I know plenty of people who like cheap American beer.

Doesn't mean it's good beer. 

if 'good' simply means it tastes good to you, then arguably, so called 'crappy' cheap american beer is 'good' because the masses like it.

^_^;
*runs* 

So, what you're saying is George Bush is a good president because the majority voted in favor of him? (NOTE: No political comments, please--I'm just making an example.)

"Good" is not a measure of popularity. "Popularity" is a measure of popularity, and "good" is a measure of quality.

Definitions of "good" may vary, but then you're refering to opinion, and not actual quality.

What wrath was refering to was popularity, which has nothing to do with Zwiffle's claim that the games are mediocre. 

How do you measure actual quality then? I'm really interested in that. 

Explained here:
http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/39.html 

bad wordage, should have read: if 'good' simply means it tastes good to you, then arguably, so called 'crappy' cheap american beer is 'good' because the masses like the taste of it.

what i was trying to get at is that since 'good' can't be quantified objectively, that these arguments were nothing but opinion. it was also an attempt to add weight to speedy's suggestion that zwiffle's arguements were specious.

in my opinion (because that's all it can ever be) i fail to see how duke3d had an enthralling SP experience... the whole game was meant to be a comedy, not exactly what i call enthralling.

i seriously do think HL pushed SP games forward by showing that it was possible to have a truly involving story and yet still be a shooter with action.

if you want to dole out your way of mesuring quality to determine if something's 'good', then maybe we can settle this now. :) 

i seriously do think HL pushed SP games forward by showing that it was possible to have a truly involving story and yet still be a shooter with action.

Marathon did that, came out before quake. Next! 

you took out my opinion with your opinion...

go you. :P 

What is this Half-Life everyone is talking about? Did it have any crates? 

How do you measure actual quality then?

I think that's irrelevant to the argument. However, to attempt to answer your question, one can gain an idea of something's quality by examining the positive and negative properties and results of the thing in question. Something with lots of good properties and few bad properties would be considered good, and something with few good properties and lots of bad properties would be considered bad.

For example, it's one thing to say "My math professor is good because he explains the concepts in detail and helps us when we have problems" or "My math professor is bad because he insults us and doesn't explain any of the concepts" whereas it's an entirely different thing to say "I like my math professor because it's fun to see him insult the other students" or "I hate my math professor because he isn't a stripper."

Obviously, quality can be difficult to determine in many circumstances, such as if the sum of the positive and negative is near zero.

But saying that a popular thing is automatically good is patently absurd, just as it's absurd to say that something that is not popular is bad. 

I would say Duke3d's SP was enthralling, because it was so revolutionary its detail and interactivity just threw you into the world and kept you there. There were so many new things to do other that just run, open door, etc etc.

I tend to base a game, good or bad, in quality, largely based on game-play aspects. For example, Half-Life was a steadily good game - it had some fairly impressive gameplay, I will admit that.

Counterstrike did not. Honestly, who here will say that Counterstrike is a good game? One, maybe two people?

Likewise, Half-Life 2 wasn't a good game. 6 years for facial animation and physics? 6 fucking years for that? The actual game development took something like 9 months I heard, and the rest of that was just tech. Reverse that, put 6 years gameplay and 9 months tech and the results would probably be different.

Look at Max Payne 2. Very disappointing. Huge graphics improvement, but gameplay remained the same, if not slightly worse because the game took 3 FUCKING HOURS TO PLAY. Why was it so short? How much time was spent on those cool bullet-time effects and comic book sequences and uber-cool graphics and super-involving storyline and how much attention was given to the actual GAME?

Take another example. UT200X. WTF? Why do they keep coming up with the same game with 2x better graphics every few years?

Some talked about Halo - they regurgitate sections of levels over and over. Gameplay is severely lacking. I enjoy lengthy games, but don't just copy and paste to make your game 20x longer than Max Payne. That's what speedmappers do.

I've kinda forgotten my point amid the myriad of examples. Gameplay or something. Yeah, something about how game developers should develop GAMES, and not just tech-showcases, like HL2. 

Counterstrike did not. Honestly, who here will say that Counterstrike is a good game? One, maybe two people?

Aiming a little high there perhaps

Take another example. UT200X. WTF? Why do they keep coming up with the same game with 2x better graphics every few years?

Preach it brother... Tell it like it is...

Likewise, Half-Life 2 wasn't a good game

disagree, I thought Half-Life 2 wasn't that bad, although I could't bring myself to play it through again...
Half-Life though..., well it sucked shit through a straw 

i find it interesting that you didn't mention doom3... honestly, i think that game was far more of a tech showcase than HL2 was. I mean, HL2's story involved a fair bit, whereas D3 was really just to survive. (there was some story stuff in there, ie: betruger and his whole transformation and constant mocking) but it failed to really interest me. (otoh, D3 was a lot scarier so it kind of balances out)

also, i never knew counterstrike was considered a game, i thought it was just a mod for hl... unless you're refering to that source version they made, which was just valve attempting to milk the cash cow dry... :P 

I enjoyed every bit of Half-Life, except for the platform jump level -- even most of Xen was good.

The levels were set up to drive you forward with a clear purpose or problem to solve in each. I would say it was quite engrossing.

