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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?"
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.
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.
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."
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 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!!!!
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
What about the collection of "The Incredible Machine" games?
In many of those games my solution rarely if ever matched the solutions that the level designers came up with.
Not caring how the puzzle was solved allowed virtually unlimited creativity in those 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!!!
Also done in by the fact that people weren't buying games for the system, instead doing things with NES emulators, Sega Master System emulators, VCD playing and game piracy.
It will have to go down one of two paths, neither of which will sell:
1) The materials and resulting bomb are completely unbelivable to anyone with a 5th grade education and people won't play it because it's 'too fake'.
2) The materials and resulting bomb are completely realistic and the game developers will be arrested as terrorists under the Patriot Act and probably be executed.
Come to think of it, I might buy a copy of option #2...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
It's more the complexity and cost that is the barrier to entree and the damper on innovation.
But personally I think that this is just a short dip in the curve; at the moment, it just takes a lot of time and effort to create content and a feature rich enough engine to make a game which is polished enough to be sold.
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 (subtle distinction, but very important).
Every itteration of game engines makes more possible: automatic, procedural and easier content generation and integration; more transparent game rule changing...thgis is being worked on right now. Look at Deus Ex 2 and Halflife 2...the lipsyncing-tech in HL2 and the attribute-techture-tech in Deus Ex make life so much easier...it takes out a chunk of grunt work (which is exactly what automation and computers should be doing).
So while at the moment it takes huge sums of money and years of manyears(?) to create a game, in the future engine licensing will be more and more frequent. And as engines get more and more userfriendly and take more and more of the grunt work out of gamedev'ing, more and more time will be available to play around with game ideas and styles.
And that also means that modders will have an easier time doing the same. And that is, nowadays, where the real innovation in gameplay experiences come from.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Sheep Raider for the playstation (one). You play Ralph Wolf, trying to steal the sheep from Sam Sheepdog's herd, just like in the old Looney Tunes cartoons.
I know, it sounds like a stupid kid's game, but it's actually a thinking man's puzzle/stealth game(in the vein of MGS). I think the cognitive dissonance between its play style and subject/theme is the reason most people never gave this excellent game a shot.
But there is really no "art house" business model for games. Instead, you see "art house" games, like Rez, or Shenmue, produced and marketed as AAA games, and then failing in the marketplace. This is a major bummer, and if someone does develop an art house model, where a high concept game can be made relatively cheaply, and designed to break even on relatively modest sales, I hope they become stinking rich billionaires, because it would be rad.
That all said, that doesn't mean there isn't innovation in the AAA, B, kids, and niche catagories. The fact that art house games don't succeed commercially doesn't mean innovation doesn't exist.
Put another way, just because a game is from EA and has super high production values doesn't mean that it isn't innovative, or can't be innovative. And just because Rez and Shenmue didn't sell 10 milion units doesn't mean innovation isn't appreciated.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
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 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.
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.