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The Fight for Original Games
PC.IGN is running a piece by Douglass Perry on the Fight for Original Games. In the article, the author examines the trends that have led to a slew of sequels, franchises, and movie industry tie-ins in the gaming industry of late. From the article: "...depending on who you speak with, the videogame industry is either reaching the most impressive convergence of its entire 30-plus year old existence, or it's falling into a never-ending death spiral of sequel-heavy, rehashed, franchise dominated blocks of stinking cheese."
Same for TV - getting and original idea out there if quite difficult. Star trek x 3, CSI x 3, Big brother, clean/decorate my house.
500 channels all showing similar stuff...
Related article on Gamespy from Tim Schafer's recent presentation. My favorite quote:
What disturbed him the most was this actual quote from an executive at a large publisher: "This is really great. This is creative. It's too bad people aren't going for creative stuff right now."
Music. Unless you're new to it, the big bands lack real variety (with rare exceptions). The problem isn't the musicians, it's the way music is chosen and played on the radio. The consumer doesn't have a say in it, even though they're the ones who buy, by definition. The big companies keep buying the independent, bona-fide, mp3 repositories where you can listen or buy indie music with the artists permission.
To learn from our mistakes with music, we need to try out independent software now and then. That's where the unique ideas are. The more people try and buy, the more independent concepts will be "spruced up" for the mainstream by a publisher. After all, who wants to spend $50 on an untested concept?
As for sequels, if the publisher can't describe "What's new and unique with the sequel?" It probably shouldn't be published.
The game industry is funded and run by people who don't play games. At all. They read reviews and have focus groups with people off the street that play games and then make decisions based off of that data.
Once you know that, the rest makes sense in a strange and depressing way.
Software development is never finished for the most part. Games are about developing engines and possibly telling a story. Any engine can be extended.
This really started with Nintendo. Super Mario 1-3 anyone? Even though 2 (US) was based on a completely different engine, no one complains about originality. Maybe Metal Gear Solid (1-3) would be a modern equivalent. Tetris was oringal. It was followed by Dr. Mario and friends.
I also like to play older games, but I'll play a newer version if it exists. I played Pirates (for Nintendo) into the ground. Having played the new PC version, I can safely say I simply like it better and there's no feature that I really miss from the previous game (and it even fixes some of the balance issues...like dividing up the plunder after "accidently" killing off your crew).
Final Fantasy, however, is an exception. While people bemoan lack of originality, anyone who was around when FF7 came out remember the fan boys being upset because it departed from the rest of the series. The newest one isn't even single player like the rest of the series (little known fact: FF6 (FF3 US SNES) could be 2 player). The only thing every game has in common is being an RPG, involving magic, story-driven (rather than open-ended and choice driven) and some guy named Cid.
If I wanted to say there was a lack of originality in games, I would instead say that there's not been a genre-founding game in a while. Mario, Tetris, Wolfenstein, Warcraft, Civilization, Ultima Online, Dragon Warrior, and even GTA (the original) all founded new genres of games. Can anyone name a new genre that's been made in the past 5 years? The only thing I can even come up with is Dance Dance Revolution.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Excepting that with the exception of Final Fantasy X-2 each of the FF games are original games and not sequals, well almost. They all have many things in common, but FF is almost a genre of its own. Its like saying this one game is a space combat game, but that doesn't make it a sequal to X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter or that it is going to be any less original then X-Com, or soemthing like that, it just means that its a game that has combat in space. Saying a game is a FF game, just means that it has some features that are in other FF games.
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