Have publishing+marketing trends damaged creative games?

[Rogue Trooper]

I think much caution needs to be exercised when appraising the Net Yaroze in terms of how much credit Sony deserve for it.

Going from memory (w/o checking Wiki!) Sony charged a small fortune for the setup. Hardly the altruistic action of a company willing to genuinely embrace the creativity of the public.

Secondly, Net Yaroze PS games were gimped from the outset by Sony's decision to limit their size to a tiny amount of memory. The upshot being that games could only ever hope to be extemely simplistic realtive to commercial games. Hardly the altruistic action of a company willing to genuinely embrace the creativity of the public.

Thirdly, Sony not long ago wiped all Net Yaroze PS games (that were available for people to access) from their servers. Without any advance warning either, afaik.
Hardly the altruistic action of a company willing to genuinely embrace the creativity of the public.

In summary, Net Yaroze was a quirky piece of expensively priced kit for budding coders to mess about with. Maybe it inspired some to realise a career in the games industry, I don't know. To credit Sony with much more than that though is perhaps a little misguided. As far as I remember it, Sony used Net Yaroze primarily as a marketing tool to help add to the 'cool' image they were so keenly fostering for the PlayStation brand.

Just been reading Edge's feature on Yaroze.

Price was £550 a LOT less than a full PS development kit, see below.

'Gimped' on memory? errr, it's EXACTLY the same as a normal PS1 (2 Mb main Ram, 1 Mb VRAM and 512K Sound Ram).

Namco fitted the entire Ridge Racer Conversion into exactly this 2Mb Main Ram, soundtrack was streamed from CD.

Hobbyist coders not really looking at CGI intro's etc

Yaroze had to be pirate-proof, thus limiting program to the PS1's main Ram, Video Ram and sound Ram.

As for giving them credit:

Dave Perry: 'This is one of the best things that's happened in a very long time'

Eugene Jarvis: 'This is an awesome development'


Jon Ritman:' We do have a problem with artists needing to see the results of their work as quickly as possible and as Cranberry is unwilling to buy them the FULL development kit, with a black playstation coming in at 4% of a FULL development kit, i can see us and other developers finding them very useful.'

Phil Harrison said 'This is NOT a mass Market consumer proposition' so , Sony were'nt marketing it as 'cool'.

[DreamcastRIP]

Just been reading Edge's feature on Yaroze.

Price was £550 a LOT less than a full PS development kit, see below.

So it was expensive just like I said it was.

'Gimped' on memory? errr, it's EXACTLY the same as a normal PS1 (2 Mb main Ram, 1 Mb VRAM and 512K Sound Ram).

Namco fitted the entire Ridge Racer Conversion into exactly this 2Mb Main Ram, soundtrack was streamed from CD.

Yes, it was gimped because Net Yaroze games could only be a few MB in size albeit that audio could be streamed from the game disc. Games couldn't be 'unlimited' in size like commercial games could.

Namco worked wonders in fitting the entirity of Ridge Racer (audio excepted) into the PlayStations's RAM but that game was hardly representative of the norm. However, that's missing the point because Namco had access to the (then) full development suite which Net Yaroze didn't have so even with the best will in the world there's no way a game of Ridge Racer's quality could have been made using Net Yaroze.

Hobbyist coders not really looking at CGI intro's etc

Indeed.

Yaroze had to be pirate-proof, thus limiting program to the PS1's main Ram, Video Ram and sound Ram.

That's fair comment when taken in isolation. Sony's Phil Harrison may have said, "This is not a mass market consumer proposition" but Sony were marketing it as 'cool' by releasing PR statements to magazines which blitzed us with it in a way that helped reinforce the 'cool' factor of PlayStation, imho. Harrison also said things such as the goal being to, "go back to the golden age of video game development, which was at home, on your own or with a couple of friends, designing a game yourself."

I'm not trash talking Net Yaroze, as I would have hoped was clear in my initial post on the matter. Net Yaroze games were distributed on Official PlayStation Magazine coverdisks, for instance, which was obviously a great thing. I'm stating that much caution needs to be exercised in appraising it. Heck, it's not as if it it were the first such consumer development kit either because the there was Develo for NEC's PC Engine and the WonderWitch for Bandai's WonderSwan before it.

Sony's record in this regard since the days of PlayStation is rather telling too. There was 'Linux for PlayStation 2' which wasn't really the same thing and PS3 originally had Linux as its 'Other OS' but Sony gimped that too by not permitting it access to the console's RSX graphics chip... before they removed it completely via a firmware update.

[Rogue Trooper]

Reading Harrison's comments in the Edge article, to me, i'm not getting this Sony=Cool! vibe, more an attempt to get more people into coding.

