Okay, so I just finished the first shot at my “Play From Zero” concept. Basically, you make a full game every work session, with the next game building on the last, but changing it so much it looks and/or feels like a completely new game. The first game is a callback to my ZX Spectrum youth, with a dungeon full of boosts and baddies. This “Release 1” is called, originally, “Boosts-n-Baddies”. It's here: https://www.gamedev.net/manage/projects/2108/ (I think, the new layout still vexes me)

ANYWAY… When I get the time for the next one, I expect to turn BnB into an ol' timey vertical arcade shooter. That makes me think a thought I've thought before: Aren't 95% of games basically the same, techincally speaking? Don't get me wrong, plenty of originality out there, but why are developers all pretending that the game isn't just a 3D point'n'click thing. Reskin Skyrim and you get Call of Duty. Make the controls newtonian and remove the ground and you get a space shooter.

It's just a tired thought right now, having spent four hours of my friday night on a straight-to-play project. But I've long felt that one game, with a few mods, could become nearly any other game out there.

Thoughts?

Embassy of Time said:
one game, with a few mods, could become nearly any other game out there.

Screenwriters know that there are only 7 basic plots for a movie or story. Somehow, they still make new ones seem fresh. Similarly, there are only so many basic play mechanics. Your job as a game designer is to make a basic play mechanic seem fresh, even though other games have similarities.

Sorry, I phraded my though ts wrong. It was not meant as a negative. I meant that the code core could be reused from nearly anything, for nearly anything, so why not just make one 3D game and advance to mainly mods, which AFAIK are waaay cheaper to make? Yeah, still a post dev brainfart, but it keeps me up at night…

I meant that the code core could be reused from nearly anything, for nearly anything, so why not just make one 3D game and advance to mainly mods, which AFAIK are waaay cheaper to make?

Sort of like, Unreal Engine or Unity for example? ?

I jest, but that's essentially what a general purpose engine is, albeit perhaps slightly lower level than you are thinking.

Unfortunately, a large part of the time and cost of new game creation is content creation, which engines or existing code can be less helpful with.

There's also some stigma to mods compared to “full games” with some players - despite no substantive difference, some people are less willing to pay (or to pay as much) for a mod as for a stand alone game. I wonder, could you make your mod cheaply enough that it makes up for any loss of sales or lower price?

jbadams said:

I meant that the code core could be reused from nearly anything, for nearly anything, so why not just make one 3D game and advance to mainly mods, which AFAIK are waaay cheaper to make?

Sort of like, Unreal Engine or Unity for example? ?

I jest, but that's essentially what a general purpose engine is, albeit perhaps slightly lower level than you are thinking.

Unfortunately, a large part of the time and cost of new game creation is content creation, which engines or existing code can be less helpful with.

There's also some stigma to mods compared to “full games” with some players - despite no substantive difference, some people are less willing to pay (or to pay as much) for a mod as for a stand alone game. I wonder, could you make your mod cheaply enough that it makes up for any loss of sales or lower price?

No, no, you're perfectly right, I was actually thinking along the lines of engines. But even engines seem timid to take the full leap. I was blown away years ago by the creativity of modders, triggered by my time playing Minecraft (before it got Microsofted). Little more than details and some reskins and you have a whole new game. Even in Unity or Unreal etc., it's still a lot of coding to create the exact same results. Apart from art assets (which I have entirely different but related thoughts on), it feels like “create a new game”, in most cases, should be doable with a few changes to some settings, and then go.

Maybe it's just my “old man says everything is the same” phase kicking in. But it feels very much like it to me…