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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?
"...you can really start to view the games industry as a marketing arm of the film industry or of the music industry."
Damn straight. Sid Meier said that "A game is a series of interesting choices." And Sid is right. The problem with games made from other media like books, movies, and TV shows is that those mediums are non-interactive and therefore contain no choices. So in a game like The Matrix, choices get reduced to the level of "how do I accomplish my pre-defined mission in the most effecient manner", which is hardly interesting.
Writers, who create books, movies, and TV shows, want to tell a story. A story has a linear progression from setup to conflict to resolution. It is the conflict and it's eventual resolution that makes it interesting. But a game does not need to have conflict (ex. Animal Crossing, The Sims) because, like Sid said, it's the choices that make the game interesting. Relying on a movie franchise to make your game interesting is like relying on a leather bound cover to make your novel worth reading.
Originality is so unoriginal.
Trust Your Technolust
I'm really not sure what his point is here.
The biggest success on the Xbox is Halo, which was not driven by any IP (other than taking Niven's Ringworld). Movie tie-ins like Enter the Matrix and Pirates of the Caribbean do well, but not at the levels of a Vice City. In fact, most tie-in games suck and this is quickly reflected in the speed with which they fall into discount bins everywhere.
Given the number of successful games (across consoles and computers) that are not movie-based, I don't see his point.
How do you halt this vicious cycle?
How about by creating something original and not worry about immediate profits? I'm a firm believer that if a game is truly good, eventually people will find it and enjoy it. Granted, that's just in theory, as many golden games have been passed over for the years, but I'm referring to "gamers," not "Joe with the PS2" or "Bill with his XBOX."
It may not sell as much as the latest Madden or Grand Theft Auto, but it'll find its market (the "if you build it, they will come" mentality). Unfortunately, all most companies want to do is create an immediate profit, and not actually create something unique and groundbreaking. Which...is why we're in that cycle. Men tend to think with their dicks and wallets more than anything else.
This guy IS the problem. He thinks that a game is about its subject content. The same idiots think they can make another hit like "Grand Theft Auto" by including prostitutes and violence.
A strong license will help a game sell, but in the end what matters is the game (witness the multitude of Star Wars games and their varying success). That's why the last few crops of "original games" have sucked so hard (think "Blix: The Time Sweeper"). While they may not have stolen subject content, their gameplay was derivative and lame.
I can hear someone thinking, somewhere: "Maybe if they would have made Blix a little more edgy it would have been great - they could have hired Todd McFarlane (creater of Spawn) to design enemies."
No! Maybe they could have made it a good game. Similarly, Star Wars: KOTOR would have been a great game no matter what the subject.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Haven't all new media forms tried to emulate its predecessors? Early films were little more than stage plays. Early television was just radio plays with pictures.
Give it time. It's early yet.
Alex.
it's not like any movie or music company has ANY ip that would be of use to make a game good or original.
they don't own shoot'em'ups, they don't own first person shooters, they don't own rts genre, they don't own spaceships either.
they don't own jack that could make a game awesome! you fight the cycle of making crappy licensed games the same way it has been fought since et, you just make good games and the gamers will play.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Somehow I find it hard to see the VP of Capital Entertainment having any real creative game ideas. New thinking never comes from the top.
But he does have a point: the XBox has been a wasteland for innovation. If I wanted fifty first-person-shooters to pick from, I would have kept gaming on my PC. The most creative thing happening on the huge black and green X is...Linux.
Isn't this the same asshat responsible for the deplorably bad 'Jurassic Park: Trespasser' game?
As far as his quote about exploiting pop culture is concerned, when in the past have games ever actually been pop culture? Gaming has traditionally been an underground sport, with only a small population actually being gamers. It's only since the 32 bit era that the average jock you'd find living in a dorm room would spend any significant amount of time gaming. The reason the industry has lost its cultural edge is because it lost its culture.
Look at Tomb Raider and Mortal Kombat. Both of these went from video games into the movie theaters.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
Ask Nintendo.
Mario, Link, Pokemon, Kirby, Metroid, etc.
No original IP? Must not own a GBA or GCN.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
NONE of this will matter when Doom III comes out. It will change EVERYTHING!
No reason to lie.
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.
...
(still thinking)
oh wait, there was that super mario bros movie!
games based off of movies are CRAP. they are inherently unoriginal and i avoide them like the plague. same with most all games that are based off a license of any sort.
I want 2D games back.
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.
When big money is involved, as it is in this case, safe choices must be made. Sure, you can go out on a limb once in a while and try an original idea. However, most of the time your investors will demand a reasonable profit forcast. This forcast can only be made if there are a large proportion of "sure things" in the pipeline.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
Er, the "pop" in "pop culture" is "popular." You're thinking of "geek culture."
Your prob. is just that video games became "pop culture."
