Pre-2000 Proofs of Decline?

[Destroid]

How about syndicate wars?

Syndicate Wars is good.


Honestly, after watching a lot of Matt Chat, I suspect a large portion of the switch to 3d problems came from 3d being forced upon a generation of artists and designers who had done nothing but 2d up to that point. They were not experienced technically or otherwise with how to exploit it and their output took a real nosedive in quality as a result.

 

[felipepepe]

I just remenbere perhaps the most declined title of the 90's:

Yeah, let's turn King Quest into a 3D action game... I should try to find a interview on this.

 

[Luzur]

the only thing i came come up with are all those "interactive" multi-media CD movies/games they crunched out in the 90's.

 

[Infinitron]

I just remenbere perhaps the most declined title of the 90's:

Yeah, let's turn King Quest into a 3D action game... I should try to find a interview on this.

Oh, there's plenty of post-mortem whining from Roberta Williams about this title, if you search for it.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Games that benefitted from going from 2D to 3D?

Duke Nukem 3D.
Ultima Underworld.

Possibly Lemmings 3D, though it's been a while.

Some might say Heretic 2 and/or Hexen 2, but I haven't played them, so no comment.

 

[Infinitron]

That's not the type of 3D we're talking about.

 

[Marsal]

That's not the type of 3D we're talking about.

But... but it has 3D in the title, bro!

 

[taxalot]

I just remenbere perhaps the most declined title of the 90's:

Yeah, let's turn King Quest into a 3D action game... I should try to find a interview on this.

I never went far. I remember playing it a bit, stumbling to a scene where you see some monster shitting in uh, the shitter, and the hero cutting the throat of a monster from behind, and uninstalling it.

 

[Telengard]

Ken Williams and Cris Matthews KQ8 quotes:

-Ken Williams, CEO of Sierra-Online, InterAction, Fall 1996, pg 10

KQ8 will be 3d ... the design goal was to be 1/2 Super Mario 64 and 1/2
Kings Quest. The characters are 99% new, although the setting is still
Daventry. There is a bunch about the game in InterAction, and also, if
you can, try to see the video that is on the Roberta Williams Anthology
CD. It shows some of KQ8, but most interesting is hearing Roberta talk
about the game. I'm hoping I can think of a way to get the video into
wide distribution -- for people that already own most of Roberta's games
it isn't worth buying the anthology just to see the video -- but, it is
definitely worth seeing.

Chris Matthews quoting his dad's thoughts in spring 1997 on why King's Quest had to evolve in the market (Interaction, Spring 1997);

"The traditional adventure game is dead."...it's time to change adventure games at least as much as the gamers themselves have changed over the last few years. It's time to make them "less pretentious. More open-ended, faster paced, and just more fun to play than they have been." After all..., "what's the use of creating these super-serious, overly literary, and downright studious games when the major audience that will play them played a Nintendo or a Sega last year? These folks are used to playing games where the correct answer to any problem might be jumping over something, hitting it with a hammer, or maybe even shooting it with a big bazooka. Why hassle through all the literary pretense when most of today's gamers just want to blow something up."

2003? Ken admitted had he continued Sierra would have stopped producing 'adventure games' (at least in the traditional sense altogether);

By the time Sierra was sold, it was mostly a non-game company. In about 1990 I made the decision to focus away from games. This came about as a result of a discussion with Bill Gates himself. It's a bit of a long story, but we had been talking about Sierra and Microsoft doing a project together when I got bold enough to ask Bill if he would ever consider buying Sierra (I had always had tremendous respect for Microsoft, and would have teamed up with them in a minute). His answer changed Sierra's future.

People at Sierra remember this meeting well, because I came back and changed the company dramatically. Bill said that he had just noted the bankruptcy of United Artists. His contention was that they were in a hit driven business, and that ultimately in a hit driven business you run into a time of no hits. Sierra lived and died with the best seller charts. Fortunately, the charts were very good to us, but Bill's contention was they had also been good to United Artists. Ultimately, you run out of hits and die. It might take a hundred years, as was the case with United Artists, but it always happens. My goal with Sierra was to create a company that would live forever. I didn't want to be a "hit machine".

