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Game Originality: Any Left?
Kamalot writes "In a world where 85% of games are solved with a gun, where are the original and innovative ideas? Adrenaline Vault has a telling editorial about the state of creativity in the game industry, the constant re-hashing of sequels, and a look into the future when technical achievements are no longer the driving force. What happens when every game follows a tried and true formula? Where do the new ideas go if we can't have games like Viewtiful Joe, Shenmue, and Jet Grind Radio? Did innovative, rather than mainstream, games send the Dreamcast to an early grave rather than the PS2's more bland, yet conforming, lineup of titles?"
No matter how good it is, it's not going to sell. A certain degree of conformity is necessary. That said, I'm sure there are people out there who are clearly smart enough to be able to combine A Good Time (TM) with Something New (TM) that Everyone Can Enjoy (SM).
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Come on, lets not leave out Frequency and Amplitude, one of the most original, and best PS2 games.
The "Insert Quote Here" line is almost as predictable as inserting an actual quote.
Grand theft auto seems like an innovative game to me... although it was follow up game to gta1 and two...
Quake clones, C&C clones, Everquest clones... there hasn't been an original game since Grim Fandango
I don't drink because I have to, I drink to stop the voices in my head!
Done in by not enough money to push a continuous marketting campaign. It had the games, Soul Caliber, Tony Hawk, Worms, come to mind, as well as the chance for online gaming.
I'll always love my dreamcast. The amount of extras that people made for this thing were immense. I have CD's with NES emulators and every NES game out there, as well as Sega's Master System. I believe there was even a VCD player.
-- taking over the world, we are.
"when technical achievements are no longer the driving force."
I don't give a rat's ass about technical achievments. I don't need to be buying new hardware every three god damned months.
I want games that are a) entertaining and b) chock full of good gameplay.
The PS2 has such games in droves.
Where you have to build bombs with sticks of chewing gum, and solve problems with your head rather than a gun.
Too many silmiarities between games... everquest and DAOC, doom/quake/wolfenstein/unreal tournament... Sim , Tycoon...
There are of course better games overall, but I haven't had a good revolutionary game in a while. What good ones are out there?
--------
Free your mind.
Did innovative, rather than mainstream, games send the Dreamcast to an early grave rather than the PS2's more bland, yet conforming, lineup of titles?"
Explain to me how Grand Theft Auto is "bland" and "conforming".
Dreamcast had poor selection of games, and equally poor marketing. Sega's prior console went to an early grave too, don't forget.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
You tell the story, not in the story itself. The works of Shakespeare have been re-imagined for hundreds of years now. Hollywood has been retelling the same stories for a century.
The originality comes in your setting, your imagination and adding your own flavor to the game. While the rare original book, movie, tv show, play or story comes out...mostly they are all just different takes on a common theme.
The Magnificent Seven and the Seven Samurai are the same movie, but both are considered classics.
So, is there originality in new games? Yes, but maybe you are not looking for it in the right place...
I'm always wary about comments that seem to reflect the "why aren't things better?" mold of thought. Obviously, there are impediments to producing a novel game concept, but if someone came up with a really catchy idea, I think game execs would sign on.
What if Miramax had told filmmaker Kevin Smith that no one would watch "Clerks" and suggested he develop a marketable teen sex comedy instead?
This is a red herring. Clerks pushed boundaries in several directions. If game designers have not done so, perhaps it's simply because there aren't enough people out there pushing the envelope. Time and patience will result in more games. Complaining won't.
*cough* karma whore *cough*
"Did innovative, rather than mainstream, games send the Dreamcast to an early grave rather than the PS2's more bland, yet conforming, lineup of titles?"
Yes, same with the Saturn VS PS.
PS had a lot more games than the Saturn, but only a bare few that didn't totally suck. Most were PC ports, because the PS was easier to port from the PC than the Saturn was.
Everyone I know with a Dreamcast is incredibly happy with it, and most of my friends who didn't already have one, bought one after the prices came down. Meanwhile everyone I know with an X-Box or PS2 are complaining about the utter lack of good games.
Silly enough, the Gamecube has most of the good games this generation. Probably has something to do with the broader target audience as opposed to Xbox and PS2's target of "testosterone pumped adolescent males".
The longer we go, the more things that will be done, the more games will have been done before. It's like the Southpark episode where Butters tries to come up with a scheme for chaos. "Simpsons did it!" The conclusion: Of course the Simpsons did it. They've been around forever. And as Chef points out, the Simpsons stole some of their stuff from others before them. It's not necessarily about doing new things. It's about applying your (hopefully good and sensible) take on those "tired" ways of doing things to put them into new light.
Derivative isn't bad. There are games that are derivative, but a hell of a lot of fun (Civ 2, for example). Games that are derivative crap would have been crap even if they were the first in their fields.
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
More games like GTA Vice City, but more straight up Pr0n?
I suppose there's always maiming kittens and puppies for sport...
For anyone who laments "Why do companies continue to pump out this sludge?", the answer is pretty simple: because consumers continue to buy.
<speculation> Perhaps in these times of economic recession, people are more likely to go with the "sure thing" (guns, explosions, sequels, etc) with their entertainment dollar than with "riskier" purchases.</speculation>
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
The best example of game originality on the Dreamcast was Seaman. I don't even know how to describe it. It was basically a simfish with a verbal interface. Yeah, I know that doesn't make any sense. I doubt you'll ever see anything like it again either.
There certainly are a lot of "me-too" games out there, but one that I found recently that held my attention for quite a while was Aargon Deluxe (can be found here). It's a puzzle game involving lasers and optics. Definitely a neat concept. I don't know if it's available for other platforms (I have OS X), but it's worth a look, IMHO. I haven't ever seen anything like it.
So what I understand from all this is that video games are a whole lot like movies. Most of the truly groundbreaking and creative movies fall by the wayside while the vast majority of the succesful movies are rehashes of some other movie, or are simply formulaic.
That's a problem, though. Game companies need to find a middle ground between making innovative games and making money, and they usually move so far towards the making money side that little innovation gets done.
Once you get it in the store, you need people to buy it. People "know" what they like. They don't want someone else to tell them what they want. They "know" that only game-type X is fun.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
Nintendo is good at original games. Look at games like Wario Ware for the GBA. Its about 200 mini-games thrown at you in rapid succession - completely random games from shaking hands with a Collie to a pretty lady sniffing snot back into her nose. No game even comes close, it's in a genre of it's own. And if you want a game thats not all about guns - look at Nintendo. A plumber washing gook off of an island and fighting weird squishy enemies - thats original. A first person adventure game (Metroid Prime) also pretty unique.
The Dreamcast didnt die because gamers dont like innovative games. Some chalk it up to its easy no-mod-needed piracy, though I doubt even that had much of an effect, being prohibitave to the mainstream non-techie gamer.
The Dreamcast died because Sega chalked up a laundry list of abandoned systems (32x, SegaCD, Saturn), and customers didnt want anything to do with it. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
I bought a Dreamcast on release day (9-9-99), and was an idiot for doing so. Sega wasnt in any position to back up another console, and to weather the financial drought before it turned profitable. EA's refusal to create titles for it didnt help either.
It was dead before it hit store shelves. And 85% of its library was indeed mainstream boring crap.
Everyone rants about the unoriginality in gameplay. But what do we hype up and get all excited over? Doom 3. Yay now we run around and shoot prettier monsters.
Fun innovative games do come out, and will continue to. And the bulk of the shelves will always be mainstream type stuff.
Thats the way it always has been - just look at the line up for your favorite nostalgia system (c64, NES, atari, genesis). For every standout there were 100 crapfests.
Nothing new here. Just nerd elitism. Sometimes those mainstream trigger finger games are just plain fun.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
In the future, people will make their own characters, and play their own game.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Not re-hashing. Sticking with (and if you're clever, building on) the established formula for success. We see it with music, movies, novels, every other kind of software, and pretty much everything else. Why not games?
Games now are any of: 1) jump around to collect coins/stars/whatever 2) pretend to kick box/karate/judo something in an arena 3) FPS 4) hack and slash.
BORING
The good thing about Atari in the day was one of the basic requirements: A new game had to look like nothing else that had come before it.
If only more companies would do that today...
Games are not original. They are all variations on the same games. There are hundreds of Breakout clones, thousands of doom clones (and even a TTY version), and... and... Quake... holy crap. Anyway. Games are not original, and havent been since ~1980 or so. Why is it this way? Because it's easy to make a shooter. Oooh. Just hack up Quake and you're good to go.
No talent required. Take a look at CounterStrike. Ha! Quake 1+Halflife. Impressive. NOT. Or maybe Warcraft. THAT was original. Now we have Warcraft 2, Warcraft III, Starcraft, Diablo, Diablo II, Brood War, FreeCraft and thousands of other derivitives. Impressive. Again, nope. It's the same idea, objectives as always. DESTROY THE ENEMY. Who cares? Civ. Civ1. Civ2. Civ3. FreeCiv. And hundreds of others.
I think a big part of this is that we may never have as much fun with games as we did when we started way back then.
We can then start looking at the games and argue that they are not as original as they used to.
But then again, my younger brother seems to be amazed and thrilled by all new computer games.
Tor
STG is supposed to have a merchant class, the first of it's ind for MMOG. This sounds to those that want to solve issues without a gun or overwhleming force like in EQ), however if the time spent to level up this kind of player is appritiatively longer then a violence based character, then only folk who will have merchants will be the guilds (who will then run up prices).
So the question of if there will be non-violent solutions to problems in a game rests on the soulders of the game develpoer. Make the solutions innovative and good enough (look at Myst)and you WILL have sales.
"I am more powerful, even then you!!"
Darth Tyranus, Registered Evil Overlord #2202831
Games make as much or more as most blockbuster movies these days...And honestly how much "art" creeps through onto screens these days? Sadly there is almost no room for an "indie game" scene on the console front because of restrictive hardwar and licenses and an uphill battle against the ginats on the PC side.
ViewtifulJoe and Shenmue and even MetalSlug 3 are proof that the 2-D platform hasnt really been explored to their fullest, and with open engines like Quake 3-D you can still develop on the cheap... But marketing, well who cares if its great if no one ever hears of it.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
I own a gamecube because I enjoy creative, challenging games. I see most PS2 and XBox games using technical merits to sell (more polygons! looks better!) rather than gameplay.
On the gamecube, you get a game like Pikmin. That is a really cool game, and certainly well done. Metroid Prime is a great example of something that really hasn't been done before (first-person adventure, not FPS). I think Nintendo has always been about quality over quantity.
To me, having to get the latest fighting game is just wasting money (more complex death moves!). Or getting the new NFL 2003 or whatever just because it has the new stats. I guess that's entertainment for some. But it's not what I look for. Even though I'm supposedly in the target PS2 and XBox demographic, I just don't find those games interesting.
--- witty signature
> What if Miramax had told filmmaker Kevin Smith
> that no one would watch "Clerks" and suggested
> he develop a marketable teen sex comedy instead?
They did, it was the unwatchable "Mallrats."
> Or if Artisan had told the creators of "The
> Blair Witch Project" to drop the film in favor
> of directing a Friday the 13th sequel?
Well, they were pressured to make the even-more-unwatchable "Blair Witch II". Innovation comes in first-generation movies and games, poor sequels are just to be expected.
modern choral music...
Oddly enough, I could swear people were making the same complaint in the '80s and early and mid '90s, and the games mentioned still came out. There will always be novelty and it will always stand out against the background of knockoff blackjack / deer hunting / FPS games.
Incidentally, I tried, really tried, to give Shenmue a chance, and it's certailnly beautifully executed, but waiting all day for it to get dark so I could look for sailors again ("Sailors? Not here. I'd try looking in bars.") just wore me out. Of course, I still play Doom because Quake is just too sluggish, so...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I always thought the Myst trilogy was pretty creative, although it wasn't the first puzzle game.
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
Why does he feel the need to credit a specific individual with the coining of the phrase "Counter-Strike on steroids"?? Jeez, anyone could come up with that. There's enough namedropping in the article as it is. The reader will also notice this piece is shot through with jargon about established games. In addition, the author merely uses his bully pulpit to complain and offers no solutions, a cardinal no-no in my book. If you complain, offer an alternative, or else it's just bitching so you can hear yourself. All we get from this is he likes to watch independent films. Big deal.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Where I can get a dreamcast for cheap? gamestop wants like $50 and I don't trust ebay =\
Modern games do lack creativity, that's why I like emulators. Before graphics were the rage, you had great games like metroid, legend of zelda, dragon warrior, etc. Now there are great graphics but no originality. I did enjoy Counter-Strike's realism, that was originality from the standpoint that it was a game without the extreme cartoonish nature. Fast paced first person shooter games just don't appeal to me anymore on the PC, and I have not purchased an entertainment system since the Nintendo. I don't think I ever will, especially since you can get a cheap laptop or build a cheap PC and play all of the older, really good games without ever having to upgrade again.
A beautiful and refreshing series, until they sold out to the Xbox exclu$ive. I heard that Munch's Oddysee sucked, though.
I have to note that selling as an exclusive is not in itself bad, but given Oddworld's philosophical leaning, it was just too much to see them go to the Glukkon...
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
Warning: I didn't read the article.
Warning 2: I normally read the articles before belching a comment.
No. There is no more creativity for one reason. The Almighty Buck.
No one makes anything now a days that won't make money at least to pay off production. This isn't wrong, but it does stagnate the market.
I can't remember the last truly innovative game I played except Black and White - not because of the genre but because of the user interface. Other than that I'd have to go back to Age of Empires (the first one) for real-time strategy and Quake for the last game true revolution I can think of - Full 3D FPS (Doom and Wolfenstein were not full 3D mind you, but they were also innovative) - I was own3d in Quake until I figured out how to play with a mouse and keyboard.
God knows what the future may bring, I just hope someone creates a new idea soon, I'm runnin' out of games!!!!!
Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul Ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul
I'm ok with it. Look at Halo. I don't know anybody that doesn't like it. Sure it was a first person shooter, but they enhanced the experience with vehicles and some AI marines.
The game where the only goal you have is to make peace over the world !
...
...
;)
If you loose, your planet will be soo destroyed
But beware, the ArmLobbies and the OilTrusts are fighting agains you !
One of the problem is that MassMedia FUD prevents you to have a clear view of your current situation
Anyway, should be a great game
-SLK
Try my college Assembly game project -
Nuclear Beach Party!
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
Good grief, I never thought I'd see someone work the poor quality of video games into The Conspiracy.
Is there anything that isn't the direct result of whoever it is with the 260 IQ (because it would take nothing less to run The Conspiracy) running The Conspiracy?
No, wait, this post must be part of The Conspiracy, too, trying to throw you off the track! Keep digging and you'll find the truth! (Or is this a double-cross attempt by The Conspiracy? All I can tell you is no matter what you decide, The Conspiracy will render your body down for the oil it contains as soon as it gets around to you.)
Forum: http://www.languish.org/forums/index.php?s=9b6377b f9a31bbd17315ba2548ae61bd&act=SF&f=6
Sourceforge site: https://sourceforge.net/projects/keewie/
I think the writers of this article took into consideration only the games they personally play, and possibly what their paticular culture plays, without looking at some of the other large gaming cultures (Japan, Korea, etc.).
"Powers. I have them."
And most of them are a result of the target audience that you're designing the game for.
Look at The Sims, for example, one of the first games to be massively popular with females 12-34. It can be, for all intents and purposes, a virtual doll house where your dolls interact on their own. One of the reasons the Sims Online has had difficulties is that most of the customizability that made the game so popular has been stripped out of the game in favor of anti-cheating and multi-player capabilities.
There is very little to do with violence in The Sims and a lot to do with role-playing, dress-up, and relationship management. I once heard a female cooworker describing how much better the game would be if the dolls could be made to be more customizable or if you could change clothes, jewelry or hair in-game.
For that matter, look at relationship and dating sims, which are very popular in Asia. These games range from tame and cutsey to pornographic. While it may be pretty lame and pathetic to interact with a virtual girl instead of a real one, that doesn't change the fact that these games are *very* popular and simply haven't been widely unleashed on NA audiences yet.
Another kind of game that is gaining more wide-spread acceptance in N.A. are the various profession sims or management sims. Most of these are builders, like the popular 'Roller-Coaster Tycoon' variants. Some are more detailed. I can't remember the title off-hand (Was it '911 Paramedic'), but there was a game recently in which the player took the role of a medical professional and had to make decisions on what kind of treatment a patient needed.
The different genres are out there, they just have to be explored more fully.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Take the old "Boot Hill" pen-and-paper Role Playing Game (RPG), the upcoming Quake2 graphics/physics engine, and the scripting language from Neverwinter Nights, and combine them.
Now you have indoor/outdoor "Old American West" style shootem-up/RPG/quest game...and you can run your own server/module. This game has it all! Bar brawls, poker games, stagecoach robberies, train heists, cattle rustling, horse thieving, canyon ambush from up on the mesa ahead, gold rushing, woohoooo....load up that six-shooter and that rifle, grab that shotgun and a sturdy horse...and ride off in the virtual sunset...YeeeHAH....
Now, I'll need some money...this game will of course be free to download...mmm.....free......
I think one of the things that 'ruined' the gaming industry like this, is the fact that in the days of wayback there wasn't such thing like a First Person Shooter. I remember playing all Keen episodes, Cosmo, Dune, Monkey Island (great games!), Duke Nukem 1 and 2, etc. Then suddenly there was Wolfenstein.. I remember me and my friends copying it to 1.44MB disks and passing them around like madness, only playing it when our parents weren't at home.. Ah.. memories.. anyway, I think that the invention of the 3D shooters, changed the world's look at game. After so many years looking at the playing character from the side (platform gaming), you could suddenly see the game through the eyes of the playing character, like you were there! In my opinion, most 3D shooters look the same, it's basicly the same concept over and over again, with slightly engine and quality enhances here and there.. Before there was something like the Doom and Quake era, the game developers just *had* to be creative, if they wanted to sell anything. Nowadays, shooters are a winning formula, and why change a running system?
In need of reliable and affordable server monitoring?
Rocket Jockey! that was an original game, it was lots of fun, and you got your fill of sports, racing, and violence all in one shot! Not to mention that it was completely original, and also one of the first cool 3d games out there.
Anyone played uplink? It's just been ported to the mac by the good old guys at Ambrosia Software. You're an elite hacker, paid by the job to break into computer networks around the world. I can't really describe what the interface is like, but it's definitely refreshing in the world of fist person shooters.
Triv
And now they are making the computer games. It stands to reason they lack imagination because they were too busy playing the results of someone elses creativity to develop any of their own. So they re-hash all the old ideas.
Some games that did rather well despite the lack of violence:
- Thief and Thief 2
- The Longest Journey
- Syberia
- Myst
- just about any Sim game
While 85% of the games out there might feature violence, I sincerely doubt that 85% of the *purchases* are of violence-oriented games.
Of course, if you're a college kid whose life revolves around Counterstrike and who uses terms like 'd00d!' then your perception of the matter is probably seriously warped by your personal experience.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Everyone waxes on about how wonderful the days of nintendo were, if only for the pure plethora of gaming selections.
Monster League Football, A game in which players die on the field, you can bribe the ref once per half, and the half time show consisted of both players mutually attempting to blow up the band.
The more graphically intense videogame systems get, the fewer original titles we seem to have.
I miss videogames having incredibly outlandish charcters, or concepts. Bubble Bobble was a wonderful game that held my attention.
Now aside from Civilization, All the games are FPS, RPG, or a style of Warcraft gameplay.
I end up playing Battle Tetris more than the majority of action games I own. I still have yet to complete more than a few levels of Neverwinter Nights, Warcraft 3, or Desert Ops.
And I want a remake of River City Ransom.
(Mildly off topic, what was the videogame with 5 charcters, a Husband, Mother, Daughter, Son, and Dog. The Dog was invincible, but had a poor jump. You went through levels, purchasing items to make it to other levels. Brilliant game I played for months to beat. What was this game called?)
http://use.perl.org
What happens when every game follows a tried and true formula? Where do the new ideas go
I, for one, would recommend getting in touch with designers and programmers from the computer gaming giants of the '80s: Broderbund, Sirius, Atarisoft, Spectravision, First Star, HES, Epyx, subLOGIC, Spinnaker, MECC, Synapse... those guys put out some of the most original, on-crack, and wildly entertaining games possible.
Anyone remember Sammy Lightfoot? Crisis Mountain? Boulder Dash? Frenzy? GATO? Paipec? That was a true era of creativity. Imagine if that were applied now.
The coolest voice ever.
Games generally require conflict of some sort to provide a play experience because they rely on a story at least on some superficial level. There are exceptions (Tetris would be a big example) but by and large you need a protagonist and an antagonist. It's very easy to portray this relationship through violence. There's also some amount of visceral thrill in the simulated killing of other people.
This problem, as with the me-too syndrome, is an instance of a general case of problem. Videogames are expensive to make and from a business point of view are a very risky investment. Lots of games get made and only a few of them are profitable but those few wildly so.
