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Strange Attractor - On High Concepts For Games
Thanks to Scott Miller's Game Matters weblog for its article discussing how to design a game from the start with a 'winning concept'. Miller argues: "Too many games are sunk from day one because they lack a compelling concept. And even though these games may get made with the highest production values and polish, they will find only a small audience." He goes on to identify specific factors to follow, including uniqueness ("You should be able to say:'"Wow, why has anyone else thought of this?!'"), an easily conveyed premise ("e.g. Tomb Raider = female Indiana Jones"), and lack of obvious ancestry ("The concept is so distinctive that if anyone else does it after you, it'll be obvious where they got the idea from.")
How many times do you buy a game and get bored with it like after a week. Doom3 and manhunt are both examples of this. They are more worried about special effects rather than the backbone of the game i.e. the storyline. I find myself drawn to games i have played to death rather then new games that I buy. Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice city are both games I can play over and over while others such as Doom3 i get bored with. I guess the same can be said about the movie industry and lack of quality movies with poor storylines. I say if they spent less time on graphics and more on storyline then the problem will be less severe.
wow, why has anyone else replied to this?
What baffles me is why there aren't more games out there that use traditional literary modes as bases for plot. I'm dying to play a good Raymond Chandler-esque game; imagine a game based on something by Kafka. A game based on Snow Crash would be killer, too. But what do they stick on the shelf? Deer Hunter XXIII and GenericFPS 12. Bah.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
"Wow, why has anyone else thought of this"
I believe this can be attributed to a conglomerate assault on intelligence by game publishers. We don't need another mind-numbingly crappy FPS or one more turd of a platformer with assorted effeminate woodland-creature antiheroes and wise-cracking marsupial side-kicks. Show innovation, please. Or offer a free lobotomy with the game.
One of these things is not like the others.
It's tragic. Laugh.
I think that there are also a lot of games out there which have good concepts but could become great games with more polishing. Example - Prince of Persia : The sands of time. It was a style of game that had seemingly been beaten to death, espically with the failure of Prince of Persia 3D, but the latest iteration was absolutely phenominal. Novel doesn't necessarily equal good, but because of all the crap that comes out that when something is different, that's considered good because it's not something that's disapointed us before.
The game players buy those same old (or atleast very similar) games again and again because they enjoy it. People who bought Doom 1 and enjoyed it will buy Doom 2 because they liked the first one, and want something a little new, perhaps some new weapons, monsters, and levels.
Not every game has to be extremely original and revolutionary. Many games do very well simply by being what the customers enjoy playing, even if they shamelessly copy a previous successful game.
Obviously in those cases, the games need to be built well (of course there were dozens of Doom 1 clones, but not many of them were created well enough to be as enjoyable as the Doom series).
Yes, it's a shame that very few publishing companies will go out on a limb for a new game concept, but it's not a terrible shame that game players are getting what they want from the same old games with new titles.
I sort of disagree with Scott Miller.
;)
If some gaming company came out with an X-Wing clone in which the gameplay mechanics were exactly the same as the original X-wing, with no gameplay enhancements or innovations, and yet the graphics and sound were out of this world, and there was a new and compelling plot, I would buy the shit out of it.
I don't think a game has to be innovative. Just really damn fun. I don't think Zelda: A Link To The Past was innovative. It was basically The Legend of Zelda with some graphical bells and whistles and a more cartoony/fun world. But damn if it wasn't fun.
Huh? All the truly original games that I've played recently have completely tanked, sales-wise. Ico, Rez, Noone Lives Forever, you name it.
For comparison's sake, let's take a look at some data on successful games. Top sellers of 2003, according to NPD.
1. Madden 2004
2. Pokemon Ruby
3. Pokemon Sapphire
4. Need for Speed Underground
5. Wind Waker
6. Vice City
7. Mario Kart: Double Dash
8. Tony Hawk's Underground
9. Enter The Matrix
10. Medal of Honor
Of these, I know that 7 are sequels -- some to strikingly original games, I must admit -- and 1 is a (bad) movie adaptation. Anyone want to weigh in on Medal of Honor and Need for Speed? As far as I know, they're respectively Just Another WWII shooter and Just Another Racing Title.
