I see what you did there.
Just listened to his speech really great rant:clapdos: I can only hope more developers and publishers are as honest and enthusiastic about their job.
I still stand by what I said but I also agree with his overall “games shouldn’t sacrifice what makes them unique in the first place in order to ape films” motif to an extent. But when the labors of the cinematic approach bear fruits like Dead Space, God of War, Mass Effect, Uncharted, etc which IMO perfectly blend what makes both mediums so satisfying in the first place I can’t help but look at Jaffe as a little too much of an alarmist and extremist.
I wonder what Jaffe would say about Alan Wake.
UC is the most blatant example of what Jaffe is talking about I wonder why he didn’t mention ittrollface.
A surprisingly sophisticated argument.
Made me think of a few things…final fantasy, and the way gameplay seems like a gatekeeper for story, and how I haven’t found them fun in the last 5 years…Fable, while being a competent hack and slash it really isn’t all that emotionally engaging amd fighting games that have absolutely terrible stories, are generally poorly told (bad voice acting, static images and text) and serve really only as book ends for actual gameplay, but still have great player driven stories like the Daigo parry.
lol kromo. underrated poster.
@ozoo. all that surface shit doesn’t matter if it’s not FUN. dead space had a great protagonist, decent story, great atmosphere, shiny graphics. but the actual missions are fuckin boring. at least UC had fun moments.
Metal Gear Solid was really the only series that excelled with cinematic cut-scenes because the unique, unorthodox, and relatively difficult (for new-gen gamers that is) gameplay evens it out.
But I do agree with Jaffe, video games spend too much time, effort, and cash, on the superficial aspects (physics, graphics, etc) rather than the fundamental aspect of the game which would be gameplay.
Developers also spend too much time on making their games “realistic.” Really, what the fuck? Games aren’t meant to be realistic. And the worst part about it is that the strive for “realism” in gaming is beginning to establish itself as a standard that will be required in all video games, or else it won’t get a B+ from reviewing publications.
You cannot deny the fact that the gaming public is also becoming increasingly demanding for realism in their games. This one comment on youtube said he “wished the physics in GTA4 could accurately depict a car crashing into the wall.” And I said to him, “why don’t you drive a car into a wall in real life if you crave that much realism?”
Fuck you kids and your consoles with Dual Core processors, or your gaming PC with a DDR5 GPu w/e. I’ll stick with my pre-7th gen consoles.
I respect your opinion, but I’m sorry… I stopped reading your post after I read that line. I STRONGLY disagree with this.
That said… Everyone should be FORCED to play a real video game… a real video game named Dark FUCKING Souls. That, and Demon’s souls are the only games worth owning a console for right now.
I’m pretty sure what he said amounts to “games shouldn’t ever include anything that is devoted solely to story telling and/or advancing any kind of ideology/philosophy” and that is a very extreme and somewhat ignorant position, I don’t agree with. Like I said before games adopting some properties of films is fine and in some cases a very good thing but only as long as such implementations of foreign influences don’t impede on the reason why we play games in the first place.
Totally disagree there are only a handful of games I’ve had more fun with than Dead Space 2. As tight as the game play is it’s the cinematic emphasis on action and horror that really took it to the next level for me making it more then just fun and being a truly memorable experience that had a strong impact on me. DS2 includes so many rich moments that give you an adrenaline rush of both fear and excitement:
-not knowing if the next necromorph will appear from vents on either wall, the floor, or ceiling
-the eeriness of a corpse filled corridor with messages written in blood on the wall
-a huge quiet room that makes it obvious shit is about to pop off but then nothing happens and in the next unassuming room I got mobbed
-seeing a shadow across the light shafts and turning around seeing nothing
-hearing a shrill followed by complete silence
-having some necromorphs play dead making you paranoid about every body you come across
-at least on hard mode necros especially after chapter 6 are tough and abundant so it’s actually a challenging game
All this and more it really does IMO exemplify better than any other game (except Mass Effect 1&2) why incorporating some of the strengths of the film medium can benefit people’s enjoyment of games. The examples I listed before are a good balance and do a great job fusing the strengths of both mediums however, just as Jaffe got a little too carried away I’m hoping developers/publishers don’t either.
I know exactly what he’s talking about. Look at the entire FPS genre right now. Because FPS games have to have a narrative, a story or be cinematic, they also have to ‘make sense’ and as a result you never get the imaginative level designs of quake or doom because real life locations don’t look anything like what those maps looked like, or to the fact that you can no longer run at 50 scale miles per hour because that would just ‘look stupid’ in the way that fps games are presented today, as largely ‘realistic’, narrative driven, cinematic experiences.
