The Icing Is Killing The Cake

This 343 dev is suggesting (what we all knew) that games and gamers desires have grown to an untenable level.

https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/halo-infinite-dev-explains-why-modern-games-are-more-difficult-to-make

https://twitter.com/Unyshek?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1557787860882710528%7Ctwgr%5E52ada2a2c5e11194c432db056e9c6df1f0648188%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.windowscentral.com%2Fgaming%2Fhalo-infinite-dev-explains-why-modern-games-are-more-difficult-to-make

I'm hesitant to fully jump on board with a 343 dev, but between the desire from some for higher fidelity, cross-play, cosmetic improvements,etc, I do believe that some of these factors are ruining games.

So what do you guys think?

duz Halo Infinite get better?

AAA gaming is trash anyways. Let it die.

Their game looks and plays like something from 2007 BUT without the content said 2007 game had. So wtf are they talking about? How was Fromsoft able to release a game that took less time to develop, and is dozens of times larger. Clueless ass dev that should close shop and go do something that they can, cuz its sure as hell not making video games.

@hardwenzen: Wow, you were only the 6th to reply.

You're a modern day case study for Pavlov's Dog. "Post a Halo Infinite thread, see Hardwenzen start to sweat and type!"

Hi. I do my duty.

I see Halo. I type in Halo thread. Fun fun fun.

Anyone else smell bullshit?

Expectations don't come out of thin air and much of what people were anticipating from Halo Infinite came from 343 themselves showing the product off well before it was ready and they knew what they could accomplish. They had a whole god damn reveal trailer for their stupid fucking engine and talked up all this stuff that it ultimately struggled to do.

And what's worse about all this is that Halo Infinite's biggest failure is a worthless multi-player mode that doesn't hold a candle to what Bungie did on the 360 or even 343's own work on the Master Chief Collection.

If you call something a live service people expect it to be supported as such. Not receiving less content than a 360 game which relied on DLC map packs to add more content.

No one forced 343 to make their own engine and tools. No one made 343 over promise and under deliver.

It's insane how some studios out there can release games without issue or even if they are lacking content get it out in a timely manner filling those voids but the studios that can't want us to believe the problem is we expect a quality product for our money.

They have plenty of money, but how much can you continue to throw at a failure? (Game and dev)

It weirdly feels like many devs have forgotten that games are supposed to be entertaining.

Because From is actually a good developer?

Has 343 ever put out a good game? Or is Phil banging Bonnie, and that's why they continue to exist?

The fault is the fact gamers told 343 Halo: Infinite needed another extra 1yr delay cause obviously it wasn't ready for primetime but the actual fault goes to MS for pushing this to meet holiday sales and don't give me that Game Pass excuse cause a AAA such as Halo should be treated like a Queen's AAA game.

@kejigoto: I'm not trying to defend 343, cause **** them, and getting your money's worth should definitely be the goal... but my concern is that devs are waisting effort on features that don't really matter. It could also be greed, or a combination of the two. I don't know, but it's too prevalent and needs to stop.

This isn't just about 343. What about Fallout 76, Anthem, WWE 20-whatever the ****, SimCity, Cyberpunk, Battlefield... It goes on and on!

@dimebag667: Poorly managed teams and studios wasting time/resources on things that don't matter? Same shit different generation, no different than when studios felt the need to cram in a multi-player component to make the game seem like it has more of a value. Or when studios thought everything needed survival crafting mechanics in the game. Or the battle royale craze. Or the MMO bubble. Remember when everyone wanted to be Call of Duty?

There's thinking you know your audience and then knowing your audience. Companies like 343 don't actually know their audience and thus waste time on things which people don't care about.

All those games you pointed to have come from poorly managed studios/teams/publishers which don't know their audiences. Some of them have had issues with the same crap I listed above and chasing fads.

Same shit. Different generation.

also lets be honest here. 343 first engine they created was the p.o.s. one that was the mcc engine... the tried a second time for new game. still utter crap. seems dev simple dont have the skill to make a decent game engine.

i seen so many post mortem of dev doing this. it never ever ends well.