The 2002 Top Sellers:
1. Vice City
2. Metroid Prime
3. WWE: Shut Your Mouth
4. Tony Hawk 4
5. Yu-Gi-Oh! Eternal
6. Madden 2003
7. Splinter Cell
8. Lord of the Rings
9. Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance
10. Metroid Fusion
Six sequels, one movie adaptation, one original game (Splinter Cell) and again, two I'm unsure of, Yu-Gi-Oh and "Shut Your Mouth."
I'm not seeing a compelling case here for practically every top-selling game having a compelling and unique concept; I'm seeing the opposite.
Speaking as a content creator myself...
Simple and cool is the toughest thing to do in movies, music and video games. Hell, make that the toughest thing to find in *all* software, laws or even women. That's why if you succeed in finding that core concept of simple and cool, the rest is just getting out the games' way and not messing it up.
Everything is tied to everything else, so it's usually only with hindsight that you can see that, for example, GTA III is really very unlike any of the first person shooters, adventure games, or racers that it borrowed its' core concepts from.
This kind of transcendance isn't anything you can plan or control, either. They key, as with anything supposedly creative, is inspiration. An truly inspired effort will either produce a new kind of game like GTA 3 or Wolfenstein 3D, or games like Halo or Warcraft 3, old concepts but still a blast to play.
Ultimatley what shovelware, movie licenses and sequels tend to lack is a distinct sense of inspiration.
Occasionally though, an ambitious developer's reach exceeds their grasp. I've seen many underserving developers get alot of flak thrown their way, I wish that more gamers were aware of the big picture.
Yes, we all love seeing the paradigm shift, but let's face it, that's really rare. I'll take a great old game anyday.
The practice of successful innovative games show that it is other way around. Most of successful innovative games weren't designed with winning concept form start, but went through a lot of iterations during which the central concept changed a lot. IIRC first iteration of the Civilization design was a real-time game.
They sell what you want to buy. New ideas do appear from time to time. Usually they get ignored in favour of Deer Hunter or Doom 3.
Very occasionally a new game appears that captures people's imaginations, but by and large - what people want is sports sims and FPS.
You'er very vague, by the way - what _kind_ of game based on Kafka? What game mechanics are we talking about? What viewpoint?
My Journal
The article draws an apt parallel with the movies. Unfortunately, if movie design is like game design, coming up with a unique concept is a surefire way to have troubles getting funding. Remember the opening scene of "The Player", where Tim Robbins' character, a movie producer, gets pitched many ideas? They all start with statements like "It's like Die Hard meets Pretty Woman". Publishers like what they know works. Publishers hate new concepts. True, a new concept might bring lots of money, but chances are it will be a terrific dud. Only publishers that have money to spare (in your dreams) dare to invest in original concepts. And they will only give money for an original concept to a development studio that has a successful record. Yeah, I too wish it were different.
I think ideally you want open-ended gameplay with a good story line no matter how you're playing through the game. Perhaps like Deus Ex {I don't know, I just started playing through it, it's just what I've heard}.
Your point with DOOM/Max Payne is good, but if someone likes that game play, as you liked DOOM's, then maybe they would play it over and over.
And now for a personal example: Playing GTA3, I got tired of the missions, they got too hard and too repetitive. While the story line was decent, I wanted fun, so I went exploring instead of continuing the story line.
The original poster said storyline in the usual 'storyline vs graphics' debate. I choose my usual position which is 'fun,' or, the long version 'I don't care as long as the game is fun.'
done
He goes on to identify specific factors to follow, including uniqueness ("You should be able to say:'"Wow, why has anyone else thought of this?!'")
an easily conveyed premise ("e.g. Tomb Raider = female Indiana Jones "),
and lack of obvious ancestry ("The concept is so distinctive that if anyone else does it after you, it'll be obvious where they got the idea from.")
