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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?"
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.
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.
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"
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.
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
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.
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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.
It was one of the good ones, but its more evolutionary than revolutionary.
You can trace it back to the 2d prequels and Syndicate by Bullfrog in the early nineties.
I remember reading an interview by Peter Molyneux talking about Syndicate. He decided to give the player the option to kill civilians and steal cars, but decided that letting them waste Prams and dogs was in bad taste.
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.
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
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.
So what about [can't remeber the title]? It's built on Halflife, but it puts a team leader in a coordinating, top down view, ordering the rest around. The teammates then run around in the 3d view, building bases, defenses and moving into position (as directed by the teamleader) to mow down the opposition. Think a cross between an rts and a fps, but with more tactics involved.
Saying the engine is the limitation means you're blaming your tools...and everyone knows that that just means you're shifting the blame from where it belongs: you. All I'm saying is that the better the tools get, the easier it is...it lowers the barrier to entry, meaning more people try and thus we get more and better stuff to play with.
Anyway, doing that game needed a deep understanding of the tools...now imagine what those guys could have done with an easily modded engine (which HL just isn't...people do it casue it can be done, not because HL is an easy engine to mod); they'd have done it faster, with better gfx, more content and could have spent more time and effort on the game mechanics itself.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
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
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 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
To follow the pirates into the cave, turn to page 45.
To run away screaming like a little girl, turn to page 13.
Those were the days.
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
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...
Every story EVER is based on 1 of 5 basic stories(the 5 man vs. something stories). Maybe games have/need a similar rule developed?
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
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
I can't stand this. For years and years I can't stand this. I don't care what Joseph Campbell said or if I spelled his name correctly.
Even if all stories can be -interpreted- and assigned one of 5 categories... that's about as fundamental as saying there are two kinds of matter in the univers and two kinds only, that which is part of the earth, and that which is beyond the earth. It's true, but not only pointless, it's misleading.
So it is with the "five" stories and "every story is from the Bible" schoole of anti-creativity.
-pyrrho
Can you give me a movie, book, television show, play, short story, etc. that just does NOT fit right into one of the 5? I believe in the 5 stories rule because I can't find fault in it.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Easily mod-able game engines, while allowing non-professional programmers to essentially create their own games, are the shackles to which game creativity is bound.
Not any more than conventional forms are a "shackles" in any other creative medium. Think about things like limericks, sonnets, haiku, comedy, landscape painting, TV sitcoms, anime, mystery novels, buddy cop films, science fiction tv, books, comics, movies, etc... in each case there are rules that govern the form, some more strict than others. In some cases, the challenge gets to be how to break the rule of the form while maintaining the form-- on the surface at least.
Indeed, while the Infocom z-machine isn't quite a "video game" it shows very much that a properly designed game engine can be a platform for creativity. I am sure there are creative Doom mods out there. But think of how many sim-type games there are where the possibilities are endless if you expose somewhat the internals of the engine: car, flight, city, wargame, etc. Then think of some other game systems that exist, like card games (both conventional deck and collectible), RPGs (non-computerized), board wargames, etc.
That said, the one video game I'm waiting for is "fantasy football", only when you think "fantasy" think Tolkien. This was a game that was included in a Dragon magazine I had back nearly 20 years ago and it was hilarious. And even in this case, look at the constraints of form that enable such a game to be readily understood by new players: the whole fantasy genre informs the choices for monster/players and the basic sense of what the game is about.
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It's the same problem with movies. Where are all the truly original movies now? Sure we get one every once and a while, but most are remakes, sequels, or based on a comic book from several decades ago.
We get a few gems occasionally, but even those seem to be heavily influenced by conformity.
It's a general trend that is fueled by money. An unfortunate sideaffect of capitalism.
no, this isn't an anti-capitalism post. On the contrary, I agree with Churchill that capitalism is the worst form of goverment... except for all the other choices. or was that democracy?
Anyway. The way I see it is that this is just something that happens and once we reach a critical point, enough people might be sufficiently annoyed with it, that the new fashionalbe movies/games/etc will be those that are completely original. Life is a cycle folks. Stick around for a while and watch the fun.
-John
"The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and hoping for different results"
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...).
Ha. Just found it via eBay. "Monsters of the Midway" was in issue #65 of Dragon Magazine.
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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.
It had a simple and intuitive gameplay that was used in a most formidable manner. Though, the idea was much better than the execution. The installation required that you install it's direct3d version, even if your version was later.
The game engine chugged along even with a TNT2 card (which was [pretty darn good for that game). The graphics were very rough, even for it's time. You could barely make anything out, it looked like a slow PS1 game.
Aside from all that, the gameplay was so simple and so captivating that I was obsessed with the game (it helped that they incorporated the use of TWO grappling hooks). The simple gameplay and variation in grapple use was what really got to me. The ability to yank a competitor off his bike, swing him as far away from it as possible was maniacally creative. It was not the only abilty or option, you were able to link the two grapples (which would only fire towards their respective sides) to make one long link. This ability could be used to leash other players to the turning poles or to make clotheslines, that could knock off unsuspecting victims.
These abilities change the dynamics of the game without compromising the gameplay. Gameplay which was obviously the selling point of the game. A game that is unrivaled in the minute manipulation of gameplay dynamics, yet failed miserably in the insatiable world of hype.
