81–90 of 163 posts
See also Dario Casali's Half Life 25yr anniversary playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk5gaNp4x_AVIJviyHueH...
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I’m sure all these people were talented, but it reinforces my own belief that the most important things are passion and focus. I feel like the tech world fixates on 10x programmers like Carmack, but motivated people can pull off amazing things.
Carmack the pizza guy. He did not have any computer science education at a formal institute.
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Goldeneye was developed by Rare, who had been in existence for 10 years by the time Goldeneye was released. I'd be really surprised if they had landed the rights to a big IP and then turned a bunch of newbies loose on it.
The 90s were a very different time my friend, prepare to be really surprised ! https://youtu.be/3AEvEIYzMbU?si=S5NDh1874vsE72Kl?t=8m28s This is video is a wider retrospective about the game that I think is worth watching, but I linked to a clip in it from a GDC talk given by the games director. Where he states himself that only he and one other goldeneye 007 team member “had ever made a game before”
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Similar with goldeneye team, I think only one team member had done game Dev before (or something like that).
Goldeneye was developed by Rare, who had been in existence for 10 years by the time Goldeneye was released. I'd be really surprised if they had landed the rights to a big IP and then turned a bunch of newbies loose on it.
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"Poisoned"? Or just more competitive? If you thought Half-Life was a "7/10" back in the day, what would you play instead? Quake? Unreal Tournament? Both were mainly multi-player games and not really a direct alternative.
Other games that released in 1998: - Ocarina of Time - Final Fantasy VII - Baldur's Gate - Starcraft - Metal Gear Solid - Resident Evil 2 - Pokemon Yellow If only it was as competitive as 2023, in which some of the top games were: - A Zelda game - A Final Fantasy game - A Resident Evil remake - A Baldur's Gate game
If you had a taste for a certain kind of game in the late 90s you didn't have many choices that were done by a full studio and polished. Most of the games you listed had the same "problem" of being unparalleled at the time.
Now you have a lot of clones of the same idea, plus so many of the classics are still replayable or remastered and rereleased. A good-but-not-great game has many substitutes with a similar scope and feel.
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Because technically, they didn't. As they say in the documentary, the version of the game that they made after the first year or so was bad, and they acknowledged it, and they changed their processes and introduced the "cabal" - so they basically paid that first year to gather experience. And what's important, their publisher Sierra was okay with it. I don't see that happening today, to be honest, in "AAA" titles at…
Reading the Factorio blogs shows their progression from "developer" to "game developer" to "top-tier game developers" - it took years. You could likely do the same today, but the key would be finding someone (like Gabe) to fund it whilst it got off the ground.
The struggle for them to move on from qwtf to 'tf2' was probably for the best as a lot of the lessons they learned in the wilderness there helped when they were taken on by value and worked on HL2.
Also find it somewhat amusing was that TF2 was originally going to be a much more 'realistic' modern miltary shooter before the scope creep killed it.
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The problem is with these "AAA" games. I've spent a dozen years having great fun with perfectly enjoyable and memorable 7/10 games. Nowadays a 7/10 is a death sentence for a gaming studio. The industry is poisoned.
Somehow audiences will respect effort vs resources as long as there is community outreach and the price makes sense. There are a lot of 5/10 games that are successful on Steam because the devs set the right expectations for the experience. Recently Vampire Survivors comes to mind. Definitely a 6/10, but something about the balance of no-effort art and masterful game tuning makes it VERY sticky.
That's fighting talk round my way!
There's something they've got incredibly right between the no-thinking gameplay and the gradual progression through the various secrets and unlocks. I thought I'd grown tired of it after finishing the base game and not being bothered about gold farming, but I bought the DLC the other week and I was instantly hooked again.
One thing I have found extremely interesting was how Valve hit the jackpot with many early hires. It was literally people that often didn't even have a CS or let alone gaming background and yet so many of them proved to be relentlessly resourceful, creative and hard working. The guy who wrote most of the HL code wasn't even a developer and at the time was studying to become a lawyer or accountant iirc. I can't but th…
Because technically, they didn't. As they say in the documentary, the version of the game that they made after the first year or so was bad, and they acknowledged it, and they changed their processes and introduced the "cabal" - so they basically paid that first year to gather experience. And what's important, their publisher Sierra was okay with it. I don't see that happening today, to be honest, in "AAA" titles at…