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Creativity, a Problem for the Gaming Industry?
Steeda95GT writes "A Reuters story reprinted at Forbes.com is an interesting read, saying that 'The gaming industry will shrink unless we start to see new games'. It talks about how the ratio of original titles to sequels is dropping dramatically, but it also goes on to say that upcoming sequels (Doom 3, Halo 2, Half-Life 2, GTA: San Andreas) will be successful only because their predecessors were."
No, its guts. Guts to try new things to break away from what is known in games, to produce the kind of games that new customers really want. The market is what you make it.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
originality and creativity when repackaging the same game and slapping a subtitle on it will rake in millions? The Sims comes to my mind...GTA is in a similar boat in my mind...
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
The end of the internet and the descent of the gaming industry into an uncreative apocalyspe has been forseen at least 2-3 times every year for the last 20 years. It's time to accept the instability but long living state of both industries and move on with our lives.
But it is not just EA chasing after proven material. Upcoming titles such as "Halo 2," "Half-Life 2," "Doom III" and "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" are all expected to top sales charts this year, in large part because the games that preceded them were so successful.
Sure this will get them noticed more, but if the games don't have innovative graphics and gameplay, the popularity of the previous titles is not going to mean shit.
I don't think the sequels will be succussful because of the originals, i think they will be successful because the simple fact that they are entertaining! People may initially buy a game because its a sequel to a game they loved, but if the reaction to the sequel is negative, word spreads and the game doesn't sell. Its very simple economics, the sequels must be as good (and in many cases better than) the original or there's no profit to be had.
"Anything that's invented after you're 35 is against the natural order of things" - Douglas Adams
Successful only because their predecessors were? Thats certainly a backwards way of looking at it. They're successful because they kept doing (and by expanding upon) what made their predecessors good games.
They may not be original, but that certainly doesn't mean they won't be fun, which is what gaming's supposed to be about. Why reinvent the wheel when you know what people like?
Mod point free since 2001
Analysts have been saying the same thing about Hollywood for 20 years, but every year the box office is consistently bigger than the last (and rising faster than inflation) -- and much of that is powered by sequels. In 2003, 6 of the top 10 grossing movies were sequels. And when Hollywood is short on sequels, they recycle old ideas -- Spider-Man was the #1 film of 2002, and it's free to spawn more sequels anew.
Bottom line: Creativity has been floundering for a long time, but people keep buying games, keep watching TV, keep going to the movies. Businesspeople would be fools to abandon a known quantity (the revenues of any sequel are easily predictable) in favor of new stories and fresh faces, not matter how much some of us would love to see them. To think that people will suddenly stop buying games because they're all sequels is silly; gamers really have no choice except not to play... and only in WarGames/I. is that a real option.
filmcritic.com - Movie reviews on Internet time
I think that Doom 3 doesn't really fall into the catagory of the other games.
1) Doom 3 is retro. The last Doom game came out while I was still in high school.
2) Doom 3 is a significant advance over the last sequel. It's not just new levels.
Saying Doom 3 is just a sequel is like saying Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was just a sequel. There's no comparison.
Still, I think that companies will start coming out with more creative games soon. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised of LARPing became the next big thing, and games that are offshoots of RPGs became bigger, such as the White-Wolf titles, only with more roleplay.
You know, video games are going the same way as radio -- more and more of the same crap, over and over and over again. No one wants to give anything new a chance, even though there's plenty of new stuff out there. The only difference is, I don't know that there's been much of a change in the corporate ownership structure in the video game industry like there has been in radio (i.e. the ClearChannel takeover). But then again, I suppose there wasn't much in the way of diversity in video game companies to start with, was there?
::Sigh::...if only companies weren't so damn risk-averse, maybe society could progress a bit.
The saddest thing about it is, if there were ever a new game that did what, say, Legend of Zelda did back in the 80's, the company that put it out could make zillions. It's not like they'd lose much putting out crappy stuff meanwhile, either.
How To Get Humans To Mars
This is not 100% true. Midway's trying to break away from the mold this year- check out their upcoming titles. The Suffering just came out- yes, the survival horror genre is a bit tired, but this one is at least trying to differentiate itself by being more action-oriented, having a branching plotline, other characters to interact with, meaningful decisions to make, etc.
