The lunar sonata. Concord sonata. Moonlight sonata techno. Hyundai sonata. Moonlight sonata. Sonata movement. Floor mats for hyundai sonata. Sonata….

Nexium reactions. Does nexium cause weight gain….

news…

Not so much off base, but it fits in to what I’m saying. It may be easier to click a button on a graphical interface that says, “Increase selected monster’s difficulty,” but it is more powerful to go into the spreadsheet and increase the damage value (or hit points, or hit percent, or any other value that increases monster difficulty) by tweaking the numbers directly. You have to decide what you want. Personally, I prefer more power over ease-of-use, but then again I’m a tech-geek by training.

But, as I’ve stated elsewhere, such people lack more than merely the knowledge of which key or icon corresponds to which command. They often lack practice with tasks in computer-oriented eye-hand coordination, such as timely precision with a mouse pointer. There is no unified eye-hand coordination skill level that applies to all activities; catching a football is different than driving, which is different from playing guitar, which is different than using a remote control, etc..

So, depending on the game, it may be worthwhile for developers to offer separate UI for separate player roles and levels of game familiarity; separate UI which differ in complexity and utility, not merely in presentation.

One of these days, I’m hoping the MMOG industry will realize that you don’t need to offer every player the same range of available gameplay experiences. Look at real life. The trick is to create and arrange possible player roles so that they interconnect and augment one another in compliment. One player’s experiences do not have to be as complex as another’s. Accordingly, it’s not necessary to force the amateur gamer to accept a pro’s control scheme.

NWN was a really mediocre game. Dungeon Siege was an even more mediocre game. Both had fairly decent toolsets (OK, DS’s was not so great and GPG did jack all to create useful GUI tools beyond the worldbuilder, everything else had to be done in Notepad) that were subsequently used by others to make good games.

Of course, that sort of business model isn’t great for everyone. What I was trying to suggest is that there exist people who would just as soon not use Notepad and/or Excel to build stuff with if better tools could be made, that could still contribute meaningfully to the project. But maybe that’s off base.

It makes sense that online games do this, because the newbie period is much shorter than the main play period. It makes a bit of sense that I might have to spend two weeks mastering the interface for a game I’m going to play two years or more. Same as Sara said about development tools above.

The recent trend to go toward simplifying everything is a step in the opposite direction. The problem is, of course, that this will in general make the system less powerful; this is something I’m not fond of as a game player.

Of course, the caveat here is in the second sentence I typed above: given that everything else is constant. If you dedicate more skill or resources to the task, you can make a system or interface that is easier to use while still retaining some power. Of course, this means that you either have to have deep pockets or have to take resources from some other part of the project.

I don’t think it’s entirely a question of sexiness as J. mentions above, rather that a mediocre game is still a mediocre game even if you have great tools behind it. Given the nature of the game industry, your great tools will likely not get to make a second game if your first game doesn’t’ sell enough to make a significant amount of money. You generally want to dedicate more resources towards finishing the game and adding as many game features as possible rather lengthening your schedule and/or releasing with anemic features in order to focus on tools and interface.

I also think that as some level, we do need to accept that playing a game will never be as easy as turning on the TV or turning the pages of a novel. Interactivity comes at a price, meaning that the end user has to have at least a few active neurons to participate.

My thoughts,

Tool programming and design is yet another required function that’s just not considered sexy enough in the game space. And I’ve never heard of a metric to describe how great the tools need to be (both in power and ease of use) versus the ability of team members to use them and produce great game material. There usually isn’t a balance, from what I’ve seen.

Besides, how many studios try to create careers for their employees? Answer: Only the best ones, but you usually have to have got your industry experience elsewhere to even get in the door.