I agree with you to an extent, and I think that the fact there there are still commercial releases being made based on the HL engine is a testament to its versatility (See Day of Defeat a couple of weeks ago). However, every engine has its limits, and there comes a point where a project simply pushes those limits too far. For all its versatility, the HL engine does have limitations in what's possible with map design - for example, player controlled vehicles outside of basic trains are near impossible to implement
I definitely agree with the idea that working from an existing engine if at all possible, as it does save tremendous amounts of dev time, but I'm also a believer that the technology should be adaptable to the game design - in short, I'm a believer in compromising design due to limited technology as little as possible. For example, on the project I just started, my team decided that there weren't really any engines out there that we could lisence that would be capable of meeting our requirements without extreme amounts of hacking, so we decided to go ahead and begin development on an engine of our own. While it's a lot of work, by doing this, we're not limiting ourselves to "what the engine is capable of." While I think it's possible to create something innovative within an existing framework, I think the likelihood of innovation increases if the development team decides what that framework is.
Yes, it's easy to get over ambitious in this way as well, but if your project manager does a good job of keeping an eye on progress, the design can be trimmed back as needed or possibly improved if time permits. Either way, you start out with a clean slate - anything is possible. If you want innovation to happen, this is the attitude that's needed.
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.
That is honestly one of the best ideas I've ever heard. If someone could find a good way to incorporate useful learned skills into a game, we might just start actually producing citizens that can read and write beyond a 9th grade level and have math skills beyond basic algebra.
The possibilities are astounding:
-A puzzle game that teaches advanced geometry and calculus concepts. Or an adduct to a game like The Incredible Machine that can teach many physics concepts.
-A city simulation game (i.e. simcity) that lets you incorporate network infrastructure, everything from global satellite WANs to 10 node small business LANs, with configurations on every router, switch, bridge, mux, etc in between.
-Something like Parappa The Rapper but using actual music theory incorporating keys, modes, chords, maybe even different instruments. (Hell maybe an electronic interface for keyboards, guitars, and other things....this may even already exist)
-As you said, an RPG type game that teaches language skills to ineract with the different players.
Man, I could think about this shit all day. Like you, I'm a terribly addicted gamer, and I'd love to spend time gaming where it might actually improve my intellectual pursuits. I'm in school now, how cool would it be to walk into a class already knowing the techniques to solving problems in the subject and just learning the theory behind it?
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
ICO was a rasonably original game, with innovative aesthetics. However, it sold pretty badly. That's where the problem lies: if the game moves away from the norm, it will not sell well.
I can think of very few original games that have sold well lately. Ico, Eternal Darkness, even Metroid, have not sold half as well as they deserved based on quality alone.Gaming is somewhat mainstream now, and in an industry with ever increasing costs like the software industry, you cannot have originality, great technology or blockbuster sales. Most big publishers sacrifice originality. The ones that sacrifice sales wil not be big for long.
I am behind this poster 100%. I say this as an avid gamer who attends large LAN parties on a monthly basis and spend half my time trying to convince people to play something other than Battlefield 1942, Counter-Strike, or UT2003. Getting people to play off-mainstream games is a MAJOR chore, even when the games in question blow the popular alternatives away (compare IGI2 or Global Ops to Counter-Strike). Then of course once I have a dozen people playing something awesome (Earth Special Forces, a DBZ mod for half-life, for instance) every wandering bystander sees it and goes "dude, that looks awesome! where can i get it?". And then I am like "dude, I have been begging you to play this game for days".
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.
I think people said (and say) the same thing about Flash: most things produced with it are awful. Sites that use it to the exclusion of normal navigation are even worse.
But at the same time, Flash has caused an explosion of amateur animator's work to be available online. A lot of it is awful, but some of it is good.
As the tools get better, less and less focus is made upon the technical ability with the tool (though we will always appreciate excellence in design). This allows the right people to do something.
Consider this: most of the best stories in our culture were at one time oral tradition: It was the only medium accessible to your average storyteller. Print was out of the picture.
Over time, advances have made it so that, now, any damned fool can write a story that could be viewable by the whole world. This lower technical barrier to entry has resulted in more crap, but it has also resulted in more good stuff being available.
My point is that once the rendering aspect of an engine stops being the selling point (Carmack believes this will be true Real Soon Now, and I am inclined to agree with him), the focus will shift to making the engine a tool instead of the centerpiece. We are seeing the vestiges of this right now.
One of the few truly innovative mods I've seen for FPS games has been Natural Selection. Not 100% original, but certainly quite a bit different from your average mod. It really tweaks with the team dynamics: something I haven't seen done successfully in any mod to date.
When short, playable, proof-of-concept games can be cranked out about as fast as a rough draft of a short story, we will see great innovation in games (note: and be of about the same quality, depth, and length as said short story).
Also, I am interested in the techno system of creativity: one person puts out something that's "pretty good." Other people come upon it, play with it, and one or two will come up with something much, much better. This willingness to play together gives us quite a bit in creativity.
The problem right now is that, to play with a game you pretty much have to entirely recreate it or be very familiar with the coding style of the programmer involved - and that's if you have access to their code and can use the engine that they use.
Text-based adventure games had some elements of "quick to crank out" and "can play with another's code", and that was without as big of a following and without the internet (until modern times, and some of the stuff coming out now is quite good - though I have never had the knack for text adventure games, sadly enough).
These are just some thoughts, let me know what you think.
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.
And before that it was called "Point Break"
Anyone else notice that these were the exact same movie.
A young, handsome, rule-breaking cop gets an undercover assignment
to learn about a close-nit group of ultra-cool-rebel thieves that surf/race
The undercover cop falls in love with the younger sister of criminal
In the end the undercover cop lets the criminal leader surf/drive into the horizon
A Usenet Troll Triumphs on Slashdot
How about a puzzle chemistry game where each player is presented with sets of atoms and a time limit.
Points are awarded to the most complex molecule constructed at the end of the time (bonus points if you can name it before you start construction)
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
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