:). But, seriously, it is a new IP with a completely new idea and (especially) a completely new play mechanic. There is no other game out there that plays like Telekenisis (the primary weapon in this game) plays. The closest thing I've seen is HL2's "magnet gun", but that is more of an engine show-off gimmick than an actual gameplay element.
Ballers is coming up soon- I've played it, and I can say it's like no other game I've really played before- like the previews keep saying, it plays like a fighting game/basketball hybrid of some sort.
And, last but certainly not least- coming up later in the year is Psi-Ops, which (ahem) is going to be fantastic
Anyway, point being it makes me sad to see this constant claim of no innovation in the industry when I feel like there are people out there trying to innovate. It's not their faul that, at the end of the day, innovation may not actually be what the public wants!
Nothing to see here.
Its more stuff like ThinkTanks, that feature kinda psuedo-unique gameplay that's a bit hard to master but very fun. Reminds me of the good old days of shareware games on DOS.
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
As someone that just left the game industry for the second time - this time 'cause I got tired of looking for a job that didn't require a minimum of 80 hour weeks working on either a n-th generation sequel or a game that tried to differentiate itself through pushing the gore / splatter level:
The problem is with the people FUNDING the game industry. The independent shops are being swallowed by companies that have made loads of cash getting away with pumping out sequels that have only minor engine improvements. This sucks, but worked for a while in a few profitable genres. Many companies that tried to push it died after too many generations (I used to work at Accolade, that's part of what killed them...)
Unfortunately, people that funds games look at this seeming no-risk model, and refuse to fund anything that doesn't look like the same. They all want you to license an existing engine, and make a game that can be described in a single sentence as {profitable game A } crossed with {profitable game B.}
If you don't follow this model, you don't get funds.
As a related point, there are WAY too many companies in the industry for the amount of shelf space available, and the big players BUY shelf space, so its nearly impossible to compete anyway without cutting a deal with an existing major distributor. Want to do that? Guess what, you have to change your game to follow the same model as everyone else.
In the mean time, the EA's and Sony's of the world are pushing their developers harder and harder - they've currently got a surplus of available headcounts to replace all the burnt out ones with...
The industry needs more "angel" funders. But in this economy...
Consider that men have been going to bars, drinking too much and going home with ugly women for thousands of years. (The oldest known human recipe is a Mesopotamian recipe for beer) Obviously humans can do what they like indefinately, even if they regret it the next morning.
Look around...
Why is music repetitive, cliche, formulaic?
Why are motions picture even worse... special effects fodder? Mindless, action packed fantasies, design scientifically to appeal to the male and pimply... in the never ending quest to suck dollars out of young people's pockets.
If anything... the games genre is even more clearly designed to go after that young male demographic, with a second wave of assault aimed at male adults (namely violent games that include some degree of sexually explicit content.)
What has always been at the bottom of human experience is the compelling story, the deep and moving experience, a chance to go, do, be something you might never get the chance of doing or being in this life. A great game, has to first be a compelling story... it has to have a context, which is artful, involving, absorbing. It has to create a viable universe that allows people to discover themselves newly, heroic, or antiheroic. There will always be new and compelling paradigms for human interaction.
One could combine existing game categories creating comletely new game types... one could come up with a new game genre all-together... The interactive novel, you press a button, and suddenly you're part of an interactive, compelling universe, a story driven by actions, choices, and an author's intent. A story that is complex. subtle, mysterious, that demands that you be smart, show finesse, and strength... Or maybe one could create a game which is a puzzle, where a team of players has to take elements, visual, linguistic (programmable code?), or alternately perceptual (music, motion, magic.) And combine them, related them, assemble them into a whole, a creation, a unique solution to the puzzle space. Then in an arena, teams compete, either for the love and appreciation of the spectators, or for some kind of game points... It took only a few seconds to invent something unique... A bright person could spin ideas out all day long... this isn't magic.
People... it's a wide open universe, you can do anything y'damn well please. The limitation of guaranteed profit (the worst kind of fallacy), or get in quick, get out quick, hit and run, sloppy. greedy half-assed attempts to shakedown the lusers, is it's own resolution. In the end, people will just walk away shaking their heads and find something else to do with their time and money.
