fuck yeah ken you tell em !

    "I like that designers know they have your full attention, so they feel comfortable EXPECTING your full attention"

    I really like that quote. For me lately the difference between console and PC gaming focuses has been really made apparent going from playing Call of Pripyat to Nehrim: Edge of Fate to Fallout: New Vegas. NV has a whole bunch of really good stuff... but its console focus just hangs like a weight around its neck, bringing down the interface, and distant land quality, how shootouts flow, etc. so much. They improved it from Fallout 3, which was balanced expecting everyone to use VATS and nothing but VATS, but it's still such a far cry from COP. List-based inventories... It's even buggier, losing the final claim that console games have always had for me- that their initial releases were reliable because they were static.

    Edit: Not to be down on NV too much, because I absolutely love it. But it's got so much missed potential due to decisions Bethesda made for them in engine and ui.

    It’s great that on a PC you basically have nobody to answer to and can dive straight in. But flying around an anus isn’t innovation, and I’d wager a few PC publishers would not be overly keen to publish a game where you explore a vagina either.

    Quote from Ken Levine

    The PC will always be the place that drives innovation. The PC is the place where great game developers are born, even—and maybe especially—where great console game developers are born. Halo, Mass Effect, Call of Duty…PC developers first.

    The implication is innovation starts on the PC and even the great console games come from ex-PC developers. At the very least this statement ignores the entirety of Japanese contribution to gaming.

    Hideo Kojima started on PC. MSX was a PC, and in Japan it was the original platform for Metal Gear. Also besides a few standouts Japanese development is pretty safe to ignore :3

    Quote from Jetsetlemming

    Hideo Kojima started on PC. MSX was a PC, and in Japan it was the original platform for Metal Gear. Also besides a few standouts Japanese development is pretty safe to ignore :3

    How do you say OWNED in Japanese?

    I can see already this is going to end with me being required to actually list extensively examples of what Japanese have innovated and brought to gaming in terms of mechanics, influences, genres, control schemes, hardware, etc. While other posters, united under ignorant, arrogant and/or nationalist hubris, consider nonsensical one-line straw-man arguments to be strong debate and yowl and jeer in the background.

    It’s a bit like posting on a board about comic books trying to argue, to a crowd of DC readers, that Marvel has perhaps had some influence on the industry and trends. But encountering resistance by people who have never read a comic book by them before, and who stare back quizzically when you lists apparently-popular superheroes.

    Perhaps use a sarcastic example that is about innovation rather than aesthetics, as that is the actual topic, and try again. An example might be a recurring gameplay feature you dislike, though this would require you to have some basic knowledge of the source material.

    Weird, I always thought of the Japanese as pretty much the origin of most things that make good games today. The influence that even single series like Mario and Zelda have had is immeasurable. Anyway, gaming history is too vast and complicated to attribute specific things to any one region — the UK alone is a massive player thanks to Grand Theft Auto's innovation, for example.

    I do think Ken's argument is fairly weak as the openness of consoles is very rapidly catching up with the PC, to the point where if it were any more open there'd be too much shit to sift through. Getting a console game published through the online stores isn't that hard for any team or individual producing quality games, and you can get development tools relatively easily — neither of which were the case in the past. If you want to make and release stuff on PS3 or 360 it's not that different to doing the same on the PC.

    I do see his point that a lot of developers were born on the PC and indeed most developers still use PCs for their actual work, but I can't imagine many new developers are going to make their mark on the PC seeing as its market doesn't tend to result in many hits (even if a very small number of PC games like Minecraft are spectacularly successful). He's using examples that are really from a bygone era, hence why pretty much all of them are now primarily console developers and there're very few PC-orientated developers nowadays.

    I'm no expert on games from Japan, but I think Taylor has a point. Wanna know why? One word: Nintendo. I don't even think most of us tried to belittle the efforts by console game developers, but with all the love that consoles get lately and the impression that the PC is treated like the older, retarded stepchild of the games business, any big name speaking out for the platform is appreciated. Especially around here, where most folks started out with games development on the PC or still simply prefer a PC release over the console equivalent.

    Quote

    I do think Ken's argument is fairly weak as the openness of consoles is very rapidly catching up with the PC, to the point where if it were any more open there'd be too much shit to sift through. Getting a console game published through the online stores isn't that hard for any team or individual producing quality games, and you can get development tools relatively easily — neither of which were the case in the past. If you want to make and release stuff on PS3 or 360 it's not that different to doing the same on the PC.

    I disagree. Unless it's XBOX Live Indie, which doesn't have the right distribution model for high quality games, getting your game out on the PC is cheaper and a lot faster. Actually, scrap that, it is faster than XBLI, too. In fact I can upload my game to my website right now and it won't even have to go through a peer review process.

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