@kejigoto: That's fair, but Uncharted 2 having multiplayer didn't break the single player. Last of Us having a crafting mechanic didn't mean it's graphics were terrible. Chasing trends is lazy and boring, but unlike now, most of those older trend games actually worked. While everything you're saying is true, i think what's going on now is a thousand times worse.

@firedrakes: So the question becomes, how does such a sub-par dev rise this high? Reality should've weeded them out, so what's propping them up?

@dabear: amen, hardwenzen is a disgrace lol

@dimebag667: it's true that it's a lot more stuff to handle so the development gets bogged down. Halo infinite had to have support for the Xbox one, Xbox one x, series s and series x. Thats a serious jump, going from 2013 hardware to 2020 hardware. I heard they also built the halo engine from scratch for infinite. This is another point people need to keep in mind. Half the studios out there nowadays don't build their own engines anymore because of the complexity and the amount of time taken. Bethesda and 343 are one of the few still doing it. I heard that 343 had a massive amount of problems with the engine development. To the point that they even considered switching over to ue5 instead. This brings me to the next point, which is employee churn. Hiring skilled workers to build these systems isn't easy, since these workers are constantly leaving for new and better opportunities. Someone who knows the halo system inside and out with years of experience decided to move to a different company, then MS has to hire someone who is a blank slate and has almost zero knowledge of how the halo system works and needs to be caught up. Finally there's the internal MS regulations. Let's just say, MS is a very progressive company. The 2022 MS isn't like the 2001 Microsoft. They don't even do crunch anymore. I believe their also unionized so employees are coddled, and coddled employees are soft.

The final point is one reason I'm not sure it's a good idea MS is buying these companies. The unionized, anti crunch environment is good for developers but bad for gamers.

@blaznwiipspman1: Couldn't agree more. I get the appeal of having 1 game play on fifteen different devices... but not if it ruins the game. I really think game development has gotten to a point (a while ago) where they can't actually create what they're selling. It's a facade that's held together with duct tape and hope.

What amazing thing in this world has ever been created without pain and struggle?

yeah i beta both games on a xbox one that was able to do quick resume for s x(alpha firmware testing). both mcc and halo 5. was a modern version of... they blam engine from 97(by bungie) new game is using slipstream engine which again has blam. it was a mess to do basic stuff before game crash.

time line of 343.

trouble engine issue for mcc and halo 5. release to early. on top of building the slip stream engine same year. so first 2 years of both mcc and halo 5 time . try to fix on top of making a new game engine.... on top of dev new game.

god that made my head hurt relishing how badly they handle all 3 games and poor mangment lvl

9 out of 10 GS

87 metacritic

Deal with it

@simple-facts: haha, thank you for your service

Design by committee, making devs waste their time on features that add nothing to the game.

@Maroxad: exactly ☝️

@mesome713: it's unsustainable and needs to be taken behind the shed.

@dimebag667: My point wasn't that all pursuits of such fads are a waste of time, money, and resources but rather done so by teams/studios/publishers who don't understand their audiences and just look to trends for their design choices.

Crafting made sense in Last of Us with the setting and story being told. Know where it didn't make sense? Dead Space 3. But there's an entire crafting system in that game solely there to charge microtransaction fees to those who don't wanna grind for materials. Remember all the knock-off Minecraft games that used to plague Xbox Live Arcade and such? Existing to either dupe unsuspecting customers into buying something they thought was Minecraft or misrepresent what the product is because they know Minecraft is much more popular.

That's the point. Just cause the team thinks it is worth pursuing doesn't mean it always is and if the team pursues something that isn't worth it the issue isn't with the consumer because they liked something else that contained said feature or whatever. It's the team's fault for not understanding their audience and wasting time, money, and resources on things no one wants who would buy their game.

Naughty Dog took a gamble with Uncharted 2's multi-player and it paid off but at the same time including some sort of co-op horde mode wasn't really that much of a stretch given the core gameplay and how often you will fight alongside NPC's in an area where you have to outlast enemies swarming in from all over.