It's not hard to create something unique. It's not hard to create something compelling and beautiful. It is however impossible to create anything that satisfies the bakers and beancounters, when the first contraint, is to make money without risk...
One more reason, to give people who aren't bound by the profit motive, the tools and space to create new and unique play environments.
Genda
click-clack, front and back. I'm not moving this car otherwise.
Damn, I wish these people would stop crying wolf for once. The gaming industry has doomed for over a decade and now, oh my gosh! It might shrink! Ok, lets break it down for the doomsayer-- Every market goes through phases, which are normally driven by what sells. If FPSs sell in the gaming industry, guess what you'll be seeing a lot of????? GASP! First Person Freakin Shooters!!! Eventially people will get tired of FPS. A new cycle begins. Something else sells. I mean think about it logically, do you think they would continue to make it if people weren't buying???
Come on, people, let's pull out heads out of our short term asses and realize:
-The Gaming Industry isn't doomed
-PC Gaming will not die out because of console competition
-The industry goes through cycles and there's no shortage of creativity
Oh yeah-- We'll be running out of oil in 25 years too.
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The way I see it the video game industry is analgous to the movie industry or music industry in general. In fact, we can group all of these under the heading "Entertainment Industry".
I will use the movie industry as an example and I believe the analogy will become fairly self evident. In the early phases of film making the director had to struggle with many technical issues as the art form was in it's infancy. Low light shots, grey balance, film processing, sound editing and duplication were enormous technical and logistical hurdles. As the technology of this artform became more complex, people involved became specialized in their particular niche of the process. The technical resources are now available to the director without the complete, in depth knowlege of each process. The director is free to focus on his particular job: making the best movie possible. (Please note, I'm not in the entertainment industry, I'm just hoping to make a point here)
A video game, without question, is a form of art and entertainment. I believe that the industry is still in a developing phase. In the beginning, the person programming the game WAS the director. Typically they concieved the game, developed, programmed and had the challenge of overcoming all technical and creative issues. (Relatively few creative issues, I might add [think: pong]).
Now the indusrty is seeing it's split of fields. People are now only responsible for texture mapping 3-d models. Other people work on physics engines. We have been seeing the specialization of technical fields within this industry. My arguement is that this specialization allows for greater creative freedom by those whose job it is to just "make great games".
Lastly, I think there have been a lot of crap games recently, but let's look at why that is. Well, why is it such a high percentage of early movies made are now considered classics? Well, they were good movies, but why? Because the people who made them were professionals and it was expensive to make a movie back then, so they took it seriously. Today, anybody with a DV Camcorder and iMovie can make a film, but how much of the stuff thats churned out is actually worth watching? It's the same with video games, the development and distribution costs of game making has dropped dramatically and the technology to produce games is now as easy as getting a developers kit and a PC.
Any discussion of the current state (or future) of the gaming industry without at least a footnote to the entertainment industries history, I think, is somewhat lacking perspective. I believe the industry is in an acceptable place, given its relatively short history.
Sequels are chosen because they're safer and more prone to make money. PC game publishers are worried because piracy is eating into sales so badly. Consoles are a little safer, particularly the Gamecube.
It's the great unspoken truth that Slashdot won't admit. Rampant game piracy is a problem. Look at all the stupid copy protection we have to go through. It is still insane to expect people to have to put in a game CD every time they play, but publishers make the development teams put them in.
He claimed that the RIAA is claiming that piracy is hurting sales, and then pointed out that their hand-wringing was contradicted by their continued success.
Be that as it may, I believe the grandparent's skepticism is well-founded. "Piracy" (what a terrible term) has -- according to pretty much every study that wasn't commissioned by payments from the major labels (and even a few that were) -- either a negligible or positive affect on sales.
I've never understood Slashdot's reasoning for this.
Well, first of all, -2 points for assuming that all of Slashdot has a single opinion on anything.
If you've never understood the reasoning behind people arguing that sharing a product also being sold doesn't automatically hurt sales, you are apparently unfamiliar with the concept of "advertising". You've also never read any of Janis Ian's or Cory Doctorow's essays on the matter -- two people in a position to actually be able to compare their sales figures before and after.
If you choose to remain ignorant of arguments being presented by either side, that's really not "Slashdot"'s problem.
