Kojima: "Next level of gaming" not yet possible

I just saying that Next next Gen game that he will make will have at least 3 hours of pointless CUTSCENE!!!

http://computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=193688

Why could he just make game that everyone want to play with GAMEPLAY that is so much fun and have one more go FACTOR rather watch Pointless broken story!!!

GTA 4 is good game where you have so much fun doing things you want to do. I know there is abit of cutscene in GTA 4 but it was good things to have abit of story rather than have too much cutscene that will frustions people who wanna play the game!

I wouldn't say the cutscenes were pointless. Without it, you wouldn't have ANY story, and the game itself would be rather pointless. Although, i do agree they are a touch too long.

kojima just wants to make interactive movies :-p

Am I missing something? In that link he is not talking about any cutscenes, but about game backgrounds that react to what the player does (like leaves that grow when the player waters them). And he says that such backgrounds can't be done with current gen consoles, but once it would be possible, this would be the next generation of gaming. Sounds quite reasonable to me.

Well, i kinda agree and disagree. Before cutscenes there were stills and text which set the mood perfectly. Whilst 'movie games' are ok, I would like to see a return to the 'novel game'. As with impressionism, my own imagination can fill in the details just fine.

It seems the use of your own imagination is dying with games.. its a shame.

@Ross C: Chess doesn't have any story, and still it's better than MGS4 :)

I admit I haven't read the article!

With the multiple cores of the cell processor, how is having a 'living' environment not already possible on the system?

He's making it out as if you needed photo-realistic graphics to not have a low-resolution skybox or not need LOD'd models in the background.

Kojima isn't the genius everyone thinks he is.

Video games aren't movies. Half Life 2 was a far better game than Metal Gear Solid 4 because it told the story through characters in the world you interacted with.

In a game where you have a lead character who actually speaks, you may want the occasional cutscene to show his reaction to certain events, but they shouldn't be used as a crutch, which is how Kojima used them, with the cutscenes lasting upwards of 90 minutes when much of that story could be relayed to you by characters while the gameplay is in progress.


See now, this is the kind of crap which won't improve the gameplay experience at all. Watering plants? Really Kojima? That's what modern games are lacking? I think Mr. Kojima, what modern games are lacking is impeccable art direction, story writing, and game design. Not plants that grow.

"Next level of gaming" -- HAaaahaha... haa. That guy's a real joker lately. Yes, let's forget that developers are coming up with consistently more interesting toys all around him; Hideo Kojima was promised flying cars! Where are his flying cars?

(Actually, does terraforming a planet to support plants count as watering them?)

Oh well, I guess that spot is just untackleable. We'll need to hang out in the world map and grind for a few years before we can progress. Where are those robotic game developers? What, you were hoping they'd die out?! Fools, we need them so this industry can stagnate properly; we only have 25% experience! What have you been doing? Exploring?! A true hero never explores; he just battles irrelevent monsters for ten times longer than everyone else.

Edit:
Darn, all these edits and links reads like a Slashdot summary.

What exactly is now the next-level of gaming. Crysis was the last high-end graphics game I saw, and it's now almost 2 years old.
There has been no new high-end games since Crysis?
I think anyone who would release a high-end graphics game would make tons of money, especially if his production costs are close to zero, like when using LE 2.1.

The idea that the Leadwerks engine is somehow 2 years more advanced than the Crysis Engine, and that it comes with little magical fairies which come around and create all your art for you is so ludicrous as to put almost anyone off. I'm not sure if you're trying to encourage or discourage, but I can tell you that your plugging of the Leadwerks Engine in every unrelated thread is so heavy-handed that it puts me right off of ever trying it, and I collect game engines like some people collect postcards.

Incidentally, I entirely disagree with your premise. I think anyone who would release a high-end graphics game would lose a ton of money, or just do nothing at all if you insisted on doing it with zero budget. Given that the Crysis shipping numbers were extremely poor and have only recently been boosted by practically giving it away with videocards, I think you'd have to be mad to think you could do better numbers with no budget.

