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From: jas@ISI.EDU (Jeff Sullivan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: How about some good games instead of graphics?
Message-ID: <16057@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 17 Dec 90 19:46:54 GMT
References: <5086.27635370@cc.curtin.edu.au> <1990Dec16.035208.8126@csn.org>
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In-reply-to: judd@boulder.Colorado.EDU's message of 16 Dec 90 03:52:08 GMT

In article <1990Dec16.035208.8126@csn.org> judd@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Stephen Judd) writes:

>This is not intended as a bashing session, nor the whiner hour.  If you need
>a reason to justify an action, consider this a personal psychology project
>of mine to attempt to understand the mind of the average Amiga game player:
>
>As long as I am on this subject... as luck would have it I seem to have my
>soapbox handy.  For reasons you describe above I have become very turned off
>of most games, in and out of the arcade.  Take a look through the local 
>arcade sometime - the games are all the same.  The same thing happens on the
>computer - I have seen some very enthusiastic reviews of several games around
>here, so thinking of how great they must be, I go try (or even worse: buy) 
>these games, and it's SOS(*):  Good graphics and sound masquerading as good
>gameplay (there is of course the opposite case, for instance the Ultima
>series for the Amiga).  Consequently the Amiga gets the game machine label,
>and people treat it as such - all fluff and no substance.  Too bad.
>
>Before I get a bunch of rabid joystick-jockeys deluging me with email, let me
>say that I am not saying that games are bad, just that there are far too many
>bad games.  I even enjoy some games.  I can spend over forty minutes on a
>single quarter at Galaga.  The Ultima series on my C64 was the waste of many
>an homework hour, and Dungeon Master was excellent.  I also have several very
>fun games on my C64 that were written at a time when a)games were not very
>abundant, and consequently they had to be good if they wanted to sell, and
>b)people weren't so good at graphics and sound yet, so the game depended on
>the game itself.
>
>* Same Old... "Stuff"
>

Here here!  It is true that good game mecahnics have been confused
with good interface/falshy graphics/net sound.  I don't think ther'll
be much done about it, however, until people start getting tired of
the endless parade of arcaders with the same basic paradigm, but
different sprites and sound.  Maybe then the market will have to
diversify.

But don't hold your breath.

jas

--
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Jeffrey A. Sullivan		| Senior Systems Programmer
jas@venera.isi.edu		| Information Sciences Institute
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