There are several possible solutions to this problem. They are all difficult to bring to bear and it's not clear to me which (if any) of them will happen and how much effect they'll have.
One solution is to lower the cost of development for games - this is hard, despite the growth of middleware and tools, because games are complex products and the perceived demands of gamers is ever-growing. There's also the arms race of technology.
Another solution is to spread the money around so that the market is not so feast-or-famine. This is hard because retailers don't like to see margins lowered and companies generally operate on the philosophy that they'll have the "killer" game that will take in all the money. If everyone expects to get the lion's share no-one wants to lower their prices and thus their potential profits. It's a prisoners' dilemma.
Yet another solution is to reduce the amount of games that get made. Ultimately this is the most likely to happen yet it's the one I personally like least. Niche-market games will get killed first, followed by me-too genre games and eventually you'll have a desperate struggle between 2 or 3 publishers with a small range of mass-market but uninspiring games. The same retail profit gathered for less development dollars is a business win, however.
The last solution is to expand the retail market. Make games that appeal to more people, and increase the total amount of money coming into the sector. The more individual consumers you have, the more diverse their tastes and so theoretically you spread your development risk further.
I like the last solution best of all, of course, because it results in a broad base of games and plenty of creativity. The economics of business make it a tough sell to upper management at publishers.
One interesting thing that may change the market a lot is the will of the hardware manufacturers. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have a huge ability to shape the market because they have to approve all product concepts before they get too far in development - you could make the whole game without talking to them but it would suck to find out you'd wasted $5 million when they turn round and refuse the game - so they can shape the lineup of games. What their actions will ultimately be, I cannot say.
Graham
Clerks and BWP are 2 horrible examples. IIRC, both were made, and then pitched to the studios. There was no real risk to the studios, other than advertising, which was kept to a minimum. BWP was the first, and still best probably, at using the internet community as its major word of mouth platform. A true independent film (IMO) is something made for a few thousand dollars (maybe 50 max), that might make it into the college campus theater scene, makes a few buck more than it cost, and everyone moves onto the next. Not everything is going to be BWP or Desperado.
Video games are now big business. They are becoming the same as the music, TV, and the movie industries. Big budget, bland, built to the lowest common denominator.
What happened to the wit and just plan fun of old adventure games. Space quest, Kings quest, Freddy Farkas, Lesuire Suit Larry, Monkey Island, etc, etc. I want them all back. Dammit Sierra come out with some good adventure games. While the majority of you are playing quake, i'm over at Adventure Game Studios downloading the lastest homemade VGA games.
- Matrix 2
- X-Men 2
- Hulk (comic book)?
- Freddy vs Jason (god!)
- Dumb and Dumberer
- Rugrats Go Wild (tv cartoon)
- Charlie's Angels (sequel to a movie after a tv show... as if that wasn't enough)
- Bad Boys 2
- Tomb Raider 2
- Legally Blond 2
- Jeeps Creepers 2
- Spy Kids 3-D (aka Spy Kids 2)
- Terminator 3
Note: These are just the hideously obvious onesOMG IT'S THE SUMMER OF THE SEQUELS.... RUN... RUN FAR, FAR AWAY... SAVE YOURSELVES!!!
Are you telling the stupid karma whores to vote this down?
As a side note, The Saturn did 2D graphics extremely well, and 2D games are still big in Japan. This is part of the reason why it remained popular in Japan during the whole "3D revolution".
Lets be a little honest with ourselves...the market for video games is dominated by males between the ages 17 - 24. We're not looking for Barbie: Dress House II, guys like us are after the rush, the fun, the quickies.
The truth is there _is_ innovation in these games, and quite a bit since, yes, they are limited to looking down the barrell of a gun. Look at Half-Life 2 with realistic facial algorims, amazing AI, incredible physics and voice acting. The original Half-Life made over $400 million in sales, so obviously something is working.
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
Sounds like the writer is just pissed he hasn't seen a lot of innovation in the most hyped games. True there are a lot of sequels and rehashes but that's true of any art form (art form in the literal definintion not asthetic) We all complain about the massive number of movie sequels books sequels (Harry Potter anyone?) but we tend to forget that innovation requires time, after all the addage "nothing new under the sun" is the rule more than a guidline. In games we get two types of innovation engine innovations (The new engines on Doom III and Half-Life are a real step to a truely interactive immersive world) and then we get gameplay inovation, which is much harder. After all gameplay doesn't require better graphics and we've had a long time to come up with new ideas. However I would say that there have been some very interesting gameplay innovations of late, what with planetside, which takes the MMO concept in a dirrection away from the lvl grind of an RPG to real world concept. Then we have GTA which while not new was a MAJOR change in the way we play games. So no not every new game coming out is highly innovative, they do use concepts we know to be fun.
:-)
IN SUMMARY
Quit Whining and be patient
This is not a sig
Anyone else remember Comix Zone?
not extraordinarily original imo
This would be too easy to rip apart as the 'typical geek' is also apparantly a 'typical hand fed moron of the media himself' type. If you are going to troll, you should at least think by yourself instead of listening to your media and the other /. idiots who parade about like a herd of sheep all bleeting out 'áZr synonomous tripe. Get a brain and get a life.
Most people probably have not played this game, much less even heard of it...but it has got to be one of the most innovative games of all time. Not only that, it's thr greatest RPG of all time, in my opinion.
It's sad that Sega was the first one to buckle under the strain...yes, their marketing division is a bunch of retards, but their development division is light years ahead of any of the competition.
If Sega were smart, they would release Panzer Dragoon Saga II, Shining Force IV, and Phantasy Star V (not the online ones). That's their best franchises, and they would be really stupid to ignore them.
In Japan
It seems to me that a lot of the games I find myself most into get attacked for being different.
One easy example is in fact a very popular game, but one that has endured some of the stupidest arguments in the history of video games: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind-Waker.
It's cell shaded; it frequently looks like a hand drawn cartoon. It recaptures the art direction of the classic SNES era Zelda game, seamlessly into a 3-d environment.
And it was attacked without mercy for being "kiddie".
Just yesterday I was at a Gamestop, playing through the demo of Viewtiful Joe. If you don't know, it's a 2.5-D beat 'em up, similar to Capcom's Strider 2 (for the playstation 1), except with bright colors and a unique take on the cell shading trend. It really stands out among the endless stream of tactical, deadly-serious games that are flooding the market.
And while one of the staff was really into it, the other guy working there couldn't accept that there was a helicopter flying around inside of a large cathedral, and that as Joe, I was jumping high into the air and punching said helicoptor in slow-mo to blow it up. As if the idea that a game could possibly be amusing and light-hearted was alien to him.
Viewtiful Joe is definitely my most looked forward to game of this year; I payed $10 for a Gamecube demo disc, solely for the 15 minute demo, which is really a ridiculous sum. It was worth it. I've played through this demo 5 or 6 times already and if the rest of the game lives up to this potential, it will likely be the best game of the year. (Like last year's Ikaruga).
I am a die hard Dreamcast enthusiast, and yes, most of the best games on the DC are unusual and edgy. Typing of the Dead, Rez, Samba De Amigo, Sega Bass Fishing, Bangai-O!, Shenmue, Chu Chu Rocket, Space Channel 5. Really, who knew a fishing game could actually be FUN.
In fact, the DC also hurt in the market for catering to old school gamers as well. Classic gaming styles such as 2-D fighters and top down, vertical scrolling shooters (like Mars Matrix, Giga Wing 2, and Ikaruga) just aren't as popular as they once were.
Perhaps Sega would have done better to cater to current trends instead of trying to invent their own, but I'll take innovative and intuitive gameplay over the trends of the week any day.
Special mention to the development teams at Sega, Treasure, Capcom, and Nintendo for making awesome, innovative games, at least now and then.
.
... it's not that game creators (and movie scriptwriters, and tv scriptwriters, and etc. ad nauseaum) are not being creative.
... } ).
Maybe it's that the vast majority of games must sell to subsidize the creative-ish games ( [ movies | tv shows |
If people didn't want to buy that crap, then it wouldn't sell. The source of blame for the state of affairs in game content lies solely with the buyer. Game companies won't write games that cannot be profitable.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
Personally, I thought Ico for the PS2 was a great game that didn't resort to inane violence or scantily clad women to get attention.
:)
I don't think it was the most original game made, but fairly innovative in that you have to drag the girl around with you all the time, and try and figure out ways to get her places. Had to use my brain there for a bit. Fun stuff.
It didn't "go to an early grave" either - it came out long before the PS2 or X-box, and had a very good life cycle.
It was released in 1999, and discontinued in 2001. If that's not an early grave, I don't know what is.
(For comparison, the Playstation 2 was also released in 1999. Just in case you were wondering, you can still buy them.)
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Neverhood, played it very little, but my stepson finished it.
Fork in the Tale, (with voice talents of Rob Schnieder), hilarious, don't think I finished it, but the boy did.
Thief, great spin on the FPS market, never finished it either.
Risk, computer version of the board game, played the hell out of that in the mid 90s, goal, take Australia first, then Siam.
But, I don't play on the computer much either. The other games I've played routinely are Warcraft II, Heroes of Might and Magic II, and Daggerfall. I've played Doom, Descent, Quake, Delta Force, and others like them, but they get boring too quickly to really stay with them.
I also bought a Dreamcast on 9999, and I must say this: if it had been a welded shut box with only Soul Calibur in in and had cost twice as much, I still would have bought it AND gotten my money's worth.
I played this game just this last weekend on my buddy's bad ass TV hooked up through the DC VGA connector and it looked incredible. That game alone was worth the cost of admission, to say nothing of Samba de Amigo and Skies of Arcadia, etc.
The Dreamcast died because EA insisted it would and little else. Sega's anti-gaijin management policy didn't help things either. The games were NOT the problem.
"My God, this must be a truly remarkable corn chip, to be so widely and confidently touted."
Just because the one sentence concept sounds similar and there are similar mechanics doesn't make them copies. Is there no creativity in the auto industry because all cars have four wheels, an engine, and a steering wheel?
There's only so many different ways to design a video game that work well and only so many types of story lines that fit into a game. The real creativity is in all the details and not the concept.
I'm trying to remember a cool game I played on my Atari ST --- called something like The Sentinel or Sentry or something like that. Basically you started in a fractal landscape and had to stay out of the LOS of a robot and build a tower higher than the height of the robot. Anyone remember anything like that? Great, innovative gameplay and story. Pretty addictive, too, if memory serves. I still marvel at what that ST machine could do.
Funny, this article comes up right after the weekend I get WarioWare and am floored by it's insane blending of micro games into a cohesive whole. If this game isn't original, I would like someone to tell me what it's based on.
And yes, I know that the individual games themselves are not original.
Add to that a strong hobbyist community, an increasingly useful toolset, and you've got an environment where lots of different people and groups can innovate. You don't need to be a megacorp to make a fun or innovative game--innovation can be as simple as Tetris.
Just because the gaming industry is becoming more and more corporate doesn't mean that there's no space for a) innovation or b) indie shops/hobbyists. What more people need to realize is that you can make a Simple, fun game (shameless self-plug*) on your own time, so long as you're willing to accept your limitations. Just because you can't go toe-to-toe with EA or Rockstar doesn't mean that you can't make games or innovate...
* Disclaimer: Nothing about above game is particularly innovative, except, perhaps, the garden gnomes.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
There's are strong parallels between the movie industry in the 70's and the computer gaming industry. Up until the 70's, movies were a fairly small niche of the entertainment industry, with an "old guard" of studios cranking out Western after Western, and Broadway musical after musical. Then a lot of raw young talent (Warren Beatty, William Friedkin, Francis Coppola, Martin Scorcese, Lucas, Spielberg, etc.) came in and turned the industry on its ear by making some really new and dynamic films on shoestring budgets. The public responded by going to these movies in droves -- i.e. Taxi Driver, Star Wars. So movies went from being a niche industry to a massive money-making operation.
I remember a great anecdote from around the time that Dennis Hopper's "Easy Rider" came out. The studio cleared like 15 million on the film (unheard of at that time), and one of the film guys came in, threw the receipts on the desk, and said, "This is great, but get ready to pack up. Once they see how much money we're making out here, they're going to take over." Larger corporations took over the film industry, and by nature, these companies are risk-averse, especially with the rapidly growing budgets (and grosses) of films. Producer Michael Phillips said something to the effect that studios were gambling with hundreds of millions of dollars to make movies without any rational framework with which to make decisions. How do you know if it's going to be a good (read: money-making) movie?? So he said that without any framework, they turned to precedent (i.e. sequels, Rocky 1-5) or analogy (i.e. "monster movie" or "sci-fi") in order to make movies. So the largely turn-the-crank movies you see in theaters these days are DESIGNED to not be too different -- it's too much money to risk.
As computer games are becoming more and more of a successful industry, you are seeing the same effect of companies taking over and attempting to minimize the risk in developing a new product. Precedent ("Counter-Strike on steroids") and analogy (Half-Life 2, Doom III).
DDR has to be the most addicting game I have ever played. It is also the only game since I was a kid that I would make a trip to the arcade to sit and play for hours on end. Daily.
Once you start, and gain a vendetta against the game to improve, it drives you to succeed. Other games just don't fill the same void.
As I get older, only multiplayer games are any fun. The concept of losing to a friend is the only real drive to succeed. I could care less about obtaining a virtual goal.
http://use.perl.org
What if Miramax had told filmmaker Kevin Smith that no one would watch "Clerks" and suggested he develop a marketable teen sex comedy instead?
You mean like Mall Rats?
There are lots of FPS games nowadays, but there is a world of difference between your bargain basement FPS and Quake 3. Namely quality. Games like Half Life added strong story elements (though some would argue that Marathon did it first) to the genre.
Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age for GBA are 2D RPGs, and seemingly a throwback from the 16-Bit Era. However, they have a good story, are very fun, and have innovative battle features that I've never seen before.
And of course there is Neverwinter Nights. The "Official Campaign" wasn't comparable in story to Baldur's Gate, but the real action is in the toolset and multiplayer. While it isn't the first game to offer a toolset, it is one of the first with an easy toolset and has truckloads of support from both Bioware and the community. Bioware has released extra creatures since release, and people have used the HAK pack support to add the things Bioware didn't have time to put in. The community has made some great mods that remind you of REAL D&D.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
It's the same reason that the music industry is full of bland, artificial, manufactured "Party Posse" garbage.
It's the same reason that the same romantic comedy script has been being remade over and over for decades.
And don't even get me started on the me-too nature of TV. Can you say "let's beat reality TV until the horse is nothing but a squishy pile of bad ratings"?
Music, films, games are all industries. Creative output is a side effect of making money -- but only if it cannot be avoided. Creativity involves risk, so the risk-minimizing side of business tends to minimize creativity. To use a baseball analogy, it's the simple fact of doing something that hasn't been tried before may strike out miserably (or hit a grand slam), while rehashing some commercially sucessful crap will probably get you a base hit.
Look at the games industry in Japan. They've got all kinds of quirky, really abstract, sometimes incomprehensible games. Why? Do they value the art-form of games so much? More likely, just because that stuff will sell.
I think the games industry is more responsive to fans then the music industry, which is more geared toward trying to dictate tastes rather than respond to them (of course, that approach works quite effectively with stupid teenage girls). And I think that the game industry does not suffer the cartel-like control of the RIAA, so it is easier for the independent artists to get play.
The film industry recognizes the need for being innovative and creative, but I think it has the problem that movies are hellishly expensive to make, so it is difficult to movie executives to do too many fresh and creative things.
The original GTA has a bit in common with Clerks if you want to compare video games to movies. Both were done on a small budget and pushed the envelope. Also, is it just me or did Kevin Smith shoot clerks before he was with Mirimax, much like GTA 1 was done without a publisher iirc?
There is always room for new ideas. The problem is, a lot of new ideas are bad ones. For every new idea that might be the next Street Fighter, GTA, Everquest, Ultima, Quake 2 there are plenty of poor games.
What it all comes down to, is most people play games for fun. Appealing to what is fun for most people is how to sell a game. To me, it's not fun to go online and role play a troll and chop wood for 90 hours a week or whatever it is you do in everquest (I got bored pretty quickly with it). I enjoy games where I can play with other people and out think them. Where I like a game of chess, a game of counter strike is much more fun since I get to solve my problems in a way I can't in real life without reprocussions. (ie, VIOLENCE)
The games that appeal to people as "fun" are the ones that will always be successful.
There are thousands of game releases every year. Some are amazingly cool, but most of them are rehashed old themes or just plain crap. How do we know which ones to buy?
Simple...marketing. Which games get the TV display at Electronics Boutique? Which ones have cardboard cutout displays?
Most people can't afford to buy any game they want. They have to rely on others to tell them which games are genuinely good. Occasionally a game will get by on its own merits, but most of the time, it succeeds based on a costly marketing campaign. Just like music and movies.
And this marketing costs money, too, so companies decide to market the games that they are relatively sure will benefit the most from it. They don't bet on the little guys with no track record, they bet on the tried-and-true formulas. So, in the end, even an incredibly smart, interesting new title will sit on the shelves because it wasn't marketed well.
Is it just me, or did you just name 3 examples that directly contradict the statement you are trying to make? There are still plenty of innovative games out there, but like most innovative art, they are on the fringes, and are incorporated into pop culture in big gulps as society tries to reach beyond its borders. Just like Nirvana helped spur the grunge phenomenon in music (and like the New Wave movement 10 years earlier), we have the DOOM spurring on the FPS movement, the Command & Conquer inspiring the RTS explosion, and GTA3 inspiring an as-yet-to-be-named phenomenon.
I think that many people (mostly those who are not gaming enthusiasts) see a first person shooter and think that it's exactly like any other FPS that has ever existed, when in fact each successful title has innovations not seen in other games.
It would be crazy to say that every Zelda game is a rehash of the last. Each release not only takes full advantage of the newly available technology, but adds new, innovative concepts not found in the previous games. These innovations (not the new technology) keep the games fresh and fun to play.
The writer of the linked article seems disappointed that more companies are moving toward first-person shooter games in hopes that they can sell more games. He quotes Ragnar Tornquist, who says that "the era of point-and-click adventures is over." Of course the era of point-and-click is over; when game developers can shed a crummy, nonintuitive interface and use new technology to make a more realistic environment, I'd call that progress. There is no reason to think that The longest journey would have been less fun if you could walk up to an item and pick it up instead of simply clicking on it.
The article basically claims that the move to a universal 3D engine will be the nail in the coffin for originality. Instead, I think it will promote originality; if developers work together to build an engine which lets players have complete control over their environment, then their ability to innovate within this environment will be limitless.
"What happens when every game follows a tried and true formula?"
We get games we like. The most anticipated game of the year is Doom3. Why? Because we like those kinds of games. Innovative does always not equal good or fun. The main reason these innovative games are not selling is... well... they suck.
Tried and True formulas get that way because we play the game, we like the game, and now we want more of the same. Not to mention that when a new inovative game is fun and sells well then of course there will be several sequels. Nothing wrong with that. You don't always need to reinvent the wheel.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
I still almost cry when I think of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2. Those were the best games I have ever played. Very original, and you had to think a lot. And they were funny too. :)
Here:
http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
The main problem is that the target audience for games is generally the same: young males
As a whole that audience is not very sophisticated and is likely to demand very few innovative or interesting elements in their games.
By the time they get older and start demanding more interesting games they generally fall out of the core audience and there will be another kid that turned 13 and will gladly fork over 50 bucks for yet another FPS or another Civ clone or another RPG light.
Too bad smaller companies like http://www.sportsmogul.com that make interesting games without the pretty pictures or marketing muscle do not get more attention.
I've recently started playing EVE Online (http://www.eve-online.com/) - It has a lot of "old concepts", but it is ahead of every other massively multiplayer game in its complexity - I don't think I've ever seen any other game with an economy designed to be a player driven free market.
:)
It's lots of fun, and it's also a challenge for the mind. Far more interesting than the FPS o' the day. (Not that there's anything bad about them, I've played my share of Q3.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
There are plenty of original games out there. Most of them simply don't do well, and those which do are copied and cliched into oblivion. Take for example:
Uplink: Every Slashdotter's dream game. Very innovative idea, properly executed, as well.
Escape Velocity Series: While the series is not exactly new, it is still an excellent idea. Completely open-ended, and quite fun. Windows port coming soon.
Wulfram II: Multiplayer only. Free. Interesting combination of strategy and FPS. The graphics are a bit dated, although community-funded development work has begun on a new graphics engine. Addicting as hell.
Black and White: Never played, but very innovative from what I've heard.
The Longest Journey: While it's very similar to the LucasArts adventure games, this game plays like a novel. That being said, if all novels copied each other, we would have stopped writing them thousands of years ago. Recycled concept, AMAZING plot.
Planescape: Torment: At first glance, this appears to be nothing more than a hackneyed D&D game/Diablo clone. Upon playing it, you begin to unravel a superb plot. Very little hack and slash.
