Games We've Never Seen Before

anaesthetica writes "The Christian Science Monitor is carrying a story on new directions in game design. The article notes that big gaming companies are not pushing innovation beyond taking advantage of newer hardware. New areas of innovation are coming from education, training, and online communities." From the article: "Online games have the potential to transform entertainment into a global-community exercise, breaking down borders, cultural and language barriers, and even political prejudices...I doubt any other form of entertainment holds out that promise...We have only scratched the surface of what [interactive entertainment] can be."

Comments

Make Something New

[mfh]

Video-game industry mulls over the future beyond shoot-'em-ups

3d immersive shooters have only really been around since Quake came out, for about a decade. Pretty much anything before Quake wasn't realized fully as games like Doom were missing the x/y/z components (and BSP AND lighting, for that matter).

Quake took the games industry by storm because it was the first true-3d game. Everyone had to eventually crank out their branded version of pretty much the same experience, twisted by the trends as they kept going towards the Counterstrike model of gaming.

Now we are overloaded with video game shelves filled with crap. Why?

Because nobody is inventing anything new. They are banking on what sells because the high cost of getting a new game on a shelf to begin with. This isn't the 80's when you could make two red square blocks fight a little jagged octagon shape, and bring home some big bucks doing it. You've gotta put millions into R&D and all that other jazz just to turn a profit. That's where companies like Id Software come in, who spend all their time working on the technology and only a sliver on the story anymore.

They are making it easier for games companies to get in, but you still have to come to the table with a pile of cash before you can launch anything at all. Back to LCD: Shooters.

"We need games with better stories, more interesting and complex characters; games that keep you up at night wrestling with whether you made the right ethical or moral choices," says Doug Lowenstein, president of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA).

I disagree, Doug. I have to make these choices in life -- I play games to escape life. That's what you guys have been doing WRONG this WHOLE TIME. Make a game where I can escape into a terrific story that lets me showcase myself and MY PERSONAL TALENT. I'll pay for THAT game. Not your moral ethics quandaries... they are simply boring to me.

Re:Make Something New

[mrchaotica]

I disagree, Doug. I have to make these choices in life -- I play games to escape life. That's what you guys have been doing WRONG this WHOLE TIME. Make a game where I can escape into a terrific story that lets me showcase myself and MY PERSONAL TALENT. I'll pay for THAT game. Not your moral ethics quandaries... they are simply boring to me.

I don't know about that -- I like the kind of game that makes me think, for the same reason I like Science Fiction: it's something more interesting to think about than everyday life.

Re:Make Something New

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just so cool these days to say 'nobody is inventing anything new'. Maybe you'd like to tell me just where you'd like the games to go?

A first-person game is just a rat-in-a-maze game. No matter what, you can never go beyond that because of the nature of the game. Some people try to 'add more' to it but the end result is the following:

You see what some avatar sees. The avatar goes where you say. You have a keyboard, a mouse and a computer screen with which to drive the avatar. Some games try the role-playing angle, letting you collect items, talking to NPCs. Some games focus on taking a very linear game and making it extremely immersive. Some games focus on speed, reflexes, etc.

Contrast Morrowind (a first-person RPG), Half Life 2 (a first-person linear cinematic shooter) and Serious Sam (a first person twitch shoter). They each try to do something different and do it well enough to sell lots and lots of copies.

Now, why should this be a BAD thing? The consumer demands a game that taxes their hardware. Sure, you can sit on your high Slashbot horse and say "*I* know better than the whole industry, and *I'm* convinced there's nothing to whats on the game shelves"

Guess what? People have been whining about 'the same rehashed crap' for as long as there have been video games. Platform run-n-jump games, puzzle games, drop-the-block games, sports games.. Your arguments are no better now than they were a decade ago.

The reason a genre is called a genre is because it describes a whole sector of the gaming market. Of the games within a genre, some are tired rehashes. Guess what, you don't have to waste your money on them. Find the games that are *worth playing* (and try-before-you-buy has never been easier in this day of Internet/Gaming cafes) and buy them instead.

It's like people complaining about movies. Sure, a lot of movies are the same generic blockbuster action smash-n-bang flick. And then there are the movies that are a little different, do something to make you think or make you feel.

Spend your dollars as you see fit. Or just sit here on /. and whine about your apparent lack of options. In either case, I'm sick to death of people talking about the death of 'original' computer gaming.

