Gameplay and game design

Many people will tell you that Gameplay is the most important part of a game, there are a few people who go on about "Gud GrafIx" but these day these instances are rare, Gameplay, and game design form the base, or foundation of a game, sound and graphics are placed on top of this.

The old classics (pacman pong etc) are still fun to play today as they have a good game design. The people who designed these games knew how they wanted people to interact with the game environment and what made them fun even though they don't quite have HDR lighting and specular maps.

These fundamentals are still here today, but are sometimes thought of differently, games can be based on a book a film or a story then adapted into gameplay characteristics afterwards.
As technology advances games move forward into different gameplay genres, this became apparent as the first 3 dimensional games where developed, this was more significant when wolfenstein or Doom where made but i suppose battlezone opened the floodgates for the First person shooter genre.















Other Genre's began to find their roots as the first RPG's where developed, also the first Real time strategy games such as Dune where made, this gave something for developers to aim for and be able to put their own story or ideas into a certain game genre.
As money became a more important part of making games publishers kept chucking out hundreds of really bad games with poor gameplay (and/or graphics) just to make cash, games like this are still made by the bucketload today and probably will continue to be made, the only exceptions are when a games designer has an idea or talent to make a good game that is strong on gameplay and style, game producers/writers/designers such as Hideo kojima or Shigeru Miyamoto make these fantastic games as they have a desire or vision to create their game. Not only do they make good games but they end up being popular and earning a lot of money, way beyond the budget used to make it.
These days there seems to be an opening for good games as good games tend to make a lot of money. Third party developers or indie games are also on the rise, as these developers create games because they enjoy them and want to create their idea, much like the old classics like pacman or space invaders. Gameplay innovations are also gaining popularity as developers make all kinds of crazy gizmos and peripherals but more importantly new genres and sub genres.
I use the phrase Sub genres as games are becoming a lot like some films in the way that there hard to define, an example could be Deus X as its a first person shooter but has a lot of RPG elements, System shock 2 is also simular to this as it has its own level system and story driven gameplay. I wouldn't call these games an RPG or an FPS, but perhaps an Action RPG or something like that.
As games develop they will continue to get bigger budgets and better visuals, some games will become a lot like films, single player FPS's usually have a story behind them and as budgets get better so does the writing, even if their are blockbuster games that have superb storylines and mega graphics hopefully the gameplay foundations are still in place, as people won't play a game that isn't fun.

YOU'RE WINNER!!!1

Writing about games.

I haven't bought a games magazine in a long time but i do remember having a short lived subscription to PC gamer from 1998 to 2000, i used to love reading the reviews on games as they not only gave information on how good the game is but did it in an entertaining way, i remember feeling like i knew each of the writers as they all had their own writing styles and feelings on the different aspects of games. I especially liked reading the really bad games as most of the writers basically took the piss in a funny way.
One of the writers during that time was Kieron Gillan i remember him being the butt of most of the staffs jokes and left at some point to do a comic or something. He still does comics and writes blogs, in one blog he mentions how reviewers are overworked and rush to finish up the magazine as these days there's hundreds of games released and the developers want them reviewed. These days their are so many games released that demand attention writers find it hard to give each review the attention it deserves also publishers cutting staff and budget does not help the situation.
When writers are very busy they can't look at every privatly developed game or mod, so the good games do not get any publicity, Kierons blog also suggest how to get your game into the spotlight by doing a bit of the work for them.
Magazines usually have some sort of scoring system that tells readers what to expect from the game, most readers use this a filter and would'nt buy a game less than say 70 percent or 7/10.
The scoring system is a good basis on how good a game is, i admit to skipping the writing just to see what mark it got but reading the review gives a better insight on the game and if its worth your heard earned cash.
I feel that games deserve creative writing and at least some effort and opinion put into a review, reviews should be interesting and not squeezed out of an overworked writer, bad games should be given a good reason of why their bad, reviews can be funny, angry or even excitable as long as they broadcast an opinion and insight.

PR 0.4

Project reality 0.4 has been released and im trying to download it over this internet.. the file is 1.6 gig and even though i cant play it over the internet i may be able to like.. run around as a british soldier and be superior to USMC for a while.
I seriously recommend this mod.. it takes the shoddy arcade monster that EA created and transforms it into a slightly buggy mod that still improves everything.
If you guys get 2142 in the lab then also bundle in BF2 and just .. play this mod instead of the original game like a lot of players already do.

theres also a player guide for folks to read

Oh and the pictures have been working again for a good while, thanks to my host.. who went to America and drank dole juice for 2 weeks.

Dark ages.

We have already done the time warp all the way back to the 50's and all the way up to the 90's so where now?

We're going back.. Back to the future! the year 2000 where we all fly around on hover boards and drive our giant roboto man to work.. well.. not quite.
In my opinion not much drastically changed in the Ps2/Xbox generation apart from souped up graphics. Sega was the first to go down the "next gen" road with the dreamcast and at least tried to change the way we play games by having those crazy VMU memory cards and having a wide array of strange types of games. I enjoyed the small amount of time i had with the dreamcast as every other day a new fantastic game seemed to be released.
The Ps2 didnt have this innovation and just had literally thousands of crap games, (bar a few wich i dislike anyway like final fantasy or whatever) i also hated the low resolution it had and its blurry graphics although it had a nice DVD player addition.. and GTA.
The Xbox had really nice graphics and a few good games, i never played much of this console but i heard good things. The gamecube was another console that had a lot of great games, the graphics were'nt to shabby either but it wasn't very popular and game stores never seemed to have any games for it.
The generation to me seemed less of a "good games and innovation" battle than a "how good can we market these things" fight where the developer with the most shelf space wins. The ps2 won hands down even though it was poorly made and had terrible games (i know some sony fanboy is going to argue against this) seemed to appeal to older and younger players because it was "cool" it was also cheap wich is a bonus too. (i have no idea how their going to shift the ps3 mind.)
Another factor of this generation is the seemingly increasing amount developers are spending on video games, even games without film licenses are becoming very serious investments. This was first apparant to me when shenmue was released and topped 20 million wich was pretty unheard of during that time. This seemed to benifit the market(although the first time this happened it killed the market .cough. ET) as developers spend more and more in making the next blockbuster game despite of possible flops.
Im also supposed to write about the future of where video games will go and wich road they will take, but i fear i'll start writing about how i want them to go not how they actually will or something.. My idea is that game consoles will keep getting better graphics and hardware but will open up to the internet phenomina a bit more and become more "PC-like" i think Mod teams breathe new life into older games and continue their life way past its generation (half-life and mods are played more than most brand new games) mods for console games seems a bit crazy now but who knows what will happen.
Steam seems like the way to go.. (not steam engines you silly) as it is allowing third party games made by individuals to sell their games over the internet. Usually crazy gameplay ideas are too much of a risk for big developers and steam offers these potentially good games to be played.. (Garry's mod is one of them DEFCON is another..) They have also bought the call of duty franchise (*cough lab with HL2 COD and HL1 in easy to use browser thing cough*)
Anyway the Truth is that however the games industry will go its us that has to get used to whatever is given to us and theres not an awful lot we can do, if a company feels like it's in risk it won't try and break the mould too much and it won't go down that road... Business sucks.
On the bright side companies do seem to be opening theirselves up to innovation, Nintendo seems to be doing interesting things with the Wii and a few of the Dx10 PC games look quite good too, i do think that the steam client will get big or another company will use the idea and improve upon it.
Games are taken a lot more seriously now than they used to, these days games are an important part of the entertainment industry and can only really get better.. where we're going we don't need roads