I set a new goal for Sierra to exit the hit business, and reorganized the company around a new vision to be 1/3rd education, 1/3rd productivity and 1/3rd perennial products. The first two categories should be obvious, but the last needs some explaining. My goal was to find products that could be "rev'ed" each year, such as Microsoft's Flight Simulator, or Electronic Arts Madden Football. I wanted to find an array of products that could be done better each year. Flight (and other) Simulators fit this category, as did construction sets. Products like Caesar fit this definition. The Incredible Machine.

By the time the company was sold, I had about 80-90% of revenue that matched my vision. It's not clear that I would have continued in adventure games at all. My guess is that this vision won't make me popular with adventure gamers, but it was working.

 

[felipepepe]

what's the use of creating these super-serious, overly literary, and downright studious games when the major audience that will play them played a Nintendo or a Sega last year? These folks are used to playing games where the correct answer to any problem might be jumping over something, hitting it with a hammer, or maybe even shooting it with a big bazooka. Why hassle through all the literary pretense when most of today's gamers just want to blow something up."

This is wonderfull, thank you.

 

[Infinitron]

Wow. First time I've seen that. But couldn't you say that Sierra adventure games were sort of "perennial" in their own way?

 

[felipepepe]

Wow. First time I've seen that. But couldn't you say that Sierra adventure games were sort of "perennial" in their own way?

Yeah, it's funny to hear that, since the older adventure games are quite "perennial", basically using the same engine and all that... Only in the 90's they started to completly change every release...

 

[Telengard]

The key is the annual release. Annual release, forever, like sports games have. There's often a major push for that, because it fits so much more neatly into an investment portfolio. Solid, steady, safe annual income.

Currently it's called annualization.

 

[Infinitron]

The key is the annual release. Annual release, forever, like sports games have. There's often a major push for that, because it fits so much more neatly into an investment portfolio. Solid, steady, safe annual income.

Today's "annual releases" are nothing compared to what Sierra was doing in the late 80's and early 90's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sierra_Entertainment_video_games

Sierra was always about quantity over quality (although their quality was not bad)

LucasArts was about the quality.

 

[Telengard]

But they never got, say, King's Quest back onto a yearly release schedule after the first couple. The idea is that each and every IP must release a unit every year. In perpetuity.

It's the big thing in investment circles.

Ubisoft are no stranger to the yearly franchise model, the publisher has proven that with the announcement of the third Assassin’s Creed game, Assassin's Creed Revelations, in as many years.

Now they want to bring that model and its success over to other franchises, as CEO Yves Guillemot explained during last week’s annual investor’s call. He said: ”What is impressive with the release year after year of Assassin’s Creed is our ability to deliver every time with a high level of innovation and creativity in a large and very diverse open world. There is no other open world console game that is coming on a yearly basis.

“We are applying the very [same] product template to our other strong franchises to bring them back to Assassin’s Creed blockbuster profitable status.”

 

[felipepepe]

It doesn't work that well on non-EA sports game, they eventually burn out, like the Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk franchises.

 

[Telengard]

I wholly agree. The idea sucks. And it's wrongheaded. But, it is what Ken Williams was declaring: no more adventure games from Sierra because the IPs can't be annualized. Instead, they were going to concentrate on IPs they thought could be.

 

[Infinitron]

felipepepe There's more of that stuff here: http://www.telltalegames.com/forums...d60596488aeca621961b2a&p=583549&postcount=233

 

[felipepepe]

felipepepe There's more of that stuff here: http://www.telltalegames.com/forums...d60596488aeca621961b2a&p=583549&postcount=233

Yeah, but they are more about Sierra & KQ details... that quote about how snes/sega fans changed the audience was pure gold.

 

[Kz3r0]

By the time Sierra was sold, it was mostly a non-game company. In about 1990 I made the decision to focus away from games. This came about as a result of a discussion with Bill Gates himself. It's a bit of a long story, but we had been talking about Sierra and Microsoft doing a project together when I got bold enough to ask Bill if he would ever consider buying Sierra (I had always had tremendous respect for Microsoft, and would have teamed up with them in a minute). His answer changed Sierra's future.