Dance Dance Revolution: Never played it, but it's popular as hell (you don't get much more original than THIS)
Morrowind and GTA were both somewhat revolutionary in that they were completely open-ended, and created two of the most original games in two of the most hackneyed generes.
Frozen Bubble/Snood/etc. More proof that such simplistic games can still become wildly popular. Revitalized a dying genere.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
The major problem with the lack of originality in games is that it's an artform that has yet to move away from its technical base. It takes a musician many years to master an instrument so that the music can just "flow". It's a technical base that we as humans fully understand and once mastered can be ignored. When we have gotten the technology to a point where any pot-head artist can make a game(no offense to pot-heads), just like pot-heads can write very pleasing music(no offense to musicians), then the art will truly take off.
When I tell an object to delete this, am I killing it or telling it to kill me?
wtf is this bad moderation? How is the parent "troll" or "flaimbait"? it's a damn insightful comment, if you ask me.
The last original game I played was Thief and Thief 2. Those games stood the genre of the "first person shooter" on its head. All of the other games in that category, including great ones like Deus Ex, have been variations on a theme.
When I was playing Thief a lot, it got to the point where I would instinctively look for surreptious entrances to buildings. And when you live in NYC like I do, you begin to notice a LOT more about architecture. At least when it comes to security!
Nono, that would be the meta-karma whores
If originality were king, Nintendo would be top of the heap right now. People dont want Pikmin, Animal Crossing, or Cubivore. They want Quake3, Halo, and Metroid Prime.
I remember a Dilbert cartoon from long ago.
Girl: "Where's dilbert?"
Dogbert: "He's been in the holodeck since January."
Imagine an immersive, virtual reality world that felt real. How many people would choose it over their own pathetc lives?
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
I think the Sims proved that demographics are the key when deciding what game to make. They made a game for non-gamers, and it shattered sales records.
Why are most games shoot-em-ups? Because most gamers grew up on doom, wolf, and quake.
However obviously there is a huge majority of people around the world that are not being targeted until someone comes out WITH a simple, novel idea that they are able relate to without having spent their high school or college nights locked in front of a monitor or console.
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
That was a hell of a lot easier to do back then for a variety of reasons.
The reason that we have all these unoriginal games is becuase we don't buy the ones are truly original.
Many of use are fanboys (including myself, I refuse to buy an Xbox), which gets in the way of buying that game that is truly original. My co-worker really likes Wario Ware Inc. but will not buy it becasue it is what he calles a "Kiddie Game".
It the hype maches too, I EB employee almost talked me into buying Matrix Reloaded: Enter the Matrix , but fortunately I went home and read a review!
phew!
Speaking of which the largest ET for the Atari 2600 like games is the Playstation 1-2. You are taking a serious risk buying a game for the PS with out renting it first. I have boughten some real stinkers for the PS, based on reviews.
There are a few companies I trust when it comes to games, and here is my short list:
These are companies I know I can trust, but there are others that make good games.
Don't we cover this once every three months?
The Longest Journey 2 just reported here yesterday too... probably no guns there. The original TLJ was a fresh break from your typical FPS.
Syberia came out a while back- decent game play, too easy for veterans, crashed on most FMV sequences, but interesting story. At least small shops are trying to put out different games.
It's just FPS and PvP sells, sells really big; can't blame stores for putting big selling games in prime shelf locations. Those of us who want *different*, *innovative* games are used to looking around on the bottom shelf and in the back corners for them.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Why can't they just release the games possibly with source code for free and accept tips from people who like it?
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
And have been for about 5 years now.
Think about it: Atari (or Infogrames, whatever) paid over $20 million to make and over $60 million just for the LICENSE to create Enter The Matrix. It features lame gameplay, bad design, and a boringness that is almost unparalelled (sure its fun for five minutes, but c'mon).
Any game venture nowadays takes a gargantuan undertaking, tens of millions of dollars.
Why?
Well, of course you have to release it on every platform imaginable. This means, to me, that at least one of those platforms is going to get shafted. Normally its the PC version(s). Why? Too many configurations. Even if you do release a PC version, you have to continue to bugfix it as old/new bugs pop up with old/new equipment.
Plus there's the raw talent. Finding a programming team to develop for up to 4 or 5 platforms (can't forget the GBA) is tough. Getting a GOOD team is even tougher.
Plus there's the actors/voice talent. You don't necessarily have to invest a lot here, but hey, it doesn't hurt to get a "big name" on the box. (I know Wolverine's Revenge isn't touting Mark Hammill, but it sure is mentioned a lot on the game/Star Wars Geek sites)
Plus there's the development cycle. Another reason that most games lack originality is that you have to take that original idea, put it on all of these platforms AND make sure its still original and current a few years down the road. When an idea is created for a game, its not fleshed out in any matter (generally) for many moons. This means that any second guessing, or, god forbid, realization that it's never going to work won't come until months down the road. And just think of all the cash already spent!
Anyone remember Prey? Or Duke Nukem Forever? An old joke, but its still viable in context. They either had a terrible idea, or the technology outran them.
I remember a few years ago John Carmack shooting for the most high-end system imaginable (at the time) as his minimum sys requirements for Doom3. This was something along the lines of an 800Mhz PIII and a Geforce2. Everyone thought he was out of his mind. Nobody is going to have something that downright uber in a few years, nobody!
But its that kind of brave thinking that makes good games age well and others turn to vinegar.
When I heard that Railroad Tycoon 3 (a fav series of mine) was going to be playable on a TNT2, you could tell instantly that its development cycle was either a long time coming, or the project manager just didn't have the balls to say "We're going to require a DX8 compliant card to continue." Sure its nice to play it on old machines, but eye candy coupled with great gameplay makes games that last, and aren't stifled by old standards its desperately trying to make pliable with its codebase.
Getting back on target, games are now million dollar "projects" and "ventures" and this means that a LOT of people who control that cash want to have their say, and want to have their approval on it. Just imagine if GTA3 didn't have its two predecessors, and the big boss executive didn't like the idea of stealing cars and running over people for fun (granted there's still Carmaggedon, et al, but work with me).
New gameplay concepts are generally taken in small steps. GTA had two top-down perspective predecessors, the FPS world was born with Wolfenstein 3d on a shoe-string budget, using a character that already had an established fanbase.
Any new, brazen concept is going to get killed at that stage. Concepts don't make executives happy, they want to hear about market forcasts and demographics and marketing strategies. There is too much bullshit involved in a big budget game to really introduce something groundbreaking.
I'm afraid that the GTA series will suffer the same fate of More of the Same. I mean, seriously, GTA: Vice City was little more than a bug fix release, with a larger playing area, newer vehicles, nicer engine, and some (slightly) improved AI. I'm sure GTA: Whatever will be the same way. A
or lack thereof. SEGA wouldn't market a game until *after* it came out, and so completely screwed themselves.
A blog about stuff.
I'm looking for some new adventure games, too. I do remember reading somewhere that sequels to Full Throttle and Sam & Max are in the works. Sorry I can't remember all the details-- I was too busy being distracted by pretty pictures of Half-Life 2: The Game That May Redeem the FPS.
When films first appeared, the very idea of editing was radical; to cut the film into chunks that somehow approximated a jilted eye-movement that had narrative power. Then the rules about editing -- breaking the axis, 90-degree flips, screen-facing, etc. Once we had a credible language for the format, there was a period of stagnation, when we thought this is how films would be... lots of locked-off tripods, static shots, clearly framed heads speaking to the camera, etc. Sound, a technological innovation, pushed the format in new directions ("Who on earth wants to hear actors talk?). Now, look at what we do in films: swooping cameras, crazy filters, surround-sound, virtual cinematography... not to mention the arsenal of tricks given to us by the Leans, Hitchcocks, Spielbergs, etc. of the world.
Video games will go forward once we begin to truly master the art of nonlinear storytelling. I often suspect that our film past, while necessary to arrive where we are now, hamstrings us a bit in terms of expectations. People like to just turn their brains off and be entertained, and any sort of interactive medium is bound to be more work than that.
I once had an idea for a DVD 'film' that would just be scraps of video, selected at the user's whim, constructed in just such a way that you could do your own sleuthing and piece together the film in your own way. That's much more amorphous than what people are willing to go through. It smacks of work to many people.
Don't worry. We'll get there eventually. I do agree with the poster in terms of lamenting the current period, though. The video game industry now makes more money than the film industry and sequels to hit games will sell. It's a given. However, sooner or later, someone will come up with the video game equivalent of something like Memento or 2001, and things will shuffle again.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Where I begin having a problem is when that process starts treading on the grounds of creativity and originality... You've probably read that Funcom is shunning the point-and-click roots of The Longest Journey in favor of a developing 3D action-adventure sequel. This news wouldn't be so disappointing if the original game wasn't a minor classic - and if store shelves weren't already saturated with third-person romps manufactured in the same mold.
Pop quiz: which is a more creative/innovative genre choice?
A. The point-and-click adventure game.
B. The third-person action-adventure game.
The correct answer is, of course:
C. Both of these genres have seen dozens of successful, well-known games. Their mechanics are well developed, and they have plenty of respective fans.
I always hear a lot of gamers complaining that they want more creative/innovative games. I don't buy it. I think in a lot of cases it is really a cover for a hidden agenda ("I want more old fashioned 2D point and clicky adventure games!"), or just an attempt to get some gaming cred. Or maybe just confusion. Because gamers don't buy games based on how innovative they are. They just don't.
What gamers really want is simple: variety. You can see how this can be confused with words like "innovation" or "creativity". Every single console war was 'won' by the side with the biggest variety. Atari dominated because of this. NES dominated because of this. Genesis managed to kick the NES* and Turbografix16 around because it offered more variety. SNES and Genesis both did very well because they had huge game libraries filled with variety in every genre. In America the PSX wasted the N64 and Saturn. In Japan, Saturn did much better against the PSX (though eventually lost) and managed to even crush the N64. All because it had so much game variety, even compared to its Western version. PS2 is following the same path - it just has more games, in more genres, than any other current console (especially because it can also play PSX games).
Look at failed consoles like 3DO or Jaguar: not enough game variety.
What the author of the editoral is really trying to say is that he wants more variety. He is sick of the two modern dominant genres (CS-on-steroids and Everquest clones), but he would be perfectly happy with a game in a truly ancient genre like point-and-click adventure gaming.
As gamers, let's not continue to hide behind this claim that what we really want is just more innovative games. We just want more options when we decide to buy a new game. And as the gaming market continues to expand, the variety of games will continue to skyrocket. If one of your favorite genres becomes less popular, just don't get all pissed and write silly editorials ending with alarmist BS like this:
Let creativity and originality thrive before the path less traveled becomes so overgrown from neglect that we no longer have the option of going down it.
The path less traveled may be forgotten, but game developers can always create new paths. Isn't that what you said you actually wanted?
*Better controls and better graphics allowed a greater variety of games on the Genesis than the aging NES did, even though the NES technically did have more games.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
Just today, a friend sent me a link to cool looking game that I guess premiered at E3 The Movies I think its a little like The Sims, but this time you are making a movie. And you get to see what the trailer of your finished product will look like. Looks neat.
The following is a broad generalization of gaming. I ignore lots in the interest of getting back to work ASAP. Please look at the point and not what I failed to mention.
First there was 2D with a few colors. This let us do lots of basically animated board games. There were good ideas because people had been making board games for centuries.
Then we got to the scroller era and every game was the same. Run around, collect stuff. Some were better than others, but within a few years, the genre had run its course and most were just bad coppies of the few innovative ones.
Then we hit the 3D era. Everything now looks like Doom with a gimmic. Some of the gimmics are good, but most are just copies. These games always have lots of guns and flash because the other part of the game can't stand on its own.
What's the problem? There is no shortage of good ideas, the problem is that we can't code those ideas. Any game that doesn't rely on running around and blowing stuff up needs another goal. That goal always revolves around the need for some good AI. The only other successful major genre that I have ommited so far is the RTS game. These work because they are from a macro perspective. The individual AI sucks, but the whole scene behaves mostly ok. Anything that needs an artificial person to behave in a strategic or clever manner just can't be done yet.
When we can do an game where harder doesn't just mean bigger and faster but smarter, the market will explode with "I've always wanted to do this" ideas.
I remember back in the day (back when NES was king and gas was just under a buck a gallon here in CO) when game publishers were not huge media conglamerates, but programmers who loved the games they created. Final Fantasy, Crystalis, Star Tropics, etc. all came from relatively small companies (at the time).
This is important, because it means that the resources required to make the game were in the best place they could be, in the hands of the people making the game. All the super-popular games of that time (even to date, occasionally) came from environments like this.
It's not that the creativity and innovation is gone (look at ICO, Fatal Frame), it's that the resources needed to afford such aren't where they're supposed to be.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
really should make true gamers think about the future of videogames, with Sony and Microsoft wanting to create entertainment hubs, and Nintendo's demise looming, I guess we're not very far from a Holywood Syndrome. Once Nintendo is out of the picture, the "true games" part of the equation will sucumb to more "interesting" business models such as "In-game advertising", more FMV, more pop music soundtracks, more movie-game translations, more "let's do what's in..." a.k.a "Bullet time on every production" etc.... it's the Industry's second death, and there will be no NES to save us....
The Official Playstation Magazine recently ran a cover story called Seven Games That Will Change Everything. All SEVEN of the games predicted to "change everything" were SEQUELS. Innovative games, I think, have always been the exception not the norm, but the industry is firmly gripped by sequelitis to a much greater extent than ever before....
Also, is it just me or did Kevin Smith shoot clerks before he was with Mirimax
Kevin Smith did indeed shoot Clerks before he was with Miramax. Miramax execs saw it at the Sundance Independant Film Festival and began negotiating there. IIRC, Chasing Amy was also financed independantly and sold to Miramax, because they wouldn't give Kevin Smith any money after the flop that was Mallrats.
Love,
Jay and Silent Bob
There are tons of great games you just can't get on the PC nowadays. Like Warcraft 3, Breakout, Super Breakout... photoshop...
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
For everyone standout, there may have been 100 crapfests, but I played everyone of them and enjoyed them!
I find that it has to do with the time/money it takes to create a game is much more labor intensive.
It's not as easy to chuck out 100's of games when they cost so much, take so much time, and each need to make a profit.
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I always ignore games based on movies (and have never purchaced one). The entire line of gameboy advance games are movie-based generally. The movie marketing point is strong though. The new Matrix game has already sold a million copies in a week, and without great reviews. Advertising a game as having killer graphics is reserved for copanies like epic,valve, and id software and is irrelevant on the gba side. But people will buy a matrix game in the same way they will buy a matrix tshirt. And will then go on to buy a roll of matrix toilet paper when it's availiable.
Anyway, as for game origionality. Eh, just a matter of opinion. There's only so far you can go before you create a game not suitable for a console, or a game that's too hard to learn, etc. And at what point were we NOT complaining about origionality?
Lets take a look: Fantavision, a puzzle game which lets you create firework shows... Mr. Mosquito, where you fly about and try to suck blood without getting swatted. Xenosaga, which continues Xenogears's trend of being a deep multilayered RPG in a market mostly dominated by Final Fantasy N+1. Lets not forget ICO, which proved that eyecandy can count for a lot when it is well executed. .hack (the US market's first attempt at multi-volume games) uses a very intriguing (and imho well executed) concept of simulating an MMORPG environment, without actually being MM or O. And these are just the games I've played.
Other innovative games abound, like Dance Dance Revolution. The DDR craze has gone on far too many sequels and spinoffs to maintain much of its originality status, but it was once a new and daring idea. Just like the other original ideas, once it proved popular it became copied.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Back in the early 90s, there was a fairly good game series called Spellcasting 101/201/301. In it, the main character met some nerdly types while they were playing malls and muggers.
Characters used modern weapons and had classes such as "hooker", "dilletante", "EMT", etc.
I still haven't played a good modern day RPG. There are thousands of medieval RPGs (Wizardry!), and a few good futuristic RPGs (Fallout!) but no good RPGs set in modern times (1990s, 2000s)... I'd love to play a nice Malls and Muggers game!
It is quite enjoyable to nit-pick incessantly, and judge what is original! (As well as tell others their opinions are wrong!)
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I suspect that we will see a convergence of things like Shenmue with Grand Theft Auto begin to create a new genre that will eventually be completely open-ended in a "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure" fashion. As freely roamable as GTA is, the game is still something that you have to follow prescribed missions to "complete." I expect that, eventually, adventure games (in particular) will allow the game to judge you on how much you are acting like how your character should, being thrown random challenges with an ultimate goal that will shape itself as you make your choices in the game.
Thus, no two games would be played the same...there go all those cheat guides. ;)
That said, I still think we're seeing some great games: GTA, Ikagura, Amplitude, etc. I know I'm enjoying the latest rounds of games...
Mallrats
Love,
Jay and Silent Bob
What tripe. Popular games = what people want. No one is forcing people to buy anything. They buy what they want/like. FPS is cool, on occassion, with the likes of the original Doom and later improvements like Quake and Halflife. DeusEx? Damn-frickin-good. And, sorry, but RTCW is/was kickass fun...and there are plenty of Germans who play/enjoy that "nazi glorifying" game. Check out the network game servers...you will find plenty out of Germany and just about every other country in the world. It isn't about glorifying nazis. It's about teams fighting against teams in a really nicely rendered "world" with great graphics quality. It's just fun...I have played both nazi side and allied side, simply depending on which side needed players. There's no nazi glorifying going on (in single player mode, in case you missed it, the nazis were the BAD GUYS).
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
For example, why would someone buy Unreal Tournament 2010 if the graphics technology peaked in 2006? The same goes for Counterstrike, Warcraft, Everquest and the rest of the games whose sequels are mainly technology upgrades.
We should also look forward to the eventual plateau of graphics/sound technology in terms of video games because it will become cheaper and cheaper for people to make games - the longer the tech is available, the cheaper it is. Already we have individuals who do 3D modeling for ZERO money (unless Valve or Id or whomever buys their mod) and there will only be more of those folks in the future. For Neverwinter Nights, there are people out there writing ENTIRE GAMES for nothing because the tools are available to them.
In short, I believe technology will advance until it reaches the point where incremental sequels will not be able to compete with their predecessors and innovations in gaming will become more common again.
This sounds a lot like Memepool's topic last wednesday.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
I know, for video-game funs it sounds weird, but old guys who played adventure games on old TTY mainframe terminals will understand what I mean.
Less is more !
Remember the original JGRF commercials in the US?
With the japanese people acting all wacky and idiotic and spray painting the sega logo on their asses?
It had absolutely NOTHING to do with the game. Instead, it made the game look idiotic. So idiotic you wouldnt even look at the back of the package to see what it was about.
If they had just shown 15 seconds worth of gameplay, it would have sold like hotcakes.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The humor is in West Telephone Hill, the gameplay in Northeast Wood Hill, the fun in Southwest Woodside, and the sweary words are in Sailor's Wharf. They are all in briefcases.
--
What games were original enough that you still play them 5 years after release?
Even from the golden age of games, with titles like Theme Hospital, Doom, Quake, Dungeon Keeper, Elite the only one I play on a regular basis now is Total Anihilation (from 1998) and only that because it's still the best C&C like game to play over the net.
To be honest, many of these games really were about as good as they could be in their genere, and just required regular graphics updates to keep them looking pretty (remember how much you hated it when your favourite game sequel messed with the gameplay? what if HL2 has a single player game as bad as Halo's?). Once you get to that point there isn't much room to go, except derivatives.
I'm sure that every now and again a new totally cool game will pop up, but the rate will be much slower than it was when there was so little before it.
Beep beep.
The people who sell games don't make shit off them. That's why ever store on earth that sells computer games sells somethign else with higher profit margins, like magazines, cards, action figures, etc. You cannot turn a profit in the software reselling industry without selling something else too. The game companies make a VERY healthy profit margin off a successful title, enough that they can afford to eat a few stinkers. But the stores cannot, and unsold inventroy shows up on a cash sheet and drives down the value of the company. Get enough stale inventory and your EPS drops, your stockholders get angry, people sell off shares, rightfully thinking that the company's profit model is flawed with a lot of inliquidated inventory, and the company starts to go under.
So, stores won't stock games if they think they won't sell. Stores cannot afford the luxury of 50 copies of "Super Jump And Shoot XIV" going unsold. They had to pay $38 for a game they have to sell at $43 to break even. When they sell it in the bargain bin for $10 they're eating a $28 loss.
So, quirky new titles that may not sell will get resistance from the retail outlets, and if the outlets won't stock your title, there's no sense in making it.
This might change if the marginal profit between the game producers and retailers weren't so disparate, but that's never going to change.
ico was a nice little gem of a game. Sure, there was running and jumping, but with a twist - not only did you have to find your way out of the castle, but you have to lead a princess out by the hand, as well. The game also had one of the weirdest storylines ever. Perhaps not the most original game, but definitely one of a kind. When was the last time you played a game starring a viking-helmet clad child who beat back shadow-beasts with a large stick?
Mr. Mosquito was another game that defied conventions. You play the game as a mosquito, who must feed on the blood of a Japanese family without being detected.
