Games are too diverse and, yep, too long to realistically expect anyone not to have missed mountains of well-designed and intelligent ones. And there are too many. (I believe there are film critics alive who have seen every commercial film ever released, but there has to come a day when even that won't be possible any more!)

Alec, where is the article you wrote? I'd like to read it and hear your arguments because I can't bring myself to view the long length of games as a bad thing. (provided the length of a game isn't artificially padded, which in fact it often is)  Rather, it's one thing I like about modern gaming. I don't mind at all that Dark Souls ate up hundreds of hours of my life instead of some other game(s), because I was having a blast. Just that long games makes it hard to be a game buff isn't a compelling enough reason to me. If one can't be knowledgeable about the entire medium, one can be knowledgeable about a subset of it. Any professional has to admit that his profession ends somewhere.

It takes a long time to read through a book series or to watch a TV drama series, but as long as the reader or viewer is getting value out of it, I'm not troubled by the book buff or TV buff's dilemma. Or let me put it this way...I'd point the blame for creative inbreeding due to sticking to a genre at sticking to a genre. If you played this Call of Duty you don't really need to play that Call of Duty to have a feel for the genre. (In fact, I want to say that if you've ever paid money to own more than one Call of Duty game, you're a sucker. But I won't Oh wait, I just did)

It'd be cool to see IF make a comeback, but just as cool would be to see text parsers make a comeback. They had their problems but they had their strengths as well, and it was like instead of working through those problems everyone just gave up on them. The common complaint was the discrepancy between a player's expectations of what words the game should understand and what words the game actually could understand. Well, we have games today that can understand every noun you can find in a dictionary and even show you a relevant graphic for it. (Scribblenauts, I think?) Would a game that can understand every verb be impossible?

Who'd want to play a game that was built in a day? Unless you knew in advance that it would take, like, 3 minutes of your time. Nor would I want to play something built in a week. (and yet them 7-day roguelikes are more popular than the roguelike I slaved over for months  )

Even building a Little Big Planet level takes me at least a few weeks of working on it and thinking about it every day. You could try that, btw, if by chance you're into platformers.

(mainly current generation shooters, but there are other game genres that have this issue).

Current generation shooters exemplify everything I seek to avoid as a player and as a developer. (Too much emphasis on graphics, too linear, too cliche, too much first person view, too much focus on violence) I would avoid them if I were you, except to use as a reminder of what not to do, and of why the world needs your original game.

Now that I think of it, the first game design 'textbook' I read had this philosophy where it discouraged details. Details were expensive... every little addition needed time and money and programmer/designers were expensive. Details were unbalancing, especially if mixed with the game mechanics.

Unless they could justify that those little details would noticeably improve the game or somehow add more income, the safe move was to not add them. Since an AAA's main priority is income/growth, why waste money on easter eggs that few will see?

Not surprising to hear, sadly. Art is about details. An artist would rather obsess over details than to drop them in the interest of profit. That might be the point at which one stops being an artist and is simply an entrepreneur. 

I can't really agree. I think you could say that the Bethesda developers have different priorities, but I dunno about "right paths" and "wrong paths". Design that favor simulation over writing will appeal to players that favor simulation over writing. Design that favors writing over simulation (including Bioware, by comparison) will appeal to players who favor writing over simulation.

If you're the type of player who enjoys tracking NPCs across the world as they follow their elaborate schedules, to haggle with them, practice your speechcraft, pick their pockets, gain their assistance in fighting overworld mobs, learn of a dungeon whose whereabouts they know of, assassinate them for profit and prestige, etc, you might be very glad that Bethesda made the decisions that they made. You can't do all those things in the typical RPG.

As for me, I am trying to make a vast richly simulated world myself (in low-res 2D, not hi-res 3D), and I struggle with the same dilemma. I don't want to compromise on the writing side too far, but I don't want to compromise on the simulation side too far either. I want my cake and I want to eat it too. Current strategy is to designate some NPCs as "major NPCs" and the rest as "minor NPCs". With the minor NPCs, all the thing they do and say will be proc-gen, but with the major NPCs there will be uniquely written material complementing the proc-gen material and I'll be making more of a concerted effort to develop them as characters.

Hm, it is almost time for me to buy a tablet. I'm afraid I'm gonna buy "the wrong one", or a tablet with some obvious problem that didn't occur to me.

^Only cheaters and lagswitchers would get to the end.

Just from the standpoint of character development, a game doesn't strictly need sex unless the story really requires it. Dragon Age did a good job developing characters the player could care about. That made the sex scenes all the more superfluous.

If a game has sex scenes that aren't out of place, there's a good chance that sex is central to the story. Like Catherine...which had a cartoony depiction of sex.

Do you think it's a result of a shift in focus toward immersion on a superficial level (like in Skyrim) that draws attention away from creating interesting and varied gameplay mechanics?

I wouldn't use Skyrim to pick on, personally. As mainstream games go, it's actually fairly complex. The situation must be pretty bad, because most mainstream games are more shallow than that! (try comparing to Final Fantasy)

Basically the problem is this:

1. A developer has limited time/money/resources/manpower to make a game. Adding depth and complexity to a game requires more work from artists, animators, composers, voice actors, etc the higher the presentational standard. Someone on the team might have a great idea, but there is always the question, "How do we represent this in game?" Thus higher presentational standards dictate lower complexity.

