101–110 of 163 posts
Loved the documentary. I played the hell out of that game back in the day. There’s a renaissance of Half-Life Deathmatch too (short-lived, no doubt) if anyone wants a hit of nostalgia. Valve even released a couple of the concept art character models, some gameplay tweaks, and some new maps. New content for a 25 year old game. Also FYI, Half-Life and HL2 are currently both very playable in VR. Half-Life even runs nati…
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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.
Here's his GDC postmortem presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Fx18cppZk
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…
That doesn't take away from a bunch of inexperienced people making an awesome game though. That was hard to do I'm sure. I couldn't even dream of accomplishing that.
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As a person who almost can't play any 3D first-perspective (shooter, action) games due to serious motion sickness, I'd say a slower cursor doesn't really make much difference. If you're not used to it (due to being different from your desktop environment), it probably would make it worse. To me, the biggest factors to (worse) sickness are 1. Narrow FOV: usually the bigger the FOV, the better. But when it starts to ha…
Portal 1 is the game that made me realize I get motion sickness from first person games. It really caught me by surprise. Amazing game though, 10/10 would do it again.
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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.
"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.
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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.
"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.
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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
He is talking about first-person shooters. 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…
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.
Unreal Tournament didn't exist yet, and both Quake 1 and 2 were very much single-player focused games.
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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.
With all due respect to the Factorio devs (it is one of my favorite games of all time and I credit them with essentially creating the genre), have they made even one other game?
Their skill in honing the game and becoming a respected game development company are what are in question, and while not an AAA studio, they are recognized as a company that knows how to highly optimize their game.
They deserve as much respect as any other game developer, in my mind. Their approach is different than other game studios, and that alone is testament to their abilities to both make a game and run a business. They're doing things their own way, focusing on the one game (at least as far as we know) and they are still simply "killing it" and I mean that in the very best way.