Between the two, "Ico" was (in my opinion at least) the more fun, but both games at least added a new twist to old formats. Of course, neither game was a financial success, which is the crux of the matter. There's very little innovation because game publishers know that formula games (FPS, Sims, and Sports Titles) will always have a built-in market. Niche games like the ones above have to explain what they're about (and possibly confuse people), which may turn off some of the more mainstream game purchasers.The Dreamcast failed because people wanted to wait for the Playstation 2, which they knew was right around the corner and which was also a DVD player. I do not own a dvd player, I own a PS2, that was my thinking for buying one at least. I could by a decent DVD player for $200 (at the time DVD players were very expensive) or a PS2 for $300 that could play games and watch movies. Also the graphics on the PS2 are much better than Dreamcast. The problem is that games get locked to certain consoles or platforms.
Bitch, bitch, bitch. Moan, moan, moan.
Bitch, moan, whine.
I'm sure people were complaining in 1979 about how Galaxian was just a Space Invaders clone, and how surely that indicated that originality in the video game medium was dead.
Why aren't there any original games being made? That questions is logically flawed. Why aren't original games on the best-seller lists? Simply, because people would rather play something more familiar.
The next big thing may be a game where the players can pick the character their armor, wepons, abilities or they can pick a weapon/armor/abilities and customize the parameters to suit their wants. There will be a rule set behind the scenes that manages the interactions and outcomes.
How would it be to pick a weapon and change it's kinetic, range, and fire damage settings to create something new. Like a bazooka shell that can pierce a wall and detonate inside a room or a flame thrower that flings a burning slug that sticks to whatever it hits.
Even at the cost of being a bit off-topic, I found one exceptionally insightful part in that editorial.
[John Carmack] believes it won't always be necessary for programmers to pump out new engines for each successive generation of releases. This could mean that it might not be long until technical innovation is no longer a driving force in interactive entertainment - at least provisionally.
I am personally eagerly waiting for this to happen in games. It has already happened in the niche area of computer demos. Just marching eye-candy and stunning visual effects on screen no longer gets the group nothing more than a few yawns. The real works of art with concept and possibly even *gasp* plot get all the appraising - and for a reason. There was a time when computer demos pushed the limits and showed what quite rudimentary setups were capable of. I really, really wish the trend saw a comeback.
Originality is, however, dangerous. It takes a certain kind of genius to design and device game with new ideas and working plot. They are far and wide apart, which means that 99% of all the games will, for the forseeable future, remain sequels of sequels and rehashes of the lowest common nominator.
There is no such thing as good luck. There is only misfortune and its occasional absence.
Sega did itself in with horrible marketing. Anybody remember that "surprise launch" of teh Saturn? People who were saving for a Saturn and were expecting to have the money by the official launch date were caught off guard by the console being launched the same day as the PSX, a few months beforehand. What the hell? How am I going to buy the Saturn now when it is $300 and I only saved $150?
Let us not forget the 32X and the SegaCD. How many Sega fans bought the equipment expecting a whole new world of gaming, only to be left in the dust?
Meanwhile, the other consoles had Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, EA Sports, Parappa, Gran Turismo, etc - in other words, the other consoles delivered bigger games, some being mostly derivative (ie Final Fantasy, EA Sports), but the others breaking ground whenever they were released. Meanwhile, Sega's line-up, while having a few gems here and there, couldn't compete, mainly because of Sega's earlier mistakes, not because Sega's titles were original and nobody plays original games. Who wants to develop for a console maker with such a shady record?
In the case of Shenmue, hopefully into the garbage. Someone at Sega seems to have confused "innovative" with "boring," "pointless," "repetative," "plot-free," and "wildly unrealistic."
Anyway... back on topic...
The editorial is off base. As any creative industry grows the core of the industry becomes conservative, unwilling to take the risks necessary to create truly innovative work. But just because the core does doesn't mean that everyone will. Some companies will realize that you don't need to sell millions of copies to be successful and will happily make modest profits with smaller markets making truly innovative games. The original Counterstrike was just such a case, it popularized the modern SWAT style game and refined into the basis of many multi-player games. Pop Cap Games has done phenominally well with their little games, most notably Bejeweled Something genuinely original? How about surprisingly addictive game about building bridges, Chronic Logic's Pontifex . How about a hard to explain that can only be inaccurately described as action puzzle play matched with turn based stategy, Moonbase Commander . Check out the Independent Games Festival for bunches more of genuinely new and interesting games.
Of course, certain genres are completely unreasonable for small publishers, like massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Or are they? How about a MMORPG without any combat? A Tale in the Desert . A puzzle based MMORPG? Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates .
Thanks to internet distribution, it's becoming more and more economical for a smaller company to reach out to a global audience.
So, there is lots of great new game ideas. Sometimes they even escape from big, conservative companies. So why don't we see them? Why aren't more people aware of them? The problem isn't that a lack of new ideas, the problem is the journalists themselves! By focusing on the big budget rehash games, spending time giving us pointless "preview" coverage over and over ("We still haven't actually played the game, but boy, it sure does look neat. We look forward to its release in forty-eight months") instead of seeking out and publicizing great stuff from small companies. It wouldn't take much to get the general public looking for these games, helping to encourage further innovation. Because the journalists hype them so, the game industry is still stuck in the idiot "Big budget, big payoff" gamble that the movie industry is. With a few small budge success stories we could see big companies realizing that quarter or half million dollar risks don't have huge rewards, but they also lack the possibility of becoming catastrophic failures.
If you're worried about the lack of innovative games, go looking for them, they exist. Point them out to your friends. And if you're a journalist, don't just bitch, tell your readers about what gems you do find!
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I have to agree with you... there really isn't that much inovation out there. The only things I could think of that are truly groundbreaking are: 1) Dance Dance Revolution (Yeah.... it's just for the kids... but you have to admit that it's quite different from anything out there) and 2) The Typing Of The Dead. I'm not sure if too many people know about The Type of the Dead but basically they took The House of the Dead and instead of shooting zombies with a gun, you have a keyboard and each zombie has a word you have to type in order to kill it. Surprisingly, it is very addictive and the first I've ever seen of anything like this. I think we need more of this type of thinking in the gaming industry.
The only thing that will stop you from fulfilling your dreams is you. - Tom Bradley
Any fighting game
Atari's 720
A personal favourite, but essentially a comic version of Scorched Earth (or even older)
Nothing original there.
Cheers,
Ian
When I get paid on Friday, I am going out and purchasing a gameboy advance.
That simple!
(Thanks for the information, You've made my day better... I am a sad, sad individual.)
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I think the problem with the marketing content was mainly a reflection of the times, everyone had EXTREME commercials so sega had to copy, and do a bad job of it, too. SEGA's problem has always been, lead in games, follow everywhere else.
A blog about stuff.
I have felt the exact same way about DC and PS2. When the DC came out, it seemed that every week, some completely original game would be released. Remember Seaman? Where you spoke to the artificial fish through a special microphone? Or the way Space Channel 5 gave a new spin on the memory type games (no, it was very different than Parappa). Or Soul Calibur, the best fighting game ever released (yes, it pwns Tekken). The list goes on and on - the mentioned Shenmue and Jet Set Radio... some memorable RPG's, great multiplayer games, sports games that quickly rivaled anything that the lame EA franchises have come up with, Crazy Taxi, the innovative Samba de Amigo with REAL maracas (yes I have a pair, and it's fun)... Virtual Tennis, the best tennis game EVER made, Phantasy Star Online, one of my favorite online RPG's (not massively-multiplayer), which had FULL support for ethernet connections, including a great port of Quake 3 Arena, with an easy to use DC mouse and keyboard to go with it! The accessories were also as innovative as the games.
Hopefully that covered almost everything. I own GC, PS2, and X-Box, and they mostly gather dust, except for using my X-Box as a media player. Since the demise of the DC, there have been nothing but sequels, and it seems that even Sega has lost its flair for video game perfection. Hopefully there will be another era in video games that isn't driven by profit margins, movie licenses, and sequels. This hasn't just been related to Sega, even Nintendo's proven franchises are becoming more and more lackluster. Please people, stop buying Wrestlemania games and try something new for once. The DC proved that innovation is still possible in a crowded market.
Sorry, but I can't fully agree with this statement. It's like asking why record companies still sold CDs for $15 and answering because people would buy the CDs. I can pull this analogy even further - just like the record companies are whining about declining profits, the profit expectations for the gaming industry have been consistently downgraded over the past year.
The current gaming industry is nothing short of a classical oligopoly. You have a few companies that pretty much have the pricing structure worked out, which sell products that are roughly the same and only differ in brand and a few details, and which operate in an industry that has relatively high barriers to entry. As a game developer, you very well know the level of expertise a development team needs to have, as well as equipment and a solid marketing budget. As a consequence, only select few people can produce games these days, and none of the independent games is actually successful enough to either become mainstream or force the big publishers from their limbo.
The Rotten Tomato movie write-up gives a few insights as to costs, as well as a number of other bits of trivia...
"The filmmaker, Kevin Smith, worked at the Quick Stop in Leonardo, New Jersey during production. The film was shot there, and at the RST Video next door. Smith was only allowed to shoot at night, when the store was closed--hence the closed shutters, which are explained away in the script.
The budget for the film is reported to have been $27,575 by Smith's ViewAskew Productions. Smith financed the film with credit cards, his Quick Stop earnings, family assistance, and by selling his comic book collection. When the film was a success, he bought back the comics (and bought himself a comics shop). The soundtrack rights cost more than the production costs."
Check it
It was fun and all, but skating games are a formula too. Tony Hawk Pro Skater had those same crazy stunts. And how is solving problems by tagging with a spraycan any different from solving them with a gun?
But it is clear he didn't look at how innovative that engine really is. The physics in that is innovative...incredible...beyond belief. If you want to talk about genre innovations..the most popular ones dominate the market. It's harder for a creative game to get coverage because you don't know if it is good until you can play it. I know half life 2 will make me happy. So there are less creative games out there...but that isn't to say there aren't any, they are just harder to find and may not show up at E3.
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The Sims, Wolfenstein 3D, Unreal Tournament, Mario Kart, Pokemon, Myst, Parappa the Rapper, Super Mario 3d, Ninja Gaiden, The Legend of Zelda...
Each of these sold better than "Legends of Wrestling" _BECAUSE_ of their originality, because they appealed to a new crowd. The Sims is the best example of this.
Of course, some ideas just don't cut it. Sewer Shark. The Sims Online. Anything for the Jaguar. It's not always because the game sucked -- sleepers like Jet Grind Radio, Star Control 2, Shadow of the Beast, Radiant Silvergun and Panzer Dragoon Saga happen all the time and either miss their audience or are otherwise stutter started into obscurity.
The Dreamcast was killed by speculation and nothing else. Everybody who played Crazy Taxi with me when it first came out loved it. Most of them waited for the PS2 anyway -- because the PS1 had a huge library and Sony was making promises to shake the very earth. It's not ORIGINALITY that killed the DC. That's just stupid. ORIGINALITY was the only think that prevented it from doing a complete "Saturn fail."
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Are posters expected to proofread and spellcheck on /.?
Yes, lots of games are just the same shoot 'em up over and over again. But the game cube has a plethora of original and fun games! Just to name a few, PikMin, Luigi's Mansion and Mario Sunshine. Hrmm, metroid prime isn't all original, but it's really good...
I have two friends that I know back from the university. We are always in discussion of our next gaming project. Well, we have not been able to make anything!!! anytime we started, we found out that someone else has done the same before us!!!
3d Shooters ? done to death.
Online rpgs ? too much work for 3 bedroom coders.
Puzzle games ? done to death. We even tried 3d battleship!!!
Adventure games ? well, no one had the talent of storytelling. But this is a field that shows more promise than any other. Basically, you can do whatever you like.
So, what you can really do ? even big companies don't have the resources to pull cinematic experiences. It's not that the hardware does not allow it. It's time and resources. The current market simply does not justify too high costs.
Even if you think about any other type of game, its been done to death. The only real innovation is combining formerly separate categories.
About the Dreamcast, all I have to say is that I love it. Today I read about the PowerVR tile engine: super pretty smart architecture for 3d rendering. It's a pity SEGA did not have the marketing hype. Because it's the PS2 hype that killed the Dreamcast: the big anticipation of the uber console that could do emotional experiences in 75 million polygons per second...damn lies by the Sony PR department. But it worked.
Look at the movies - we've had them for a long time, and technology is still one of the main driving forces. If you believe this will change for either games or movies, you're just being narrow minded.
sig sig sputnik
There will be some original formats in the future. If I knew what they were of course I wouldnt be wasting time on /. though!
Sure a lot of new games are rather identikit, but dont get misty eyed about the 8-bit past too quick, there was a lot of complete dross around and *how many* remakes of the popular formats of the day (frogger/space invaders/donkey kong)? Anyone remember Ocean's run of woeful film tie-ins? And believe it or not people were having the same debates as this in the early 80s. Just like they have had about music, theatre, the novel, poetry etc. for hundreds of years.
Bear in mind also we only tend to remember the succesful experiments that stood the test of time. Anyone for a game of Deus Ex Machina (a widely heralded classic of invention in its day)? Thought not.
In any case, I personally find the established formats (e.g., FPS) are popular for a reason. And all it takes is a good instantion of said format to make you remember. I was fed up with the FPS for a while, until I tried BF1942 and it rekindled the sort of excitement I used to have for Doom. Largely because it was executed well and brought a few new additions to the table.
Not that Doom was as original as often portrayed. There are many 8-bit antecdents of that format as well. Which rather supports my claim; Doom seemed was a watershed because it did something well and thus seemed incredibly exciting and original.
So I say don't worry about originality per se, worry more about quality. And the rest shall follow.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Just one thing: where's my McMansion and my SUV? Do you think that every American is an Imperialist pig? Your view of the world is so narrow, yet you are too full of yourself to notice.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I'll field this one. Originally, I had a "the DC rox" post lined up but it seemed too obvious. Anybody who's familiar with videogames as a genre knows that the DC had some brilliant titles.
I was watching some pre-awards show for the G-phoria Awards (game awards given out by G4TV) last week. The show was basically 4 industry people plus a moderator sitting down roundtable style and kicking around all the different games that were up for different awards. One of the guys, maybe it was Seamus Blackley, said that the future of gaming is a continuation of the blending of genres.
Which is probably the most intelligent thing you're going to read in this thread.
Games, due to their nature, can't be simply lumped together as innovative or derivative. Parts of all games will be derivative. There are a set of standards that all games must follow - from the way the packaging looks, to the price point, to how the save option works - it's all according to a predefined specification. This gives gamers a sense of familiarity with the environment across all games on the same system. The A button will always be forward and the B button will always be backwards when navigating menus on the Xbox. It's a spec.
Beyond that, games have developed into the genres that we're commenting/lamenting about here. The problem with these genres is that they're pretty specific. A FPS has a certain number of qualities about it that you know you can expect in your game. The extent to which a new title is considered innovative or derivative is partially a judgement on whether the game used the genre to its advantage or became limited by it.
Oftentimes, games that are lauded for their innovation tend to innovate in one of two areas: technical ability or gameplay mechanic.
Splinter Cell was innovative in its technical abilities. It showed lighting techniques and fabric movement in ways that we've never seen before on a home console. Some would argue that the graphical innovation was so huge as to change the fundamental gameplay mechanic. This isn't true. Splinter Cell is part of the stealth genre of action games. And even at that - it's pretty lame. The trial and error nature of the game reduced it to a series of puzzles to solve. Couple that with a so-so storyline, and in my eyes, you have a very over-hyped game.
Grand Theft Auto III (or Vice City) is a game that blends the genre lines. It's an action game, a racing game, a shooter, a stunt game, etc. But the graphics were still ordinary. Nobody would claim that GTA innovates graphically. However, most everybody agrees that this is a genre busting game that's fun to play.
Then lastly, games are defined by our expectations. The Matrix Reloaded videogame has some cool moments and there's no doubt that it's fun to play scenes from the movie. But other than that, it's your run of the mill Max Payne, Dead to Rights knock off. Sure, they've sold a million of them in the past week - but how many of those people bought the game for the added movie footage and how many bought it for the cool gameplay? And before people start talking about the quality of the graphics, please realize that the wheels on the cars were octagons. Talk to me when they get to be circles.
When it comes to sports games, we don't want gaming innovation. We want something entirely different. We want to make it realistic. We want better graphics and a more true to like AI opponent. We don't want to change the rules of the sport we're playing. But that doesn't stop us, the gaming press, or the developers themselves from claiming startling feats of innovation with each new Madden game.
So innovation is all what you make of it.
Is Planetside innovative for being a FPS MMORG? Is The Matrix Reloaded innovative for meshing with the movie and including 60 minutes of additional movie footage? The answer is probably yes. But the extent to which being innovative makes a good game experience differs greatly.
Since getting into MAME recently, I have played over 1,000 classic arcade games. They are almost always based on an existing game format.
Galaga is based from Space Invaders, and games like 1942 are based on Galaga, just that the terrain moves vertically.
Then games like Shinobi, are just like Double Dragon, Kung Fu Master, and many others where you navigate horizontally.
It goes further in gun based games like Operation Wolf, Duck Hunt, and Terminator. Also, with the many driving games, on to STreet Fighter game.
So, all in all, there have only been game format changes. The differences between games have been marginal and usually just in appearance/style.
What's tower defense? ::) And my reason for asking here rather than googling is cause I'm having a rough day and need an excuse to come back here and check for responses.
And yes, the most fun has been coming out of Mods. BF1942 was made with the Modder in mind and just look at what it's spawned! Desert Combat in of itself is shaping up to be an amazing game, then you got your GI Joe mod, your Action BF1942 mod, etc.
If only I had time to play.
-- taking over the world, we are.
If you liked DDR, then you'll probably like to check out pyDDR, a DDR clone written in Python and PyGame. It's got a buttload of dependencies but other than that it looks beautiful.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
perhaps it's time we go back to the days of smaller, condensed games, plots, storylines.
You could extend a simple game style like...mario kart to include vastly more gameplay/etc while keeping it simple and fun.
The setting is in a movie theater during the days of silent films. The film itself is, of course, black and white but everything else is normal. There is a piano player on stage in the corner and a movie audience. The movie playing is a serialized "Perils of Pauline" kind of thing. You control what happens on the movie screen and how well you do effects how the audience reacts. The tempo of the piano player's music will warn you when things are about to get hairy and the text-screens during the movie (It's not a "talkie" remember) will provide clues as to what to do.
You get points for not only rescuing the "damsel in distress" but doing so in the "nick of time" using the most outlandish means possible. Your audience responds by remaining focused on the screen and coming back next week to see what adventures our hero gets into next.
On the other hand if say, she's tied to a railroad track and you rescue her before the train is even on camera, the audience will be bored and start throwing peanuts at each other and some will even get up and leave.
Also, if you fail and the damsel dies, then the audience is horrified and storms out the the theater in mass never to return.
anyway, that's the basic jist, I just wish I knew how to code it.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Anybody here remembers David Braben's Frontier? :)
here do the new ideas go if we can't have games like Viewtiful Joe, Shenmue, and Jet Grind Radio?
Jet Grind Radio, after you remove the horrible spraying can follow-the-sequence mini-game, is pretty much the same old "avoid enemies, collect items" game. Sure, the graphics are dazzling, the physics engine lets you do stuff you couldn't 10 years ago, there's 2/3 kinds of things to collect (spray cans and stuff to spray, and those "graffiti souls"), moving targets (tag the enemy gang), and racing mini-games, but nothing's really _NEW_.
Shenmue's basically an adventure, with atmoshphere to rival a movie (especially audio-wise) and a lot of stuff to do (arcade games inside the game - by the same developer!, forklift races, stuff to collect, Virtua Fighter - like fighting game, and 'press button quickly' reflex tests).
In both these cases, the games offer little innovation, but what's there is a lot of tried and tested content, with superb attention to detail. These games are not new, they're just well-crafted.
That's not to say they aren't worth your money or your time, but if you want innovation, you won't find it there. Perhaps you should be looking at either PC or GBA games, where the barrier of entry is still low enough to let a new idea in a little more frequently.
P.S. I'm probably supposed to say something about the gamecube's Animal Crossing, but I haven't played it.
Just look at something like Savage. Granted, it has elements of fighting... but it merges a 64-player FPS with the RTS genre, allowing commanders to build, research technology branches, and command the 31-person FPS players.
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
If I were to somehow distill the inner workings of my mind and figure out the process my brain goes through when determining whether or not I enjoy a particular game, these criteria would be on the checklist (in no particular order). A Yes answer to each of these makes it a winner in my book.
There are more criteria, I'm sure, but that captures a large chunk of them. There are very few games I've played that meet those criteria (this includes non-FPS titles):
For example, I've been playing the game Lux for the past little while. It's exactly like the boardgame Risk, except that instead of playing on a map of earth it randomly generates maps. Now I think that Risk is one kick-ass game, and random boards are making my mind explode!!! (note that Lux is OSX only)
Yet another person complaining about how game originality has disappeared. How original is that?