2. Graphics are the easiest thing to hook a potential player with. You can tell from an instant of glancing at a screenshot if a game's visuals will appeal to you. Gameplay is harder to sell, and story/writing is harder still.

3. Therefore, big game companies invest considerably in presentation at the expense of other things, because that's what will sell their games. Is it what will make their games fun? No.

The sad thing is that the average player, including many who would call themselves "hardcore gamers" have no clue that the games they are buying are relatively shallow. Dwarf Fortress, roguelikes, and projects where the developers were free to add all the depth and complexity they like unconstrained by presentational demands, reach narrower audiences and probably always will. It's just how the market works

I'm not crazy about the oversized bosses myself. You spend all this time underneath their legs where targeting is messy and it's not always clear who is able to hit who.

But I rather like the blend of action combat and leveling. In fact, I'd say that it's a crucial ingredient in the game's success, since player skill and character skill both have their appeal. It presents some conflicting goals from the standpoint of PvP though, and they came up with interesting compromises there.

I'll admit - the first time I got invaded by Kirk in the depths, I thought that was a real player. I even bragged about it to a friend, who was nice enough to let me enjoy my minute of glory before letting me know it was an NPC invasion.

Oh I think everybody does. Up to that point all one's experience with being invaded has been by players, so why wouldn't one be fooled?

I'm all for npc invasions happening at random times and places in the next title. If sudden and unpredictable player invasions are fair game, sudden and unpredictable npc invasions should be, too.

I hope we appreciate how improved the AI already is over the previous title. The enemies have more attacks, their patterns vary more (is he swinging his sword once? twice? three times?), a few of them do backstab or parry/riposte you, many of them are able to heal themselves, and they almost seem to sense when you want to heal yourself and have a thrusting attack ready.

Another sign of good AI in a game is when enemies have more than one movement speed. Knights will pursue you at a run, but walk slowly when you're near, allowing combat mechanics to play out with precision. (this is even more helpful in a game with lots of shooting since hitting moving targets in a game becomes ironically more difficult as they come into close range; it was a vital innovation in Resident Evil 4)

Also, it's arguably not the same as AI, but particular enemies with scripted behavior can surprise you on your first play, and there is more of that in Dark than in Demon's Souls. (hollow soldiers climbing over railings in Painted World and Undead Burg, snake creatures running up the stairs to guard the door during the scene when you're captured in Duke's Archives, a tree scout temporarily retreating and returning in numbers in Royal Woods)

AI needs to improve further if they really want to blur the distinction between npc and pc--clearly one of From's goals with the series--but I'm having trouble thinking of a game I've played that had better AI than this.

Another thing about this game that I've been appreciating lately (at least on ps3) is that it doesn't force you to wait in front of a "Now loading" screen every time you enter a new area like so many other games do. Lack of loading intermissions helps give the world's geography the seamless and interconnected sense that the developers were doubtless aiming for. I think the only times you see a loading screen are when first loading up your character, when teleporting to a faroff place (homeward bone, lord vessel, etc), or when you die.

In a real way, the loading scheme is integrated into the game's system of rewards and penalties. Death is (almost) always fairly deserved, and the penalties for death are already so significant that the loading time after death is something you hardly pay attention to. It's like icing on a cake that you yourself took responsibility for eating. Besides which, you are probably using that time to rethink your strategy for the next attempt.

This is such smart design. Why can't more games handle load times this way?

I had some similar doubts about my current project. Don't want donaters to feel I'm getting paid off of work they themselves did. But considering that people will pay money up front for a good tool even without a game attached, it's probably not worth worrying about as long as the main game and/or the tool is fun enough.

It's fine by me. What I want is even more outfits for my chars to wear, being the type who chooses what to wear based on its fashion value rather than whatever statistical (dis)advantages it gives in combat. I know I'm not alone.

That did it, thanks! I had been thrown off by how the most recent version is listed near the bottom of the list.

So I guess in the future I should ask for support right here on tigsource, huh? Unless the Pygame community is hanging out elsewhere.

@nikki
I couldn't import pygame.

File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\pygame\__init__.py", line 95, in <module>
  from pygame.base import *
ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.

I am not sure I'm using the correct version for python 3.3, but it's the most recent version. It was the msi installer.

Yesterday I tried unsuccessfully to get Pygame working on Windows. When I went to their newsgroup to ask for help, I found that someone who'd been running into a very similar error had already created a topic several weeks ago, which no one had answered. The fact that the installer hasn't been updated in years should have given me pause.

I'm actually considering Ren'py now. Not sure I'll be needing the visual novel stuff, but they have a more active community than Pygame does, and I could still use python that way. Currently looking into how well Ren'py is suited for animating sprites on a 2D overhead map JRPG-style....

I don't agree that showing in words is just as effective as showing graphically. Even when the writer is competent, showing graphically gets the picture across quickly and more efficiently. I think that aside from costs, any advantages that words offer for describing scenes are overrated.

What words are great for are ideas, thoughts, and dialogue, which aren't easily represented visually.

DMC is okay, but I always liked God Hand better. Could never understand why DMC got sequel after sequel while God Hand got only neglect.