I don't think that there is any more innovation that anyone can do about graphics and 3D to really lead the industry in a new direction. Especially, since we have 3rd party developers like AGEIA specializing in particle physics, and things like the Unreal 3 engine, innovation in this direction won't give any one game company an edge over another.

Having said that, I think the area that is most undeveloped and in need of innovation in today's games are gameplay and character realism. I especially hate it when an enemy, or a boss character has 5% HP left, and he still acts and moves like he's still in his prime condition! How utterly fake. The reverse is also true. I also hate it when the main player takes some damage and acts like he's still in his prime. Maybe something like progressively blurrier vision as the main player takes on more damage may compensate for a game's lack of realism. Another thing that I've always been amazed of in games is how a mere mortal player, like in the Unreal Tournament series, can carry a massive arsenal of weapons around, when he only has two hands, some clothes on, and a backpack to carry all of that (if he is lucky to find one). It's just physically impossible, unless he's dragging a mobile weapons dispenser behind him...

ageia was acquired by nvidia last year fyi.

I think the true problem is developers/publishers do not ant to take risks given the increased dev costs. So you get the same junk (madden, final fantasy 1,000,000 anyone) that we have been suffering w/ for years.
granted these are successful games and im sure a lot of the populate enjoys them but they not innovative.

when i think of innovation i think of games that truly changed things.

doom 2.
half life
master of orion
sim city
rail road tycoon
out of this world
early wing commander series
final fantasy 2 for the snes
fzero
street fighter 2
system shock 2
fallout
heroes of might and magic
dune battle for arrakis
red alert 1
uprising

i wish dev would take more risks and stop/reduce sequeltitus
right now we are stuck in the dark ages of gaming

Tell me about it... the Dark Ages, that is... I can't even play newer games b/c they don't support my laptop's intel integrated 945GM graphics... How hard would it be for a game company to "strip" down graphical features of a game, so that they would at least run on a standard laptop?

No offense but you need a better graphics card.

Developers have to sell games to survive. Unfortuantly 95% of people would know a great even if it bite them, instead they focus on graphics. Plus you really want to get your employees on board the project. Telling your artists that they will be limited to intel garbage intergrated graphics is not the kind of stuff that would pump me up.

I have no problem with developers designing for the leading edge GPU. It's the way towards innovation! But, wouldn't it also make more economic sense to design a stripable game where you can strip down graphical features after the fact of design and development, so they could run on a laptop? Your original drive and inspiration is there for high GPU users to experience, but also don't forget about the rest of the mass, who can't afford a new laptop every year.

An anology is Microsoft developing the Ultimate edition of their recent OS(es) as the way they envisioned an OS should behave and function. During the entire planning process, they also made sure they could strip down features, while still allowing their original vision to shine thru for those who would purchase the Ultimate edition.

What I'm trying to say is this... There's a difference between designing a game for a laptop, and designing a game to work on a laptop.

P.S.: Plz gamesas, don't design your future games for a laptop, but design them to work on a laptop...!!

Cheers!!

i think thats what he was saying, not that he wanted games to run at full speed on his laptop but that they COULD run. ( no matter how shitty the visual result )


IMO the most under used facet of videogames is the concept of expansion packs. look at how successful the Warhammer: 40k (dawn of war) line was. relic built a quality engine and then stuck with it, 4 full games with interlinking content that rewarded players who picked up earlier games.

by all accounts fallout 2 SHOULD have been a expansion pack to fallout 1 ( with a few minor plot tweaks it it would have worked phenomenally. )

ultima 7: serpent isle is the undisputed pinnacle of the ultima series, would it be that if it had shipped with a brand new engine? probably not ....

i know I'm kinda contradicting the topic of this thread by advocating that game developers recycle content but i feel that the reason that theres no new innovation is because people keep pounding on the "NEW" button too much. i think that 90% of why games from a certain "other company" do so well is because the contain level editors that, in effect, empower the user base to generate expansion packs for themselves.

( not that the vile-blood svcking-rat bastard "other company" is unique or innovative in this case. where would warcraft and C&C be if those games didn't have level editors and you could only play the retail maps? )

to get this back on topic or at least back to gamesas products: Baulders gate (BG 2, and the other expansion packs), PS:T, and icewind dale (and its expansion packs ) all did extreamly well. (i personally didn't like the BG line but that is due to Bioware's "format" than the quality of the game) IMO the resulting quality of those games is due to the basic engine being previously compleeted, so the developers could spend 90% of there time on content instead of say 60/40 engine/content. one could almost say that all the games i just listed are pretty damned close to being expansion packs of one another.

( i think most games now a days probably spend 80/20 even with out of the box engines like the UE3 because its not good enough to use the engine you have to make it look like it doesn't use the engine. ) hay, "OC" ..... i got something for ya right here! _|_ (^.^) _|_


"MMO-RPG" = "Mass Market Oriented - Repetitive Profit Genera"
- damned things still svcked me in ...

developers try to hit a middle ground.

also you could always put your color to 16 bit instead of 32.