GBA - A Wasteland For Creativity?

jvm writes "Having been intrigued by heated discussions over licensed games and stagnant creativity in the videogame market, I did some investigation into just how many original titles can be found in the library of games for Nintendo's GameBoy Advance. Depressingly, out of the hundreds of games catalogued, only 9% are not licensed, not sequels, and not remakes of older games. That's fewer than three dozen games, and most of those fall into well-known categories. Graphs and downloadable data are provided for interested readers to do their own examination."

Comments

Re:Reasons why the lack of creativity

[SmallFurryCreature]

Original games become ever more impossible. There are after all only so many things a person can do that is still fun.

The only thing left is to make hybrids, putting more then one game genre together, or to improve an existing genre.

Is this bad? No. All my favorite games had been done before, just not as well as those games did it.

As for sequels, well it is easy isn't it. Try selling a game to a company it is easier if you can say, hey the previous version did a X amount of sales rather then trying to convince them that yes people will love a fat italian plumber.

So this research falls into the category, "Women buy more dresses then men" AKA the "No shit sherlock" category. Still nice to see someone taking the time to put it all in writing.

Re:Reasons why the lack of creativity

[PainKilleR-CE]

I noticed the article also forgot to mention something else that was blatantly obvious:
The top two original titles (Golden Sun and Advanced Wars) both have sequels now.

Of course, he also ignored franchise titles with original gameplay, such as Wario Ware, Inc. which could be viewed as a commentary on the game industry very much in line with the article, if you follow the storyline. It's much easier to simply examine the titles and figure out which are sequels or franchise games than to figure out what titles actually have original gameplay.

Not a problem.

[raygundan]

No matter how hard you tried when you were a kid (and believe me, I did) you just couldn't possibly have played ALL the good NES and SNES games out there. I am more than happy to play these "rehashed" games for the first time, and am even happier to see sequels to games I enjoyed.

Didn't RTFA...

[GeorgeH]

... And this doesn't deal with the statistics of sequels, but Wario Ware for the GBA kicks all sorts of ass. It's the most original game that I've played since Typing of the Dead for the Dreamcast, and I can't recommend it enough.

The GBA Lineup and the overall success of sales...

[ihatesco]

prove that people is so stupid to make e-mail spamming profitable as well.

Ok, that was the flamebait... but think about it... GBA Lineup wouldn't be so full of shit if people didn't go to kwik-e-mart, bought the same buggy platformer with the brand new Disney character that looked like coming out from the Commodore 64 era and then went back to kiwk-e-mart only to buy another platformer based on a Cartoon Network show.

And considering the cost of those fucking games (50 euros here in EU), I wonder if the buyers are little children with little wages, or they demented parents with no knowledge of videogame whatsoever.

I hope when I will be a parent, the situation will be different, because I will not buy my daughter/son a lame game based on a lame franchise.

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On the other hand, Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, are really good games, even if the franchise is old.
Sometimes having a franchise breathing beind the back of the developers makes them to publish good games... unless the franchise is Tomb Raider (rotfl).

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I can still remember that Simspons episode with Bart being instigated from Donkey Kong, Mario and Sonic to steal Mortal Kombat from the Mall.