Oh, look, the same guy that we have to thank for Xbox too.

 

[tuluse]

By the time Sierra was sold, it was mostly a non-game company. In about 1990 I made the decision to focus away from games. This came about as a result of a discussion with Bill Gates himself. It's a bit of a long story, but we had been talking about Sierra and Microsoft doing a project together when I got bold enough to ask Bill if he would ever consider buying Sierra (I had always had tremendous respect for Microsoft, and would have teamed up with them in a minute). His answer changed Sierra's future.

Oh, look, the same guy that we have to thank for Xbox too.

I don't think so. Gates hasn't been involved with the business decisions of MS for a long time.

Blame Steve Balmer for that.

 

[tuluse]

Mario Galaxy is still floaty compared to the 2D games. It's just harder to judge distances in 3D, that's why you get a double jump and spend much time running around in wide spaces and jumping on wide platforms. It's the same thing with every 3D platformer. People would ragequit trying to land on platforms as small as some of the ones in Mario 3.

Even without all that, I don't see how 3D is incline.

Crash Bandicoot did some nice things with 3D platforming.

 

[Renegen]

Very nice quote from Ken Williams. Still, there is some truth in that. You need a steady stream of income to have stable finances, it's the only way to have the company go forward. It's quite an inevitable part of any business, you want it to be predictable and safe and Sierra was turned into that.

What's interesting is that I was a huge Sierra fanboy in the 1990s. I subscribed to their magazine, only downloaded their demos and religiously bought what they advertized. Since Sierra had sort of collapsed later on I tried to research and never found an answer why. All I found were countless re-organizations, layoffs, cancelled games and more layoffs. Now with Ken William's quote it all makes sense. The destruction of Sierra was to accomplish his 1/3 x 3 vision of financial security. By the time it was sold to Activision, Sierra was a shell of a company. I would be interested in knowing what Sierra's revenues were when it was sold to Activision, but I imagine they were less than in its "hit years".

 

[Infinitron]

What's interesting is that I was a huge Sierra fanboy in the 1990s. I subscribed to their magazine, only downloaded their demos and religiously bought what they advertized. Since Sierra had sort of collapsed later on I tried to research and never found an answer why. All I found were countless re-organizations, layoffs, cancelled games and more layoffs. Now with Ken William's quote it all makes sense. The destruction of Sierra was to accomplish his 1/3 x 3 vision of financial security. By the time it was sold to Activision, Sierra was a shell of a company. I would be interested in knowing what Sierra's revenues were when it was sold to Activision, but I imagine they were less than in its "hit years".

Note that according to Ken, Sierra did not collapse because of his plan for "steady revenue". It collapsed because of the CUC scandal, a hostile takeover by an incompetent con artist who did not follow Ken's plan.

 

[Telengard]

Resuscitation.

I did remember a lot of reviews from the time, one with my favorite line of "not your dad's rpg", but couldn't remember where I saw them. But I stumbled across this one the other day:

By
Johnny_B
02/01/99
The combat system in the game is truly admirable. Unlike past AD&D games that were turn-based, Baldur's Gate features a real-time engine that uses an ingenious system of pauses. You can pause the game at any time using the space bar and set up several auto-pause options. From here you can give orders and have the sort of precise tactical control that a turn-based system allows, but with the more realistic combat feel of real-time strategy. You can even select group formations in order to tactically position your party. If you are not an RPG regular just think of it as a 2D Myth with much more specialized characters.

Possibly the biggest triumph of Baldur's Gate is its broad appeal. It is the most accessible true RPG I've ever seen. Although it possesses the depth of a true game of AD&D, a novice gamer can play it. You can practically ignore the finer rules of the gaming system, barely glance at the excellent 150 page manual, and still do admirably well. Of course, Baldur's Gate also offers almost unprecedented depth of gameplay and game mechanics for the true AD&D fanatic. Baldur's Gate serves up the best of both worlds.

http://www.gamerevolution.com/review/baldurs-gate

Accessibility and broad appeal are already buzzwords. Immersion was around too. Not to mention Diablo's "Mom test". It's all just a bit further down the line these days, so now it's the Gramma who has to be able to play the game instead of the mom.