Re:Make Something New

[Afrosheen]

NPC's exist because they take on jobs nobody could possibly find fun or entertaining. Being a blacksmith or an inn keeper would be dead boring. You sit in one spot and make do one task. Yay.

Then again some people don't get enough repetitive button pushing in everyday life. Who am I to judge?

Re:Make Something New

[Elsebet]

when are they going to come out with the MMORPG where I can play as the dragon, or the inn keeper, or the weapon master? The real future of gaming is to elliminate the NPGs ion favour of humans.

You are correct, however MMORPG design is fundamentally different from normal game design due to the fact that MMORPG success is based on continual subscription volume. If it does not turn a profit, it is no longer a valid MMORPG design scheme. Allowing freedoms like true roleplaying (as you stated) is one of the casualities of such a system.

I have to believe the designers of MMORPGs wish to make a fun game, however the drives of profit force them into artificial downtimes, treadmills, and tedium in order to keep active subscriptions. Content and fun is not high on the agenda.

I too would like to see a living, breathing world in a game. Even Morrowind suffered a bit from the static NPC's who never moved, ate, or slept. Everquest 2 has hints of this (cats chase mice, children chase pets, etc) but it's very rudimentary at this point. I would like to see an entire NPC marriage occur in town, and a celebration in the town square follow. I would like to see crowded nightclubs in a sci-fi setting where you could pay in-game funds to request music from the DJ or a digital library. There should always be a budget in a quality online RPG for a live acting team to create dynamic content (similar the all-volunteer ARK event team in Anarchy Online).

Day/night cycles should have an impact on the world, as should weather. A game world should be alive to the point that simply sitting in town is entertaining. NPC's, player characters, and a live acting team all play a part in that.

However with most media enjoying enormous profits even for mediocre content (think Britney Spears or most box office releases) the threshold will take a bit to rise to that state in the online RPG arena. After all even after 5 years of EQ you still have to slay legions of the same boring mobs in WoW and Everquest 2. Now you just have the savory guise of questing to sweeten the stale broth.

Geez

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not graphics and such over gameplay people. Look at FF3. That game beat all with 2d graphics. It still does. Id rather play that than over blown crap like Luigis Mansion or Mario Sunshine

Re:Geez

[UserChrisCanter4]

I'm going to pick on AC here for a minute, because every time any article such as this is posted, people trot out the ol' "Gameplay rules over graphics argument."

You're correct. Gameplay does trump graphics. In a purely theoretical world, if given choice A or B, almost everyone would choose gameplay over graphics. Fortunately, we don't live in that world.

Further, when people create this dichotomy, they ignore the fact that graphics have an enormous amount of power in enabling good gameplay. Without the simple hardware power increases of the last five years, many of the great games from that same timeframe wouldn't have happened.

Take Grand Theft Auto 3/Vice City/SA, for example. People love the storylines, and the satirical look at the world, but both of those chracteristics were present in GTA 1 and 2. Neither of those games was particularly succesful at all compared to the last three. The sense of immersion was provided by a major jump in graphical capability that afforded the developers the ability to create an extremely immersive environment. In GTA 2, you could still choose to abide by the laws or mow down pedestrians, take alternate missions as you desired, and run amok with a gun or just listen to humorous radio DJs. The only difference was that the whole game took place from a top-down perspective. Arguably, every gameplay aspect of Grand Theft Auto would be do-able on a Sega CD, but I guarantee you it simply wouldn't be as much fun. I enjoy GTA 2, but it can't come close to holding my interest like GTA 3.

Or we'll take Katamari Damacy, a game that will entertain almost anyone. The gameplay and quirky charm is what draws everyone in, but I'll lay straight out that said gameplay simply wouldn't have been possible with the graphical power of the PS1. Seeing individual objects rolled up in the katamri wouldn't be possible. Without the smooth zooming transitions of the camera, the gameplay and control would suffer significantly. Critics would refer to it as a solid idea that was poorly executed, and they'd be absolutely correct. Again, gameplay here is great, but it relies on the graphical capability of good hardware to make it work.

