I remember reading an article with a developer commenting on how nice it was to work on a Sudoku title instead of a massive crunch-mode-for-several-months A-list project (like, say the Halo games). Yet according to you, the latter are "lazy", and take vacations when they feel like it? So you don't know the kind of manic schedule that movie productions keep either. How much deeper does the hole you're digging for yourself here go?
making a game now is no easy task really, compared to older times. People's expectations are higher and higher each generation, which means that game creators must worry about more things than just gameplay. Also, the more complex and advanced a technology gets, the more stuff you re expected to pack in, which in turn makes you need a larger team, and more time to impliment. Of course, the larger the game, the more complex the game, the more time it will spend in testing and debugging. Often people complain that game X is short and doesn't feel as epic as it should (GoW), but they fail to realize that if they want epic games (no pun intended) they have to wait - Too Human for example has been in the backburner since PS1. Yesterday, I watched the video regarding Too Human and the game is not only massive according to the developers claims, it's also very different from what was originally planned , now including online gameplay etc. - and if it turns out to be a good game (Which it should), then be sure that the sequels will put great pressure on the developer in order to be hits. You have to innovate and this takes time, money, and a lot of effort - because at the same time, you don't want to be out of touch with the original. Making games is hard. Making worthy sequels is harder though.
+1 Halo 1's textures were absolutely beautiful. I remember zooming in on rocks with my pistol just to look at them, lol.
Thats the chicken and the egg: like the big executive who talks about how easy was when he started in the company as a simple employee, but you can bet he was (at the time) dreaming of reaching the level in which he is right now. But according to your rhetoric concept a hobo should be happy becos he doesnt have to get up in the morning and go to work....
Well then why don't I just tie Halo 3 discs to my feet and skate on Paul Bunyan's giant skillet to cook his flapjacks!
It's nothing like the chicken and the egg, and it's not much like the big exec looking back on his early days. It's about people prefering smaller workloads - and congratulations for sidestepping the real issue, which is that you think the developers of A-list titles are lazy and take time off. You still haven't justified this. This doesn't make sense either. If you can't grasp that less stressful titles can be more enjoyable for staff... I just don't know how much simpler I can make that equation for you. If you don't have anything to add to the debate, do us a favour and leave out the irrelevant, nonsensical metaphors.
Nope, I said bungie were that, not everybody. Sure its easier to make a small game, the problem is that unless is something out of this world is not going to be groundbreaking, not a chance. My point which I made clear 20 posts before is simple: I would like to see Bungie working with the limited resources other studios had to go on with and then come up with a game thats at least decent and up to the hype. They had (and still havE) a lot of advantages others studios would dream of, and practically every mid-to-high project today has crunchtime some way into development, so dont talk me about how hard is to work in bungie.
I bet right now Bungies just having some fun testing all there hard work. Thats probably the best part.
Well DUH! when tetris was released it wasnt at the low end of the technical spec (when compared to other games of the day). it was like Lumines or EEE today: an intelligent puzzle with good graphics.
I appreciate you feel the need to try and shoot down whatever it is I'm saying, but you need to try harder. Tetris was at the low end of graphical intensity in its day, in fact I was watching a documentary on it last night which pointed out that it almost didn't get picked up because it was so drab compared to the action games of the time. The original Gameboy version (which is the most widely-distributed and well known) is about as minimalist as a game can be graphically. Keep trying!
