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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.
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.
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.
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!
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.