He talks of how he started in videogames by typing in magazine listings, 'screwing around with them, saying this does'nt work, but what about this?' and he hoped the logical outlet for Yaqroze would be computer graphics and computer science courses at varying educational levels, be it at the masters level or moving down to vocational training and technical colleges.

The 2 Mb Ram was also done to ensure that the Yaroze programe would NOT be competing with the professional dev.kit.

Also, Yaroze user was'nt looking to be producing the next £45 mega-game from his/her bedroom, so they did'nt need the polish to justify a games asking price.
Eugene Jarvis said regarding the Ram issue: ' By limiting it to 2 Mb, the focus needs to be on gameplay, not graphics'

In Japan, Yaroze sold to a large number of artists+designers looking to team up with programmers to create games, so it was a low cost means of opening up a whole new range of possibilites, with the hope that people would code in C, use the PS tools, focus on the game, not the video drivers etc, instead of being bogged down in the things programming for something like say Windows threw up, where you'd need to be able to run printer drivers, screen savers etc.

Plus the coder did'nt have to write the 3D maths routines when working with Yaroze as it's 3D Math's chips took care of that.

Also regarding Sony trying to make gaming cool, whilst they used the music arm of Sony corp etc to great effect, in instances like using the Designer's Republic for artwork on Wipeout series, it must be noted Gremlin Graphics interactive did same thing with Hardwar, also BMG with GTA and then you've E.A and Virgin Interactive who also used Designers Republic.

[Rogue Trooper]

Few more attempts from others at trying to make THEIR products appear 'Cool' way before sony tried it with Playstation:

Phillips were calling the CD-i the'Phillips Imagination Machine' in it's early, pre-release days (I.e the only limits with it, is your imagination'.

Commodore showed the Amiga 1000 to the world at a special event in New York on July 23 1985, the Amiga was presented by Debbie Harry and Andy warhol, in an attempt to make computing appear 'cool' to the selected jurnolists present.

Least we also forget The Bitmap Bros-Licencesd Music in their games/deal with Music Publisher, Rythm King, so we saw music by Bomb The Bass, Betty boo etc.

They were very vocal at the time how RENEGADE would be all about publishing the work of the indie programmer, yet as Jeff Minter said in an interview, when you approached them, they were really ONLY interested in promoting their OWN titles, hardly setting up a home for creative talent....



Plus they loved to publicise hemselves as 'Rockstars', huge hype at the time about them setting up their Renegade publishing label...

Sega:Well, Moonwalker arcade/MD/MS, the 'Make My Video' series on MCD (INXS, Kriss Kross and Marky Mark) trying to merge lines between gaming and music.

There was an Amiga game who's name escapes me which had Snap music in it etc etc.

[DreamcastRIP]

Reading Harrison's comments in the Edge article, to me, i'm not getting this Sony=Cool! vibe, more an attempt to get more people into coding...

The main thrust of my original post, as was stated three times, was that of Sony not having been the altruistic company with Net Yaroze that some people are seemingly so keen to paint them as.

Net Yaroze was a nice piece of kit and it helped provide a limited platform for creativity for those who could afford to lay out £550 (£808 inflation adjusted) two to three years after PlayStation had launched.

As I've also previously intimated, I'd perhaps be more likely to entertain the over the top praise some afford Sony for Net Yaroze if the company had developed the ethos with subsequent generations of PlayStation brand consoles (see previous post re: PS2 & PS3). I could elaborate further but it sometimes feels you're being contrary, i.e. playing devil's advocate, just for the sake of it so now I've made my point I'll be saying no more on the matter.

To state the blindingly obvious, of course other companies before and since have strived to position their products and brands as being 'cool'. I fail to see the point of you having listed those examples because it wasn't as if I or anyone else here was putting forward the arguement that Sony were the first console manufacturer and videogame publisher to try marketing their product and brand as being 'cool'. That would have been just plain silly.

[Rogue Trooper]

IF you think i set up this thread or indeed ANY other thread i've created on here to, as you put it, play Devils Advocate or just being contrary, then you VERY much mistaken and that's a sterotype in itself, thought you'd be above claims like that.Maybe your confusing me with someone else.........

Entire point of the threads are to encourage debate, take a look at way public and media saw a company, device or/or games and how attitudes changed.NONE of them are PRO-Sony, PRO-Jaguar, Pro-ANYTHING.Not everything has to be this viewed in 1 light

I've had run in's with Sony over hardware defects, don't rate the PS2 as high as i do my Xbox/DC,been very vocal over the piss-poor handling of the Vita etc etc, but i feel nothing for them or any other corp.Hell i'm typing this on a Logitech keyboard, connected to a MS device, which is connected to a Toshiba TV and is sending information via a BT landline.

