Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 155 posts

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#121

Post by kdheiwns »

sph wrote: post #110
TACIXAT wrote: post #108

The article said they are looking for $1m to $10m in funding. Given the hype and pedigree, I feel they could crowdfund the low end of that trivially.

In this economy, when only old people like me care about Myst (and I’ve been around enough to know not to crowdfund games)? It’s not the 90s any more.

This is the real issue nobody else wants to address. Tastes have changed and genres have progressed.

A few other old time devs have tried reboots of their games (a few point and click adventures, mostly) and they were hyped up beyond belief since they were made by legendary developers and were "bringing back the classics". Then they released and got a few sales from older people wanting to get a taste of youth again, but realizing it's just not the same. Those new games by old devs didn't progress in terms of gameplay, and visually, they were worse because they tried too hard to be "retro" and made things look shoddy and low effort on powerful hardware. When back in the day, artists busted their asses to make things look beautiful on shoddy hardware.

Myst has had a bunch of sequels and remakes, but there's a reason people only care about Myst 1. It was lightning in a bottle and trying to desperately pull the "remember Myst?" card several times gets a bit embarrassing after a while.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#122

Post by nkrisc »

galangalalgol wrote: post #18
bob1029 wrote: post #13

The biggest issue is that it has become very accessible to approach AA quality in a solo setting. The jump from indie to AA is much more plausible than the jump from AA to AAA. The middle of the market is in a gigantic space trash compactor right now. I could sit down with one other level designer / environmental artist and create something that would be visually competitive with Myst in record time using modern tool…

Why is using it for code more acceptable than for art? I can't imagine we aren't already seeing tons of both in indie games. Maybe aaa too? Is there any ramification for leaving off the disclosure, or adding one? Personally if the gameplay is good I kind of don't care if it used lots of ai.

From the user’s perspective, there’s not much difference between good code and bad code if the gameplay is the same. The bad code might be a nightmare for the developer adding new features and updates, but it doesn’t directly affect the user’s experience with the game.

AI art, on the other hand, generally looks like obvious AI shit, and the user will see that and notice it.

Even human-made art will negatively affect the user’s experience if it just isn’t that good.

From what I’ve seen of AI art, nothing is yet coming close to the overall quality and effect a talented team of artists can achieve.

I think AI disclosures are good though for a different reason: when there are so many games, I want to know if this game was worth someone’s time and effort and money to make, or is just AI slop.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#123

Post by vintermann »

bob1029 wrote: post #13

The biggest issue is that it has become very accessible to approach AA quality in a solo setting. The jump from indie to AA is much more plausible than the jump from AA to AAA. The middle of the market is in a gigantic space trash compactor right now. I could sit down with one other level designer / environmental artist and create something that would be visually competitive with Myst in record time using modern tool…

I thought the term "AAA game" was silly, but now I've heard someone use the term "AA game" as well and that's even sillier.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#124

Post by goosejuice »

numpad0 wrote: post #113
galangalalgol wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is using it for code more acceptable than for art? I can't imagine we aren't already seeing tons of both in indie games. Maybe aaa too? Is there any ramification for leaving off the disclosure, or adding one? Personally if the gameplay is good I kind of don't care if it used lots of ai.

A lot of people are confused and/or behave defensive and hallucinate copyright issues(which is real, but IMO not the reason why artistic or creative AI contents aren't accepted). It's just not good enough. AI art generators aren't used in porn industry much. That should tell enough about quality and value of those. Bad VHS tapes were worse than YouTube 144p, and still totally fine for that industry. We're almost as f…

I agree art lags text, but it's not that it isn't good enough, it's that it isn't controllable and it lacks expression that comes from an innately human thing.

Self driving cars are pretty fucking good, that's not doing the work you think it's doing.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#125

Post by smallmancontrov »

drsalt wrote: post #117

aren't all these guys rich? why do they need funding?

They probably spent the bulk of their myst/riven fortune on Uru (a puzzle solving MMO, a year before World of Warcraft). It was bold and a very cool idea but didn't work out. They kept enough in reserve and have enough residual sales to hang on through the years, but now big projects have to be capitalized with outside money.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#126

Post by [deleted] »

vintermann wrote: post #123
bob1029 wrote: post #13

The biggest issue is that it has become very accessible to approach AA quality in a solo setting. The jump from indie to AA is much more plausible than the jump from AA to AAA. The middle of the market is in a gigantic space trash compactor right now. I could sit down with one other level designer / environmental artist and create something that would be visually competitive with Myst in record time using modern tool…

I thought the term "AAA game" was silly, but now I've heard someone use the term "AA game" as well and that's even sillier.

[deleted]

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#127

Post by vintermann »

drdaeman wrote: post #115
semiquaver wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people can tell the difference between AI art and human art. Not true for logic unless you are incompetent.

Agree on the substance, but hate the way things ended up colloquially called. AI art is human art. It is based on human intent and choices (and in non-trivial cases it’s a lot of effort to get the machine to produce something that resembles a artist’s mental image), and the rest is mathematically sourced from human art. I strongly suspect the only difference is in level of decision making, where details that aren’t e…

Humans detect mode collapse. If there was one artist making art in the style of AI (by hand), he'd be no more annoying than say Reg Mombassa, Guy Delisle or Tony DiTerlizzi or anyone else drawing in an idiosyncratic, easy to recognize way.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#128

Post by philipov »

vintermann wrote: post #123
bob1029 wrote: post #13

The biggest issue is that it has become very accessible to approach AA quality in a solo setting. The jump from indie to AA is much more plausible than the jump from AA to AAA. The middle of the market is in a gigantic space trash compactor right now. I could sit down with one other level designer / environmental artist and create something that would be visually competitive with Myst in record time using modern tool…

I thought the term "AAA game" was silly, but now I've heard someone use the term "AA game" as well and that's even sillier.

it's been around for a while. That's what Eurojank is. Or stuff like Expedition 33 and BG3. Mid-sized studios that are too big to call indie, but are not on the scale of first-party studios.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#129

Post by languagehacker »

Myst was really interesting when it first came out, but games like that are woefully out of date in a world where most games are immersive, and where players are accustomed to onboarding systems like tutorial levels to help prevent frustration and focus on story and enjoyment. I also just really don't think that in this world's collective attention span, nobody wants to play a game where you have to traverse the entire map a bunch of times to solve a puzzle by trial and error.

Give me a new Journeyman Project instead!

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#130

Post by samfriedman »

Ariarule wrote: post #105

_Dimhaven_, released just a few months ago, looks fairly Myst-like from the videos I've seen. While I haven't played it, Zadbox, the developer, also made the very Myst-like _Quern_; released 2016 and which I have played. I can't help but think the article is a story about _Cyan's_ woes conflated with industry woes. Which isn't to say that the industry doesn't have problems! But Cyan really underperformed with _Firmam…

Yes, this is definitely more an article about Cyan than it is about the Myst-like genre of games. Quern was relatively popular and it is certainly the best Myst game since Riven. Dimhaven is quite good too if a lot more linear. I think the problem is that it’s just very hard to build a satisfying puzzle game. You need brilliant puzzles and a lot of testing.
Post reply on HN