FPS games are stagnant exactly because of what Jaffe is talking about there and I think they’re the harshest and most obvious example of why games are so shitty now.
Something Jaffe didn’t mention but correlates to the topic is how games are too easy nowadays. As frustrating, cheap, and pure utter bullshit as many games used to be especially in the arcade days the fear of actually getting a game over and having to start from the beginning also brought the reward of a greater sense of accomplishment.
Obviously this doesn’t apply to many games like for example having a game over your scrub ass it out of continues in Mass Effect would be retarded but I’m just saying more games need to have real game over screens not this “game over means warp back to check point 3 inches from where you died” shit.
Let’s put it this way. I played Borderlands for like 40 hours.
I played the Black Ops campaign for like twenty minutes.
I didn’t read this thread, but I agree with this Jaffe fellow if he is implying that games think that QTE is the equivalent of quick thinking in older games, like Mario or something, where you had to react fast.
I hate QTE. I blame Shenmue.
And Uncharted is just a movie with some sequences where you can pick up the controller and shoot stuff.
Half Life, Halo, Team Fortress, Unreal Tournament, Bioshock, Prey, The Darkness, RAGE, Borderlands, Killzone, Crysis, Singularity, and many more which don’t even include the upcoming titles like Dishonored. Sure some of those are closer to an exaggerated reality than complete fantasy but all of them are as if not more preposterous than Quake and Doom.
Edit: Just caught that you said Doom and Quake have “imaginative level designs” so you’re either a retard or a decent troll.
So you agree with the creator of GOW if he’s arguing against QTE?
You’re a fucking idiot.
I agree with Jaffe for the most part.
On the same token I don’t think he has beef with cinematic games existing as much as he doesn’t want them over flooding the market. He doesn’t want cinematic games to be the standard, that’s all he’s saying.
I only have fun with qte when it is reactive rather than cinematic. You might be wondering what the hell I’m saying but having it reactive is like ducking the U-13’s grab on the catwalks when it’s stalking you in RE4 or in GodHand when fighting Azel, you get into HNK like punching matches and reverse suplex each other. I dislike it when you press a button and have to watch a cutscene as a part of a cinematic (though some are fine if they are short and simple, just not too excessive). GoW was okay for it’s setpieces and scale but seeing him doing all that canned actions led me to be thinking “okay whatever, get on with it asshole”. I prefer it when I do the awesome stuff, not the character.
You know games could be a hundred times better if they did one small change: You know that video you have planned where the main character does a lot of cool shit? Yeah, go ahead and turn that into gameplay segment instead of a keeping it a video.
Cinematics are just now (2-3 years TOPS) getting attention from game producers. Before they were a small team stuck trying to make them work in tools that didn’t support them. I’m a technical director for cinematics, so it’s sort of my comfort zone to talk abou this 
Sometimes a QTE works just as good if not better than an in game action but generally I think we can all agree that we’d like to be able to fully control characters doign awesome stuff instead of watching them do awesome stuff. I think the technology just doesn’t exist yet otherwise almost everyone would be doing it.
Again I find myself paraphrasing David Cage’s great argument for why he chose to make Heavy Rain ATE heavy:
In an FPS the core engine and mechanics let you shoot in elaborate ways but for all it’s variations you’re doing the same thing every level just over a different background. QTE’s allow me to incorporate anything I want with no engine limitations one minute you can be in a fist fight the next driving against traffic, then running from police parkour style, then diving under water all in a context that no single game engine can provide.
I think the root of the gameplay/graphics problem doesn’t depend on developers most of the time. Its the higher-ups fault. First of all they get most of the cash without even working on the game.
Second of all they put pressure and time constraints on the team not to mention that because of the new technology your game needs to look good first and play good second which is bullcrap.
And lastly these higher-ups are only aiming to make money as fast as they can and they can do it by pulling casual gamers in with nice graphics and sub-par gameplay.
Making a good game nowdays is hard as shit, you have a limited budget and you have to spend most of the time making it look good. And I think it will get worse in 1-2 years we are gona get the new xbox and ps and they haven’t even tapped the power of today’s consoles let alone make a game without any bugs that needs 10 patches. Not all is lost though companies like Platinum games and Konami are on the right track.