As I write this, I'm in a conversation that has me thinking about old games and how they were developed. The game that has prompted this moment of musing is Mega Man 9. I like what's been done with Mega Man 9 and the purposeful 8-bit approach, not because I care for the NES style but because I like the intentionally imposed restrictions. Sometimes, when the sky is the limit, sloppy design can result. I'd like to see more developers give their teams pet projects like this just to hone their skills and learn the value of efficiency.
Way back in the day, resources were pretty limited. Only so much space and processing power could be dedicated to music, graphics, and levels. Every element had to count. There was just no room for fat and fluff. Today's systems overflow with resources by comparison. It's like being handed a box of 120 different colored crayons. Sometimes, the desire to use every last color in the box, even those useless metallic ones, can overwhelm good artistic sense. A lot of games these days seem to have more spectacle than substance. They suffer from loose design and dead space.
For just one example, compare two Legend of Zelda games: Twilight Princess and Link to the Past. Looking at just Hyrule Field, LttP loaded every screen with something. There were caves and holes to explore all over the place, hidden in clever ways. There were foes to defeat and friends to talk to, mini-games to play and treasures to find. Hyrule Field was packed. In TP, Hyrule Field was more expansive than ever. It looked quite naturalistic and was pretty, but it was mostly empty. What's the point of having all of that space? Was it there just because the developers wanted to convey how epically large the world was? I'd rather have a game world that was small and packed with content than one epically empty.
I have the same problem with game length. Somewhere, at some point in time, somebody decided that for a game to be worth x amount of money it had to last at least x number of hours. This unfortunate thought spread like an outbreak of Yersinia pestis in a prairie dog town, prompting developers to start padding games. Again, I don't care about length, I want content. I'd rather spend my fifty bucks on three hours of densely packed entertainment than 30 hours of game play spread so thin you could see through it.
I like today's games. I'm not looking for a return to old school design. I do, however, feel that today's games can suffer from too many crayons, too much fluff and flash. The games of yesteryear hold a lesson in tightness of design that some of today's developers could stand to learn (or relearn). Maybe the occasional project that forced dev teams to work under 8-bit constraints would help them focus on what really counts.
Related Links:
End Game: The Necessary Evil of Boss Fights
Design Resurrection: How Capcom Finally Proved That It’s Game and Not Graphics That Matters
Gimmick: not a dirty word