"How come most games these days don't seem to hang together properly?", poses AP reader Tristram Claypole of Ballingry, echoed by Eamonn Bannon from Melton Mowbray, who wonders "Why is it that some games can have a fabulously-crafted atmosphere, only to inexplicably ruin it with 'Accessing Disk, Please Wait' messages or suchlike?" Permit us to end your enquirimental sufferings by planting a KnowledgeExplosiveCharge at the foot of the DisusedUncertaintyFactoryChimney and effecting an InfoDetonation.

They don't make 'em like they used to - that's what we always say when we're down the pub complaining at each other about the latest software atrocity and how long it's been since we saw a really Great game, and pretty damn tedious conversation it makes for, too. But the fact is, as far as games are concerned, it's the literal truth. Forget all that romantic toss about bedrooms and stuff, but most of the games of yesteryear were created by one or two people, from start to finish. The same people did the designing, programming, sound, graphics and everything else, with the result that if the game turned out crap, it was at least coherent crap.

There's an old proverb to the effect that "A camel is a horse designed by a committee", or something like that, and it's true not only about camels, but about present-day videogames. Your average 90s game is created by anything upwards of a dozen people, and what tends to happen in that situation is that you get a game that nobody hates, but that nobody's going to love either. Every last twist and tweak gets ironed flat in one design meeting or other, and what you end up with is a bland, competent, mediocre, inoffensively alright nothing-very-much of a game.

Of all the creative consumer artforms of the 20th century, videogames, despite now being almost 20 years old, exist in the most immature, conservative industry of all. Whether it's music, films, comics, books, theatre or anything else, every other type of leisure pursuit can expect to get an easier ride than games. Music and film magazines can print the most savage, cutting criticism without being crucified by sulky advertising withdrawal and boycotts - go and read Empire or the NME if you want to see for yourself - and a movie or a record or a play or a book can tackle challenging or adult topics without being censored out of existence. Try to put even the tamest of rude words in a videogame or on the cover of a games magazine, however, and see how far you get. What this means is that hardly any games have any creative life in them in the first place, and what there is stands less of a chance of surviving through to the end the more people get involved with it on the way.

The only chance, then, is the solo artist. The Geoff Crammond, the Archer Maclean, the Andrew Braybrook, the david Braben, the Chris Yates or the Peter Molyneux. But sadly, the 3D-rendered-polygon-texture-mapped demands of today's games means that they're all but out of business as solo concerns. Weep, children, for it is our loss.

THE FUTURE OF GAME DESIGNING

In the future, the explosion of development budgets combined with the exponential rise in the price of consoles will ensure that games ("InterActive ProduTainment") will be designed by more people than will actually play ("Purchase") them. This should enable developers to cut out the middlemen (ie magazines) altogether, as reviews will be entirely irrelevant and the costs of each game will be recouped from the developer's sinister megaglobal parent company, which in turn will reach its required profit target by selling hugely expensive spin-off licenced products. (A black plastic box with a sticker on the front? That'll be the Official Batman Forever Lunch Containment Device, just £12.99). Game sales? Who needs 'em? And if you think we're joking, then you obviously haven't seen Sensible's contract with Warner Interactive. For example. Oh well.

INSPIRATION!

1: HAVING AN IDEA

Good ideas don't happen in committee meetings. They happen when someone's sitting on their own, idly messing about with a mouse or a few lines of code. So what happens if you have such an idea? Well, naturally, you think about knocking it out fast and flogging it yourself, but that idea's out of the running pretty much straight away (except in the PC market where there's always shareware, but that's another article). So what's the alternative? Obviously, you try to get someone else to publish it. Problem one.

SUBMISSION!

2: GETTING IT ACCEPTED

Before that can happen, you've got to 'sell' your idea to the publisher. As we explain in the main text below, that's immediately tricky because publishers are scared of anything that's even the tiniest bit risky. You're probably going to have to cut all the most innovative, original, funny or grown-up bits out of your fledgling idea at the first hurdle, and you're going to have to put up with cretinous morons with grandiose job titles going "But what's wrong with just doing another beat-'em-up/platformer/driving game? The kids buy 'em by the bucketload." And it's going to get worse...

INITIALISATION!

3: THE PRODUCT MANAGER

...because then, even if your idea gets accepted, you're going to have a 'Product Manager' appointed to oversee it. His (and it IS always a him) job is to make sure you turn out a 'suitable' 'product', and to make sure you do it at the right time. Wacky new ideas? Different way of doing things? Slight deviation from the set path? Forget it, mate. Even if he's a buffoon in a suit and a ponytail who's never designed or programmed a game in his life, you're going to do things his way or you're not going to do them at all.

DELEGATION!

4: EMPLOYING 50 OTHER PEOPLE

Of course, games these days have to be out practically as soon as they're announced, and there's no way you're going to be able to manage that by yourself. So you'll need a couple of graphics artists (and about £60,000 worth of state-of-the-art 'workstations' for them to use), a couple of blokes to do the sound effects, three failed 'rock musicians' to write some awful tunes that sound like Jean-Michel Jarre's roadies tuning up with a hangover, someone to direct the six-and-a-half-minute rendered intro sequence, a 'Producer' to convey messages to and fro between your team and the Product Manager, etc etc.

CONFUSION!

5: ARGUING WITH THEM

The more people you have involved in any project, the less interesting it tends to become. The attempt to keep everybody happy and working together leads inevitably to compromise after compromise, after which you're left with something designed by committee, and bereft of anything, however minor, that might cause offence to anybody. And of course, that kind of thing is exactly what puts the spark of life into the best games. Can you imagine Cannon Fodder without the screams of the wounded? Gloom without the splattered corpses littering the corridors? On The Ball without the drunk players with marriage problems? Strip Poker without the naked girls? (Er... - Ed)

CAPITULATION!

6: THE DEADLINE

Of course, you can't go on forever. As more and more money is thrown at development teams, and more and more games become just another part of MultiMediaLicenceMerchandising, the amount of leeway allowed to programmers withers away correspondingly. Thus, a game MUST meet its deadline, or else the movie (or whatever) will have passed from the public eye and been forgotten. And if that means having to glue together whatever bits of the game actually exist and flog them, regardless of whether it's actually properly finished or not, well, who cares? What does it matter? Who's going to complain? The game buyers? You're just not getting this, are you?