There are still plenty of simple gameplay improvements left to tweak that will rely on quality graphical capability. I want to see truly, totally deformable environments in an RTS. I want to be able to blast through a building to create an alternate path for my units, or fell that building to block the advance of enemy troops. I want randomized chunks of metal flying off of an exploding tank that can wound surrounding personnel. Realistically, both of those ideas could be implemented in a simple top-down strategy game, but they won't have that truly realistic feel until I can see the size of the building in relation to the troops, or until I can shoot out the corner to drop a chunk on te enemy. Just like GTA would be do-able on a SegaCD, those ideas would be do-able in the original Command and Conquer, but they're not going to have that same truly satisfying feel until they're implemented in full 3D with the proper accompanying physics.

FPSes would benefit from those same characteristics, so it's not as though they're immune from this issue, either. Yes, gameplay is king, but please don't create an argument that forces graphics to the other side. Many gameplay ideas simply need good quality graphics behind them before they can be properly implemented.

Art vs. Concept

[NickHydroxide]

The problem with the large volume of sub-par games being churned out today is the budget. From TFA, millions of dollars to develop a game is no longer unreasonable.

The problem is where this money is directed. I'm pretty sure the code monkeys at EA aren't seeing much of this. Distribution/production costs I'm sure haven't changed in the past 5 years (and if they have, I would be certain that they would have decreased). Ridiculous amounts of money are being shoved at top level executives and art designers.

If the focus is shifted from game art back into development of the actual game concepts themselves, then innovation will return. Naturally that's not to discount the necessity or preference for the look of a game, but it should never come at the cost of gameplay. This is why HL2 was received quite well, but Doom III wasn't. The latter looked slick, but all in all felt like House of the Dead in a 2 metre wide corridor. The former looked gorgeous, was amazingly engaging and interesting.

Independent development and (to an extent) open source game design can assist in these areas. Honestly, a successful publishing company would trawl the net looking for innovative independent developers, snatch them up and give them a budget to produce a game. The industry has outgrown itself and needs to consolidate to remember what games are for: FUN.

Re:Art vs. Concept

[vaporakula]

Shame this is really hard to get across to the consumer.

There's a really good track record of games that looked brilliant but played poorly selling well; very few manage to look bad, play well and sell amazingly.

(I'd say your off mark with the comment about the art directors getting huge chunks of cash, btw - replace with Marketting and you're bang on the money. In a typical dev studio, the top programmer will earn as much / more than the top artist - depends on the studio tho, admittedly)

all i want to know

[harlemjoe]

all i want to know is... when can we have adventure games back?

they can't be that expensive to develop -- i don't know about you guys but I liked guybrush threepwood better in 2D.

Re:all i want to know

[yotto]

Google for 'interactive fiction' and play all the free, immersive, good text-adventure games you could ever possibly want.

Break down cultural borders indeed

[B1ackDragon]

Online games have the potential to transform entertainment into a global-community exercise, breaking down borders, cultural and language barriers, and even political prejudices...

Didn't they say that was what the internet was supposed to do?

New Concepts

[Jace of Fuse!]

In case anyone hasn't pointed it out, there are plenty of new and exciting concepts in gaming coming out all of the time.

It's just that the non-game-playing world doesn't notice much. Instead, they read articles by people who oveiously don't really play too many games complaining that gaming has become stale.

This isn't to say that the majority of games AREN'T stale, but there are still some new and interesting concepts in gaming coming out all of the time. You just have to be willing to try an obscure title from time to time.

Katamari Damacy and Yoshi Touch-n-Go are two recent games that stand out in my mind as really original ideas.

Games with a story

[Spy der Mann]

Make a game where I can escape into a terrific story

That's what's been missing. Good stories. I liked FF-X for example, but then it got tedious. I'd like a game with more story so that I could interact with other characters. More story, less leveling up.

Funny quote from article

[core_dump_0]

"Even in a popular war game such as 'World of Warcraft,' if you have a strong character and a newbie comes into the game, you have to take care of him and help him out," he says. "The strong character gets stronger by taking care of the weaker."

Like that really happens in online games.

Re:All is not sweetness and light

[DroopyStonx]

Here's a bit of what I call "the truth":

If anyone's racism or nationalism is even REMOTELY affected by something like Guildwars and the "Favor of the Gods" message, then they are fucking idiots.

The end.

Re:Over

[NanoGator]

" Video games and other interactive media will never surpass textual resources for quality."