Guess what? The gaming industry is very big these days. You're going to see a lot of repetition because of this. There never was a huge amount of originality in the gaming industry to begin with. There was always a few good games, that had a concept that was new and entertaining. Then an onslaught of games that copied this concept. Look at the old Atari 2600 games and you'll see this. Look at 8-bit consoles, 16-bit consoles, etc and you'll see this. Look at PC gaming at any time period and you'll most definitely see this.
If you liked licking my balls, add me to your foes list!
So games have a specific target audience. It's pretty much the same audience that likes mainstream hollywood movies
...however, I'm not holdning my breath.
I'm pretty sure that once women like my girlfriend who likes chickflicks and hates Van Damme movies starts to play (and buy) computer games, the industry will change accordingly.
It's funny reading this article because I can think of a number that came out a dozen years or so ago with exactly the same theme; games were all the same, there was nothing new, game developers were rehashing the same old concepts over and over again...
And then came Wolfenstein and suddenly games weren't boring any more and people couldn't get enough FPS. When things got boring again, out came "The Sims"...
I have no doubt that the pattern will repeat itself and somebody out there has a great new concept for a game and it will be "discovered" now that people consider the current ones boring and manufacturers are looking for new concepts to exploit.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
If other people don't post their lists, how are other people supposed to know what others find original. If everyone found the same games original, then we could just have one person examine all the games make a list of the original ones and be done with it. The fact that different people find different games original is an argument for you posting a long list of games you find original not against it. Also, what's so bad about your list being nit-picked?
Amazing levels of freedom and detailed world (Morrowind)
Thrill of sneaking up and tricking the enemies rather than killing them (Hitman 1 & 2)
Really challenging AI (announced in Halflife 2)
Atmosphere of real fear (Silent Hill 2)
Amazing plotline (Final Fantasy, since 4 or 5)
Easily extendable "create your own world" without quality loss. (Morrowind again, compare to average user-made levels in other FPP games)
These are but a few relatively new tricks that will not get old&boring anytime soon, and before they do, people will come up with new ones.
We're far beyond the times where everything could've been turned into a game: Brushing teeth, riding elevators, catching sheep, eating hamburgers... Nowadays all games need to have a plotline (not only some "intro legend" written in a paper manual), some 3D gfx, good music&fx, several hours of gameplay, more or less "closed ending" (at least a "main quest") - these are a must, and they make all games very similar to each other. But there's a whole big layer behind that, which evolves slowly but constantly and it's NOT just the looks.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
That reminds me, Dale Gribble once said it's possible to build a bomb using nothing but a roll of toilet paper and a stick of dynamite.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
See subject.
Halo sucked.
Multiplayer was fun for about oh, 10 minutes.
If you have watched the gameplay video you know what I mean. It exists within the framework mentioned countless times here, basically you run around and kill things in a spooky environment. However, the level of innovation present is nothing short of staggering, and should make anyone who has seen the demo flinch when hearing the above description of the game.
Since when could you push things in front of doors to block the enemy from coming in, or shove a matress down the stairs to block them? And since when would the enemy be SMART enough to immediately shoot open the window when he realizes the door is blocked? Birds swooping overhead, fantastic sound and interesting new weapons. Sure it isn't a revolution in context, but it proves there is still plenty to do in the genre.
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
I don't know about anyone else here, but I still love playing the old Infocom text adventures which can be obtained from eBay or from other places.
They have no need for fancy 3D graphics cards or the latest speedy processors.
It's very relaxing to play the games. They are quiet. They keep my mind stimulated.
It would be nice if there were a game manufacturer who made new text adventures; I am not aware of any that currently do.
Explain to me how Grand Theft Auto is "bland" and "conforming".
They'd already done it twice before? It took 3 attempts to make it into a good game....
Regardless, it's bland and comforming because it involves mostly driving and shooting
In a world where 85% of sex acts are performed with a penis and a vagina, where are the original and innovative ideas? xxx.com has a telling editorial about the state of creativity in the sex industry, the constant re-hashing of positions and acts, and a look into the future when technical achievements and new gadgets are no longer the driving force. What happens when every sex act follows a tried and true formula? Where do the new ideas go if we can't have positions like the "Second Posture of the Perfumed Garden", "The Position of the Goat and the Tree", or devices like the "Venus Tickler"? Did innovative, rather than mainstream, games mean that hooker "Twisted Lady" needed to get out of town while "Alotta Fagina" still enjoys enormous success and popularity?
Look at Hollywood. There are the blockbuster action movies which are close to the kinds of games the poster doesn't like. Fine. But there are also all kinds of different movies which can't even be approached with games. The technology is the limit. The current state of AI, graphics and physics lends itself to dumb, ugly games. You can't have social interactions because of the AI and because computer humans look awful.
Why is it we need an original game? Aren't the current ones good enough? Don't get me wrong, I don't want revolutions or evolutions to stop, but I think our priorities are messed up here.
Linux is basically 30 years old, and certainly the Posix standard it was written against was based off of rewrites on rewrites, but it inherantly goes back to 1970 UNIX (now politically referred to as Unix).
We're in an atmosphere where PowerPC and Sparc falter, MIPS and Alpha barely survive, but Intel 4004 derived processors prosper and dominate?
My favorite game is Starcraft (aka Warcraft 2.5: Now In Space). I've reluctantly started playing "Warcraft 3: 3D Acceleration Because We Could, Not Because It Was Needed" despite my 32 meg video card from ages ago. My favorite game of all time, Starflight II, was based on Starflight, whose premise could be loosely considered to be based on Oregon Trail. New titles are hard and spaced out very far. It's not enough to be different, it's got to be compelling. If it's same old-same old, but compelling, that's what matters-- ask Id. Doom III may be a rewrite of the engine in manners which I cannot comprehend, but it's a spin on the genre that Wolfenstein started (and games before it, I imagine, but Wolfenstein was the first I saw). I didn't play that much Tetris, but I played enough Puzzle Fighter to keep me busy.
I'd like to see more of a concentration on game writing getting the best of the best even better. I'd like to see an end to Warcraft III's characters that are obviously polygon derived -- an example of moving to a technology because it was possible. There is so much more that the hardware can really do, but we give up because New is Better. Finish what you start before moving on.
If innovation was the norm .... it wouldn't be innovative.
Sic biscitus disintigrat.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Innovation is as big as its ever been. You cannot have a market with infinite innovation, it is simply impossible. Lets say you start with 1 inovative game (or movie, or music, or book), meaning innovative in a "catch the popular imagination" sence, and not in the self-masterbatory "look I'm creative" sense. From there people will copy that forumla, meaning it is no longer innovative, it infact becomes a cliche, including the orignal game.
So now you have 1000 games, one innovation, and 999 variations, some of which EVOLVE and MUTATE the original innovation (better rendering, less clunky engine/system, better plot), but all following on the one original concept. Then the 1001st game is another true innovation, then the cycle repeats until the 2001st game... And so on. So in your hypothetical market you have 3000 games, and 2 actual full inovations, and probably another 500 almost-innovative-but-following-a-theme titles. And some odd number of games that combine various elements.
Look at CS and the HUGE market of clones. First you get the whole "stealth" genre started with CS, and Tom Clancy decides "bring out the clones", and the market gets innundated with CS wannabes with better graphics, better controls, better play systems, yadda yadda yadda. Then come sub-innovation, team controls! Then comes another grip of CS clones with team controls, with continueing improvment (or not) in AI and such. Somewhere in there WWII sims become big thanks to MoH, then the genres combine and mutate together.
This is how it will be from now on. We're all suffering from back-in-the-day syndrome. The problem is, "back in the day" commercial video games were young, and not fully developed. Look at a biological system for an analogy. When a enviroment opens up, evolution EXPLODES, until every niche is full, after that it is just variations on themes, building better adaptions to the pre-existing niches, and against competition.
Back in the day video games were the new enviroment, the possibilities were endless, all we could see is new niches waiting to be filled, inovation ran rampant, everything was new. But as time went on, these niches filled with tried and true forms, and the amount of new niches started to decline rapidly, inovation slowed, variation increased. Bringing us to today, where pretty much every niche has been tried, there may be some new ones, down in the bottom of the entertaiment ocean yet to be tried, but the prime real estate is pretty much full.
Pretty much a universal.
My 2c.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
You just have to look a little harder. Games like Uplink, Pontifex and Combat Mission are available, successful on their own scale, and pretty durned innovative! I would love to see more games like Pontifex that educate while they entertain.
Siggy Wiggy Figgy Tiggy a bana bo Biggy!
How is this different than any other part of the entertainment industry? People like shit that blows up. Big news here.
People don't necessarily want "new" or "original" games. People want "fun" or "entertaining" games. Producers are just giving us what we want. Even though GTA: San Andreas is going to be the 5th game in the GTA series, I'm willing to be that it will still sell multiple millions of copies. It won't really be much different from the original GTA. You run around, stealing cars, doing jobs for various criminal underworld bosses. It's not original anymore, but it IS still fun. VERY fun. Nobody will play an original, creative game if it is not fun to play. Many people will play an unoriginal, uncreative game if it is fun. There is your answer. I guess the same could be said of the movie industry.
When the technical stuff is maxed out (or just on a temporary plateau), that doesn't mean creativity is the only leg to stand on, that's ridiculous. Because there is yet another leg, marketing. And THAT's the leg they'll end up standing on.
That's why I own a Gamecube.
"All it takes to fly is to hurl yourself at the ground... and miss." - Douglas Adams
You know how in a rpg battle ( I am thinking Final Fantasy X here where you have the guys waiting to get thier turn to fight just kinda waddling/dancing from side to side looking kinda stupid ) well wouldn't it be kewl if the whole party came to real life! They could talk to some gang bangers, opening thier mouths silently while a floating blue 'window' with some text appeared, the bewildered crack dealers would say something about how they were going to bust a cap in their arses and then out of nowhere the battle theme music would start playing 'dunt dun dun dunna na dunna na dunna..' and the characters would all start dancing from side to side. The bewildered gang-bangers would be like 'what the f*ck?' and start shooting. The bullets would bounce off someone's armor and maybe hit the little ORCO looking dude in the shoulder the white digits '399' to come up. Then maybe one of the girl chars would magic some green sparkles to give Orco back 567 life ( green digits ) Then the fighters - the main char,
and that armored up guy would take out six or seven of those bad guys each on their turns and then Orco could summin Ifirt to crispy fry the rest.
Soon all this ruckus would get the cops attention and another battle would ensue. The chick would summon a 'shield' spell and the moogle would send a pack of hundreds of chocobos to peck the heads of the cops trying to shoot the dancing characters. The main character would use 'mug' to dispatch the police chief ( a boss ) and get the gun mana to add to his sword. Now each slice hit also shoots a bullet!
As the characters continued to search for the way home, breaking into random people's houses to steal anything in a foot-locker, vase, bookshelf or cabinet they would eventually draw the Army's ire who would position themselves blocking a bridge that would of course be the only way to get across the calm and easily swimmable stream. The intrepid characters needing to get home through the interdimensional portal hidden in a ps2 which was on the other side of the bridge would challenge the host of 'ArmyGuys' and 'MechaTanks' and 'FighterJets' ahead.
The battle music would begin and they would switch the moogle for the Ninja guy, then a bullet would bounce off the main character's 'KevlarArmr' causing his limit to break. He - being the fastest aside from the ninja who has lost his turn by being switched in would go first and kill most of the weaker 'ArmyGuys' at once moving so fast that it looked like there were hundereds of him. The 'MechaTanks' would be mostlu uneffected. One of the 'MechaTanks' would shoot a shell blowing Orco's head clean off, but the chick would through some stuff out of a pillow on him and he would magically come back to life. Then the 'TroopCarriers' would do their 'more troops' move and replenish the entire supply of 'ArmyGuys' the Knight/Armor dude would step forward and hit a 'MechaTank' with all his might for a measily 1 damage. Then the Ninja, knowing the battle was shaping up to be fierce would eschew throwing the stars built for throwing that they picked up at the last town and start throwing obsolete weapons at
military. A fire claw - for the cat dude that never gets played and has no experience goes flying and hits one of the 'TroopCarriers' setting it ablase.
Hmm that fireclaw had magic in it thinks the party. The troop carrier was taken ou easily. So Orco summons Ramuh the lightning god to zap some of these machines. Bzzzzz every ArmyGuy and Major standing is wiped and three of the four MechaTanks are disabled. The ArmyGuys inside them pour out and run for their lives. But the last MechaTank does a 'radio for backup' and four TroopCarriers full of ArmyGuys come to replace the fallen.
In the distance the roar of 'BomberJets' is heard and a floating digit clock showing 3 minutes starts ticking backwards. The FighterJets have now taken off and are circling back to fire missiles at the party but just in
Eat at Joe's.
We've been avoiding any typical genres with our game tranquility.
Apple's review said this about us:
If you've watched those old movies or TV shows that fantasized about what our lives might be like in the future,
you've probably seen people playing futuristic games in ultramodern settings. And you may have thought,
"Wow. I want to play those games. I want to be there."
Guess what? You're there. The game's called tranquility, and it represents an entirely new kind of game.
We use the term "game" loosely to describe tranquility, because it's like nothing you've ever played before.
And while it does have definitive objectives, it's also a highly sensual environment that you can enjoy without
pursuing any kind of goal at all. In fact, if you want to, you can just bounce around to music. "
Doesn't sound like a typical title does it? But it's a hard sell.
It appears that, at least in the US, if it doesn't have a gun, or a car, or a spaceship, or little puppets running
around, the mainstream game market sees it as "pointless", even if pointlessness is pretty much the concept
behind most games anyway.
Another part of the problem might be that the money men, the guys running the publishers, are too Type A to be
able to comprehend something where the goal isn't to dominate and vanquish your opponent. That's why we
see mostly things like Quake and GTA clones. Beyond that, it's the 10,001th version of Breakout or Tetris.
Sure, some things slip through the cracks like the Sims series but that took them like ten years and even then,
they keep pushing variants of the same idea.
Come on! Mallrats is Smith's best film. Easily his most watchable, and funniest.
And for those of us who own a Volkswagen, it's even funnier...
Shadowate et al were also out for the Amiga (and possibly the Commodore 64), Apple IIGS, Macintosh, PC (Windows). I played them all on the little 9 inch black and white Macintosh.
I think the root of this poster's problem is what is done with interactive entertainment. When someone plays a video game they expect a different experience then what a book or a movie would give them. It is like any "play" activity and thus is bound by that expectation in the consumer. Complain about 95% of games being solved with a gun? Well no one's going to play the video game equivilent of C-SPAN.
Interactivity demands action. Action usually implies simulated physical activity or puzzle. And this activity usually needs some verve. The 100m sprint may be the purest competitive sport on the planet... but it would SUCK as a video game. Dialogue and plot may help make a game experience better... but no one will play a game that is just a queue of cutscenes.
So we have sports games, action games, puzzle games. The problem is that much of the action either needs to be scripted or supplied by a human opponent (either local or remote). And compared to the 80's, current games are far and above more complex. How much more side scrolling jumping on sprites and picking up coins do you want?
And guess what: a sequel of Jet Grind Radio (i.e. Jet Set Radio Future, out on PS2) or Shenmue (I believe the new one will be out on X-box soon) is still just as derivative as the next Doom installment.
What is music when you despise all sound?
All these wonderous advancements, and we've still not had Elite remade in a way true to the original form. This of course goes against the spirit of the article, but why can't someone make a (non-online) modern day version of Elite. Freelancer was okay, until the game was over - then you realize the only real thing you can do is kill things. They didn't allow for any variation in style of play after the single player mission ended.
"... I doubt you'll ever see anything like it again either."
Good lord I hope not. If I never see a steaming pile of crap like seaman again it will be too soon. Seaman was the most boring pile of horseshit I ever had the displeasure to witness being played. I had the DC, and a friend of mine bought seaman after the noise about it on slashdot. I had to watch while he pestered me every day to play that worthless pile of crap.
Seaman is utterly 100% boring crap. The Dreamcast was super cool, but Seaman had no redeaming facet at all. It wasn't even original - crappy tomagochi (sp?), AIBO, and every other "virtual pet" stamped that territory into a path before anyone had the misfortune to purchase Seaman.
and a red herring. As a film buff and former filmmaker I bought into the "non-linear storytelling" hype that was coming from various projects that purported to combine the best of hollywood and games, but all fell flat. Michael Crichton was a huge booster for this concept for a while. Several crappy games later I don't hear much from him about this anymore. Anyone want to fire up "Trespasser?" Didn't think so.
The basic problem is that compelling storytelling requires the storyteller to be in control. The more you add interactivity, the less good the storytelling.
It's like trying to combine the best of democracy with the best of totalitarianism.
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
There's money in it. If the game and the software itself don't make money, custom equipment will just like the thriving paintball equipment market. You can always charge people for the overlays, much like gamelan.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Speaking of half-life, incidentally there is a new vid of the gameplay just in case anyone is interested. Bit-torrent required however.
Here to download.
--->----
I think if you've ever watched kids pour money into DDR at the mall you know this isn't always true (perhaps some of those "smart" people work at Konami?).
Actually, there DOES seem to be an emerging market for 'Art house' games. It's the direct download stuff that's being sold straight from websites.
They are usually lower budget, with lower production values, and even lower tech, but often with really good game play, and with original ideas.
An example of this is 'Uplink', or anything released by Ambrosia.
A couple of people can produce a game like this on nights and weekends over a couple of years. They can do this with almost nothing invested but time.
The model of direct only sales works pretty well for them. You can sell for $20, and see almost ALL of the the $20! And because the focus is on the game, not the technology, the games tend to sell for years, not for a few months.
However, console games can't be sold this way, since you can't release a game unless you get permission from Sony, MS, whoever. They take a big cut, and pretty much force you into the mainstream marketting model.
This means you have to compete based on the pretty pictures and mainstream appeal to get enough sales to be able to break even. A small game company is lucky to see $5 a copy per game sold, and probably has 3 million invested by the time to game goes to market.
plus-good, double-plus-good
meaning that really good games, whether they are on a computer or not, are rare.
i think that we've only begun to see the possibilities - it's just going to take people a while to figure out how to best make use of the amazing computing resources that are available.
We, as consumers, are responsible. We buy the GTA's and Half Lifes out there and the publishers want to make a profit, so they make more from the same genre. The author of the blurb here on /. sounds like a ticked off DC owner..
which was a Games Workshop product, using their established Warhammer races.
Blood Bowl News
"Even if you do learn to speak correct English, to whom are you going to speak it?"
The way you had it left a dangling participle, how embarassing! I'm not trying to be a smartass; I figured you'd want to fix it, given the implication for the sig's meaning. Oh, and shouldn't it be "...speak English correctly"?
Hopefully, as games evolve in graphics, we'll move towards more of a story-style or perhaps cinematic (as long as we don't get bad game cinematics the way we get bad movies) style. If you view something like FFX... you get talking characters, solid graphics, interesting storyline, and decent gameplay. It's the first FF game that I've been able to get my g/f to play, likely mainly due to the fact that it's not a bunch of funky looking characters walking around with textboxes (speech definately seems to attract more interest in some cases).
Shooters can be improved. For example, spy games wherein you still get to blow the crap out of stuff, but still have to solve clues to follow a (possibly not overly strong, but better than doom-clones) plot. How about a "Roger Wilco" game in 3d? I think we've come to the point where you could have Roger in full 3d, cinematic, and speech-enabled glory (heck, evil SQIV had a talkie version).
Maybe something along the lines of "Alien Vs Predator", except you could interact with civilians etc as you progress through an alien overtaking. I know that AvP2 had the potential to be a real freak out... with effects such as walls being dented open, bodies dragged around corners, etc. How about some more of that, a little spruced-up graphics and some TLC and you might just have a really good interactive game, guns included!
The gaming industry is still establishing itself as a major industry. The money is already there - big time. But the rules are still being figured out. Publishers obviously like the low-risk, high-reward established titles. These titles pay for everything else, though.
The article talks about reaching an apex of graphics technology. What the article doesn't focus on is the fact that this apex will bleed all the way down to the independent developers. Right now, an indie developer can't make a game that competes technologically with a large company's. However, once that apex is reached, and the indies have access to game engines that aren't leagues behind the big boys, you'll see a bigger presence from the indie vanguard.
It's like indie films. These days, an indie film can be shot on a budget and still look pretty darn good. It won't compete with The Matrix in visuals, but it's not something we would look at as if it was a relic from ages ago. Likewise, indie recording artists can create an album that sounds great - much better than even what the biggest recording artists were using years ago.
And you'll see the same in games soon enough.
There are a lot of new ideas in games, but few of those new ideas are coming from the commerical game developers. I've found there is many new ideas on game design and play floating around in the MUD/MUSH/etc community, but most of today's gamers won't touch them because they lack graphics and require thinking.
the fine line between being original and being too risky is thinning all the time. once in awhile a small design house manages to skirt this line and creates a killer game, then gets eaten up by a bigger fish like EA or microsoft. i'm afraid that not too long from now there will be no more little pretty fishies in the ocean, leaving only the big mean sharkies to worry about their Q4 bottom line.