How many have actually tried to develop a simple game? Compared to developing other end-user applications it is very difficult.
Even with access to a good high-level API, such as Managed DirectX, or a complete game engine, it is still very hard to get into the technologies behind the games. I remeber the first time I was writing a very simple game where the chararcter could walk around in a simple limited 3D world. I quickly gave up trying to get shadows working, and basic things such as gravity or collision detection was more difficult than I would've imagined. The easiest thing was actually the AI of the computer opponents.
What the gaming industry needs are simple tools and standards for creating games. Sure, there are a number of APIs and game engines available, but none is simple enough for a an average programmer to start with.
The problem with piracy in the gaming industry is also a problem. But I think the solution would be something like iTunes for games. And they have to get alot more cheaper. But that would come naturally when it becomes easier to develop games
Yes, this laugh-out-loud argument is something I've seen posted over and over.
It's not that laugh-out-loud. Take yourself out of the Clear Channel pop crap music section for, ohh about ten seconds. There's a whole world of tens of thousands of _great_, _original_ bands that you would never hear about, or be able to find the cd of if it weren't for file sharing. This holds true immensly for the underground scene. Let's enter this world for a moment.
I listen to dozens of bands from Europe and Japan that I would never have heard of if it wasn't for file sharing. They don't tour here. Their EP's and LP's arent distributed in the US at all; if we're lucky we might get 100 or so pressings that are quickly snatched up and resold on Ebay for 50 times their original price. In these cases, we have no other choice but to rely on our friends overseas to rip the albums and let us download them. Period.
Now, say one of those bands were to decide to tour in North America one summer. All of the fans would show up, pay $5 at the door, then buy every piece of vinyl and cotton that we could get our hands on. I'd easily blow $100 at a show if one of my favourite bands from Spain actually played a show in North America. (Hell, I'd spend $3k to fly over there and see them if I had that kind of money.) Multiply this by about 4 or 5 thousand.
Now, if it wasn't for file sharing, they wouldn't make a single dime from a tour over here, and would be lucky to draw a dozen people at a gig.
I think that more than makes up for "stealing" their work.
Underground and DIY artists and labels THRIVE on file sharing. The entire scene has literally EXPLODED in the past 4 years because of free advertising tools such as the internet and file sharing networks.
I've been in several bands that've cut albums. We put all our shit out for free on certain file sharing networks. Why? Because we play for the love of music, not for money. Download our shit, if you like us come to our next show; that's all we ask. Did we lose money? Nope. We made more and drew more at shows than we would have ever hoped to.
The plain fact is that kids aren't going to throw down their hard earned money on a band they've never heard, or don't know if they'll even like. They download it to try it out, and if they like it, you can bet damn well that those same kids are going to save up to have the real thing. Vorbis and MP3s can't touch the viceral qualities of a vinyl.
Those same kids are going to show up and pay at the door for every show you play, and buy every shirt and sticker and patch you sell. That's the truth. Of course if you suck, you won't be getting anything, but you're not losing any money either; chances are they wouldn't have bought your album in the first place.
As for the rest of the world: Clear Channel and your pop artists can fuck off; anyone who is stupid enough to pay for that shit should be shot.
The kids who download radio music and never buy the cd aren't music lovers. They would have never bought that cd in the first place, wouldn't have ever gone to a single concert, or bought a single piece of merch, period. For them mp3s are like a custom radio station that always plays what they want to hear. (and would be hearing for free anyway, so I don't see how it's stealing at all...) The labels and the RIAA are fooling themselves if they think otherwise.
It also goes without saying that major label artists as a whole make nothing from store sales of albums. That money goes straight to the label, the RIAA, and the publishers. Pop artists and bands make money from TOURING and MERCH sales. Most of them actually have to buy their CDs and merch back from the label and publisher to sell it at a show; it's pathetic really. It's sad but true that a band can put out a platinum *selling* album and end up in debt when it's all over, so don't for one second try to say that they're losing money from file sharing. It's not the bands losing money, it's the labels and the publishers
It was from 199? (before 1998) and it had no heroes and only small diversity in the teams. But the building and the order system were revolutionary, I'd say.
There were 2 switches for unit behaviour, that could be set per unit, directly, via a group selection or as a default for new units from a specific factory.