Connected to same TV is a Sega Dreamcast and MS Xbox mk 1, so i'm far from heaping praise, but then i would'nt want either Sony or MS to bow out in next 5 years either.


I know your views on Sony and on many counts i'm in total argreement with you, as for Yaroze, sure it was flawed, just like anything else that's created, but i'm willing to accept at least it tried to do something.As for the price? that's corporations for you, what was the CDTV RRP? 3DO? CD-i?

The likes of the fact/fiction, did Jaguar games get unfair reviews and indeed this very thread were to get insights from the community on it.

I'm not going to blow my own trumpet here, but by giving quotes from the people who worked on the saturn, i've tried to break down the stigma the machine has at being crap at 3D, with the Jaguar thread, how initally the media loved it, then turned on it soon as Saturn+PS1 arrived.

With the Sony thread here, as i said on the opening post, i've seen the Playstation 'blamed' for the industry shift, ON OTHER FORUMS, when as i've put forward here, you can see the early signs of publishers and corporations trying to get gaming away from geek into cool.Sony had the cash and the music etc arms to really make that happen, but the roots were laid down a long time ago.

You can also lay some of the 'blame' on the publishing models used by the industry-how many MD games were platformers or shoot em up's for example? or the games press, something that's so evident in todays jurnolism, where a review is boiled down to a series of tick boxes-Does it have online MP? +1 if YES.Is it a FPS? If YES, does it play like COD? if NO, -1.

The gaming media has constantly been trying to champion what they class as cool and if things were seen as different, they'd get very little page coverage.

If you felt i was playing devils advocate to such a degree, then why post? why not just ask IF that was my game via a PM, i'd have been more than happy to clear up any missunderstanding

I had hoped perhaps we'd see some comments from people who had (or knew of people who had) used the Yaroze or worked in the industry, as this site has some very rich talent on board and people clearly know far more people within the industry past+present, as the interviews on here are fantastic.

Seems pointless starting threads at times.

I really should'nt be having to justify a post or thread when it's non-offensive and just set up to get some debate going.Really annoyed  me off as i've approached a Sony thread same way i have the Saturn, Jaguar, PC etc.

[zapiy]

This is a brilliant debate, i have let it go as most of what has said has been in the right manner so far so lets keep it that way.. Remember opinions are just that, facts are sometimes that formed of opinions..I wont say no more lets just keep that in mind.

[Rogue Trooper]

Rebooting this thread.Changed title to relect that and with hindsight and common sense, i really SHOULD have started thread out as i intend to now, focus on 1 corporation was bound to go south somewhat, so how about the following to start a new debate:

The gaming industry has ALWAYS been looking to capture fresh, new consumers and as a result, we've seen games+hardware increasingly targeted at fresh markets.

For example the PS1+PS2 were aimed at the 'core' gamer, generally male, 18-35 years old, large disposable income etc and towards the later years of it's life, Sony went after the causal, Non-gamer with things like Eye Toy and Buzz on PS2, PS1 aimed at younger age group etc, yet these consoles saw support far longer than say Xbox, which having done what MS wanted from it, was cut off sharply (and in it's prime i feel).

Nintendo with the Game Cube by comparison seemed more focused on the family side of gaming with the G.C which seemed to suffer for this approach, yet nailed it with it's handhelds, GBA, SP and DS being huge sucsess stories.The DS sucsess in Europe it has been said was due to Nintendo getting female consumers into female gamers.

MS had huge early sales of Kinect, Sony's Move has been a slow and steady sales device, the Wii was massive due to going after the previous non-gamer market etc.

But with resources going on games and devices to attract previous non-gamers, did we, the 'core' gamer loose-out somewhat?.

I ask as this generation alone has seen MS can Freelancer sequel on 360, have RARE stop work on all internal projects to just produce Kinect titles, Sony closing studios left, right and centre, had DLC for Heavy rain canned, instead had studio patch in Move support, Steel Battalion and 'spirtual' new Panzer Dragoon' gone Kinect only etc.

What, if ANY games or experiences has the core gamer lost, as publishers rush to attract the causal market?.

[Rogue Trooper]

I'll get the ball rolling on the reboot:

Ex-RARE member, Chris Seavor, was interviewed and he talked of the projects RARE were working on and why they got canned:

Perfect Dark:Core, which was to be a lot more open and with freedom, very much a Deus Ex styled Perfect Dark.It was canned as P.D 0 sales fell short and MS said we alreadyhave a FPS franchise (Halo) so we don't need another.