On the flip side of that though is something like Spec Ops: The Line's multi-player mode which is totally at odds with the story being told and the reason that story is being told. The entire mode was dead on arrival and became a point of mockery for being tone deaf when the main story is about exposing the harsh realities of war and the horrors that stay with us even when the conflict itself is long over only for multi-player to be a third person Call of Duty wannabe experience.

Teams wasting their time on that stuff have no one to blame but themselves and management.

@kejigoto: Oh I don't think you're wrong, I was just saying that what's going on now is vastly worse than the trends of the past. I picked poor example of those past trends. They were just the first ones that popped in my head.

Dead Space 3 and Spec Ops: The Line are definitely contentious games, but at least they were working games. The same can't be said for some massive games that are just being sh!t out into this world.

i'm surprised most of that stuff hasn't been commoditised for lack of a better word into frameworks or platforms that can plug into game engines or whatever to provide that functionality. i'd have thought interoperability would be a big thing in game dev.

everything other than crossplay has been around for years and are things game devs who make those sort of games have to deal with. i know next to nothing about the intricacies of game development and infrastructure, but i find it hard to believe every studio is rolling their own in-house solution to those things, rather than buying something off the shelf

@Macutchi: I would've thought that too, but I really don't know.

The game scored a 9/10 here, and 87 on metacritic. Despite that, the haters are in here convincing themselves the game is a failure.

There is enough salt in this thread to season all McDonalds french fries for a year.

@dabear: Couldn't that be said about most threads on this site? Honestly, I see more thoughtful conversation, and legitimate concerns, than the standard "that thing is poop, because me upset". At least at it hasn't devolved into the generic "yur stoopid", "no yer stupud" reply chain nonsense.

No offense, but looking back through the thread, your contributions seem to lean towards the antagonistic, rather than authentic. Do you have an actual opinion on the subject, or are you just interested in trolling? If it's the former, I honestly would like to hear you're opinion.

Are game devs waisting too much effort trying to please everyone? Is this 343 guy just whining? Funyuns are neither onions, nor are they fun; what should we do about that?

@dimebag667: Yeah - my opinion is that it's a fact that Halo Infinite scored a 9/10 on Game Spot, and has an 87 on Metacritic.

Obviously, it's been met ith critical acclaim.

Therefore, the negative comments in this thread are nothing more than fanboy drivel.

@dabear: Ok, but this started because someone on the dev team said they can't handle what gamers supposedly want. So how does the review score matter, if the creator is the one with the problem?

GTA IV is 100 on GameSpot and 98 on metacritic. Is that correct? Do you agree with every review without question?

But more to the point of the thread; are games being ruined in the attempt please everyone?

I think they’re right in many ways. Certainly today games are different then the 90s and 2000s. You need more production value and more manpower to release a game. And that’s exactly why I miss the older games, they used to make you think, in-spite of the limited resources they had. And that’s precisely why it worked, because they had to express their work with limited capacity.

@dimebag667: Obviously. 90s games could still be made the exact same way, and they would sell just as much if not more. But even then NOT ENOUGH FOR MUH PROFITS.

So everything gets dumbed down to LCD level, and now they are made so they have to basically develop for daycare cause people dont even know how to use the basic ass controller in their hands, let alone a kbm.

I mean the only other explanation is that the populous is getting dumber and lazier.........that can't be the case, right?!?!?!?

Are you for real with this shit? If you actually read the OP, most of the users here are pointing out the issue of what 343 has done and what could have been done better and you know this has nothing to do with GS score or MC for that matter.

Look, I've been a Halo guy from the beginning with Xbox decades ago, I still love this franchise but no way I'm gonna overlook the problems 343 pulled off and you can like the game, but don't overlook the problems and if you can't see that, I honestly don't know what to tell you.

I always said Halo: Infinite needed another 1yr delay but MS/343 didn't want to do that for unknown reasons. Sure it got good review scores and that's only because it's on Game Pass and just because its on Game Pass doesn't mean AAA game can launch half-ass done. I'm more worried for Gears 6 but at least Coalition isn't anywhere near as bad as 343.