My question is why are there few/no (good) open source games? I realize that there's a lot of $$$ in selling games, but that's true of OSes as well.
Why not create a good open source FPS engine and see where it ends up? Why not make a good open source RTS engine that could be re-used for years? Why not realize that your love for gameplay might be satisfied by doing something for free for the gaming community? Hell, I'd send someone doing this a few bucks just to encourage it.
Kudos to the modders who are doing this already. I wish someone had the courage to start a project like this from the beginning.
In some instances it is hard to breakthrough the popular concept of what a game is. A game with a high degree of originality that is completely different than anything else could be perceived as confusing even before the user tries playing it.
Let's face it, games are big business and big business runs by the bottom line. Thus games made by big business are made for the "average" consumer. Cars could be made with sports suspensions without adding to the price but the average person wants a soft ride so the cars handling suffers...
For games this "average" usually means something like 16-35 year old males and that's when you get all the guns.
A couple of my friends and I made an "original" game (plug: www.pixelescape.com) for kids a few months ago. Seeing how it doesn't target the main user group (they have to have kids) and it's non main-stream concept (coloring instead of shooting/killing) we've had a hard time getting on any big "game" sites because they just don't care as they cater to that main audience.
The bottom line is that people want stuff they recognize and if you're in it to make money you will cater to those needs and not go off inventing stuff. The industry is getting standardized so to speak.
This doesn't apply as much to small, independent developers and original stuff can still be seen coming from there but they obviously cannot compete with big budgets in some areas (FMVs, animation...).
Carmac seems to be implying that the underpinnings of the gaming industry are becoming very stable, and mature. Not to put words in his mouth, but this has to happen. In my opinion the PC industry is plateauing, at least for the time being. The next couple-few years, we'll all have 3-5GHz boxes somewhere, but that will take a while. Until that saturation happens, the software industry isn't going to be able to write code to utilize that speed. When they do start utilizing it regularly we'll see the next push in PC sales and faster/better chips and cpus.
So my questions are thus: Isn't this the time we should really be seeing a standardization of non-proprietary or possible RAND 3D engines, modular, with no "base genre" in mind? Something along the lines of Crystal Space (i know, i know, but it's promising...) along with standard physics models and interchangeable modules for different gaming rules, scripting languages and so forth?
And Secondly (thirdly, fourthly?), if it is possible to do something like the above, is it not possible that one of the evolutionary benefits would be a large indy scene. Maybe even a scene where the "publishers" are the creators of the engine. As an example of what I mean, let's say that Rockstar Games wasn't part of a super-hyper-mega-corp, or split off. They have this great game that certainly can inspire the best game devs (GTA3 engine, duh.), and want to allow innovation in game design, but don't want possible competition for GTA4 or whathaveyou. They start taking auditions, putting together a company structure not unlike the music and movie business, seeking indy game developers with fresh ideas. They MAYBE give the "pitches" they like some seed money, but basically, put the financial risk on the new developer and only offer him the PS dev tools and engine (under NDA maybe) to use for free. In return, Rockstar publishes the game and gives it a test run, hosting there own website and trying to develop a "indy" community. The website would sell the indy titles for inexpensive (read around $10-$15, most of which goes to the artist/dev team) prices, hoping to find a diamond in the rough. When a game is found to be high quality and/or popular with the community Rockstar then deepens its pockets and does a mass printing and PR campaign, pushing it to the larger public at regular console prices. Eventually everyone would want in on the indy scene and creativity will have crept back into the game scene, if it was ever REALLY there to begin with.
Note, I used GTA3 as an example, i'm not implying that its engine is anywhere near the quality I really mean at the beginning of my post.
put the what in the where?
The First Person Shooter genre is peppered with necessary steps towards a completely immersive experience. There was a plodding progression through Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke3D, Quake, Unreal, Quake3, Max Paine, and in parallel through the multi-player equivalents, CounterStrike, Tribes, and now Planetside. These games are building up to kinds of software which could not be made without these stepping stones _and_ their derivatives (and licencees). Without selling all those knock-offs, who would pay for the Carmacks of the world to spend two years working on nothing but the Doom3 engine?
These whiny premises get us nowhere. It helps noone to ask why other people continue to pump out cookie-cutter products. Create something original yourself if you think it's so easy, and then see if anyone else thinks it's original or fun.
I look forward to seeing what you're capable of.
I thought I had heard the song before, so a quick Google revealed that it's definitely not the first time a reviewer complain about the lack of innovation in games. I think I will complain about the lack of innovation by reviewers. ;o)
To of the articles:
The True Death of Gaming? August 2000.
Change Is Scary... Hold Me November 2000.
The game industry is in as big of a funk as the movie industry as far as original ideas goes.
It is amazing the originality that went into some of the games back in the 8-16 bit console days. There are plenty of nes-snes-genesis games that I still play today despite the aged technology/graphics. I think it'd be awesome to see some 3-d remakes of some of these games River City Ransom Legend of the Mystical Ninja Double Dragon Ninja Gaiden Super DodgeBall Wizards and Warriors I don't think all the originality is gone. I mean mods at least serve as a testing ground for new ideas for FPS games. I mean after playing doom->doom2->quake quakeworld team fortress completely blew me away. TF2 is coming, TF2 will be released The same will happen with this generation of games after we get past the eye candy phase.I still think my favorite fps has to be Duke Nukem 3D, there was humor, great levels (Shop n Bag anyone) and even attitude. BTW anyone remember the nintendo game "gotcha!" (that has to be the first FPS even though it was a side scroller)
died? :)
mine is still very much alive and kicking....
You just havent lived until you've played virtua tennis on hard, while drunk
PS2 games like Zone of the Enders: The Second runner
or Final Fantasy: X-2 weren't mentioned in this article?
It looks like it was created by a lamoid PC Gamer who thinks the world revolves around PC Gamers and PC Gaming.
The truth of the matter is that PC gaming is the *LAST* place you'ld look for orginal games.
Most of the truely original games come out of Japan and are created for the PS2 market.
This is mostly an illusion of perspective. If you climb a tree in the woods, and look off in the distance, it seems like the trees are clustered far less densely where you are than far away. Similarly, as we look back, it seems like most of the innovation is in the past. But really, there have always been only a handful of real game design innovations per year (with occasional brief bursts when new hardware allowed people to implement games they'd thought of before, but couldn't previously implement). Most games have always been sequels and clones.
Ha. Just found it via eBay. "Monsters of the Midway" was in issue #65 of Dragon Magazine.
I do not have a signature
Game publishers want to move volumes of product, and games that help this tend to be if not disposable than at least shorter rather than longer-lived. That means quick, linear scenarios - the kind best suited, of course, to the 12-year old target demographic. Despite their evolutionary polygonal distance from their forerunner in the old Atari Berserk, these are still only simple mazes for going zap! in. And a consequence of that aesthetic choice is that complexity goes out the window, along with ambiguiety, variety in problem-solving, and other open-ended criteria that most of us equate with "originality."
That said, three major games suggest a countervailing force: the Sims and the GTA3 franchises, and Morrowind. These are major commercial successes that flout the platform-hopping, find-key-open-door rattrap of most games, and point to a more dynamic and nuanced form of gameplay. If this continues, good things will follow.
Ironically enough for a form that traffics in sensation rather than ideas, another tendency to consider is political. Apart from horror and sci fi, there has long been a social and political context in video games. At the risk of simplifying, lots of games through the 70s and 80s reflected utopian leftist values - big bad corporations were always either releasing giant robots or leaving a scorched earth in which vigilante players had to set things to right (with a gun, naturally). Looking over gaming history you see this trend start to level off as gaming moves out of the garage and into the boardroom. Today, in many games, the enemy has been humanized (some would say dehumanized) as a projection of grim right wing urges: Arab or Vietnamese soldiers who must be eradicated in the service of "freedom" or "justice". (How congenial a trend this is to our rulers can be seen in the US Army even deploying its own game.) So our values - or at least as construed by those who control big-money game publishing - can also drive a lot of me-too game making.
Was the best half a horror movie I've ever seen. It was absolutely great and 1/2way through how long a horror movie plot should be, and then it ended.
Very big bummer. There was no attempt to fight the monster.. it was like they had a great idea and then ran out of them, so they ended the movie.
Oh well, maybe JC2 will be as good (doubtful) with a middle/end (very doubtful).
I'm not sure creativity is a plus if the market doesn't want it. I don't feel that we're losing out from lack of creativity. When I find a game I like, I look for more games similar to it. I'm irritated if I buy a game that appears similar but has some new innovative element that changes gameplay. As an example, I really love Starcraft. I was very excited to see Warcraft 3 coming out and I bought it immediately after I saw it getting great reviews as an RTS. When I started playing it, I was angered by the Hero/RPG addition to the game. It changed the gameplay enough to where I did not care to play the game. My buddies and I played it for about a month before we shelved it and haven't played it since. Meanwhile, we still play Starcraft, though it's over 5 years old. We would be most drawn to buying a new (technologically) game that has nearly identical gameplay to Starcraft than we would something innovative and different.
I'm sure there are people who never want to see new games that mirror old ones, but we aren't those people. We'd rather see better looking higher content versions of old game mechanics.
"A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself."
Originality is a weird term, because technically all the games are original unless they are identical. But I suppose the concepts are identical, such as "Find the key, open the door, kill guys, go to the next level, repeat"
But some games have "Find the keyCARD, open the door, kill guys, go to the next STAGE, repeat"
Why would anyone want to play a game that has originality when everyone whines about games that "Are too hard!!!"
People dont want originality, it is proof that Doom 3 is the next big hit before it even comes out, Half Life 2 is another one.
THESE ARE SEQUELS. how are they original? they're not, they're playing on people that have bought the original. So do they want originality? No they just want to relive things they've already done in different games that they have enjoyed.
Nobody likes crappy originality, much less pointless conceptual gaming. Sure you can have an original game and make it good, but most of the time originality to most people is just something done before, but done better.
[cx]
Back in the days of Commodore 64 (never had an Atari, but I think we're talking about the same era) I was pushing it to the full extent. I was drawing sprites and doing 2D gfx, creating "music" that was "good enough" for something that wasn't even a PC squeeker (speaker), and I had multiplayer - two joysticks! And that was just me. Even my pathetic drawings couldn't look bad in 320x200x16 color (CGA). I knew every command in the manual almost by heart.
/rant
Let's say I want to create a game - any game - today. 3D engine (for anything but a platform game, and you'd want even a "platformish" game to be 3D today), textures, model, bump mapping, shaders and whatever. Music at CD quality or better, and catchy tunes too. Not to mention sound effects. Free choice of resolution (much harder than hardcoded) and with detail level of 1600x1200 you'd want some talent too. Network code and multiplayer. Try to prevent exploits and hacks, deal with dropped packets, out of order packets (UDP), guesstimates of what's happening (to reduce "jumpyness", real AI code and game balancing and more. Not to mention you usually need replayability on whole new level, none of the games back then had "mods" that I could think of.
Anyway, I think there are just as many "obvious" ideas to take from today. They weren't that obvious until anyone did it back then, and they aren't now.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Who cares about innovation?... I just want Final Fantasy XXX.
Eternal Darkness for Gamecube is one of the most innovative games in the last few years.
For those of you who don't have it, or don't have a cube, it's innovation is in its "sanity meter." As your character loses sanity, so do you. All of a sudden, the volume bar on your tv goes up (no kidding), the screen switches to "video 2" or to channel 5, the characters begin moving independent of you and rip off their arms and stuff. You dont always realize that it's just the insanity effects, and you go "huh?" and reach for the remote to fix the problem, forgetting it's all an illusion. Truly freaky shit, especially at 3AM.
Did it sell well? Nope. Not nearly as well as most of the crap out there.
A real shame...
When the game industry was smaller and less accessible, a sophisticated, clever game would gain the recognition it deserves.
Now that gaming is a huge business, with a larger portion of revenue coming from casual gamers, it's so much harder for a clever game to make it as a success.
Liquidwar, for example, is clever, addictive, and basically a very simple game. Who has played it? Could it make any money if sold mass market?
By and large, if you're just slapping some new graphics and maps on an existing engine, you're not going to end up with anything innovative.
The really innovative stuff, depends on whole new paradigms. Whole new ways of playing, etc.
A new set of skins, is about as innovative, as the aliens got in original Star Trek.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Shareware games is where the real creativity is these days.
-- Cerebus
I disagree. However I will say that I went through the same thing. After one plays around with trying to develop a nonlinear storyline for awhile, one quickly realizes how bloody difficult it is to find something compelling.... let me put forth the notion that knowing the idea is sound is much easier than executing it.
An example: the film TimeCode . In case you haven't seen it, TimeCode is a 4:3 ratio film consisting of four separate panels, each of which contains a continuous 'shot' of video. All four are locked together time-wise, and there are no traditional edits (as such). It was a very clever work, and a new way of looking at a series of sequential events. At first I found it weird, but it only took 5 minutes or so to draw me in. A truly unique film experience, and one that was nonlinear in the shallowest sense; you directed your attention where you wanted it to go, rather than being forced by the director's camera.... or at least between the four shots offered by the director. It did subtly direct your attention through the use of the separate audio track volumes, however.
A more engaging/interactive example of nonlinear storytelling would be Grand Theft Auto . Even though the story itself is on rails, it is definitely mixed with totally freeform gameplay and exploration that has the interesting characteristic of mixing itself with linear plot, in intervals. One can imagine a just-slightly branching verison of a GTA storyline, and you'd end up with a lot of possibilities.
So, my point is, I think there is such a thing as nonlinear storytelling, it's just hard to get to. Don't give up on the notion.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Sturgeon's law: 90% of everything is crap.
As soon as an "industry" moves from a cottage/craft industry to big business, it will start degrading into conservative blandness until it too is 90% crap.
It costs lots of money to make games. Now would you, as a game company manager, rather spend $$ on a guaranteed hit sequel to your last game and have it out by September, or spend $$$$$ on a new, unknown, novel idea that may or may not make dollar #1 in profit, and won't be out until next spring at the earliest?
From a business point of view, creativity is dangerous and foolhardy. From a craft point of view, it's the very reason for existing.
We need to build up the infrastructure for a gaming cottage industry underneath (or beside?) the existing commercial gaming industry. That's where creativity will come from.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
When companies try to "innovate", it usually doesn't involve any truly new gameplay. They merge genres. Deus Ex merged an FPS with an RPG (most of which were watered down features of System Shock 2), Warcraft III merged an RTS with some half-hearted RPG elements, and a bunch of shooters have tried to become semi-adventure games (talk to character to find item to get to area, repeat).
There has been some real innovation though. Rainbow Six (the first two at least, the 3rd appears to have been butchered by Ubi Soft) created a first person shooter *simulation*, whose gameplay was defined by reality and not the other way around (which is what most military-themed shooters are today). Medieval Total War was similar in its emphasis on realism, an RTS in which you control groups of dozens of units who have moral, stamina and varying degrees of skill.
Which brings us to a common fact; none of those games were hits. Sure, they all received critical acclaim (Medieval Total War won RTS of the year from Gamespot and Gamespy), but they weren't top sellers, compared to games like Quake 3 and Warcraft III. Innovation is risky to profit-driven companies and unfamiliar to the constantly growing number of new gamers. Developers stick with the tried and true because it's what sells (see Warcraft III).
Innovation, when done right, can sell millions, like Half-Life. That kind of innovation though actually requires real game development skill, which is what most developers lack.
I don't think there's neccessarily a lack of originality. I think it's more to do with the "suits" realising that they can make more money by releasing sequels to popular games as that "almost" guarantees solid revenue.
They have this amazing new gaming conzept of running down dark corridors and shooting monsters from a first person perspective.
The dreamcast did not die -- the other consoles just refuse to live. I mean come on -- look at the music people today are buying, look at the TV shows that people are watching. Hell -- MTV does not even play videos anymore and can still stay on the air? I may be getting old, but nowdays it's all about flash and hype -- nobody cares about quality, Integrity, and substance anymore. The DC died for the same reason Freaks and Geeks was cancelled. The DC died for the same reason Spiderman made millions and broke records from just a mediocre adaption of a good comic. The DC died for the same reason PS2, Gamecube, and Xbox are still trying to figure out online play and the ability to actually use a keyboard and mouse with FPS games -- almost 4 years after it was out the door default with DC. Who knows....
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I have thought about this a lot, being horribly addicted to video games and having woken up at the end of many a fourteen hour binge feeling empty like I had wasted precious life. Boy wouldn't it be great to become completely immersed in a game at the end of which you wound up speaking fluent Chinese or having acquired some other skill useful in the real world? I know that there are plenty of kids' learning games out there to teach phonics and stuff like that, but that's not what I'm talking about. Those are too pedantic.
What I had in mind was something more in the direction of Cyberchase, were the skill being learned was important, but almost incidental to the game play. For example, take all those Everquest-y RPG-y games out there where you're an ancient Greek warrior or a spy or something, and gradually require the player to understand what the characters are saying in their native tongue in order to advance, and after that require the player to speak back in the language. Presto at the end of the game you come out with basic understanding of French grammar and a vocabulary of 1000 words.
I know it wouldn't be easy to walk the line between educational and fun, but if someone managed it I'd be a slavishly devoted fan.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Ever heard of simulations? I was playing Falcon 4.0, a flight simulation, and it kind of went like this:
Load campaign. Watch as simulated war progresses in real time. Wait for an appealing mission to come up on the Frag Order (short for Fragment of the Air Tasking Order, nothing to do with "fragging" as in Quake), and then select a mission along with a position to fly (flight lead, wingman #1/#2/#3 etc.). Print briefing and read it, using a dry erase board to write down important stuff (expected threats, friendly aircraft operating in the area). Look at recon imagery of the targets and maps to plan your approach. Analyze SAM coverage, and other enemy composition location via JSTARS. Adjust waypoints as necessary. Adjust weapons loadout for aircraft. Click the "Fly" button.
Mission loads. Then, request take off from ATC. ATC tells me what runway to taxi to. Lots of other aircraft coming and going, so I have to wait a few minutes. I disable the wheel brakes and slowly make my way to runway 27, after which I take off. Only then do I get to the actual mission part. Describing that would quadruple the length of this post, and I'm tired of typing.
The point is that there is a wealth of underappreciated and neglected value in simulations. You don't have to be a military-buff to enjoy them (though a good 70% of simmers are), you only have to have the desire for gameplay that requires depth and thinking (and practice!). Simulations aren't just games about strategy in the traditional sense though, as dogfighting and other types of combat maneuvering require the utmost finesse and dexterity that any FPS player would envy.
About four years ago, I had a version of PCAE that had a timing problem in Win 9x. Basically games ran at four times normal speed if executed in Windows. To my friends this was not a bug it was a feature. Our favorite game with it was Ludicrous Speed Combat. Instead of shot......shot......hit opposing tank...let's pause for the spin...shoot again. It was shot!,shot!,hit tank!..hit tank!..hit tank!. Okay now you put me through a wall so you can't play kick-the-can with me anymore! It's payback time! Uh oh, the score's flashing, I'll only have ten seconds to for payback. Repeat four or five times.
TONS of fun. Pity there wasn't a way that four people could have had a good simulated paddle. Ludicrous Speed Warlords would have been the bomb.
Well as long as they keep making highly original and innovative games I'll keep buying them. As will a few other gamers. Right now titles that come to mind are... Super Monkey Ball Pikmin Eternal Darkness Animal Crossing Cubivore Ikaruga Rez Frequency and Amplitude Mr. Misquito Fatal Frame ICO There are probably countless more I'm not thinking about...
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
I just keep replaying the 'classics', like, currently, Ultima Underworld. Those that I don't already own can usually be bought for next to nothing from the bargain shelves. It's rather amusing how today's $60 hit will be $20 a year from now, and less than $10 after a couple years. The game industry has a rather wierd pricing strategy, but it works fine for me.
Games generally require conflict of some sort to provide a play experience because they rely on a story at least on some superficial level. There are exceptions (Tetris would be a big example) but by and large you need a protagonist and an antagonist.
You seem to have fallen into the same track as a majority of the major game developers in that you're confusing conflict with interaction and feedback. It's not terribly surprising, because conflict is one of the easist forms of "interaction causes feedback" to understand - do the task correctly, you go farther, do it wrong and get punished in some way. But that's kind of what the article is about. Nobody's actually putting in the time to think of some other way to get that interaction-feedback loop going.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Black & White isn't a game.. ..it's a God Sim with some tasks thrown in.
Its major failing was that it was marketed as a game, and over-marketed at that.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
nt means no text
absolutely none at all
stupid lame filter
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Think about it: Atari (or Infogrames, whatever) paid over $20 million to make and over $60 million just for the LICENSE to create Enter The Matrix. It features lame gameplay, bad design, and a boringness that is almost unparalelled (sure its fun for five minutes, but c'mon).