*head explodes*
was the M*A*S*H game for the 2600, you had to go around rescuing falling patients from helicopters at first. Then after you were done with that, you had to go into the "operating room" and operate on terrified patients(well, that was the look in his mono-color body anyway) and remove a little pink thing. If you were successful, you went outside again. Good times....good times....
I guess he knows all about lack of innovation, seeing as how he built Apogee on "me too" concepts. ;-) Where's Duke NukeEm Forever?
Does originality really sell games? Look at some killer apps, games that were a reason to buy the requisite system. Super Metroid for the SNES, Zelda and Mario for the N64, Final Fantasy VII for the PSX, Final Fantasy X and Gran Turismo A-Spec for the PS2, and Halo for the XBox. Is any one of these games original? No! They were, however, huge steps forward in the evolution of their genres. I would argue that what gamers want isn't originality; we want the application of a familiar concept in the ideal way, with everything fine-tuned to perfection. That isn't to say that originality is wasted, however. Originality has its place, but generally an original concept lacks the extra layer of polish that a game in an established genre (or series) has. Look at FPS games, for instance. Doom was good, but Duke Nukem 3D took the concept and ran with it, offering countless innovations and expansions of the concept that just wouldn't have worked in the genre's infancy. Quake evolved on the Doom concept by making it truly 3D, but then Half-Life came around and took the FPS concept to new levels. The new generation has Halo, which hones the concepts familiar to FPS players with a new layer of polish and balancing. Each of these games did original things in their genres, but they managed to stay within well-defined boundaries, and that's why they were able to evolve the concept so well. True innovation requires a generation or two to work out all of the kinks, and therefore the really innovative games are very rarely top sellers, but such innovation is required to lay the foundation for the evolution of gaming.
This sig has been stolen. Return it to its original user for a reward.
I loved this game and the simulated MMORPG feel to it, plus i didn't have to worry about network stuttering.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Has anyone attempted a female James Bond, yet?
Yes
The Operative in No one lives forever fits the bill. An great game with a compelling story that for some reason is overlooked a lot. Its sort of a tribute/spoof of the old 60 spy movies/TV shows with a female protaganist. The in-jokes are worth the price of the game alone. (especially the used PS2 games)
If you really want to make a lasting impression, you have two paths to choose.
1) Innovate, and develop a new genre of game. (Example: GTA series)
2) Bring an existing genre to a level of maturity previously unattained. (Example: Half-Life)
That being said, there is nothing wrong with doing "another FPS" as long as it brings something worthwile to the table. Half-Life is an excellent example of this. It pushed the FPS genre to a higher level of maturity without fundamentally changing the genre.
And he has a right to be. Apogee was built by carefully branding solid action games with memorable characters, and then marketing them through shareware. By being non-generic Apogee's titles always stood out in the marketplace.
I think his grasp of gameplay, on the other hand, can be kind of shaky...
Was the typo in the title intentional?
As the title says, I bought my psx just to play Silent Hill, and have not played any other games for a year or so. Never played a Final Fantasy, not the kind of games I like.
Woops, lost in my zeal.
There've been numerous post about declining PC game sales and companies going out of business. It seems clear that in many cases game companies aren't giving us stuff that we want to buy. The reasons that people are gravitating towards sequals is in part because many of the games out there are just ripoffs of a popular game. In the field of less well known games we have a large number of crappy copy-cat games and a few fun original games. After getting riped off for a few $100s trying to find a decent game in the forest of lame ones, one finds themself either sticking to known brands or resorting to piracy to keep from wasting money.
From 2002: You lump Metroid Prime as a sequel. True, there have been many Metroid games, but Metroid Prime (MP) was unique compared to the rest of the Metroid series. It was a 3D First Person Adventure, opposed to the rest which were side scolling adventure games. It's not a First Person Shooter as there is no skill needed to aim and shoot. I would consider it to be an innovative game.