I can't help thinking that the articles referenced by topics like this one and the 'PC gaming is officially dead.' one at http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=79200 are a bit like inkblot psyche tests.

Both articles are short, with a piddling bit of information, and a casual, and fairly ambiguous, comment by an industry proffessional.

I think what people read into those comments says more about the people doing the reading (and posting here), than it does about the intent of the person making the comment in the article.

It's all a bit silly.

why can't ppl just get laid

Crysis didn't have poor sales, just not as much as they had hoped for the vast expense and resources that went into the game.

Leadwerks isn't as usefull as crysis even on the most basic level. That Crysis will run on crappy hardware in low settings, and 2 - 4 year old DX9 hardware with high settings at a playable rate. I do think Leadwerks engine is a impressive engine that stands up well to a lot of other cutting edge indie engines if you have the hardware to run it.

"The next level will be when we start improving the backgrounds, the things you don't instantly see but enhance the experience. For example, there are leaves in the background and when you water them they grow. Instead of the backgrounds being pre-programmed, they actually respond to what the player does."

Wow.. yeah that's totally background stuff, you know all the player interaction to actually 'water the plant' and to watch it grow - its alllll in the background. Fool.

I for one don't much care for gardening work. Games shouldn't be a chore to play, that's what we have daily jobs for.

Because, like sinu said, he wants to make movies.

Except he's wrong. Black & White did almost exactly what Kojima is describing. Sure it was a gameplay element, but there's no (valid) reason it can't be applied to non-gameplay elements as well.

Exactly.

I'm thinking games like Spore, The Sims, maybe a little Black & White and The Movies. At least those are the games that spring to mind as most innovative in terms of gameplay and user interface.

How do you figure that? Any game that does not recuperate it's development costs did not sell well.

They've still got a way to go in some of the basics haven't they before they can start talking about extraneous background fx.

Like non-pre-canned character animation (e.g. walking down stairways and calculating the physics of the footfalls, etc..).

Characters that can depict nuanced emotion - just starting to see that now really (Mass Effect?).

Or even lighting - realtime radiosity with colour bleed and diffuse fx rather than fixed or direct lighting only.

I think some of you are getting it wrong with the whole watering a plant thing. I feel he is maybe trying to say a living world with realistic vegetation systems etc. Complex stuff that takes away cpu power so is made basic in current games.

Even real crumbling and breaking of scenery is quite basic these days, imagine in an fps where bullets realistically destroy scenery with nothing precalculated in a full game with full ai, vegetation, great graphics, physics and 32 human players.

Not possible in this gen but is it really needed, don't really think so myself but i think it's what kojima is aiming for.
He'll want hair on characters growing naturally and not just some presets, almost real breakable glass systems etc

It seems that more and more devs are wanting to get as close to the complexity of real life which isn't the point of games.

What next, kojima wants to create ant systems with billions of ants living their lives under your feet realistically while snake is sneaking around and can't even see them unless he pulls out his super realistic magnifying glass which reacts like a real one, and reacts to the suns glare realistically and starts burning leaves just like you would expect in real life. Yawn

..what he need for things he want to achieve is Cray9 or Blue Gene or something like that , but once he make step in there, I do believe he will be late because scientists already playing with such things by simulating atmosphere and weather conditions on such machines, as well as other stuff close to the nature...I think he talking trash...there is no game stuff in his vision..

To what I remember, the next level of gaming, was more of how we viewed it. Let me explain

I belive 10 years ago, I watched a tech show, on whats comming in the future. One of those inventions was a projector-like that would shoot the image to the floor. For example, how many of you remember when R2-D2 has a program in him, that the Princess Leia had put in him? When Luke clicked something on him, Leia's image was shown on the floor. Very simmilar to whats to come. That was one version.

Then they improved it, to where instead of just an image (or foorball game) shown in one sarea, they made the whole room turn into the game. Could you imagine your living room, turning into an enemy base, just dont trip over the dog :D

Well, thats to what I remember from that show. They talked about plasma tv's etc, and those came out. After they make enough $ on those plasmas, they may release those projector-like tv after. Maybe this is the idea he is more or less needing. Or all of us for that matter.

