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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.
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"
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
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
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"
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
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.
I do not have a signature
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.
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.