"Every New Game From Now On Must ___________" (fill in the blank)

[Texas Joker 52]

Every new game from now on MUST focus on overall quality, including story, gameplay mechanics, graphics and performance, in favor of development of DLC or the addition of multiplayer (unless multiplayer was intended to be part of the game in the first place), or DRM, and DLC is to only have been developed AFTER the game is finished and shipped.

So hows that for a blanket statement, that is at the same time specific? Besides, hopefully this will weed out shitty games, especially ones that could have been great, only the developer/publisher decided to ruin it with any of the above:

"Oh, all games need multiplayer now!", "Our game needs to not only have day-one DLC that costs an arm and a leg, but is already on the disc! GENIUS!", "I'm worried that pirates will steal our game. I know! Lets add useless DRM that will easily be stripped, will only inconvenience our paying customers, and if they strip it after buying it, we can accuse them of piracy, and keep them from playing our game!".

Shitty business practices have little to no excuse. Games today need more focus on quality, not DLC, Multiplayer, or useless add-ons to 'prevent piracy'. A good, solid, base game is much better and more fun than a shitty game with a bunch of stuff tacked on. Its like having a turd, and covering it in glittery stickers. Underneath the glitter... Its still shit.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

Every new game from now on must be able to pass purely on Gameplay, not story or graphics or anything. Mass effect I'm looking at you.

 

[Cobbs]

Ever new game from now on must not suck. There. That is a blanket statement that will help the industry.

I think you win.

 

[iseko]

Every game from now on must not invoke rage by the majority of the gamers, if it does the dev's will be shot.

There, how is that for an incentive to make a decent ending for ME3 bioware.

Captcha: Berlin wall. Seems appropriate

 

[Macgyvercas]

Don't half ass the single player option for multiplayer games. Too often, the single player is treated as an after thought. Either do both well or just focus on one. Don't do one well and then say "Half ass time!" on the other.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

Every game *with difficulty options* must do more than just make your attacks weaker and give the enemies more HP on the harder settings.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

Don't half ass the single player option for multiplayer games. Too often, the single player is treated as an after thought. Either do both well or just focus on one. Don't do one well and then say "Half ass time!" on the other.

I find this problem especially bad when you consider that if you want to fire up the game a few years down the road, most of the community playing the game will have moved on and you're stuck with a half-ass afterthought as your sole experience.

 

[Da Orky Man]

Be made by an independent studio.

How about 'be made by Valve'?

You may thank me later.

But what if I want to play a new game between now and forever?

Oh, they'll make games, they just won't go make more than two in the same series.

Captcha - om nom nom.
Why yes captcha, \i am indeed feeling quite nom right now.

 

[Auron225]

Every game must be fun XD

Yeah thats too vague

ok then, Every game must be free =) Unrealistic maybe...

Yeah I'm not very good at this...

 

[immortalfrieza]

I'll give you my eleven gaming commandments. Why 11? Because I like to go 1 step beyond:

11. Thou shalt sell one's game as a whole or not at all.

On disc DLC and Day 1 DLC are ridiculous cash ins that remove features from a game and sell them separately the game developers act like they think we don't know this. $60 is already far more than games should cost as it is, making us spend another $20-$30 to get the entire game is a middle finger to your own customers and is completely unethical.

10.Thou shalt not release a buggy game.

Make absolutely sure your game has no bugs whatsoever before you even release it. You shouldn't have to your patch your games over and over and over just to make them functional.

9.Thou shalt price one's game proportional to the amount of content.

A game that has 10 hours worth of content should cost far less than a game that has 50 hours worth of content. That's all there is to it.

8.Thou shalt not release the same game several times and call it different.

It doesn't matter if they're in the same series or genre, there should be several improvements in terms of gameplay, graphics, and story between games. A game with a graphical update and the same exact gameplay as the last one you made is NOT a different game.

7.Thou shalt listen to one's criticism.

If there's dozens of reviews saying that a feature of your game is bad, then it probably is and you should at least try to fix it. There's no excuse for making another game in the same genre that has the same exact problems that your last one did.

6.Thou shalt create anti-piracy measures that work or shut up!

