Talking about the wave of WEB 3.0, what is most popular amongst all new innovations ? The answer will probably be: Open Platform.
Nowadays, companies provide all sorts of Open Platform allowing designers to integrate their own vision with the corporation, such as Facebook Developers, Google API, Google Appengine, and even MIXI considered as the most conservative SNS, launched APIs. In the cellphone industry, there is iPhone SDK, Google Android SDK and so on.
So how about games ? What can we customize right now in games ? By far, there are only "illegal MODs" such as those in
Etc
....
And there are few Open Source games which allows programmers to create their own games,
Etc
..
There has been nothing like an API sort of stuff ever launched in games, well technically, there has been things like Map Creator Pack in Starcraft and Warcraft and also in other games. But there has BY FAR, never been any Map Editor or things like that allowing users to customize features inside the game engine itself (Legally, meaning without risking the stability of the program itself by Hacking or Monkey Patching or Reverse Engineering the Complied Program).
However, in a few months, there will be such thing coming soon, which is the Starcraft 2 and its almost "all mighty" map editor. The map editor is so powerful, so that you can even create FPS, or Car Racing Games with the map editor itself.
To See for yourself, Please Click here.
So, what really did the Galaxy Editor do ?It liberated almost everyone from the original game plot, and offered us freedom to create our own game, which is absolutely evolutional for normal users, though this is nothing too fancy within the community of Power Users and Super Users, for Open Source Games have been years in the community.
What I really think is that did the Galaxy Editor REALLY gave freedom to users ?
What is the difference between the Galaxy Editor and Open Source Games.
And at last, I think someone will probably mention Spore in the discussions. I personally think it is sort of a failure towards the "openness" of the game, but still a nice try.
Source: The Power of the Galaxy Editor:http://online.cloudyama.com/blog?id=3&lang=en
4 comments:
I for one never really understood the craze about galaxy editor. Sure it can make you play an FPS on an RTS. Sure you can recreate a MAD with it. But at what effort? and at what quality?
To say that galaxy editor is able to create an entirely new game is really a stretch in my opinion. Clunky movements, absence of any physics effects(ragdoll, etc), reused model from SC2 is just a few of those reason.
"But you can import models!". I'd imagine it would terribly bloat the map size, and the last thing I need sitting in my SC2 map folder is a 300MB modern warfare-1-level-only-lookalike that is inferior anyways. Just remember the wc3 days. We will just play those maps for once or twice for giggles then get back to melee/DotA.
Also the whole thing about commercializing maps, what's up with that. No chat rooms aside, I really am confused about some directions the battle.net 2.0 is going. I am pretty sure it would be a major annoyance above all else. Imagine you and your bros playing some rpg map on sc2. You love this game so much, you would play together it all day as if it was an mmo (you can save progress using codes or whatever, this function is present in wc3). All of a sudden map developer decides he had enough fan base, and it's time to harvest. He would make new versions pay to play. That would be really annoying, and guess what, there will be a lot of these kind of maps since you can not start off pay to play since you won't get any players.
"Support the developers you pirate!" Well I would if not for the fact that I have already paid 60$ (50+10) for SC2. If anything support your fans blizzard. If you see a fans made a map that single-handedly revived your game from the grave it is probably a good idea to employ him, like valve did with ice frog. I seems to me that blizzard just went "Hey look what dota did to wc3. We ought to give them fans more powerful tools. more power to them, more money to us".
"But it incentivise map making" I thought about it back then until I saw this video (good stuff). Now I'm not so sure anymore. If anything, there will be even more shitty maps floating around that we had to sift through to find good maps.
Lastly, don't get me wrong. I do think galaxy editor is awesome. I chuckled a bit when I saw touhou on sc2 (look at dat thor). It's just isn't what their marketing want you to believe.
But even though my opinion is as such, I know full well that we can't underestimate the power a community brings. For all I know, I could be proven wrong few weeks after release. It's just that from what I seen, galaxy editor is not the gaming revolution we need so bad right now.
/rant
It is sad just to see the quality of games these days declining. The game industries have made their game so well they now lack of ideas of how they can make the game better. Till they reach the point where they can go nowhere but to say, "we may be messed up but that doesn't mean we must get less money from gamers". So they just make a tool which enables the gamer to suit themselves to certain games. "Let them help us by giving us ideas too, we don't need to work, just wait the result", after they got the result that is the time to harvest just like chocosundae mentioned.
So the meaning of "interaction" is your relation between the game and the gamer. While i enjoy the most playing online game, i must agree that the one which needs enhancement is the interaction between player in my opinion. Now almost all games and consoles have ability to play online, so they need internet connection. The game producer just keep thinking,"Now they have internet connection so now what? Oh right, let them buy something from the internet". And since then, many buyable addons just popping everywhere.
The sample case which has gone very wrong is Street Fighter IV. Maybe all of you have heard the updated version of Street Fighter IV "SUPER", which you know==>what they mean by "SUPER" is 8 more characters from the previous Street fighter."All Hail CAPCOM!!"
What's more, you can get it for the price of street fighter IV.
See how this is going very wrong?
In my opinion, the one which we need right now is not a device to exploit more for the game, but rather another inovation which exploit the relation between gamer and community through the game...
Guys, thanks for the reply.
First, all what you see for SC2 is just still in the beta stage. All the MAD and the custom maps are made just during the beta opt-in stage. So I guess, we are going to see things with better quality in the future.
Secondly, for Battle.Net 2.0. It is something that integrate all Blizzard games together, including SC2, WOW, Diablo 3, and of course Warcraft 3 and whatever it is in the future. I see it as a challenge to Facebook, and VariousApp Stores, i.e. Apple App Store, Google App Store, Nokia OVI store etc. We are probably going to see something like a Blizzard map store or whatever like that in the future. Why ? Simply because of the internet. The internet is changing the way of game retailing, they got to follow up.
Third, back to Our Main Topic, "Interactions in Games". What is the "next level of interaction" ?
Say, for example if the current level of interaction is "to become an actor" inside any game, the next level should be "to become a director" in any game.
And that is why I think the Galaxy Editor is a revolution in that sense.
Sorry for the late comment.
Yes, I agree that it is still in beta, and perhaps it was rash of me to treat it as if it as a retail product.
I do think map editors and mods are good, and galaxy editor is an awesome tool. I also think that world editor is the main factor that sustained wc3 for the larger part of the community. But once you try to move from asking "what could galaxy editor can do that world editor can't?" to asking "what kind of games can galaxy editor possibly produce that world editor can't?", it is surprisingly hard to answer clearly.
So my rationale is this, if we are going to treat it as a revolutionary game SDK, then in my opinion it lacks a lot of essential feature other SDKs have. I don't think we can really make a full fledged FPS games, for example, using galaxy editor. On the other hand, galaxy editor is certainly a huge improvement from world editor, in fact I'm awaiting those custom maps eagerly. I just don't know if it warrants the adjective "revolutionary"
Post a Comment