Are you looking at me? I'm the only one here.
8 Mar 05

I get a lot of press releases. Most of them have nothing to do with strategy or tactical gaming. That's why I like days like today when I get a couple of articles to post on the News section. Take Two announced a new cocaine kingpin RTS and a turn based combat game where players try to force reunification of a United States shattered by civil war. Wow, I don't even get to use a more of the same joke.

I noted with amusement that Epic called stories about increased game prices nothing but scare tactics by big publishers. Here's the Games Industry dot Biz article.

I keep saying that developers shouldn't be rebuilding everything from scratch every time. Epic seems to understand that if you build the engine and tools with modularity and scalability in mind, you don't need new tools for every project. Film makers, to use my favorite analogy, don't build new cameras, research new lighting techniques or even make costumes for every bit player. They only build the specific sets, costumes and props they need for that film. It saves money. So while you've seen movie tickets slowly creep up in price, they haven't jumped up 10, 20 or 30 percent at a time.

Larger companies like EA (especially now that they own Renderware) should be able to make massive use (and re use) of common, shared tools and engines. The huge budgets aren't necessarily justified for all project. Just like Hollywood, you only spend the big bucks on the ones you have confidence will make it back. Also keep in mind that not everything demands a realistic graphical style. Some simpler styles don't need the polygonal horsepower. Sure, we may have one more generation that relies on graphics, but after that it will depend on what you do with the graphics. Why not get started now?

Finally, in case you haven't seen it, the free Wing Commander Privateer remake project has released version 1.0. For those who don't remember, privateer placed you in the boots of a freelance pilot just trying to get by. You started off small and built up your ship. You could choose to run cargo, provide security, become a pirate or some combination of those. It gave you the sort of open ended gameplay that everyone calls Grand Theft Auto like. Check it out Here.

Jason