I thought Half-Life 2 was generally good, but the puzzles were often tedious, like Blue Shift (God, I really hated that add on). In this respect, it was very similar to Caselli's Prodigy SE, a technical masterpiece that I quit after a few levels out of boredom. 

Zwiffle, you say you judge games on mostly gameplay, then you go and pretty much talk about only tech aspects in your rants... =)

I thought HL2 was a great game, sense of location and atmosphere were perfect, and the gameplay was definatly not repetitive, each area had different kind of fighting etc, unlike doom3, which got old at around the end of the 2nd map. 

he judges them on how long they were in development. 

That explanation sounds like you are a math student yourself. Seriously though, measuring "good" or "bad" properties is too simple an approach in my opinion. First of all, who gets to choose which properties are relevant? Next, who decides what makes a property good or bad? And what about art? You can surely measure the build quality of something in this way, but what about taste? And finally, when you have all your properties, there's the problem of weighing them appropriately.

Frankly, I don't think that there always is a way to objectively measure quality. Surely, some things that have clear and quantifiable properties (like practical objects, or maybe even software) can be measured that way, but others, like the artistic quality of a piece of art, can not.

Btw, getting back to your example - surely a student who is good at maths would say "My math teacher is good because he teaches me a lot of new things, and I can learn more than in other classes.", whereas someone who has his or her problems with mathematics might say about that same teacher: "My math teacher is bad because his pace is too fast and I can't follow.". Both students are commenting on the same property, and obviously their arguments are entirely subjective. My original question was how one would measure quality in an objective way (or at least, that's what it should have been). 

I wasn't saying that popular equals good. And you know it. But when something is so wildly popular as the half-life franchise is, well - that's a hint people might actually like it. And that, makes it good. A whole bunch of people look at it and go "Good - me want more." Yeah, it's good. Doesn't mean I personally have to agree, but if I'm a developer or publisher, I'm going to think to myself, maybe these valve guys are on to something here.

Counterstrike did not. Honestly, who here will say that Counterstrike is a good game? One, maybe two people?
I haven't played that much CS, mostly on a LAN with some friends. But I can honestly say I've gotten more hours of fun out of that mod than I have from many full price "triple a"-projects.

Likewise, Half-Life 2 wasn't a good game. 6 years for facial animation and physics? 6 fucking years for that? The actual game development took something like 9 months I heard, and the rest of that was just tech.

You usually don't design one engine to handle just the one game. You design it to be a base for several games down the line, games you don't even know about yet. You design for versatility. And you design it to be expanded and reshaped when you have the time to do it. Procedural content, streaming content, both things coming at us looking ahead. If we can't get it in now, I wan't it to be as easy as possible when we can. I'm pulling this out of my ass, of course, but I wouldn't be entirely surprised if the next tech-cycle for valve is substantially less than six years.

OR;

Wow, HL2 content in just nine months. Those guys are good.

Take another example. UT200X. WTF? Why do they keep coming up with the same game with 2x better graphics every few years?
The same reason EA churns out new sports titles every year. It makes them money. The fans buy the latest itiration, the newcomers do the same thing. Win-win.

In the case of epic, they also get to show off the engine that is the hottest thing to license right now. Do you know why it's popular? Not just because it's got great specs. Dev teams look at epic and go "these guys have produced alot of content, really quickly, and to great acclaim. I want to do that too." The game is a product for consumers, and an ad for the engine.

Gameplay is severely lacking.
Halo's gameplay is severely lacking? Now you're just being plain wrong. The Halo gameplay is severely streamlined, and sticks very close to the story. In many ways, they are indistinguishable from eachother. You are one guy in a big conflict. You drive cars, shoot guns and bluw stuff up.

Sure, it's not rocket science, but what it sets out to do, it accomplishes. It keeps people playing the game.

What you need to understand is that not everybody is like us here on func. We're halfway into the industry, we're not joe sixpack. Joe sixpack doesn't have time for 20+ hours of engrossing storylines, he just want to have some fun. Joe sixpack doesn't care how long a game was in development, or what physics API was used to simulate the ragdoll-effect. He just goes "cool, I can kick around the dead guy!" He definitely doesn't care about pushing the envelope the way we might.

Do I wish epic and id would use the independence they've earned to make something different? Yeah, sure. That would be cool. But they are one trick ponies, as long as they chose to be. So I'm gonna get my fix from Japan, like everyone else. Wanda and the Colossus is on it's way. But in the meantime, I'm having quite alot of mainstream fun playing HL and Halo, games that might strive not for innovation, but for solid craftsmanhsip and well-formulated fun. 

Hit me with it baby.

To be honest this discussion is so exciting I wish metl had left the viagra spam uncensored. 

Check out my PANTS! 

Wanda and the Colossus

Is that what Shadow of the Colossus is called in Japan?

I saw a trailer for that game; it showed Aragorn on horseback holding Gandalf's shining sword up at the sky, and then he climbed up the side of an Oliphaunt and stabbed it in the head. Looked quite good :} 

is Fitzquake the right engine to play DM ? I assume so, but am not sure if its DM compatible.

Also, what bots ? Are omicron bots still the way to go (even without routes) or is their better bots with waypoints for newer maps now ? 

who keeps deleting my viagra ads?!?

Just kidding :) 

Zwiffle, you say you judge games on mostly gameplay, then you go and pretty much talk about only tech aspects in your rants... =)

That's because that's all there is to talk about those games.