It surprises me sometimes how rediculous the excitement is surrounding supposed new features or technologies. Who would really care about watering a plant and seeing it grow a bit. Like, if you want to water plants, go grow some houseplants in your window, or get a garden. Being able to do it in digital 3D does not suddenly make it a wonderful amazing thing. It's not going to be long before we have supercomputer-like power just to make an image of a toilet appear on the screen - and get this, you'll be able to REALLY FLUSH IT with physically modelled realistic water and even floating poopies. Wow! Let's play. And the water will be all realistically high-dynamic-range-lit and the poopies will have 5th generation poopie shaders with realistic flecky-bits and evidence of last night's curry or whatever, even with realistic deformable bowl-streaks. Let's call it `the next next-gen experience`. I can see it now, people addicted to the single push-button they need just to flush, flush, and flush again. And get power-ups that allow you to drop extra poopies in at will, and maybe a physically modelled rubber ducky, and an accasional squirt of toilet cleaner under the rim - all realistically lit and textured and all that, SO REALISTIC!

I dunno, it all sounds very exciting to me! :(

I'm sorry but it has to be in the background to be next gen, this is clearly in the foreground, an Atari 2600 could do this.

the operative phrase here is 'interactive' if I have to sit through hours of a film I would buy a film, games are supposed to be 'interactive'.

Sure, but his analogy wasn't too great. Do you know how long it takes for plants to visibly grow? There's a real good reason stuff like this isn't in video games, and it's not a limitation on CPU power, so much as a limitation on usefulness, or bringing interesting things to the table.

So kinda like Crysis? Even that Russian WW2 strategy game (which name escapes me) from yokes ago had realistically destroyable landscape features. Unfortunately it was so realistic they had to throw in balance aschewing "mechs" with equally absurdly large weapons to show off the technology, because as it turns out, a regular rifle round, fired into a brick wall, does practically no damage at all. In the real world too.

Sure, but why? With the possible exception of an MMO, what game exactly are you intending to play that takes long enough for you to notice, that your main character hasn't shaved this morning? Seriously? Why would you even want to?

Exactly. While there was little doubt Crysis is a fantastic looking game, and to a certain extent provides a realistic (for lack of a better word) environment, games like Team Fortress 2 and Battlefield Heroes are just more fun to play.

Now look what you've done. Gone and recreated next-gen game technology in a web browser. Just don't forget to update the image every once in a while, so we can see it growing.

Spreadsheets are interactive. Games are supposed to be fun (or in the very least, competitive).

I think this statement sums everything up. Let's not forget it.

Yes good point.. If they made those metal gear solid games realistic, the player would die after 5 minutes because instead of saying "HUH what's that", "HUH, did you hear something", "GUESS IT WAS NOTHING", "HUH.." etc. the enemy soldiers would walk around the corner and shoot him.

I have to say though, the metal gear solid game I played was on the ps1, maybe the new version is different ;).

Just to be picky, just because spreadsheets are interactive, and spreadsheets are not games, it doesn't mean games can't be interactive as a condition, in addition to the others you listed.

I agree games should be fun and sometimes fun means funny.

I must say I agree widt Kojima, we need backgrounds that can be watered till we can say "now finally we are playing next gen game"!

Imagine pissing on some grass and you come by next day and it has grown 10 millimeters, now that is next gen gaming my friends!

I think it really misses the point when the focus is put on making small little aspects of the game world be impressive or something to boast about, it actually takes away from the rest of the game. I live in a world where I can actually go to the bathroom and flush a real live toilet with real water and all the rest of it. It's nothing amazing. We do it every day. Yet do it digital and it's like wow, that's so realistic, that's so amazing, I want that. I don't know who is more gullible the customer or the developer. The focus should be on these things being subtle and in the background, not a main focus.

In a realistic next-gen game - that would had killed the grass.

It was a bad example, cut the guy some slack. The more interactive the environment the more players can use their imaginations to compliment the gameplay.