Either make foolproof anti-piracy measures in your games or don't complain about piracy. It shouldn't even be possible to pirate your game, at least not for some time, and if it is possible it's not the pirate's fault that you're losing sales to piracy, its yours. The law of the jungle is the weak die and the strong survive, and that can be applied to video game production as well.

5.Thou shalt not continue using noneffective anti-piracy measures.

Particularly not ones that inconvenience or even outright punish your perfectly loyal customers. Pirates have already proven they can go through DRM and other anti-piracy measures like Kratos' blade through people's heads, there's no reason to continue using them.

4.Thou shalt put thought into creating thou's game.

There is no reason whatsoever for making design decisions for your games that are so monumentally STUPID that anyone, not to mention trained game designers, should be able to instantly tell that they are stupid. This keeps happening, and it shouldn't.

3.Thou shalt not focus on the graphics of a game to the exclusion of all other aspects of a game.

Graphics are one of the most unimportant parts of a game, as long as the player can still see what they're looking at most don't care about it. However, there are plently of perfectly good games out there that have excellent graphics, excellent gameplay, and excellent stories, and there's no reason why yours can't have all 3 either.

2.Thou shalt have good voice actors or none at all.

If you can't find perfectly good voice actors that are passionate about VAing your game, then forget about voice acting at all and just go back to text, there's no shame in it. Bad VAs are worse than text.

1. Thou shalt not do ye olde english and/or highly inaccurate and bad accents.

Ye olde english is called that because nobody uses it anymore. Ye olde english is not something that people understand easily anymore, and it's not something nostalgic or quaint or anything, it's just annoying, ESPECIALLY when it's voice acted instead of just in text. Similarly, accents that are poorly done are worse that not saying anything at all. Frequently both become nonsensical jibberish because of how difficult to understand they are. A player shouldn't have to pause, put their controller down for a minute, and stare at the screen for a while JUST to understand what a character just said.

 

[TheLastSamurai14]

Every new game from now on must place single player above multiplayer.

Way to doom every GOOD MP shooter in addition to CoD. Case in point: Tribes: Ascend. The game has no single player and still manages to be a great shooter based solely on its multiplayer community. We don't want Unreal or Tribes to turn into Brink, now do we?

 

[Aeshi]

Every game must now come with robo-Scarabs that burrow into (and promptly devour) anyone who starts up the game if the copy in question was pirated.

 

[getoffmycloud]

Every new game from now on must place single player above multiplayer.

Way to doom every GOOD MP shooter in addition to CoD. Case in point: Tribes: Ascend. The game has no single player and still manages to be a great shooter based solely on its multiplayer community. We don't want Unreal or Tribes to turn into Brink, now do we?

Sorry for thinking that MP is shit I guess I won't have my own opinions any more

 

[anthony87]

Every new game should try to emulate the sheer insanity of Asura's Wrath.

Just finished having a fight against Akuma from Street Fighter on the moon in which the moon is destroyed and the two proceed to fight for the following 500 YEARS!

Massive grin on my face the entire time.

 

[HealswithBeard]

Every multi-player game must include "couch co-op"!

 

[TheLastSamurai14]

Every new game from now on must place single player above multiplayer.

Way to doom every GOOD MP shooter in addition to CoD. Case in point: Tribes: Ascend. The game has no single player and still manages to be a great shooter based solely on its multiplayer community. We don't want Unreal or Tribes to turn into Brink, now do we?

Sorry for thinking that MP is shit I guess I won't have my own opinions any more

My problem with your previous suggestion is that you're overgeneralizing all multiplayer components of every single game. It's like saying that every RPG is crap because The Legend of Alon-Dar [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRwVOe-n0tI] is crap.

I'm not saying you can't have your opinion. I'm just saying that generalization is bad (mkay?).

 

[Smeatza]

Every game that has online co-op MUST include local co-op as well.

 

[figday]

Every new game from now on must be made where the developers have total freedom.

 

[templar1138a]

Every new game from now on must have replay value.

And blackjack. And hookers.

In fact, forget the replay value.

 

[templar1138a]

I'm going to make a slight alteration to the statement, because I only care about a particular genre.

Every new WRPG must have full character customization, a dialogue wheel with icons to indicate tone (like the one in Dragon Age 2), significantly better voice acting than any given Charlie Brown cartoon, and multiple endings that aren't determined by which button you push; being made available or not based instead on the decisions you make throughout the game.