[HN Gopher] John Romero on his book "Doom Guy" and developing ga...
___________________________________________________________________
John Romero on his book "Doom Guy" and developing games at a small
scale
Author : riidom
Score : 35 points
Date : 2023-09-25 19:50 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (howtomarketagame.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (howtomarketagame.com)
| bitwize wrote:
| I was just thinking about Romero. I was watching the "Wha
| Happun?" episode about the System Shock remake, and I realized...
| back in the day we made fun of Romero for his mismanagement of
| the Daikatana kerfuffle: schedule slip after schedule slip,
| changing engines twice, the staff quitting and needing to almost
| be completely replaced, it's no wonder the game turned out crap.
| But so many of today's games have most or all of these problems.
| System Shock (2023) changed engines, had massive staff churn, and
| considerable schedule slips (taking seven years to Daikatana's
| four), especially when COVID-19 hit. But by paring back the
| ambition and focusing on delivering an experience faithful to the
| original, they got it out the door despite doubts from the fan
| base and it was a hit. So today, some games do turn out good
| despite mouldering in development hell for the better part of a
| decade. Of course you still get your fair share of buggy messes
| (which may be rehabilitated with a post-release patch) and
| complete misses like Mighty No. 9.
|
| So it seems like maybe we've hit a complexity threshold beyond
| which it stretches human feasibility to turn out a good to great
| AAA game within a reasonable time frame. And maybe Romero was
| just one of the first people to "go big" with Daikatana, and he
| hit that threshold before everyone else. His ambition (and ego)
| exceeded his actual reach, but... few if any had attempted such a
| large scale project before, aspiring to reinvent the FPS and add
| RPG and story elements to it. Granted, Half-Life made everybody
| else look like chumps when it came to embedding story into an FPS
| -- but Daikatana was announced long before Half-Life congealed.
|
| The man deserves full credit for learning from his most famous
| boondoggle, and focusing on smaller games rather than epic genre-
| busters that he doesn't quite have the ability to manage the
| development of.
| gabereiser wrote:
| I still prefer smaller games or games by smaller dev teams. Don't
| get me wrong, AAA titles are fun but it's like going to the
| movies, it's predictable - it's consistent - and it's mindless.
|
| My biggest gripe is that these smaller, "starter" games usually
| don't get much play. Everyone wants to immerse in a loading
| screen space sim but can't stand well-painted pixel sprites?
| Crazy.
|
| There's still hope. Hit games are hits not because of just their
| art but because of their play. Fez, for example, had pretty
| mediocre art. What it did have is an awesome 2.5D world. Doom, at
| the time, had great art. It hasn't aged well. However, the level
| design, textures, and concepts, and play are still fantastic.
|
| My only advice is if you want to make games, start making games.
| Who cares what your avatar looks like. Make it fun. @ works just
| fine.
|
| Also, Commander Keen art splashes were top notch. The only thing
| missing was pro dithering.
| Minor49er wrote:
| If you haven't played it yet, you would probably love Prodeus.
| It's basically a modernization of the Doom/Quake formula, but
| with satisfying pseudo-retro graphics and really thoughtful
| level design. It's also made by two people (I think three
| technically, but the site lists two) who have worked on AAA
| titles like Doom 2016, the new Wolfenstein, and Bioshock:
| Infinite
|
| Prodeus also has a shotgun that can snipe enemies at far
| distances with a long range incendiary mode
|
| https://www.prodeusgame.com/
| brezelgoring wrote:
| >Fez, for example, had pretty mediocre art.
|
| Are you in the camp that says the creator was an insufferable
| man that did a lot of damage to the credibility and likeability
| of indie developers for years to come?
|
| I remember reading about that a while ago and it wasn't until
| the last 5 or so years that indies got back into magazine
| covers and such.
| tiptup300 wrote:
| Hard disagree, the only people who know of him probably
| respect indie game developers.
| dcchuck wrote:
| Looking forward to reading this, thanks for putting it on my
| radar.
|
| I really enjoyed Masters of Doom - which has been discussed here
| plenty on HN - https://hn.algolia.com/?q=masters+of+doom
| orliesaurus wrote:
| I personally felt Masters of Doom being better than this one,
| this had too much "life" drama in it IMHO
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| "13 games that we made in 1991 alone" Wow. And these games
| weren't just shovelware.
|
| I grew up playing Commander Keen games, and to this day have not
| finished a single one.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I remember playing it as a kid and I couldn't even beat a
| single level
| gumballindie wrote:
| > Indie teams do not spend enough time making smaller (and less
| profitable) games first before transitioning to multi-year
| projects.
|
| This worked well for romero and carmack. A game a month was it?
| That's how you refine your skills.
| rpdillon wrote:
| Indeed...Doom was Romero's 90th game!
|
| https://gamerant.com/john-romero-doom-90th-game-made/
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Seems... deeply misleading to draw an equivalence to today.
| The market is vastly more competitive.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| All the more reason to spend time making small games
| without a goal of profiting from them in order to refine
| your skills. When things get more competitive, you need to
| practice more, not less.
| gumballindie wrote:
| But back then it was much smaller. Suppose some will always
| find an excuse as to why things may fail today vs
| yesterday, while others will find a way regardless.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| Kinda a diff topic but if anyone else read "Doom Guy" - what did
| you think of it?
|
| I know it's not what this interview (blog) is about but I feel
| like compared to Masters of Doom this one had a little too much
| "narrative" and "drama" and felt like it was an answer to certain
| things discussed in Masters of Doom which he wanted to set the
| record straight.
|
| Another weirdness - i.e. early into the book John Romero says
| that he has a super-power like ability to remember everything
| perfectly...which to me sounds like some big ego bullcrap?
| Because there are a lot of things that he conveniently did not
| discuss in the book but which fans know happened! So what kind of
| super-power
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-09-25 23:00 UTC)