The first was aggression: always shoot, only shoot back, do never shoot and the second was allowed path deviance: break orders whenever aggression triggered, stray only lightly from the path, stay on orders no matter what.
That was perfect in my opinion, since you could easily create guards, patrols, offensive patrols and suicide missions without the need for any "pre-fab"-stances.
These stances also applied to non-combat units, since you had a multitude of construction vehicles, that were all able to interact with one another, automatically.
Set a constructor to shoot-all, and it will repair anything damaged and harvest any resource it sees along its patrol. Set path straying to light and it would only repair standing units and buildings, set it to liberal and it would follow damaged units until they are fully repaired, then returning to the next path vertex. And all would aid in construction buildings automatically.
Now imagine you do this with 20 construction aircrafts, that patrol your base, repair all buildings, repair all defense units, aid in all construction projects and harvesting minor resource thingies along the way.
Imagine another thing: you could set the aircraft factory with a predefined guard route and the stance behaviour, then assign some construction units to "guard" that factory. They will then aid in all construction projects this factory starts and will heal the factory if it gets damaged. Since there are 20 units helping, it churns out aircrafts extremely quick. All these go on an offensive patrol directly or meandering into enemy territory, sweeping anything away they see en-route. All this, while you concentrate on the main tank/battleship attack, resource expansion or a stealth operation behind the enemy.
This is automation and that's what I expect from todays games. Westwoods "Dune2 Battle for Arrakis" had essentially created the genre, but you had to click and command each and every unit on its own. Wasted mouse and brain of the avid gamer in less than 3 hours, but it was still a great game. Command & Conquer added a central build interface, unit grouping, hotkeys. Starcraft made this more RPG-like with clear values for each aspect of the units and allowed the first automations. "Attack ground" for a rapidly growing hydralisk army bred from 10 or more hatches was devastating against all but the most skillful micromanagers, since it used the most valuable resource in a realtime-strategy game - human attention.
Warcraft3 went leaps and bounds backwards. This game needs such a minute attention to details, micromanagement on all occasions, even special units to care and feed for and even an inventory to fill properly. Come on, I wouldn't consider this "strategic" anymore. Strategy is a concentration on overall goals, resource management, unit mix and attack plans. Warcraft is more like a tactical element on a smaller scale. If you like it that way, no problem. But it wasn't revolutionary on any aspects. It just consumed too much attention with no chance of recovery.
Strategic games shouldn't give the player the feeling of a trained hamster in a wheel. Recurring and trivial clicky-tasks should be assigned to some of the units in the game. "Repair all buildings damaged in the last whatever-storm" shouldn't involve more than 3 clicks. Let the player decide how much micromanagement he'd like to use. And through that, you not only make the game fun to play with, you also create possibilities for more discoveries and "real" skill & experience increase for the player as they find new ways to let the units interact. That way, you can win the game with less-than-perfect hand-eye-coordination since you don't compare click speed but some kind of "leadership"-qualities. At least it does not become a boring clickfest...
I've come up with several ideas for games which I would LOVE to play. They, of course, contain derivations at the lowest level, (for any computer game designer there are only two choices in only two categories; 3d/2d, (Doom vs Pac Man) and realist/iconic. (GTA vs Tic Tac Toe). You can jump/slide between degrees within both categories, and mix and match as you please. In the truest sense, of course, there is only 2d and iconic, as the screen is flat and points of light can only be representational. --I've yet to see a game where pixels are actually thought of as pixels. Sound is also a layer I consider to be largely under-exploited as a challenge/reward mechanism.
In any case, I certainly have game concepts which could be enormously enjoyable.
And guess what? I'm not the only guy with good ideas. Not by a long shot. I know a couple of game designers who cry, "There ARE cool new game concepts! Lots of them! It's just that they don't get any production and promotion money because financiers are too conservative!"
Money people would rather invest in a tried and proven concept than gamble on a new idea. New ideas come from weird people who don't fit in and who it is hard for people to overcome their self-protective herd mentality in order to listen to. This is self-evident. Financiers don't care about advancing the medium; they care about making their money back! If they cared about advancing the medium, they'd be Art and Design people. Not Money people.
Anyway, I don't really care. Computer games are a flimsy distraction from the much more vital and rewarding game of Life.
-FL