Conker 2, Kameo 2 also in the works and stopped as teams switched to producing Kinect Games, he said Kinect Sports sold 4-5 Million units, so MS wanted more titles like this, then there was Savannah, Ordinary Joe and Urchin-a dark fairytale in mould of Fable, but with things Fable promised (replace the dog with a pig in this case).He talked of how MS just were'nt interested in the creative stuff RARE were doing, only sales units.

Generation before, i'd have loved to have seen how Jeff Minters Unity turned out on Game Cube, seen someone sign him up to convert Tempest 3000 from Nuon to G.C, loved to have seen Capcoms Dead Phoenix.

On Xbox, things like Team SAS or Lionhead's B.C (Caveman sim) looked very promising, as did Falcon:Into The Malestrom (sadly never made it, yet Mace Griffin did), never saw GP4 on Xbox either.

PS2 wise, New Xcom (Dreamland Chronicles:Freedom Ridge, by J.Gollop) sadly died.

Psygnosis were reduced to just producing Wipeout Games, yet Off.PS mag ran a feature on possibility of PS1 franchises like G-Police and Colony wars getting new instalments on PS2, nothing ever amounted to more than talk of doing them.

Guess the market was changing quicker than i wanted to accept and games were being made for a new auidance, those who give me blank stares when i mention Syndicate, Xcom, the Strike Series.Guess only hope for new instalments on these for say PS4/Xbox Next, lies in the digital only route.

[Rogue Trooper]

Reading an article from May 2006 on Psygnosis:

Ian Hetherington (company founder) would back projects other publishers might not have or at very least, not so early on, as he'd spot talent just by speaking to coders and seeing their very early demos.

Martyn Chudley approached them with a very early demo of The Killing Game show and was lent an ST HDD to speed up development dramatically.

Martin Edmonson approached them with early code for Shadow Of The Beast and Psygnosis backed it as an Amiga 1st game, this at a time when the ST was outselling the Amiga 5-1, any other publisher would have said, yeah but can you do an ST version 1st?.

Jon Burton's Leander was backed on the spot, based on a very earl demo, which just had 1 creature in it, a dragon.

Wipeout designer Nick Burcombe talked of how someone like Ocean would 'recycle codeand change graphics to fit any IP they could get their hands on' in comparison to Psygnosis nuture talent approach.

He describes MS dropping Quantum Red Shift 2 on Xbox as a real eye-opener as up until that point he'd had the romantic idea that Curly Monsters could flourish or at least survive as a small, but cost-effective studio, but where as in the glory days of Psygnosis, a game selling 350,000 copies would be a huge achivement, in 'todays' market, things were very different.

Quantum Redshift just had'nt sold in numbers MS wanted and thus had little-no IP value and thus could'nt warrant a sequel.

[Rogue Trooper]

On Wipeout, which Psygnosis described as the best thing they'd ever done they said:

'we very consciousily said:How do we take this to the mass market and get cool?', it was the complete product in terms of positioning.

They spoke of a very early desire to capitalise on new, growing markets, beyond the ST+Amiga, the Mega Drive was just the start.Hence tapping into CD Rom development with things like Microcosm.

Curly Monsters, talked of how when you approached MS with ideas for games, they expected you to be a big (60+ people) studio, with big ideas, blue sky and massive budgets.


Regarding Sony+The Playstation:

(Hetherington again)'..When Playstation was 1st conceived, it was'nt going to be released in western world.The amount of memory it had meant it was a load-and-go machine, niether streaming, nor making real use of the CD.If you could have made a 3 megabyte CD, that would have been fine for them in Japan.Thier development systems, EVERYTHING was a mess......IF you'd relied on the Japanese for support as a platformer developer, nothing would have happened.Psygnosis built the development systems for the European market.'

[TL]

Such a shame that Sony bought out Psygnosis and ruined them

[Rogue Trooper]

Such a shame that Sony bought out Psygnosis and ruined them

That's talked on, how once Sony 'took Office' you saw a gradual decline of the brand image, how it was all standardised jewel cases, need for more identifiable, market-friendly IP.

Complete absorption into Sony's internal studio structure soon followed, with UK operations becoming SCEE Studios:Liverpool, Camden, Stroud+Leeds.

To see them become just a Wipeout production line was tragic.

[Rogue Trooper]

Disney just CLOSED down Warren Spector's Junction Point studios, after Epic Mickey recived dissapointing reviews and sales.

Review score hovers between 56+64 on Metacritic, depending which platform you look at.

Sales wise, 529,000 copies sold, compared to 1.3 Million of the 1st game.

Man, it seems to me as soon as a studio has 1 or poor selling games, that's it, closed.

Bizzare were hit bad by dissapointing sales of The Club, then Blur, but were very talented.

Very ruthless market out there.

[onthinice]

If that is the way of the future, then I do not like the path.