@davillain:

Blah, blah, blah...

Critics disagree with you. Keep crying. "Only got good reviews because it's on game pass" - that's a rediculous comment.

Love that salt.

@simple-facts: I like how you’re ignoring the 7/10 GS gave the multiplayer and that was several months after launch too. 🤣

If it came from a real dev, I'd give it some weight.

But no, every post MS takeover studio has been a joke.

343, Coalition, yea.............

@loonski: I mean, I totally think our technological dependency is making us weaker. Take away Google, GPS and 2-day shipping and our world would crumble. Holy hell... I've had both my niece and nephew ask me to open jars for them. And I'm not talking the super tight pickle jar that requires the jaws-of-life, or some slick lid that you just can't a good purchase on; I'm talking stuff that is barely even sealed, like ranch dressing. It's probably more because they've never had to fend for themselves, but I do believe our culture of always on entertainment is stripping us of the ability to cope.

Remember when they just stopped playing cartoons at 9:00 am, and there wasn't a whole channel dedicated to nonstop cartoons? You had make do with soap operas, Golden Girls or some interior design bs on the discovery channel. We learned to make do, and were forced to explore areas that weren't in our comfort zone. Sorry, I'm rambling, but I really think it's hurting us.

To the credit of kids though, I didn't have to go through active shooter training to enjoy kickball... So in that regard, I feel really sorry for them.

uh wrong forum..?

@SolidGame_basic: I always wonder about that second score...

@loonski: Sorry. You asked are we getting dumber, and I went "there".

Games think they're required to add more crap than they are capable of, and some gamers are feeding that. Instead of making the best with what they have (like Jaws) they try to build around gimmicks that are worthless. We can do better

Its not harder to make games, in fact I dont think its ever been easier with all the tools we have today. He should try coding a game from scratch in 68K assembly and then fitting it all on a 8224 kilobyte cartridge. Its just harder to make a decent profit from games now, especially in the AAA market.

@pelvist: as a wannabe game developer, I understand what your saying. But these days you need a team to work with. Back in the day you could make a game if you know programming and art design.

That's only partly true for AAA gaming. F2P game development is now easier than ever. F2P games make up a much bigger chunk of the market.

But you have to also consider how older games required things like assemble language. Game development for the Sega Saturn, for example, was a nightmare.

"Oops, development costs way more now, so please pay 70 bucks for the game, and 125 bucks for the rest of it. Oh, and don't expect as much content as that old game released 25 years ago, since this new game looks so great and we had to pay a million people for creating the hats you can buy for your character". - AAA publishers.

I think what I've been thinking for years. AAA games suck. Making the best game you can make? LOL. AAA studios are huge soulless corporations too busy with taking cues from the billion dollar-making phone-games to make good games. The fun is gone, either soured or completely replaced by aggressive milking. And when I notice that with new games, I just don't buy the game. As I did with Halo: Infinite, Sony games, the Mario sports games, etc. Not to talk about upcoming games that could've been good but are already confirmed shit, like Diablo 4. While I've basically abandoned the soulless husk of what AAA gaming once was, others haven't and keeps making sure the industry goes to shit. Wonder how far it'll go, but I'll have no part in it.

Seems like 343 damage controlling.

@Heil68: Oh I'm sure they are, but the points still valid? I would love to see what a major dev could do if they weren't forced to worry about 4k, RT, monetization, GaaS, etc.

Smaller studios have proven that making a decent game in the AA space is entirely obtainable. It's nobodies fault other than the devs for trying to hit unrealistic goals. AA games are what drove and kept the industry alive for years and major devs and publishers often even let people know that they made most of their money on their smaller games and their larger games were basically eye candy and bait. If they go back to that model then things will look up moving forward. If they keep trying to impress people with cost, dev time, graphics, and tech then things will get even more stagnant and may even eventually cause another crash.

@WitIsWisdom: I'm definitely onboard with that. Dial back the flash, and up the substance.