I spend quite a lot of time on computer, either for work or play. I typically play online multiplayer games which have some sort of combat or fighting between players. Games I’ve enjoyed playing most over the years are Soldat, WoW, CS:S, TF2, and Naruto: Rise of a Ninja all game with pvp content (well… Naruto has 2 players anyway :P ). However, recently I’ve become frustrated with these computer games:
- Soldat I’ve loved and still love playing occasionally but it is dated and I yearn for something fresh and modern which retains the frenetic gameplay.
- WoW was fun but addictive and not balanced. Many players (myself included) would play it eventhough its pvp is not balanced, but eventually you get trapped into a cycle of waiting for balance changes from a patch, the patch changing some stuff but creating a whole set of new problems, then waiting for the next patch and so on… This kind of vicious cycle which continues, all the while you’re lining Blizzard’s pockets with cash for a game which you continue to play on the off chance that they fix it up.
- CS:S and TF2 basically suffer from the same problems: they’re both very team games and if you join a game and end up on the crap team then you can have a pretty miserable time for a while as the other team whips you round after round. Eventually the map changes and you try and get on the team with the better players. Although you can have fun in these games (and I still do to some extent) you are somewhat dependant on the other members of your team to not suck. The gameplay itself isn’t good enough to want to play it even if your team is getting hammered, atleast not for me. Obviously this isn’t an issue if you join a clan and play in a ladder or something against other clans, but players shouldn’t have to join structured teams to get the most out of games.
- Naruto on XBOX360 I only like for the 2 player vs mode, which is a bit like street fighter but 3d and a bit better mechanically. It’s problems are that it’s only 2 players, only on 360 (I don’t own a console and still consider them inferior to the pc for gaming). And it’s based on Naruto which means half the characters look/sound like girls eventhough they’re guys, and it’s a bit childish looking (I mean honestly, he’s meant to be a fucking ninja, what kind of ninja runs around in an orange jumpsuit?!). It just isn’t hardcore enough.
This brings me logically to a solution: Why don’t I make a game, a game which plays like I want it to play, and which hopefully appeals to some other people too? So that’s what I’m going to do. I know that huge numbers of people have had these same thoughts “if only it played like this and this and featured awesome stuff like this”, but this is something I feel committed to. I’m not going into this lightly, I don’t expect to be able to make this in a few months or even a year or even several years. I’m studying software engineering, I know large projects take time, especially if you don’t have all the knowledge or experience to complete it right now. That’s why I’m not setting a deadline at this stage, I’ll work on it as I can, while fitting in all the other things in my life (mostly uni), but all the while aquiring the knowledge needed to create something awesome.
So! What’s this game going to be like then? I’ll post some of my thoughts on that next time :)