/me wanders off to play one of the 800 Street Fighter clones that came out in the 90s.
And in 1982 Atari paid millions for the rights to an E.T. game, that featured "lame gameplay, bad design, and a boringness that is almost unparalelled (sure its fun for five minutes, but c'mon)".
For most of the 1980's, games fell into 4 or 5 genres, all clones/variants of the popular titles at the time. Every play Mr Do, Dig Dug, etc? They're all Pac-Man wannabes. Ask the original developers themselves sometime, if you don't believe me. Companies would see a new game become popular, then instruct their programmers to basically dupe it.
This has been going on since the beginning of the video game industry, and anyone posting "games these days are getting derivative/boring" is just showing how young they truly are.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I want to see a strategy/adventure game where you must design, develop, implement and execute a manned mission to Mars and back, with lots of reality programmed into it.
Originality in video games is always possible, but then again, the same holds true for TV and all we get is reality TV and sitcoms...
Since the discussion topic at top is somewhat open-ended, I'll just babble on a few points:
If every commercial game is made from a cookie-cutter template, I don't think it'll be that huge a blow. There are always independent shareware and freeware programmers ready to make something original even if it doesn't make a huge profit. If it really shines, it'll even have some viability on the commercial market. Look at Counter-Strike. Sure, it's another team-based fps, but it was so addictive, that now it's one of (if not THE?) most popular multiplayer game on the Internet. It was free when it started, and it's even free now, but you can still buy it in stores packaged with Half-Life (the game it runs as a mod for,) and it's even coming out for the Xbox in a while! I really don't think we're going to see a total death of originality in gaming... ever.
Video games are just like any other form of mass media. When they came out, they were all new and original (you wanna see some unique games? Get an old Intellivision or Atari!) but now that they've been around for a while, they've stabilized to the point where just like TV, movies, music, or any other mass media, they're 90%+ cookie-cutter fodder for the masses, and a few real gems that gather cult followings, or even widespread attention and longlasting recognition.
While it is true that the Dreamcast was a haven for original games with titles like Crazy Taxi, Shenmue, Jet Grind Radio, and a real model of originality, Seaman, I don't think that's what killed it.
[HISTORY CHUNK]
Every time Sega made a system, there was an achilles heel that dragged it down. The Master System competed with the NES and it's myriad of games and already widespread acceptance. The Genesis had few colors and terrible FM-synthesized sound compared to the SNES (and it's leagues of game developers from back in the day of the NES!)
The Game Gear, compared to the GameBoy of the time, had lush color graphics, awesome sound, and some nice titles. The GameBoy was cheap at around $100 (CDN), and as grainy and colorless as the games were, with their bleepy sub-NES (stereo!) sound, they had some exceptional gameplay to them, and some winning developers licensed to make them. It also didn't hurt Nintendo any that while the Gameboy would use 2 batteries for a week, the Game Gear would use 6 batteries for a couple hours! More playing is more fun. 'nuff said. 11 years later, Nintendo finds it can make a color screen that doesn't need a hydroelectric dam to power it, and they OWN the handheld market, competing with truly nonthreatening offerings like the GP32, NeoGeo Pocket (and hastily-released Color version,), and the Bandai WonderSwan, which to my knowledge, didn't even make it to these shores (unlike the first Internet-ready console system, the Bandai/Apple "Pippin.")
The Saturn was a 2D 256 color (?) system that was tweaked at the last minute to compete with the PSX's 3D prowess. Truth told, it probably would have amounted to the greatest 2D system ever, beating out even the Turbographix 16 and the Neo Geo. However, they chose to instead make grainy-looking off-color versions of Playstation titles, and leave all the titles that really showed off the system's strength in Japan.
Wait, where is Nintendo now? Well, with the N64, they pulled a Sega and built in an insurmountable flaw. Being cartridge only, the games could be either low-detail, low-content, or expensive like Neo Geo games. Contrary to what you'd think though, that wasn't what killed them.
You see, they were working on a sort of CD-addon for the SNES to match the SegaCD. This system would include an additional processor to handle the next-generation CD games. However, they got partway though development, and decided it wasn't worth their while. They were working with SONY on this project, and legend has it, it was even going to be called the PLAY
I read once where copyright was extended forever. Eventually artists barely came out with anything. It was too much like stuff that was done 100 years ago, or more, so couldn't get copyright. I don't remember the name of the story, but it was kind of interesting.
How much true originality is there out there? Is building on the shoulders of others a bad thing? Is being derivitive a bad thing? Perhaps not always, or even at all.
Nuff Said. The very last great gaming console not polluted (yet) by that deadly virus known as the "3D-at-all-cost". Even the good ol' 2D platformers are a gift from god compared to the bland, lifeless and repetitive games we get those days. At least the PC is not that bad. The Sims was a great innovation. They just don't happen as often as they used to ... :-(
However, that's gonna change. At the moment it's still quite complex to modify games to any real extent. I'm not saying it's gonna get easier per se, but it is gonna get easier to get more done.
Then that slack taken up will be used to innovate even more, making the individual difficulty about as much as a person can handle, yet again. New slack? New expectations.
With increased ability comes increased workload. The curve will never really settle in any kind of programming, because if you are a student of history, ALL human systems have a tendency to increase in complexity and capability. In all of history, the more you can do, the more you WILL DO.
Your argument is the same argument you can say about technology that they told my mother in newsreels before movies in the 1950's. It never worked before. (Radio Voice) "With your Westinghouse push button kitchen of the future, You'll have so much time for kids and family!"
She found out that more time or ability just means, once again, increased expectations. Now we all work a 50+ work week. So much for the promised 1950's utopia.
The promises of any future where something is easier or going to help you immmensely or free you up is hard to swallow. That thinking is pie in the sky... mostly predicated on the concept that the future is going to stay the same... that the expectations are going to stay the same, and that technology will not change our culture or behavior.
It will change... however, I guarantee you that human ambition will stay at its roughly breakneck pace, as it has all the way through history.
People are afraid of new things. You should have just taken an existing product and put a clock on it or something.
-- Homer, on the baby translator, "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?"
It isn't the lack of originality in PC games, console games will always be rehashes with new twists. Mario, zelda, metroid, etc as examples will always be new rehashes of an old consept; the trick here is to add in new storylines and put twists on the gameplay.
PC games are evolving quite rapidly however. Planetside, a Massivly Multiplayer online FPS just came out and after being in the beta, I still think it needs a few more months of developement before it's worth any cash atall, however it's interesting what they are doing; realtime war between 3 sides and 30,000 or so people.
Morrowind, aka the elder scrolls 3, is another example, and although bethesda's engine for it is so shitty I wouldn't even plop down $10 US for this game and it's add-on packs, it is innovative and different.
The RTS genre is an example where the PC industry has not evolved, not since Total Annihilation and it's gazillion of mods or kickass UI. CC is just rehash after rehash of the same, crap game and people buy it over and over; generals is so god auful that I don't even know why anyone would buy it accept to look at the pretty graphics.
In any case, I'v got some problems with the PC games being released; most are still very much Beta, and a lot of game makers won't give you your money back if you buy it and it doesn't work. You can't take an opened CD back to the store and this needs to change. Companies are afraid of loosing sales becuase we'll burn the games and return them, but it pisses me off that the truth is that these assholes spend millions influencing game reviewers, and then some kid spends $50 of his x-mas dough on a game that crashes to the desktop every 5 minutes, and when he trys to return it he can't because the store labels him a criminal before he is one. They have a nice little advantage to everyone else in the fact that their products can't be returned on any basis unless the CD itself is physically broken.
What pisses me off even more is that other companies, *cough*Eidos*cough* like to release games in single-cd packages instead of the boxed forms, call it "special edition" and charge $19 for it, when really it's a demo of the game. Can't return that one either, and other companies do this too.
So, you can't blame people for deciding to pirate, that goes for PC and Console. If you rip people off, they will do the same back and since they ARE the people they will win.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
What sucks right now in the game industry isn't that you can't make clever games with new ideas, but that you can't get them funded. If you develop an unusual, refreshing game to completion, you can get wonderful deal terms and have surprisingly good odds of turning a buck.
Getting them funded to completion is the trick. Even veteran game companies are finding they need to pitch a sequel or a heavy license, and the deal negotiation still takes 3-6 months, during which time you can't make payroll and lose your employees to the monster first-party developers or in-house megacorp developers.
Angel funding generally doesn't work unless you know someone wealthy who really trusts you. Doing the angel circuit is incredibly challenging, and you still have to wait several months for the deal to sign and cash to flow, during which time your tasty team is disintigrating.
What I recommend to teams trying to do original content is find a way, by hook or by crook, to completely develop, debug, tune, and polish the game to completion, to develop their own ads, their own marketing plan, their own box art and box copy. This forces you to think through where the game can be sold, how, and for how much.
Handing a boxed, shrink-wrapped product to a publisher makes recouping your development costs trivial. Most big publishers have slipping product, and most big publishers, particularly publicly traded ones, need to ship a certain # of titles every quarter. There is a powerful demand for completed, fun games, but there is an over-supply of largely unwanted proposals and demos.
I did exactly this with Abuse and turned a $60k investment into $1.1M in royalties on a game that sold lousy numbers of units (though it was downloaded like crazy). I have friends doing exactly this sort of thing now, generally quietly, content to make money on games that they love making, even if they aren't over-exposed mega-hits.
They don't always have a $5M marketing campaign or a $5M art budget behind them, but good, fresh games are out there.
why does no one ever mention Empire Deluxe. it was just re-released. see Killerbeesoftware . it's even more original than before, not a re-hashing. no fast action, just thinking. it's the only game i've got.
it's funny though - I can't think of a game which equals good old MULE in terms of playability and enjoyment. I miss the c64 games - they rocked.
I know, I can get emulators (although c64 on OS X is sorely lacking), but I'd like to see someone re-write THAT game for today...
-David Barak
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
One of the big problems in the hardcore gamer market is that most players demand millions of dollars in art and animation budgets to produce enough eye-candy to outdo the last round of hit games. This cost won't go away even if all the game engines are licensed and bring the programming costs down thereby. I think the real hope for innovation lies more in the mass market - even if a lot of them are out there now just playing online Hearts and Spades. They have a broader range of tastes and interests, and they've made games like Tetris and Minesweeper and Shanghai big hits, even without much of an art budget. Also they've made The Sims the biggest selling PC game of all time - it was expensive to produce, granted, but it certainly represents a developer putting out a new and different form of gameplay, and the market rewarded it. So I think there's hope yet. :X)
Furcadia - A free online game with user created content, DragonSpeak scripting, & more.
Seriously, I will probably get hit as a troll on this, but I noticed what I'm about to say hasn't appeared in anything mod'd 4 and up.
If you're not happy with lack of game originality, you have yourselves (as a consumer group) to blame, because you told the powers-that-be that's what you want. That the shite you buy is what you'll put money down for.
So many people here commented on console economics, and the convergence of games and movies, and blah blah blah crap we've heard a billion times that any pseudo-intellectual who buys a computer-game oriented magazine once/year (or reads slashdot) can figure out.
How Ironic it is to see pontificating posts holding forth some of these very games as examples of originality. The HERD (That's the majority of you slashdotters out there, with respect to gaming) bemoans the lack of originality. The HERD thinks that discussing it on slashdot is a testament to their ability to be intellectual. Most of THE HERD put money down in advance to reserve their copy of a new release of a MAJOR game title this year. The HERD blindly responds to each "new release" and marketing campaign, plunking down their money where told to. The HERD moo's contentedly when given flashy new grapics or gimmicks. The HERD mindlessly plows through these games, and when done looks up from their screen long enough to say "Next?" The HERD is hooked to the soma of the big budget games, and sees originality only as a variation on a theme.
There is PLENTY of originality out there in computer games. It seems like every other week I walk into my wife's office and see her playing some new little flash game that dazzles me with it's simple yet addictive game play. I don't know who out there is writing these things, but I've been blown away by the quality and orignality of many of the titles my wife and her friends seem to stumble across. Word games, hand-eye coordination games, all sorts of little games. Fun little adventures. Simple little games. But, many of them have been VERY original in their theme, and very well done.
Btw, the games-of-old are often still around. That's right - MUDS, with their mix of combat and puzzle solving (via quests) are still out there. Almost no two muds are alike, and many offer a lot of fun adventure-style puzzle-solving gameplay, as well as hack-and-slash dynamics. Oh yeah... you can talk and interact with other people too.
Not up for MUDS for whatever reason? How about a MUSH, or a MOO, where god forbid, you make the game happen. You create (hopefully) ORIGINAL characters, breathe life into them, and build stories collaboratively. Again, this is quasi-troll material, but I bet most of the slashdot readership couldn't do this for one reason or another (I won't get into what they might be here).
What's more, they are often very low-cost, if not flat-out FREE!
Not once did I see someone mention these sorts of games as examples of originality that still abound. Well, HERD, ARE YOU LOOKING? Or are you waiting for a multi-billion dollar marketing campaign to spoon-feed originality to you! How does a multi-billion dollar consumer group presume to have origanality?!!
The Dreamcast had an oddball high-density CD format that could not be written by normal burners.
Which only helps if your developers produce games in that format. Most didn't, as the DC accepted ordinary format CD-Roms also.
Couple with a bootdisc that completely bypasses the media check, and you have instant rampant copyright-violatry (a new term for those who don't like the simple word 'piracy')
For a while there, (at least until Age of Shadows) Ultima Online had a good thing going for blacksmiths, carpenters, etc. Easy enough to be one-a those without killling a single thing.
If you want to get yourself an original title, you need to be able to cope with the dismall sales (80%?). To be able to do that, you need money. How do you get money, churn out a liscene or a sequel. Theyre not ALL the same, theyre all quite quite different.
Is there really no difference between mario sunshine, halo and grand theft auto?
If this was 1994(with the same amount of titles availible), people would be complaining about day of the tentacle being just another hugo clone.
Same with discworld, sam and max, lure of the temptress.
Thing is, whats different between games is story. but people dont play console games long enough to appriciate it, because theyres 40 other games released that month to try out.
It was the same in the old days. how many variants of 2D games were there REALLY?
Look at it this way: there have been tons of good games with good media and major distribution that took about 6 months to make it to the bargin bin (Alice, Thief, Undying). Who's to blame for this? Think about it. The games are out there; the buyers aren't.
I shudder to think what will happen to games like Call of Cthulhu. As much as I pray that it's going to bring a change in PC gaming I know the truth; CoC will be in the bargin bin by the end of the quarter and HalfLife 2 will have sold an average of 200,000 copies a day for 5 months. Not that HalfLife doesn't deserve it either but very few PC Gamers are going to give CoC a second glance with old standards like HalfLife and Medal of Honor on the shelves.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I think that the past year or two has showen far more variation and creativity than the last 5 years added together, which I put down to their ideas then being so grand they needed todays hardware.
Go to the good old days of superb creativity and the best games, and the technology didn't matter. Now, to rival the numerous FPS's that come out, we need creative games with more vision into the worlds. We need to feel we can walk around it and interact with more detail than a speccy platform game.
What about the work and creativity that went into say Black & White - yea it was too ambitious, but it was a good kickstart to some more imaginative gaming.
How about Morrowind - yep, OK so there are swords, but you don't have to use 'em. You can play a pacifist, and OK you can't do the main quest like that, but you can still do a whole lot.
And of course, the Lucas Arts games. With sequels of Full Throttle and Sam & Max coming out, we get more of their pacifistic humour back.
Basically I think while most of the big games we see are just new FPS's with not much new (though I'm sure Carmack can deal with that!), there are those that still make a big splash now they have the hardware to put up the images and worlds they wanted all along, and that gamers expect. And I only see the hardware helping to produce more and more bizarre, creative imaginative games in the next decades.
The only real innovation is combining formerly separate categories.
Bingo!
This is exactly the problem that people--including game developers--seem to be missing. Innovation isn't that hard--you just have to do something different.
Of course innovation is difficult if you define it in terms of creating something new that's the same. The reason why it's difficult is because it's not innovative! This is exactly the problem that exists! Innovation doesn't mean making another MMORPG like EQ only better, or another FPS like HL only better, or another RTS like Warcraft only better. It means creating a new genre or oevre.
The thing is, with games, this isn't that difficult to do. I can't count the number of times it seemed like the easiest thing to do: Morrowind with multiplayer, Neverwinter Nights with FP perspective, Rogue Spear with role playing elements (tactical FPRPG?). Sure, these aren't totally new genres, but they push the envelope in a way that seems trivial from a game design perspective. Why don't more FPS add more role playing elements, ala Deus Ex? Or become more puzzle-based, ala Project Eden (which was incredibly innovative and fun, if impaired in its combat)?
There are numerous posts comparing games to film and books--how there are basically 5 stories to be told and so forth. But this is irrelevant. Games don't even have to have a story! And even if they did (putting aside issues about 5-basic-stories being an oversimplification) it's irrelevant because the lack of innovation isn't coming from lack of innovation in the story narrative, it's coming from lack of innovation in gameplay.
For example, let's say we can all be happy with FPS. Why the push toward photo-realistic rendering? Why not try watercolor rendering, pencil-shaded rendering, cel rendering, or something of that sort (many of which I have seen in games)?
There's so many avenues to explore in gaming, it's ridiculous. There's just too much money involved in the status quo, and too much emphasis on photo-realistic graphics.
Whilst these might not be original in _concept_ (they're all 'FPS'), in storyline and execution they certainly are:
System Shock 2
Deus Ex
Max Payne
Splinter Cell
Deus Ex morphed RPG elements into a great storyline. The utterly cool Max Payne was just as dark as a depressed Tim Burton's Batman Knightfall (I know, wishful thinking...); the Finns certainly know their stuff, can't wait for the sequel. And Splinter Cell's focus on potentially non-violent sneaking deserves kudos. Plus I just got a Radeon 9800PRO for my "ageing" XP-1900 system and SC is just amazing to behold.
For the former, as I never finished it, I've just blown off the dust of my old SS2 box and installed it for a few weeks of retro-gaming. I'm quite looking forward to the scare - and I'm sure it will still hold up.
ISO certified == THX certified
I stopped playing video games for a while now. They are all dumb and repetitives. Then I discovered *GREAT* games and rediscovered the meaning of "Fun", with the German Boardgames like Puerto Rico, Tikal, Amun-Re, Citadels, Euphrats Und Tigris, Throught the Desert, etc etc etc. Countless awesome games that make you think while having LOT of funs. Something impossible to accomplish these days with a joystick in hand.
1.) Replay Value. it does the game no good in terms of long term value if kids beat it once and are bored and sell it back EB at bargain basement prices. Look at Halo.. STILL $40 USED!
2.) Story Line. If the people playing are emotionally attached, you're set. Look at how the RPGS that Squaresoft pushed out (FF3 anyone?) did? Great Story Line. And i'm not talking about "saving the princess/mario junk" (note, this isn't applicable in the Street Fighter style fighting games).
3.) Graphics. No matter how good your game is, the majority of people won't come to play it if doesn't appeal to them in the least. Lets face it. The kids who drive this industry want flashy cool stuff. Most likely they don't know a quality MUD when they see it.
4.) Pick a target audience and stick to it. Pokeman for kids, Mortal Kombat for older kids, House of the Dead for "mature adults". it makes sense (i think.)
now the problems.. look at sports games.. they arent' original at all.. yet madden 'xx continues to sell like hotcakes. The problem with this is when for the simple level of adding a few more bells and whistles they can rake big profits for yet another year.. why bother making something completely innovative? No purpose.. it's better to go teh safe and easy route.
Barrier for entrance into the video game market is just too high now."Melancoly Elephants" by Spider Robinson is what you are thinking of. It's a cool story and Spider writes alot of other cool stuff.
2) The Typing Of The Dead. I'm not sure if too many people know about The Type of the Dead but basically they took The House of the Dead and instead of shooting zombies with a gun, you have a keyboard and each zombie has a word you have to type in order to kill it.
That sounds exactly like the Mario Teaches Typing sidescroller that my elementary school had on its library computers.:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
There's a problem with creativity in every single area of art and entertainment, including games. The problem is source. Most music, movies, books, and everything else is now influenced by other music, movies, books, and video games. Pop culture is eating itself now and has spawned some sort of cultura Mad Cow's Disease. The low point in entertainment is the Scary Movie Series - a movie parodying recent movies. Next we'll have Creepy Movie, a parody of Scary Movie.
Video games suffer the same problem.
But the Dreamcast also read CD-ROM's and CDR's. And once people figured out how to make boot roms and how to read the GD-ROM's it was a short matter of time before bootable ISO's started appearing on the net. NO MOD CHIP REQUIRED!
And what of the higher memory capacity of the GD-ROM; people would just strip out some or all of the FMV's on the disc to get the ISO size down below 800MB.
I personally bought a Dreamcast when they went on sale, and I do not own a single "legal" game.
