Game development and the gap in mechanics and design. Games are not film, they can never be film as they are 2 completely separate artistic mediums one requiring no brain power to sit and drool in your spit cup(anime fan here so I know of drooling, lulz) The other requiring a basic level of depth least you become a film one has to press the remote every few seconds to un pause it. Sure balancing difficulty is tricky enough but when you make things unbalanced to make it easier, faster or smaller you wind up with a mess and this is how I see modern gaming. I could care less about graphics or esthetics in design styles. Even bad or poor story/plot/character issues I can ignore if mechanics are thought out and well balanced. Starting off let's see if I can go over some Japanese's game design basics and some western basics. Japanese games tend to be a bit more unintuitive but more polished in some mechanics, in comparison to western devs they favor larger levels which still are not as big or intricate as in the 2D days, they also favor grind and MMO like overly balanced to the point of bland and boring items and equipment , obviously esthetics in design styles favor effeminate or ambiguous looking male leads for the majority of their games. Of which they have been trying to change this of late but changing surface issues and ignoring core problems is pretty ridiculous, looking at the care in mechanics they ,and western devs, apparently could care less and looking at game prices across the board at almost quartering in price after 6-12 months it's no wonder why modern gaming is more about the short term sell than anything. Even square admitted they took out everything mechanic wise that their western focus group deemed annoying making FF13 a very shrunken Final Fantasy even more so it made the game much easier to produce this coupled with being asleep at the wheel in production for the just released Final fantasy 14 their flagship MMO has been them in the red and it all goes back to quality thus balancing thus mechanics. On the flip side of things US designers favor macho muscle men (which can be seen as a form of gayness in Japanese comedy/culture) in design esthetics (which makes me wonder why the macho Dante from Devil may cry is being changed to a anorexic emo hollywood teen male but I think Capcoms issues run deep as one of the founding designers of Mega Man left the company due to issues with development on mega man) Also on the flip side Level design is smaller and more tightly built to limit any meandering from the action or flow of the game this coupled with mechanic issues did not affect the sell of Dragon age: Origins which IMO is the ying to FF13s yang as far as overall design implementation goes, tho I bet they have even sale numbers world wide which saddens me to no end. Bethesda(making of TES/FO3) Bioware makers of Dragon age and Mass effect and Square makers of Final fantasy all have shrunken the content and depths of mechanics in their games, almost as stark as FF13 is to any other FF game Mass effect 2 has become an action game hybrid instead of a RPG hybrid, I don't care for the change its made decent game luke warm with its attempts to make the default product more open but watering down everything. The story might be a bit better polished this time around it dose not help the more boring gameplay. Before moving on a quick recap JP likes larger more grindtastic games with androgynous male leads while the US prefers smaller faster games with macho men leads.... Oy talk about a physiatrist's field day getting deep into that query. Mechanics have slowly eroded since the 90s almost every 3-6 years you sell larger gaps in mazey more open designs to smaller and less open designs and mechanics that favor cheap gimmicks to hamper gameplay. One of these cheap gimmicks is health regeneration, if you have a character that can take an unlimited amount of damage then you do not have to worry about level design at all. Another cheap gimmick I am on the fence about is limited weapon carrying when you use to carry 10 weapons you now are lucky to carry 3 tho depending on the game it can be a nice mechanic. While not a cheap gimmick it's a cheap design choice, and that is smaller less intercut level layouts, this is most notable I any RPG made on either side of the world as the old standard was ranged somewhere in-between 5-30 buildings in a town even the small ones slowly doubling as the game progressed these days you are lucky to find a new RPG with more than 5-10 a town and this design choice dries up what you can get out of the rest of the game. In action focused games(and FPS's) this trend is even more stark not that action games have towns but their level layouts tend to even more tightly laid out and IMO limited to the nth degree, take Castlevina Lords of shadow or Enslaved, very simple layouts with scripted jumping events, oh sorry scripted assisted events to lessen the chance of falling off a ledge or platform. I guess that's one more thing to water down in level designs. As way I see things going it's time to just let the game play itself and sell videos of the game as film, maybe just maybe they will finally sell the whole game in a u watered down state at 3 times the cost... unlike now where you get a tiny bit more content but no increase in quality or depth. --- http://zippydsmlee.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/game-development-and-the-gap-in-mechanics-and-design/
I dont really get into the FF games anymore.use to love FF3 but once i played part 7&8 i was kinda disappointed.Dont think ive seen any new megaman games for years.Capcom seem to be focusing on streetfighter.I know in streetfighter it may not be realistic or fully 3d graphics but i enjoy the streetfighter games.IMO game makers are focusing more on graphics then actual game play which is a shame. @ZippyDSM your good with words.I'm not the best with words but i think the last line of my statement sums it up nicely.
Ha I am bad with words or more correctly bad with grammar the words have minds of thier own LOL Mega man console wise was MMX9 and MM network for the game cube, portable wise theres been acouple remakes and a Zero 4 or 5. FF has gone down hill they don;t really know where they want to go and each project is to independent from the last, FF4 and FF6 are the high points of the 2D era, while FF7 was a down grade in size the gameplay was there despite itself. FF8 I turely have mixed feelings for the magic system ruin the game for me and the junction system was a bit overly complicated. FF9 was gold fck story/character issues LOL FFX is another downgraded mess, frankly I enjoyed blitz ball more 0_o, FF12 has great level design but weak everything else. F13 is just a WTF they down graded again even more so than the last time due to money issues. You can see a trend shared in my Jrpgs and FF, I can;t stand most these days.
