Adventurer #15 31 июля 2004

Игры

Reviews - Tendencies of ZX Spectrum game industry development.

Modern game making
Chasm / CyberPunks Unity

 Tendencies of Spectrum game
 industry development

During last few years the uprising
interest for games and gamemaking
became more evident, moreover,
not only in Russia, but also Eastern
and even Western Europe. In this
article I want to follow the roots of
this phenomenon and possible tendencies of its development and 
its place in the global Spectrum

scene.

Historically was defined, that to the
1994 all major labels such as Ocean,
Codemasters, Gremlin, etc. stoped
their publishing activity on
Spectrum and moved towards
Amiga, PC and game consoles, that
started to gain more and more popularity. Due to this fact, the 
software flow that joined Western Europe with its Eastern part 
and which was strong enough earlier, grew weaker and finally 
became extinct. I don't know exactly, how it was in

other countries of former socialism, such as Poland, Slovakia,
Chezh Republic, but I guess
Spectrum (along with C64 and Amiga)
remained the most popular computer there till the mid 90-ies, 
and this can be proved by appearance of

such games as "Twilight",
"Quadrax", "Prva akcia", "Sherwood", "Adventurer" between
1990-1995, but we all can be sure
that in Russia Spectrum till the end
of 90-ies was the most popular computer with thousands of 
users. At first, it was defined by relatively

low prices for Spectum clones, that
were being produced with good sufficiency (some of them even on 
big national enterprises), besides, the

prices for more progressive computers were still high, and 
that's why most of people couldn't afford to

buy those expensive toys. For
example, prices for Amiga and PC varied between $ 300-1000, and 
a good working Pentagon, Scorpion costed

about $ 20-100, of course, depending on its configuration.
As it is known, the most part of computer users are gamers, so 
the main software sales for Spectrum in

ex-USSR were being kept by games.
At the beginning, it were games that
couldn't reach Russia from Europe
earlier, and later, games, made by
Russians. Of course, the major part
of gamers dreamt about more
"Powerful" machines, which could
allow to play more progressive
games, comparing with those which
were available for ordinary
spectrumist till the mid 90-ies,
exactly this fact pushed the most of
gamemakers to make game conversions of popular games, as it 
could bring not only mental pleasure, but

also real money. We can remember
success of such games as "UFO 1
2 "," Prince of Persia "," Mortal
Kombat "," Black Raven "(with its
prototype-Warcraft) and others,
however, some original developments gained certain popularity -
"Star Inheritance" and its clones,
"Kolobok Zoom", "Pussy",
"Technodrom", "Last Hero of Light
Force ". To the end of 1990-ies there
was a situation, when second hand
pc's became cheaper, and also game
consoles as such as SPS, 3DO and Saturn, it made some Spectum 
users leave, and due to this the Russian

Spectrum game industry grew weaker and weaker, cos it couldn't 
find a customer with enough of money. It

can be described with the following
table and diagramm, that shows the
amount of games, released between
1990 and 2003.


Y. 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03

N. 03 07 08 17 33 81 57 39 33 31 21 16 11 09



And now here we came to the analysis of current sutuation, that 
appeared in the world Spectrum game industry. In the beginning 
of new millennium, there were very few game releases, however, 
the activity of Studio Stall and Action, who possess

the persistance and continued to
make games one after another, is an
exclusion. Other coders and programmers were being held by 
demoscene. 

This situation resulted in a contest,
held by Perspective Group in the beginning of 2002 and which 
pushed many programmers to develop their

games. By the end, there was released a good compilation of 
interesting Spectrum games. Perspective decided not to stop and 
continued their activity by releasing a new

game by Action - "Imperia 2", however, this action didn't 
succeed due to the low quality of the game

(The publisher didn't check whether
it is possible to play or not), and so
free version of the game appeared
in Internet.

In the beginning of 2003 Simon Ullyatt from UK founds his label 
- Cronosoft, oriented towards gamemaking for retro machines 
such as Spectrum, ZX81, C64, Vic 20, Oric,

Sord M5, Dragon 32 and so on. Currently this label distributes 
following games for Spectrum: "Egghead in Space ";" Football 
Glory "; four games pack: "Zblast SD", "Scrolly

Stack "," Dotathon 2 "and" Soliyawn ";" Rough Justice ";" 
Gloop! "; "FlashBeer"; "Hop'n, 'Chop"; "Wanted Dead or Alive". 
However, I should mention the relatively high (comparing with 
Russian) price - 1.5-2.99 pounds and the fact, that

all these games are released only on
tape (due to the multiple versions of
different DOS), but it must be appreciated that Simon Ullyatt 
looks after the quality of released products.