Erm okay. I don't buy that as an absolute. Teaching requires interacting with the student. Textual resources offer some interesting abilities here. However, it's not a safe assumption that this is correct every single time. I've actually watched kids pick up and grasp ideas they couldn't get from a book from simple Apple II games. Why did it work? a.) It was made interesting to the kids and b.) the games presented the information in a way the kids could really quickly wrap their minds around. Text books are fine and dandy, but they're not a one-size-fits-all approach.

"Give me a book any day. You can have your flash, video games, and propreitary applications."

Give me all of the above. A mix of all three has led me to indepdent study. Right now, I'm an animator for a full-length animated movie. Books got me interested in the story making process. TV/Movies got me interested in how the visuals are captured. (Special FX, filming actors, etc.) Video games got me interested in interaction and UI design. So now I'm writing tools to make the process smoother.

Nothing wrong with having multiple options.

I don't play games for innovation

[AutopsyReport]

I play team FPS games for the interaction with my teammates, the dedication, dependencies, communication, and so forth. I've been playing several games now with the same group of guys for almost 4 years. Independent of the game(s) we play, the best fun I have is competing in their company against other teams. It's the spirit of competition which keeps me coming back, not innovation.

Let's face it: the luxury of playing an innovative game will wear off quicker than the lettering on your keyboard. The nature of gaming is that the more you play it, the more the novelty of how good it is wears off and the stimulus that made it innovative are now stimulus which don't draw any larger effect than shooting a gun in an FPS.

I can understand the need for innovation, but at least for FPS games, the innovation is in the strategies you employ and the techniques you use to become good at the game.

I'd like to see more games that emphasize the need for relationship-building, not games where you can collect gold on your own and ignore all others.

Re:All is not sweetness and light

[WillAdams]

``It's amazing people can fit so much prejudice into such little minds.''

William

As a game developer,

[Aggrav8d]

I'm sick of hearing everybody say that innovation is dead and nobody is trying to innovate, for two reasons:

1. Inventing is hard. Admitedly I can only speak from personal experience based on a budget of pocket lint, hardware rivaled by 2600s, and a social life outdone by hermits.

2. There's a lot of innovation happening out there if you stop reading glossies at the 7-11 and playing multinational-controlled consoles. This is the same reason I'm tired of hearing "pc gaming is dead" FUD. Plenty of independent shareware developers are quietly pushing the boundaries and pcs are one of the only places they're allowed free reign.

Multinationals have been keeping a stranglehold on the tech specs and apis for their hardware since day one and I've been struggling to figure out why. My best guess so far is because they don't believe they would benefit if they gave up a little control. There is no evidence to prove this belief but, imho, when you're a mega corporation the mere shadow of risk is enough to send you screaming in the other direction.

If you want to see a lot of innovation check out a 48 hour game making contest, or find an indie developer's website and start hunting through the affiliates. Tucked away in those dark, mossy corners of the web are some really cool things with no eyes that wriggle and glisten.

Re:Christian Science Monitor?

[xutopia]

Wouldn't you question their motives if a retarded islamic group created a news source? Wouldn't they have something in mind other than just showing you the story?

If any religious group decides to control a news source don't you think that they might be doing it to get yet another outlet for self-promotion?

-> got karma to lose -

Everytime I hear this...

[edremy]

I'm reminded of the old saying that there are only 7 book plots. I've got a freaking house full of books despite the fact there hasn't been any real innovation in content, story or characterization for a hundred years or more.

I don't care if something is "Innovative". I care if it's good. Two examples: Serious Sam and Morrowind. Was either remotely innovative? SS was a self-parody of shoot-em-ups. Morrowind was innovative only in the expanse of the game- there was nothing there that hadn't been done a dozen times before.

But both were fun. Thinking back, the last "innovative" games I really enjoyed were Thief and System Shock 2, and I'd be happy to play an SS3 or another Thief not crippled by XBox compatibility.

As far as online play transforming everything, I don't really want to play a game that requires a lot of interaction with other people around the globe- I've got two young kids, a wife, a job and a house to take care of. Every online game I've seen seems to assume that you have none of those and that you'll just spend 60+ hours a week in your guild.

Irrelevant

[pandrijeczko]

Online games have the potential to transform entertainment into a global-community exercise, breaking down borders, cultural and language barriers, and even political prejudices...

Correct me if I am wrong but most, if not all, on-line games are populated by users who log on with nicknames or anonymously. In other words, unless you were to do some serious analysis work, you probably have no idea of the skin colour, race or location of other people in the same game as you.

