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Strange Attractor - On High Concepts For Games

Posted by simoniker on from the duke-of-earl dept.

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.")

6 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. Its all the same by Schwing84 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Its all the same by DeadboltX · · Score: 5, Insightful

      so you're saying gta has an awsome storyline and that is why you play it over and over again? I have a feeling it is more because it is open ended and you can run around doing whatever you want to kill time I played doom1 and doom2 over and over again relentlessly as many people did, and it wasn't because it had an awesome storyline, it was because the gameplay was fun I think storyline actually kills replay value. Take a look at max payne 1 and 2, sure they were fun games and were packed full of story, but The last thing I want to do is play the game over again when I beat it. It may take a year or longer before I feel like playing the game again.

  2. No, you don't get it. by Hamled · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. me = devil's advocate? by TheAdventurer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Concept gaming by oskillator · · Score: 5, Informative
    From the article:
    If you think about the best selling games in recent years, practically all of them have a compelling, unique concept.

    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.

    ... Madden 2004, Christ.

  5. It's the inspirado by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.