Now I'll try to analize the motivation that keeps gamemakers 
release games. Let's begin with "Russians". As I've read 
before, that it's almost improssible to gain any

money for your project. So, what
does make them carry their ideas
thru titanically difficuilt work? Elf
asked a few people with this question on CAFe'2003. And it 
appears that the main aspect in gamemaking

is to be pleased with having your
OWN game for Spectrum. Having
read the letters from Simon Ullyatt
and some forums at World of
Spectrum, I suppose, that there is
almost equal situation in Europe,
cos the summs that author of the
game gain from selling the project
are very small and that's why I can
conclude, that moral satisfaction
can lead programmers into such actions (it's a pleasure to hold 
the designed cassette with your own game in your hands), or 
possibly, the feel of nostalgy also affects, concerning

the Shaw Brothers.

To describe the situation more precisely, we decidied to make a 
poll, asking people do they play games,

what games and will they buy
anything. 1938 Spectrum lovers, active and not, ex-USSR and 
users abroad were qestioned. Among them 22 people do play 
Spectrum games, 1916 won't pay a penny for any game,

though there were three ones, who would like to sponsor the 
game projects and gamemakers' compos. Also, we wanted to learn 
the playing activity and tastes of players, and

here are the statistics of answers
on the question "When did you play a
Spectrum game last time? ":

Yesterday - 4
3 days ago - 1
a week ago - 5
2 weeks ago - a
a month ago - 2
2 months ago - 2
3 months ago - a
4 months ago - a
6 months ago - 5
a year ago - 3
2 years ago - 3
3 years ago - a
5 years ago - a
7 years ago - a
10 years ago - a
long time ago - in June

As you can see, people still play
Spectrum games and by the way,
answers as "yesterday" and "a
week ago "came mainly from abroad. The most popular games are
"Dizzy", "Dan Dare", "Black
Raven "," Star Inheritance "," Your
Game'02 "compilation," Lethargy "
and "Pussy".

Also, the poll results showed the
image of a "perfect" game, which
gamers would pay for. Russian language users are definately for 
games like "Star Inheritance" and "Black Raven"-they are certain

hits, and as I can suppose, many of
western gamers don't even know
about these games. Also, the RPG
games are popular, like "Moon
Wind "and quality puzzles / logic
games. Europeans prefer action / adventure games, "Dizzy" 
clones in particular. There were also specific opinions: for 
example, one our native demands mandatory mouse support, sound 
improvement (General Sound, DMA), HDD support

and extended screen modes (for
example, Profi screen). Though wouldn't pay more than 1-2 eur 
for such game:) Most of europeans are

orthodox - 48kb + tape standart is a
stable classics and every game should run on such hardware, 
though one of the respondents would buy

"Good games, with more than 500kb
size on disk, with mouse support,
512kb memory and ZXVGS mode ". But
one thing that is common for everyone - the game genre is not 
important, it's only need to be a NEW game for Spectrum, 
professionally made with a good screenplay.


Finally, some words for distributors and developers. As time has
showed, commercial distribution of
games on the territory of the former USSR is almost unreal, cos 
the majority of Spectrum users don '

want to pay money and prefer to
wait for free or crack releases of
games. Speaking about buying games released by Cronosoft by 
Russian gamers I can say only one thing, and this can seem too 
pity for our western mates, - nobody would

pay more than 1,5-3 eur for games
80 of the-ies' technical level, and a
tape version in addition. I realise,
that for western retrogamers it's
not so high price for the nostalgy,
but for our consumers, spoilt by
progressive games, its beyond the
sense, cos even "Your Game'02"
compilation and "Imperia 2", surely
made on a high technical level
(Higher, than all Cronosoft releases), were seld in not more 
than 30 copies on a price of 3 eur.

each.

Some words for western game developers - if you want your 
products to be seen in ex-USSR, you should

make a free release, or distribute
your game thru Perspective label,
which would spread your game in
TR-DOS version, and can't count on
any profit.

As the poll made among russian gamemakers showed, they don't 
even think about commercial distribution

of their games, cos they understand that nobody would pay,
and getting only moral satisfaction
from realizing, that many people
can play their game (for example,
Slip ^ Action said, that he wrote a
game and gave an agreement for
commercial distribution of his game
in the game pack only because he
wanted Spectrumists get acquainted with his novel, based on 
"Imperia 2"). 

However, we shouldn't forget about
the european Spectrum users-the
strong TR-DOS attachment and russian language don't let them 
enjoy amazing games in a full scape, cos

the only possibility to play these
games is the usage of emulator with
a total misunderstanding of russian, as like as we when playing 
the games, with incomprehensible for

the most russians izquierda, derecha, arriba, abajo, fuego. To
make 128kb game with a tape loader
and to translate a game isn't so
hard (for example, it can easily be
made with "Lethargy" by Studion
Stall). Then you can ask Cronosoft
about distribution and then to please yourself with knowing 
that YOUR game is available for every real

machine user all over the world. Moreover, as Simon Ullyatt 
says, you won't lose the possibility to spread

your game in any way you'd like to
make it with royalties from every
copy sold by Cronosoft.

So, retrogaming still alive 'Speccy
never die!!!