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Former Xbox Director Targets Lack Of Originality
Thanks to Indie Magazine for their report on former Xbox director Seamus Blackley's comments in a recent lecture regarding games and originality. Blackley suggests: "Why is it that we've lost the cultural edge? The reason is that today's games are not exploiting pop culture. We're being willingly driven by pop culture. We just crawl over one another to get access to IP [intellectual property] from other media. In this light you can really start to view the games industry as a marketing arm of the film industry or of the music industry." The article also points out: "Blackley added that with past IP and other people's IP being exploited there's nowhere for next year's sequels to come from and in turn, the industry is forfeiting its ability to create original IP." How do you halt this vicious cycle?
I think this is why GTA has done so well despite IMHO being a buggy POS. GTA gives you more freedom than most other games, although it still has stupid scripted missions. My hope is that in the next few iterations of GTA that they lose the scripted missions, and instead just inform you of certain character's attributes and let you choose how to deal with that, sort of like the way the Sims works. So for example rather than a scripted mission where you kill Mafia boss x you would have the choice of killing, partnering, setting up, dating, whatever. Then your chosen action could have a ripple effect on your interactions with other NPC characters in the game. They also need to make the environment more interactive (my biggest gripe about GTA). You should be able to enter all the buildings, there should be destructable environments, and what you do in the environment should be at least semi permanent (for example if a car burns on street x then there should be evidence of that on the street for at least several game weeks).
"Windows Me offers tremendous reliability and stability improvements..." -- Paul Thurott
He's clearly obsessing over something without any real rational reason. It's sort of like people who complain about the Internet becoming "too corporate." All the academic resources of the Web that were there back in the NCSA days are still out there. All the geek counter-culture is still around, ready to be found. If anything, such things are far more abundant. The fact that Toyota Motors and CNN have web pages doesn't change anything, unless you let it.
Likewise, the fact that there are craploads of licensed games in the console market doesn't take away from the joys of Halo, GTA, DOAX, NBA Street v2, or any of a wide array of other fun and creative games. This guy needs to lighten up. If you don't like the idea of a game based on The Hulk, do what the rest of us do: don't buy it. If the simple fact that it even exists upsets you whether you personally buy it or not, then you need a life... or maybe anti-depressants. Talk to your therapist.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Exactly. Besides, isn't Blackley the same one that criticized Miyamoto for "holding the industry back" because Miyamoto wasn't making a violent bloody gangster game (in other words, the equivalent of a snobby "get with the times")?
Unfortunately, Sega has done this for years, and it's done nothing but make the mainstream think they have 'weird' games and contribute to them dropping out of the console hardware business.
Nintendo is just like Sega, with a bit more marketing savvy and a nice cash cow (the GBA) to help things along Of course, like Sega, they are also getting lumped into that "games for the hardcore but eh response from everyone else" group. Meanwhile, the PS2 and the Xbox garner the biggest mainstream attention. While certain games warrant this attention for those platforms, it is not proportional to the amount of originality found on the GCN, or even the Dreamcast.
So while if you build it, they will come is a nice dream, it's just that - a pipe dream. Dream field. Field of dreams. Er... Whatever.
Anyway, if this guy was right, we'd be spared movies like Tomb Raider, Super Mario Brothers, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.
The Xbox's problem does have to do with content, but once Microsoft floods the market with Xbox 2's, the problem will largely vanish. Right now, though, game developers and publishers tend to be conservative in their choices and go for license deals. They have to make money or face getting a new job. Sadly, games like Enter the Matrix validate license deals.
This guy is a grandstanding doofus, in my opinion.
From Wired 11.01 (some irrelevant portions excised, check the article itself for more):
"He is not helping things," says Seamus Blackley... He speaks for many game designers raised on Miyamoto's innovations - developers who admire the master's work but are desperate for something new.
"At this point," Blackley continues, "Miyamoto is making games for his fans. Granted, there are millions of them, and it's smart business, but most are kids. He's not opening up adult audiences. He's reinforcing stereotypes about games, not pushing them to a place where they can become something different and truly awesome."
What especially frustrates Blackley is the sense that Miyamoto could take gaming to the next level: "There isn't anyone on the planet better at lasering into the lizard brain, that eye-attached-to-your-hand-attached-to-your-brain thing that makes it impossible to stop playing. GTA3 is good, but it's not revolutionary. What Miyamoto could bring to a game like that would be incredible."
