Worst book about gaming I've ever read
PostPosted:Fri Oct 29, 2010 8:31 pm
I was reading some books online and came across one called "Creating Emotions in Games". The guy's website is here http://www.freemangames.com/idea/. It's a book about, not surprisingly, how to make your games emotional and stuff. I noticed the guy's credential includes games like Duke Nukem Forever and Tomb Raider, which aren't exactly games known for being emotionally moving, but what the heck, shouldn't judge a book by its cover. The techniques are pretty much your standard stuff any armchair game designer can come up with, and in fact it sounds remarkedly familiar to when I write up something convincing people that Megaman had a deep story.
But let's say I said Megaman X4 employs the concept of dichotomy where Colonel and Iris represents two sides of War and Peace and blah blah blah, you can actually play X4 and at least verify that there are two characters that sort of remotely embody whatever the heck I was talking about. Sure you'd probably think I'm just making this stuff up but at least there is some basis in a tangible product you can see.
This is not true in the book. The entire books talk about techniques to develop emotions on HYPOTHETICAL games that aren't even on the conceptual stage, it's basically like, "If there was this game with this guy who was like the Sun, and then there was this girl who was like the Moon, and then there was time travel, you can't help but to feel attached to those guys!" It's not even like, "Back when I was working on Duke Nukem Forever one of the great idea was Duke would be symbolic of whatever"! I noticed there was even a quote from some guy higherup in WoW saying the author is a great guy. Granted I'm sure it's not hard to find random quotes to sell your book but I think it does highlight why the story aspect of gaming sucks so hard. You've a guy who is apparently a consultant or specialist or advisor or something for big name companies on story elements, and it's stuff any high school guys can come up with when forced to write an English paper about why this book is really awesome. Not only that, he doesn't even have anything tangible. If he makes a sales pitch on why Tomb Raider was an emotionally involving game I can at least see that he can make a sales pitch, but he doesn't even do that. He's making sales pitch on his techniques on games that do not even exist!
Here's an exercpt from the book http://www.freemangames.com/idea/6_3.php. The rest of the book reads exactly the same as this one.
I was reading Spoony The Bard's section on 'why I'll never be a script writer' or something along these lines about how he'd actually develop stories if he was in charge of the story of famous franchises and most of his idea strikes me as certainly creative and if he was actually doing that I'll certainly at least check it out. Yet most guys who get paid to do this stuff seem to only be able to come up with ideas that makes you wonder who ever thought of this. Surely it can't be that hard to beat the Internet Warrior? I realize a lot of things are easier said than done, but you'd at least consider a good Internet Warrior's take on how to revitalize (whatever), whereas the majority of story just makes me think 'who's the moron that thought of this?' Yeah I'm sure the low end of the Internet Warriors are worse, but asking for good Internet Warriors isn't exactly a high standard, I'd think.
But let's say I said Megaman X4 employs the concept of dichotomy where Colonel and Iris represents two sides of War and Peace and blah blah blah, you can actually play X4 and at least verify that there are two characters that sort of remotely embody whatever the heck I was talking about. Sure you'd probably think I'm just making this stuff up but at least there is some basis in a tangible product you can see.
This is not true in the book. The entire books talk about techniques to develop emotions on HYPOTHETICAL games that aren't even on the conceptual stage, it's basically like, "If there was this game with this guy who was like the Sun, and then there was this girl who was like the Moon, and then there was time travel, you can't help but to feel attached to those guys!" It's not even like, "Back when I was working on Duke Nukem Forever one of the great idea was Duke would be symbolic of whatever"! I noticed there was even a quote from some guy higherup in WoW saying the author is a great guy. Granted I'm sure it's not hard to find random quotes to sell your book but I think it does highlight why the story aspect of gaming sucks so hard. You've a guy who is apparently a consultant or specialist or advisor or something for big name companies on story elements, and it's stuff any high school guys can come up with when forced to write an English paper about why this book is really awesome. Not only that, he doesn't even have anything tangible. If he makes a sales pitch on why Tomb Raider was an emotionally involving game I can at least see that he can make a sales pitch, but he doesn't even do that. He's making sales pitch on his techniques on games that do not even exist!
Here's an exercpt from the book http://www.freemangames.com/idea/6_3.php. The rest of the book reads exactly the same as this one.
I was reading Spoony The Bard's section on 'why I'll never be a script writer' or something along these lines about how he'd actually develop stories if he was in charge of the story of famous franchises and most of his idea strikes me as certainly creative and if he was actually doing that I'll certainly at least check it out. Yet most guys who get paid to do this stuff seem to only be able to come up with ideas that makes you wonder who ever thought of this. Surely it can't be that hard to beat the Internet Warrior? I realize a lot of things are easier said than done, but you'd at least consider a good Internet Warrior's take on how to revitalize (whatever), whereas the majority of story just makes me think 'who's the moron that thought of this?' Yeah I'm sure the low end of the Internet Warriors are worse, but asking for good Internet Warriors isn't exactly a high standard, I'd think.