A Usenet Troll Triumphs on Slashdot
I've been severely depressed by the recent video game releases. Most notably, The Matrix Reloaded. While it was highly original in style and gameplay, It was stereotypically simplistic and linear in design which lead to me beating the game with both Ghost and Naiobi in less than 6 hours combined, on the hard setting of the game. Come on! Why can't there be more games like Deus Ex which takes days and weeks of commitment to finish? Sure, the occasional quick wham-bam game is okay, but we haven't seen a game that can live up to the dynamic, complex and intricate plot line that Deus Ex had.
The root of the problem is that game companies want to publish neat-looking games as fast as they can because neat-looking games bring in the most money the fastest. If game designers would pay more attention to level design, puzzles, strategy, plot and overall length as opposed to how many cool graphics they can plug into it, then maybe we'd have better games on the shelves. I blame money.
It's getting right down to the whole problem I have with professional sports. Players getting paid millions to play basketball is absurd. The players are playing because they want to get paid, not because they love the game and that for me ruins the sport. Same goes with Video games. If the designers are not designing because they want to produce the best product available, then they're obviously designing for money. Wrong wrong wrong.
The point is, Lack of originallity is not the problem, it is the primary symptom that money rules the game industry, not designers.
"In the beginning, there was nothing; Then it blew up."
This settles it. There are TWO people in the world that liked Rocket Jockey.
In Masters of Doom John Carmack hinted at reaching a level of realism with the Doom 3 engine that would result in the tapering-off of the advancements in graphics. That is to say, Doom 3 is about as real as he can see games getting. If such is the case (or even if he leaves id to focus more on armadillo aerospace) it'll probably [re]ignite the race to develop the most involving, fun game possible (much like the C64 and early PC days when the graphics were so poor that developers were forced to make games fun - a commercial textadv these days would be laughed off the shelves).
OK... I know absolutely NOTHING about what it takes to write a game; the last time I did any kind of programming it was to get the computer to do my math homework for me and I plugged numbered lines of BASIC into an Apple... but here's an idea that might be workable, and I'd kill to see this on the shelves: a computer game derived from the old Squad Leader games... all of the stategy and tactics games on the market are just so incredibly superficial. I want a turn based battlefield game where EVERY piece becomes important and I'm not simply overwhelmed by the guy who occupied an enviable position where he could fight no battles until he had armies made up entirely of mounted cavalry.. If you're not familiar with Squad Leader, think Axis and Allies but with a LOT more detail... Get cracking you three, I wanna be able to put this game on my Christmas "wish list"
Interested to see:
DOOM III and Duke Nukem Forever
Fondest Gaming Memories:
DOOM II deathmatches in college
So we have someone who likes sequels, yet complains about the lack of originality...
I personally think that originality in gaming is overrated. People don't care if it is original. They care if it is fun. Originality is not the end all be all of good games. And originality comes in many forms. It doesn't have to be a completely new genre. It can be a new take on an old idea.
Original War was an original game. An RTS with RPG elements. Not many people played that one. If it could get rid of its bugs, it would have been perfect.
People liked Ogre Battle...it was also an RTS with RPG elements, only different.
I originally thought Doom 3 was just an FPS with prettier graphics, but seeing the demo made me realize just what was possible with those graphics. Alien vs Predator 2 had dynamic lighting and shadows, which made the game quite scary, but Doom 3 seems to be going much farther than that.
It is hard to see what is coming next. But I get tired of people complaining that games aren't original anymore. What do you expect? Games have only been around for a couple of decades or so. Of course every game is going to start to look unoriginal. It is hard to create your own genre.
That is why you have to start to appreciate what is available. I am not saying that you should be happy with crappy copies of games. I am saying that you should look at what you consider to be a crappy sequel and figure out what they might have done better. What innovations actually exist in that FPS you have been ignoring. What secret you missed out on because you avoided what you thought was "Yet Another RTS."
It is interesting how popular NES emulators are...I mean, aren't those games...boring now? You get bored of their sequels, yet classic gaming is ok?
I have 3656.9 Bogomips. How many Bogomips do you have?
When there was only 2d, the game creator forced themself to produce original games.
Now Almost all games resume to "find the lever that give acces to the trap where you can push the button that open the door that lead to the labrynth where you must kill all the vilains to gain acces to the next level where you must beat a big boss"...
I've seen no more real evolution or creativity in 3D games since 5-6 years (except maybe for Nintendo). The only thing that evolve is the need for more rendering power...
I was once an hardcore gamer. I should spend more than 20 hours per week on games like Prince of Persia or King Quest. Now the only game i play is Counter-Strike.
IMHO CS is one of the best shooter ever made and its 4 years old!
"Insanity in individuals is something rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." - Nietzsche
The obnoxious and annoying voice shouting "SEGA!" at the end of each commercial didn't help either. The more melodious "SE---GA----"(descending tones) was okay though.
There is no shortage of good ideas, the problem is that we can't code those ideas. Any game that doesn't rely on running around and blowing stuff up needs another goal. That goal always revolves around the need for some good AI.
:-)
This is the single most insightful point yet posted in this discussion. Most human activities of any interest involve interacting with other humans (even masturbation gets boring eventually). We still SUCK at simulating this interaction in a game. This is why MMORPG's are so popular - people are willing to overlook a lot of retarded gameplay (killing dozens of rats to learn how to use your sword?!) because the human interaction is immersive and rewarding. You may be all excited about being a Wookiee bounty hunter in SW: Galaxies or whatever, but really, what you crave is the ability to interact believeably with other beings as that character... and Biff the Understudy (Baldur's Gate) repeating the same four sentences just doesn't cut the mustard. Funny that game companies have tricked their customers into providing the "AI" for each others' gaming experience
Freedom: "I won't!"
Leisure Suit Larry - First person shooter.
The polygon count and frames per second are high enough that it would be downright entertaining.
If there was a Multiplayer version, it would give "fragging" your friends a whole new meaning.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
The problem isn't that a lack of new ideas, the problem is the journalists themselves! While I wish the game magazines would spend more time covering the smaller, more obscure games (the way Computer Gaming World did back in the early to mid 1980s), I can't totally blame them for the current state of affairs. When the magazine publishers discover that having a cover that boasts of lots of screenshots of the new Mario game or the latest sequel from Blizzard makes their magazine sell a lot more copies, and that when they have an exclusive on the first screenshots from a hit game it boosts their sales even more... What do you think they're going to try and get for their next issue? The public shells out more bucks for a lot of coverage of big hits, and coverage of the interesting small games doesn't help sell magazines. If the public would show more demand for that kind of thing, maybe we'd get some better game magazines to choose from.
Furcadia - A free online game with user created content, DragonSpeak scripting, & more.
"So what would you think of then?"
You can answer the question but it forces you to think.
A blog I run for the wealth
Originaly game making is wonderful, but from a business angle it is hard to push to the bean counters. Before any type of R&D project a business is going to estimate the future money to be made and then in corporate the business risk. For new developpments, this is very high, and pushed your value down to nothing, so why bother.
If you look around and see the market has room for another game where you tote hundreads of guns and have balls like churchbells and blow away all the pinko scum, you know it will make money, just add a cute new feature, like bullet time, or extra blood splatting on the walls and you sell your game. Same as putting "New and Improved" on a box of Tide.
Until the consumer quits opening their wallet for the same old thing you wont get much innovation. the only reason we can say "they innovated in the old days!" is because there were no video games to compare from. Same as old cinema. iturn of the century and into the 30's movies were innovative. today, they are variations on a theme.
Make innovation profitable, and you will have innovative games.
we could also get into the limitations of UI devices and innovate those and then games could go nice directions control wise. I mean have you played Enter the Matrix for the PC yet? Your left hand gets one hellacious workout with all the different control combinations.
-- Insert wisdom here:
wolfenstein and doom were shareware
If Doom was shareware, then so is any commercial game with a downloadable playable demo. Doom did show up on Wal*Mart shelves.
Will I retire or break 10K?
[in Frequency,] you trigger the music, an instrument at a time, which feels like playing the song not the song playing you [as in Beatmania]
You're confusing Beatmania with the dance-based rhythm games such as Para Para Paradise and Dance Dance Revolution. In Beatmania and Drummania, the player actually does play an instrument (a sampler in BM and a drum set in DM).
You can also play your remixes and online, both firsts for a music-rhythm game.
Did the online features of Freq and Amp come before or after the first release of PC-based clones of Bemani games?
Will I retire or break 10K?
You claim Metroid Prime was the first first-person adventure. What about Drakkhen or Real Myst?
Will I retire or break 10K?
And how is solving problems by tagging with a spraycan any different from solving them with a gun?
It expands the audience of the game from those whose parents will let them buy T or M rated games to include those whose parents will let them buy E rated games. Super Mario Sunshine isn't too different conceptually from, say, Tomb Raider except that Mario can use the water gun as a jetpack.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Think DDR is original? Have you tried Dance Aerobics by Nintendo?
DDR is also a descendant of Beatmania, which is a nearly direct clone of Parappa the Rapper.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Nintendo's demise looming
I wouldn't be so sure about that. Nintendo is #2 worldwide among console makers. Microsoft is having trouble selling Xbox consoles outside North America.
Hollywood Syndrome [is] ... the Industry's second death, and there will be no NES to save us
Even if commercial game development does slow to a trickle, then who's to say developers will stop scratching their itch for open source video games?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Oh my god. If you started a game company and made those games, I'd buy 10 copies of each. Seriously.
There are still originality. You just have to know where to look. Nitendo seems to be better at this. :)
Think Animal Crossing and Pikmin. Think Eternal Darkness (the sanity meter).
Sometimes, originality is in the little things. Ever play Wind-Waker? When you walk in a room, the character's eyes will look towards interesting objects that you can interact with, even though they maybe off screen and not obvious at first.
The connectivity between GBA and GCN is also brilliant.
You just have to know where to look
I agree. This is just like that company that sold operating systems without much copy protection (just an easily copied serial number). Look where they are now.
Languages aren't inherently fast -- implementations are efficient
The lack of originality in games isn't for lack of ideas, it's due to the same reasons as Hollywood: just try to get something original funded and published. If it's not a big license, a sequal to a big game, or at least smack in the middle of a traditional genre, prepare to be laughed out of the meeting with the publisher.
Developers WANT to make original games, but they can't afford to do it without a publishing deal, and publishers only want drivel.
but it doesn't pay much, at the time of the dc, sega came out with some brillant ideas as cited in the article (shen mue, jet set radio, space channel 5, crazy taxi, etc) and it didn't help them a lot. A this time, nintendo is the company making the more imaginative games, but people prefer to buy games like "gta vice city".
-- moo
I just had to bring it up.
It's an earlyish Nintendo 64 game with a crap plot involving nuclear bombs and a stupid software design error. Just there to validate you having to come in and level cities using bulldozers, motorcycles with missile launchers, big robots, etc.
I really wish a modern sequel would pop up for this game...
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
It's the buying public who are being unoriginal. Games like Jet Grind (and then Set) Radio were original, but sold far less than the likes of Splinter Cell, Halo, GT3, etc.
There are hundreds of original ideas kicked around development studios every day, but none of them are worth looking at while the public just want to shoot bad guys.
Are you the Dr Cat from Austin TX I visited in 1996 when we crashed Richard Garriot's roller blade party? :-)
Bring on no. 3. I know its DnD but I still think it was orignal and really one of the best games round. I spent 1 year uni exams playing that and second year playing no. 2
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
Just to name a few games that fed my insomnia:
-Pacman
-Space Invaders
-Pitfall
-Tetris
-Monkey Island
-Lemmings
-the Incredible Machine
-Doom
All of these games were the base for other, new-and-improved versions of the same game-play. I've seen just a few games that appealed to me, because they had a complete fresh & new game-play which I and my friends had not seen before.
I've been wishing someone came up with a brand new game-plan to get that Oh-no-more-Lemmings-feeling back... Still nothing.
Sob.
It becomes clear that most of the people are missing the point. Expecting complete and total originality...it's not going to happen. We build art on the shoulders of giants people. All art is evolutionary, not revolutionary. EVERYTHING will remind you of something, once a medium hits a certain point.
Keeping that point in mind, you can see how the gaming industry, to be honest, is making huge steps forward from an evolutionary point of view. New gameplay concepts turn out to be worthwhile, then time is spent combining that new concept with appropiate other ideas.
Take for example the idea of the GTA 3 "living city". The games, both back and forward using a similar idea...
Spiderman 2: (Free-form as a superhero? Cool!)
Tony Hawk Underground: (Jackass the game. Seriously.)
Mafia (Very solid game)
Republic (One of the most orignial game ideas in a long time..you play a revolutionary who has to get a revolution started)
Completely different genres of games/styles, all using an already "warmed" idea, as some people would put it.
The evolution, quite frankly..is great.
In my opinion, too much attention is being paid these days to graphics and frame rates. I like the occasional FPS, but it tends to get old after a while. Many of the classic games didn't depend on graphics, but on actual game play. I remember when Tetris swept the world. Very simple game of blocks, people used to play on end for hours. Or how about Lemmings? A puzzle game WITH sound and graphics (for the day). BUT, it also had addictive game play... Don't ask about my grades from that semester. I used to log onto the Merit Network just to compare notes on how to get through a level. I was also majorly addicted to Neuromancer, which combined classic text base with graphics. I still rmember the first time I cracked ICE in that game. I didn't sleep for a month getting through it. Anyone else remeber Tower Toppler? Another classic puzzle game.
The Grandaddy of time wasters on my college dorm floor was a surfing game on my Amiga. Of course this was back in the day when there were only two computers on the floor, my amiga, and a pc across the floor. OF course I remember playing Sim City for hours on that PC. These days, every student has one or two computers and a T-1.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
Points are scored as a two "level meters". One for "Hair Raising Suspense" - which is based on how close you cut the rescue,...and the other is for "Darring Do" - which is how complex/outlandish the rescue is. As you accumulate points, you earn "Technical Difficulties". A "Technical Difficulty" can be played if you see that your attempt to rescue the damsel will fail. When you use it, the projector has a problem causing the film to be reset and you get to try again. The audience will get a little annoyed, but they generally won't leave.
The audience should do random things during the movie that will play out based upon how interested they are in the movie. For example, a lady with a large hat can sit down in one of the front rows, little kid starts kicking the seat in front of him, etc.
Each level (episode) ends with a "cliffhanger" that provides clues as to what the next level will be. Of course, you have to finish with something like "IS THIS THE END!?", "WHAT WILL OUR HERO DO NOW!?", "TUNE IN FOR NEXT WEEKS EXCITING ADVENTURE!!!".
and yes, there is even more to this concept, I have an idea for the sequel game (the genre would be early B SciFi/Horror - complete with monsters that look like guys in rubber suits and cheesy dialog).
I don't suppose this could be written in Python huh?
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Shenmue is a 3D adventure game with a few collection sidequests and some action gaming shoehorned in. None of the individual elements are innovative, and you can't call it innovative just because these elements are squashed together.
The game (and its sequel) are also badly paced, poorly -- no, pathetically voice acted (in the US), needlessly tedious and have a very bad tendency to use action-based sequences as either timewasting filler or, even worse, roadblocks to the rest of the gameplay. Like another flawed game with many cutscenes (Xenosaga), the cinematic sequences were clearly scripted and directed by someone with no moviemaking experience whatsoever.
It frustrates me when someone praises Shenmue to the skies, or promotes its originality. There are so many other better games out there.
Solving games with guns isn't new. Guns hit the mainstream -- and stayed there -- shortly after Pong lost mindshare to Space Invaders. Get used to it.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
How about Uplink?
Now available in North American stores, in a box, labeled 'Uplink: Hacker Elite.' The problem, as always, is that the mass market probably couldn't handle it; 'aim boomstick at bad guy and mash button repeatedly' is about the level of the average NA gamer, these days, unfortunately.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Both GTA III and Vice City used the Renderware engine, as do many successful games.
The technology is not an end in and of itself, but a means to better gameplay. That's why I'm looking forward to Doom III; it's engine will allow unprecedented freedom of design to developers making the Next Big Thing.
And old technology does not mean bad games. Download the demo forMoonbase Commander, which came out last year and runs fine on a 486, and see for yourself.
Okay, it's a fair cop, we, as gaming consumers, get a bit of the blame. We (as a whole) reward cowardly, mindless behavior from our review sources.
However, I'm not suggesting that the game review media suddenly stop making "Best game of next year (or the year after that, or the year after that)" their hyped cover story. I'm talking small changes. Try to give at least one page (if you're, say, a magazine) to a lesser known game. While you're there, mention a few other "Worth your time to check out" games. I discovered some of my favorite small publisher games from the occasional site that would just make a thrown away comment, "I've been playing Weird-Game-X almost non stop all week, check out the demo." That's all it would take to change the direction of the industry. By and large these games are nearly instantly demoable thanks to the internet. This would encourage people to give them a look. A single paragraph mentioning how much the editor liked Such-and-Such is just a blip in the sales of a mainstream game, but would create a huge spike in the sales of a lesser known game.
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There is this entire article that says the big thing missing in games is creativity. Well, maybe true but creativity is just part of a good or a bad game. Games, like film, books, and any other type of entertainment have elements. For films it is things like direction, acting, editing, plot, script, etc. For games it is interface, story, graphics, sound, etc. Everyone has their own opinions about these elements. Creativity is just one element and it will not determine, for most people, if a game is successful.
For example, I don't think there has been a game about doing dishes. It could be an action, adventure, or role-playing game. You could go up in levels for scouring, drying and polishing. You could get docked for pruned hands. It is creative, but would it be fun? Maybe... if you could get all the other elements right.
I think the successful games get most of the elements right and that is what makes them successful. It is true that there are a lot of copycat games but some of them perfect an original idea and get more of the elements in place. Total Annihilation was a game like this. You could say that it was a copy of any of the previous RTS games but it did everything very well.
I think the article at Avault was just grousing about the lack of games in the author's favorite genre, adventure games. That is OK but I do not miss those games at all. They held little for me in terms of entertainment. To me it was just "keep clicking until you find the path that doesn't kill you". Sure you could make an educated guess now and then but I found them boring.
I think there will always be creative games... there is always a new idea out there. But I don't think that one factor alone will make a great game. Right now my favorite game is not particularly original, it is just well done. That's is good enough for me.
grimzap
"I'm right..."
"No, you're wrong. Here is why..."
"No, YOU'RE wrong. And you have no business giving opinions..."
etc...
This is basically what smart guys in this 'creative' industry do. Its all smug, self-important, condescending bullshit. They snipe, they blame, they whine. And then they wonder why their games suck. Hmm, perhaps you spent too much time cursing the darkness instead of lighting a candle.
The PlayStation lineup is bland and unoriginal, eh?
What about Rez, Irritating Stick, Frequency, Herdy Gerdy, Roll Away, PaRappa The Rapper, Incredible Crisis, Stretch Panic, Mad Maestro!, Mister Mosquito, Fantavision, No One Can Stop Mister Domino!, Vib Ribbon, Kinetica, Monster Rancher, Shadow Of Destiny, State Of Emergency, and maybe Sky Odyssey? And those are just the ones I can think of right now...
As a fan of quirky games, I picked PlayStation and PS2 precisely because the platform tends to get strange experimental games that other systems don't. If you want to see a truly uninspired lineup of FPS and sports games (with one interesting game), look at the Xbox...
Maybe you think the PlayStation has no original games because it has so darn many game releases that the unusual games aren't as prominent. Quirky games wasn't what killed Dreamcast, not enough games was the problem.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Sequels and clones, however, serve their own purpose. Once the original game serves up the "killer idea," others can come in to try to improve on it, and the market determines which of these will succeed(though the Darwinian aspects of this are offset by marketing campaigns, at least in the retail world - but the online one is set to eventually replace it anyway).
Sometimes concepts introduced by a clone are applicable outside of their original game context - things like score, high score, lives, levels, hit points, and combos are found through a wide range of games. More recently popularized, similar types of innovations are unlocks, more sophisticated/diverse ranking and rating systems than a single score measure, the usage of more body movement than just a joystick or gamepad and buttons, the exploration of music as a central focus of gameplay...
Innovation is not really a complicated process, at least with respect to game-making. It's just a matter of recognizing what will use the technology you have in mind to entertain someone, without restricting yourself to previous models.
A game concept I came up with just today: You own a car and can drive it around or get out and walk in an accurate-looking version of the real world, but with certain restrictions - a limited section of the world(like only California, or even much less) no fighting others, no entering buildings(for technical reasons) except the ones critical to the gameplay of driving in your car like auto shops or gas stations, and death results in magically being revived at a hospital ala GTA. Within the world, the player can use his car and some equipment to accomplish various missions, like take photos of landscapes/wildlife/cities, run cargo(perhaps even illegal cargo to add just a little criminal element), and investigate landmarks for something of an adventure aspect. Mostly, though, it's a shell so that the player can enjoy the graphics in a pleasing setting.
It's that or Ultimate Dance Kung Fu Gunfight, the hardware and specifics of which I'll leave to imagination(two hints: someone playing it should look like they're having a seizure, and the screen should be seizure-inducing with targets and arrows and a combo count at the same time amongst flashing lights)