Were Nerdnoises ever in? They aren't now

Being a nerd at heart, I'm staging my own Star Trek TNG marathon, including the specials and cast interviews.  Specifically the boing-ping noises so typical to Star Trek of mostly the first generation reminded me of a screensaver I used to have for my mac: Star Trek, the Screensaver.  I loved that screensaver.  Watching Spock wander around my desktop commenting to himself was a special kind of thrill.  One of the most prominent features of this and other screen savers I had at the time, of those that stuck to memory, was sound.  My room was the home of phrases like "Most....illogical" and "Beam me up, Scotty" and the DUN DUN DUN when evil goatee Spock appeared.  When I wasn't at my computer it was audibly running a lawnmower, fish were blowing bubbles or blob creatures fell from the sky to explode on impact.  That was about 16 years ago.

Today everything is muted.  Socially acceptable screensavers are purely visual, world of warcraft is played on mute because you're used to having it off so you can hear teamspeak anyway.  I attended a gamedev event in January 2011 where I watched a presentation on intelligent sound design for games.  Although I'm told all the presented information was fundamentals any sound technician should know, I found it very interesting and sensible.  But it did occur to me that I had never actually heard the sounds to the example games in the presentation, even though I had played them myself and been present while others played them.  Typically, this was because the game runs on facebook, and it isn't a good idea to tip your boss or colleagues off to the game you're playing at work, which is where most social networking games are played.  But it doesn't end there.  These days I depend on games with subtitles, especially big games like Mass Effect 2 or Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (my current vices), because I just don't get to be as noisy as I used to.  Or I'm older and don't like noise like I used to, though I wouldn't like to admit it if that were really the case.

When I first played Grotesque Tactics: Evil Heroes, the game didn't fully grab me until I turned the sound on.  The voice acting really pulled me in, it's a shame there isn't an english language version for voice in GT.  It made me think about what I'm missing.  Hearing is just as much a part of immersion as sight.  Maybe that is why warcraft felt so cold and meaningless while I still played, I couldn't feel a part of the world I played in because it was audibly dead.  Possibly a game environment that didn't make it necessary to mute music and sound in order to play in a group effectively would have bred a whole different kind of ingame community.  Who knows?

There isn't a real point to make with this entry.  I'm just noting a little nostalgia for the cool sounds we used to have, and the things we take for granted now and just discard without a second thought.  So here is my late new year's resolution: Unless I am otherwise being a public nuisance (I don't sit 10 seconds on a train or bus without having my laptop open),  I plan to pay more attention to sound in game and not mute things so much.

First Impressions Never Go Away

As a developer I have found that the shipping impression is kind of a frustrating aspect of games.  No matter how great you make your game after release, by implementing patches and addons etc, you never shake off the first impression.  How the game is when it was first shipped is how it sticks in the minds of the gaming community.

We all want to make great games.  We strive to surpass our past works and build something that will affect the lives of as many people as possible.  We also have to be realistic.  As developers we are dependent on a publisher to finance our project.  That gives us a set amount of resources, both for funding and time.  We have to meet a deadline, and it helps when we know a little about project management.  We work overtime to get our game done in time for release, and then we ship it out there and wait for the first reviews to trickle in.  I love the nervekick associated with it.

So what if you overlooked stuff.  Or, what if you had great ideas for features that never got implemented?  Maybe you even developed those features, just not in time to add them to the shipped release?  Or maybe, if you planned well and worked hard, your game shipped out just the way you wanted it.

Your game hits the shelves and makes its first impression on gamers.  This impression sticks.  Any fixes or improvements you want to make, or should make if something went wrong, won't change it.  A series of bugs you had in the initial release and removed in a subsequent patch will be remembered.  The internet and online reviews are a wonderful way of reminding people how buggy a game is, even if it isn't anymore.  Then you've got your publisher, who isn't funding your project anymore.  Implementing fixes and additions is all on you, and you have to wait for enough sales to at least break even.  That gives that first impression enough time to settle in even more.  It isn't exactly fair, but its how it is.

I make it a point to keep this in mind in all my projects, and it gets repeated often enough in any game design book I can think of.  Make sure your game is polished when it goes out.  You're better off with a small set of features that works well, than with a giant set of features that needs more testing.  After release, any changes to your game should be added features and things that make the game cooler, it shouldn't be fixes to things you rushed into premature completion to meet a deadline.  Make a good first impression, and then improve on it.