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]
Yeah, Blix was a real pity. The premise was so cool and reasonably innovative. (Can't expect games nowadays to look like absolutely nothing that has come before, what with tens of thousands of games existing already.) Executiong on it sucked; I could create several better puzzles with those capabilities in a couple of hours.
Blix should be made into a poster child of failed potential in original video games.
There are unique games out there, you just have to look. Most of them are not out for xBox, mostly because there is a big financial risk in launching that on a platform.
Some examples:
The Sims: It's getting older now, but despite taking the Sim _____ series title, it was really original in what it considered to be a game. Hey, take this family and uh.. make them cook stuff and go to work. Surprise, huge franchise and a massively multiplayer extension.
Dance Dance Revolution: Gimicky peripheral games have been around, but this was a new take on the thing. You don't try to shoot bad guys or win a race, instead you're "dancing." Suprise! It doesn't suck and is a great party game because normal people (my parents) and even normal girls think it's fun.
Nintendo's Cute games: Those Japanese have a stack of really, really weird cute games. I've looked at a bunch of comments and reviews and thought wow, that's odd. Never played them, but they generally seem original as heck.
Odd Massively Multiplayer Games: Let's face it, Everquest is a MUD with pictures, not terribly original. But there are some differant ones out there. My favorite are a couple that have appeared where the players are businessmen and their holdings are active 24 hours per day. You just have to log in enough to keep things going straight. Very differant. Also, Planetside has really changed the FPS genre for me. Taking FPS into the massively multiplayer realm may have been obvious, but it is new and presents another oppurtunity to franchise. Couple cool and new programs in this department.
When I look around, check out the upcoming and recent releases, I see a bunch of oddball games that I probably won't buy, but are look very differant from what I play. There are a lot of games out there take a look.
If console designers want to see thousands of original titles, they need only make their platforms open to garage development.
Of course, independent development, while it does result in original content, doesn't necessarily dump cash into the Microsoft/Nintendo/Sony coffers, so it isn't creativity or originality that's the real issue here.
It's properly licensed and royalty bound creativity and originality.
Perhaps if Mr. Blackley actually created a game, instead of constatntly talking about how bad games and gaming is today, he would hold a little more salt in my book.
I mean, honestly, what has this guy done? PR for the Xbox launch, and then started his own studio...which has yet to put out any game. Enough talk Blackley, lets see some product.
The how about not turning to a designer who's cranked out 5 carbon copies of someone else's already released game in the last 7 years.
Originality isn't going to happen as long as you keep recycling the same people to be the "creative driving force".
Eventually, someone has to get fired for making the same game...otherwise, they're just going to keep doing it.
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The Parents The majority of videogames are sold at Christmastime, and they're gifts. Parents buy what looks familiar -- if it's Batman or Frogger or some license they recognize, that's what gets bought.
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Hans Blix did the looking at weapons thing, but you probably meant that blinx thing (the only 4d game other than 4d boxing).
I think what you're looking for can be better summed up with examples such as Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, which are set in the same time frame and place with the same overall story, but are centered on 2 different characters, giving a different perspective and different particulars on the story. Similarly, a game can tell the same story from a different perspective (think Resident Evil 2, or any number of RPGs, RTS games used to do this as well), or can change the story based on the player's decision (ie KOTOR or a number of other RPGs). Another example would be the Choose Your Own Adventure style books, which are very similar to the way many RPGs work on consoles/PCs.
You don't always need a complete world to make a solid game, and most of your examples are more like what franchise games often try to do: make something that fits in the existing universe or acts as a prequel/sequel to the existing works. Games need to not only have good story, but make use of the strengths of the game medium, and tell those stories in different ways according to how they're played and the decisions the player makes.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Damn right! That son of a bitch couldn't even find WMD in Iraq! Stupid UN weapons inspector!
(Psst. The game name is "Blinx", not Blix. A Hans Blix game would be more entertaining.)
Hopefully, by doing that players will be so sick of just reusing ideas, game publishers will be forced into using fresh ideas from developers.
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.
The most creative thing happening on the huge black and green X is...Linux.
Why is porting Linux to this machine "Creative"? It's a port of a desktop operating system to cheap, low end hardware. It's not creatve, it is boring and pointless.
I think that's his point. Mind you, I'm still waiting for Fable to come out...
Don't trust any concentration of power.
I like Seamus Blackley, I really do. But its funny that he should talk about lack of originality and tie ins to other people's IP, because the last thing he worked on was Trespasser: Jurassic Park.
Gee, Jurassic Park isn't one of those movie things that spouts endless tie ins and sequels that suck and just won't die. That's totally original. Though to his credit it is not a direct tie in to one of the movies.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
A license can have a great effect on how a game sells. However, what I said was:
Similarly, Star Wars: KOTOR would have been a great game no matter what the subject.
Now, this may not hold for all subjects (your subject has to mesh with the gameplay somewhat), but I think it's true (regardless of whether the resulting great game would have been as successful in terms of sales).
Let's not stir that bag of worms...