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Ah, so developers should be original, so long as it isn't percieved as kiddy in some way. It doesn't work to say "Be original, but only in the way I say." Originality doesn't work that way. And it so happens that the most original things get made by starting from the abstract and then paring them down to the concrete, rather than starting from reality and then trying to devise a play mechanic (which is by nature abstract) from that. And abstract things tend look kiddy when presented in an easy-to-understand format, which it must be in order for a new player to grasp them.
It's this same state in the industry that's producing both things that Blackley is complaining about here: game designers tend to be hard-core gamers, which do not tend to be very original because they don't know much besides videogaming and the attendant arts (action movies, comic books, paper RPGs, trash fiction). So, you get a lot of games based off of those arts. People like Miyamoto get their ideas for games from spheres outside of the "traditional" areas. The idea for Pikmin came from working in his garden.
No idea comes from nowhere! The industry won't change until either the current developers start getting interested in more things (unlikely, as most of them are reinforced by the other hard-code gamer staff members on their teams) or new designers come in with a wider array of interests. (And people will probably deride their games the same way Blackley derided Miyamoto.)
I now abdicate my post as the All-Seeing Know-It-All.
GTA3 is good, but it's not revolutionary. What Miyamoto could bring to a game like that would be incredible
I think it should also be added that this quote shows he's falling into the same trap that leads to today's game industry: 'Lets make GTA3 only better'. Except that it started much further in the past, and GTA3 is actually a good example of a game that DOESN'T do that. It's why we have FPS, RTS, PC RPG and Console RPG genres so well defined, because everyone keeps doing them the same way someone else did them.
If Miyamoto makes a GTA3 game, it's not going to be good because it's Miyamoto and GTA3, it's going to be good because of Miyamoto's vision, and it's not going to feel like GTA3 (and probably won't even draw any comparisons to GTA3). In the meantime, we'll get a bunch of half-assed GTA clones that aren't worth the discs they're on, and Miyamoto will keep overseeing the development of games that utilize Nintendo's IP in new ways, or with incremental improvements that end up gaining a lot of praise because very few others seem to consistantly do it as well. In fact, Nintendo is still creating a large amount of new IP for themselves, but the sheer amount of past IP they have to leverage for new games means that it's often overlooked (even when people actually mention the games that bring about the new IP) in the swarm of Mario, Wario, Zelda, and friends.
His complaints are only really valid for a small number of games. The primary problem is not IP, but the unwillingness in general to explore new ideas. Gameplay is not IP, but it does sell games. IP can sell games as well, but they get panned if the games don't play well (though in cases like Enter the Matrix or Tomb Raider they may sell so well that it doesn't matter if they get panned). As someone else has already mentioned, there are plenty of Star Wars games out there, but only certain ones sell and are praised by gamers (but at the same time Star Wars may not be the best example because some of the games do sell regardless of whether or not they're good). Even the Star Trek license, which is considered to have one of the worst catalogues of any license, has some good titles.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
If console designers want to see thousands of original titles, they need only make their platforms open to garage development.
Well-put. But consoles aren't generally where you innovate; consoles are where you make money. (Yes, there are exceptions.)
Where's the innovation in games today? In mod development and the interactive fiction community. Coincidence that neither of these is profit-driven? I think not.
Games have become incredibly expensive to produce, yet they haven't raised their prices to compensate. As a result, the success is terribly unbalanced -- 10% of the games make 90% of the profits. Because of this, publishers are getting more and more risk-averse. Risk averse == low innovation.
I suspect we'll eventually see the PC as the "local art gallery", where individuals and small groups can do innovative work, while consoles will be the "mass media", where real profits lie. And like the relationship between the gallery and the mass media, innovation first appear in one area and then slowly make its way into the other.
Microsoft takes the 20-year-old PC architecture, puts it in a PC-sized case, designs it around a Windows-based core using common PC components, then goes around trying to get PC game developers to write titles for their console -- and they expect the _games_ to be original???
Microsoft designed the most un-original gaming console ever. They wound up with what many people predicted -- a completely un-inspired software library that looks just like your typical PC game (without getting any of the actual worthwhile PC games). Can anyone truly say they're suprised at the state of the Xbox's library?
Yaz.