I get the impression that 99.9% of the human population just "gets on with it" irrelevant of skin colour and it's the politicians and publicity-seeking quangos like the Christian Science Monitor that feel the need to create racial barriers.

In a kind of related subject, on a UK radio phone in show last week, a topic was discussed concerning one of the UK National Health Service Trusts (= hospitals) that is making a decision to remove the left bibles from the cabinets next to patient beds due to the risks of inciting racial tension from non-Christian, specifically Muslim, patients. Most of the callers to the show were Muslims, all of them said that they have no problems with bibles next to bedsides, in fact most of them said they respect the bible as a "holy book". A few even commented that it's the politicians themselves trying to stir up racial tensions because they themselves have no problem with this.

I suggest the Christian Science Monitor would be better employed looking at the lack of morals and social responsibility amongst a great proportion of people in today's society rather than poking it's fat Christian nose into matters it has no knowledge about.

Nice fantasy, now welcome to Real World

[Moraelin]

Why do people treat it like it's a "Gameplay or Graphics" choice? Because that's the budget choice that publishers make every day, that's why.

Every extra polygon in models costs man-hours, which means dollars. Every new quest scripted into the game, or every fork in the plot if you want non-linear games, or every alternate way to solve a quest, that's dollars too. Every week spent tweaking the gameplay or balance, now that's _big_ bucks.

And it all ads up. You can't have everything.

Yes, it would be nice to live in a fantasy wonderland where developpers are given enough time and budget to make everything just right and perfect: the best possible graphics (including someone modelling all the chunks and the interiors of the buildings you want to blow holes in), _and_ the perfectly tuned gameplay, _and_ plenty of interesting and unique quests. Quite a nice fantasy, I'll admit. But in the Real World it won't happen.

In the Real World, whatever you do will be a compromise. To put extra money in X, you have to give less budget to Y. To hire an extra scripter for the quests, you give up one artist for the graphics. Or more often viceversa.

Even inside one such category it's a compromise. You could make your game as vast and full of quests like Morrowind, but on the flip side they'll be all generic fed-ex quests and all NPCs will say the same deliberately generic one-size-fits-all lines. Or you could make every quest unique and each area unique like the Tribunal expansion pack to Morrowind, but then it will be a _lot_ smaller. Or have something in between like Bloodmoon. As I've said, it's all a compromise.

But back to the "Graphics vs Gameplay" choice, that _is_ the story of the last decade straight.

What do you think was _really_ the reason why FPS exploded, while a _growing_ market like adventure games was dropped by Sierra and the rest? Yes, more people were buying adventure games than ever, yet that genre skirted with extinction. You know why? Because of that budget choice. Licensing a 3D engine, slapping together a bunch of graphics for it, and calling it a game was cheap. Scripting a complex adventure game was more expensive _and_ didn't leave you enough budget for flashy graphics to flood the screenshot sites with.

Gameplay is even more so. Coming up with something even vaguely original _and_ tweaking the gameplay and controls to be just right, is something that takes lots of testing, lots of tweaking, which all means lots of money. Licensing a 3D engine, and just putting new skins on the monsters and weapons of whatever game sold well last year, meant you had to invest exactly 0$ in gameplay. So everyone and their grandma took that route.

So there you go: _that_ is what and why some of us are ranting about. Because the "gameplay or graphics" is a choice that's very very real, and which is in fact why for a while the market was flooded with pure crap and clones.

Yes, it's gradually getting better, and in the meantime more publishers increased the budgets to sorta cover all bases, at least half-arsedly. But it's still a compromise, and still a choice they have to make: how much goes to gameplay, and how much goes to graphics.

Re:Christian Science Monitor?

[dr.badass]

If any religious group decides to control a news source don't you think that they might be doing it to get yet another outlet for self-promotion?

Hence the name of the paper being the "Christian Science" Monitor, i.e. "the Monitor belonging to the Christian Science sect"; (often misread as something like "the Monitor of Science belonging to Christians"). It's a tool for self-promotion insofar as putting out a quality product is self-promotion.

Wouldn't you question their motives if a retarded islamic group created a news source? Wouldn't they have something in mind other than just showing you the story?

This is a silly question. You should question the motives of all news sources. That's why they're sources, and not the final word on a subject.