible if you buy an engine developed by someone else and don't work on that technology by yourself. Take Guild Wars and the way it is built, the whole server infrastructure, the streaming technology and all the rest. That game just couldn't exist if they were going to buy an engine.
To not consider that the great majority of games built on non proprietary technology finish also to be very buggy and with an awful performance because the programmers have no deep knowledge about it and have to adapt to those problem (the original memory leak in DAoC that corrupted the graphic is a perfect example).
In particular for a mmorpg project that is planned to last, not having a direct control over your technology and what is possible to do with it, is already a quite consistent limit. The technology that you develop is a capital, the technology you buy is just an expense.
So you can take the shortcut and arrive sooner to the point. But this also means that what you can do with it is also strongly limited and the technology will become obsolete soon, along with your game. Or you can take the longer and harder path and develop all you need from scratch, tailored exactly around your needs, like a progressive investment that will only show its value in the longer term.
I can see how often you don't have that choice. But I would also assume that the bigger studios have a bit of more freedom.