{"id":92335,"date":"2016-05-18T17:54:58","date_gmt":"2016-05-18T15:54:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=92335"},"modified":"2016-05-18T17:55:49","modified_gmt":"2016-05-18T15:55:49","slug":"why-gamer-rage-over-casuals-gender-and-race-needs-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/features\/92335-why-gamer-rage-over-casuals-gender-and-race-needs-to-die","title":{"rendered":"Why gamer rage over casuals, gender, and race needs to die"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a \u201crage bubble\u201d in gaming, and hopefully it will burst soon. That was the word from the founder of QCF Design<\/a><\/strong> in Cape Town, Danny Day, who co-developed and released Desktop Dungeons<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Day recently subjected himself to an interview with us, in which he gave his views on everything from DLC and in-game currencies, to the skills he would look for in new employees.<\/p>\n

As studio head of QCF and gaming since he was a tyke, Day has a lot of insight to offer on game development, gamer culture, and gaming in general.<\/p>\n

The first part of our interview may be found here: Desktop Dungeons has made South African developers QCF Design R9 million so far<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

In this second part, Day weighed in on the rage and fighting we\u2019ve seen among gamers over a variety of issues.<\/p>\n

He also bravely tackled the topic of gender and ethnic stereotyping in gaming from a historical perspective, by looking at Nintendo\u2019s Mario character.<\/p>\n

To preserve the full context of the interview, Day\u2019s answers are reproduced below with only minor edits.<\/p>\n

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How has gaming changed between when you first started playing games, and when you started making games?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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I watched the Casual bubble happen and thought, \u201cHey, these games are tiny enough that maybe I can make something like them, lets try!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Um, wow\u2026 I guess there have been loads of cycles of expansion and contraction?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s this repeating loop where new developers with smaller budgets can colonise a new type of game, hardware or other niche and then you see a lot of interesting differentiation happening until the larger budget systems figure out how to maximise for the new space and then slowly push the small studios out.<\/p>\n

When I first started playing games, PCs didn\u2019t really have a distribution system, so games would filter through to you in strange ways and patterns. Consoles were all grey imports.<\/p>\n

Arcades still existed, but were somehow more dodgy\u2026<\/p>\n

I\u2019d been playing stuff for years before the Internet happened, so I watched the rise of trying to get games to connect to each other – first over serial cables, then LAN, then your crappy modem.<\/p>\n

Modding was the new best thing ever because a game could become something entirely different, thanks to some people in Sweden who were just like you that liked reading obscure text files.<\/p>\n

I watched the Casual bubble happen and thought, \u201cHey, these games are tiny enough that maybe I can make something like them, lets try!\u201d and then the bubble burst and the huge casual portals ate everything.<\/p>\n

Then they stopped being massively profitable and most of them died. Now they\u2019re just these big dinosaurs grazing a paltry few tens of millions of dollars off an established market.<\/p>\n

I watched the Facebook bubble, the mobile bubble (remember when there were new games in the app store top 10 every week? No? Well, can you imagine?) the Steam bubble, the XBLA bubble\u2026<\/p>\n

There are a lot of bubbles, I guess is what I\u2019m trying to say.<\/p>\n

\"Danny<\/a>

Danny Day<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

The rise of 3D cards was cool, no doubt there, but have you seen how much our game interfaces have changed since then?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And yes, games have become more graphically whatever and there\u2019s more herpaflops pushing pixels around, but who really cares about that?<\/p>\n

When you know what\u2019s going on with those systems behind the scenes, they become a bit boring.<\/p>\n

I mean, yeah, it\u2019s cool and technically awesome that someone\u2019s pushing 8 lights per pixel in a deferred renderer, or how mind-blowing Carmack\u2019s Reverse was when it made vertex shadows possible on regular machines\u2026<\/p>\n

But those tricks die, or fade away into just being what everyone\u2019s doing now anyway.<\/p>\n

The rise of 3D cards was cool, no doubt there, but have you seen how much our game interfaces have changed since then?<\/p>\n

So I kinda don\u2019t really care about the whole graphics obsession\u2026 I mean, yeah, I can see exactly why some new console game isn\u2019t running its backbuffers at 1080p to maintain 60fps.<\/p>\n

The frames-per-second is a shipping-blocker, so they optimised for that and<\/em> still had to render X more shaders per poly than their nearest competition, buffer size is practically a slider that you can change late in development, so they did what they had to do.<\/p>\n

Boo, what evil devs they are for not justifying the size of your screen! (But can you really tell anyway, honestly? Without the badly photoshopped comparison shots?)<\/p>\n

\n

I want the people who feel they\u2019re entitled to \u201cown\u201d gaming as a whole to stop shouting so much and fighting quite so hard to protect something that was never theirs in the first place.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I care about things like coherence of vision, style, and people.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s mostly the people though\u2026 Every bubble has introduced more people to the joy of playing games. People were never going to play Quake on the bus, but they can play stuff now, and have a more fun commute\u2026<\/p>\n

I\u2019m always a bit saddened by people who seem angry that more games exist now, or there are more people playing more kinds of games. How is that a bad thing?<\/p>\n

I guess I want the rage bubble to burst too.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I want the people who feel they\u2019re entitled to \u201cown\u201d gaming as a whole to stop shouting so much and fighting quite so hard to protect something that was never theirs in the first place.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re playing something that someone else made because they were fascinated by watching people play the thing. If you\u2019re not rewarding to watch play, who is going to keep paying you enough attention to keep making things for you?<\/p>\n

Have you seen the smile on a grandmother clearing a difficult puzzle on her phone? Seen the little dance someone does when a new cat rocks up in their Neko Atsume garden?<\/p>\n

Imagine how rewarding it is to have a part in giving people happiness like that.<\/p>\n

\"Super<\/a><\/p>\n

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Have the changes in the medium and industry been for the better?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Stereotyping chases people away from games when it really shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yes and no.<\/p>\n

Yes, 3D cards are cool. Yes, realistic graphics made my dad and I share our experiences of Rome and Florence, except he was talking about the physical cities and I was referencing Assassins Creed.<\/p>\n

But being able to show actual humans instead of @ signs put us on a road of maximum stereotyping as an industry.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s something that chases people away from games when it really shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\n

Why is Mario a he, why is he rescuing a she?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Why does Mario have a mustache?<\/strong> Because it was hard to show a face with that few pixels in the sprite, give him a huge nose so we can see it too.<\/p>\n

Why does Mario wear overalls?<\/strong> Because overalls have those easy-to-understand buttons on the front and they\u2019re one piece, so less colours needed for sprite work.<\/p>\n

Why the hat?<\/strong> Hair edges are hard to integrate with other art\u2026<\/p>\n

That all works easily, but it gets flipped around:<\/p>\n