I think we have a lot of silly little graphical effects already. I really want to see games finaly develop past simple linear trigger based gameplay that it is now. Have some decent ambient AI, not so much trees and grass and hair growing. But give AI players some dynamic behavours that enable them to interact in interesting ways, like they originally planned for Oblivion.

They slightly touched the surface of that in assasins creed with AI flocking behaviours in crowds and stuff. But that could be taken so much further. Like the behaviour systems you can get in 3D apps with their non linear behavioral animation systems.

I'm tired with games, because they are so boringly trigger based, basicly the same retro games of 20 years ago, without much tacked on other than fancy 3d graphics and physics.

Jeremy Alessi wrote:

See, this is exactly what I don't want from games. I want a focused, directed gameplay experience, not some sandbox full of pointless gadgets to fiddle about with.

Evak wrote:

I don't want this either. I want to interact with carefully, skillfully created characters in a compellingly scripted way. I want meaningful dialogue.

Basically, I want all the stuff that fancy algorithms can't bring to games - heart and soul.

But I'm an algorithm, you insensitive clod!

who said anything about dialoge. You can't have good non scripted dialogue, but you should be able to have a living breathing world of NPC's that arent important to your story interact with you in a more convincing way than they do today.

I just get tired of everyone just walking/standing and having one of maybe 5 generic canned responses. And important NPC character maybe doing 2 basic things and one branching dialogue tree and thats it. Games are so linear they just arent fun. Might as well be playing a text adventure most of the time, at least you can use your imagination. These days all you get is a text adventure with a lot of walking running and button mashing attacks, or target shooting to fill the time in between. And some simple spreadsheet inventory and stats juggling, Hardly innovative.

Linearity is a good thing. You mention the problem of having characters standing around and repeating a handful of generic responses, and I agree that this is a problem. The difference between us is that whilst you would try to make these characters more interactive via various AI tricks, I would either cut superfluous NPCs out of the game entirely or carefully script each "scene" to prevent the player from interacting with them in ways that revealed their "hollowness". By the way, the reason I mentioned dialogue is because characters - dialogue = furniture.

Why not just watch a movie?

I think the future is in the algorithms. The only way to create these more compelling characters is to study ourselves and break it down into useable chunks. Scripting only goes so far and is way too abstract to use as it relates to the advance of games as a medium.

This goes back to what Kojima was saying. Right now we can script plants growing when they get water. That's not the point though. The point is to create real time dynamics. In time those dynamics will evolve into heart and soul.

FlameDuck: I think the Russian game you're thinking about is Silent Storm. It was a tactical turn based game, with completely destructable buildings. While a rifle shot could didn't have much effect (though you could shoot the enemy through wooden walls), a MG, grenade or bazooka could blow a hole in a wall you could use to get in an alternate way. Also, there were sometimes oildrums in the basements of this building that would blow up when shot, taking parts or the entire house with them. I would love to see a FPS that has completely destructable environments like that, where you can take out enemies hiding in the attic by blowing a hole in the floor below them. ;)

Oh, absolutely. Writers and artists have been doing this for years. Unfortunately, the "chunks" that you mention don't translate very well to formulas, and computers are unable to break them down or effectively make use of them without human intervention at each key moment.


This is a lovely idea. But it's as useful as saying "what we need is self aware AI!" Yeah, it'd be great in theory, but I'm not sure if it is realistically achievable. And even if it is achieved in the future, I'm not sure that it will result in anything more profound than complex sterility. Judging by his over-reliance on mostly non-interactive cutscenes, perhaps even Kojima realises this. You can't knock him for his idealism, but his naivety is rather disappointing.

I think he uses the medium well. What he stated is at odds with his actual design approach but perhaps that is simply out of necessity since the tech isn't there yet.

This whole discussion reminds me of one I had with a friend of mine about CG in movies when Star Wars Episode 2 came out. He basically thought they should give up on computer graphics because Yoda didn't really look much better than the original puppet. I told him back then the only way forward was to keep dreaming and keep working on it. As of late he's changed his tune because of the advances made in the past few years.

That's the one! Awesome game.