Gamespot.com has a great article up this week discussing a rant session with a panel of six experts in Austin, TX. It covers the recent decisions of most developers (not unexpectedly) to copy the immensely popular formula of World of Warcraft (WoW). Playing Guild Wars, I am exposed indirectly to some aspects of this MMORPG. I’ve never had a problem with anything Arena.net has done with Guild Wars, and I feel that they support it wholeheartedly. In fact, Most of the upper echelon of Arena.net consists of former Blizzard employees. The Arena.net website is full of great information about the development status and problems of both previous Blizzard releases and Guild Wars.
Gamespot’s article shows the world that the common idea of copying a successful formula (i.e., Grand Theft Auto III) is still in full force. What is interesting is that many developers and programmers feel the same way we do: games are rushed to meet release dates and earlier promises have no chance of being kept. I still remember Fable as being hyped as the game to end all games, but upon release, it was found to be so lackluster that the creator apologized for failed expectations. Budget concerns and schedules are the true enemy, ending many games before they have a chance to liftoff.
Being an avid classic gamer, I see an easy solution: less ambitious games. Often times, it feels like technology takes off so quickly that it takes a long time for developers to catch up. Systems die before their full potential is reached, sacrificed to the next generation. But, we live in a material world, and it’s just to hard to sell old hardware when the new, pretty pictures come out in the magazines.
I’ve been in this system for a long time, way back to the Atari, and all I can hope for is just that little bit of extra support for an “old” system that is fully capable of producing memorable games.
-mlbradley
durden26@comcast.net