GDCE Keynote on The Future of Games

Gamasutra is reporting on Sony Executive VP Phil Harrison's keynote at the Game Developer's Conference Europe. He discusses where he thinks games are, and should be, going. From the article: "We have to continue to put creativity first, otherwise we will turn into a formulaic industry. It's up to us all to... try to put innovation foremost, otherwise the consumers will go elsewhere. If we're not exciting these eyeballs better than anyone else, people will go watch Lost."

Comments

Try exciting something else

[Anonymous Coward]

Execs thinking like this is one reason we have a bunch of expensive 3d games that aren't much fun instead of fun 2d games.

Way back in the 8 & 16 bit days, it was easier to sell a game based on graphics alone. Times have changed. Sony will have to figure out (like Nintendo seems to have) that most of us don't want our eyeballs excited. We want to have FUN.

Innovation?

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Innovation? Plenty of things to innovated in game design.
First AI: This is hardly developed very extensive in a game. Games with fantastic AI are few and far between. AI has enormous potential and deserves the same attention graphics got.

Sound: Currently we can play near CD quality sound effects in a game. But sounds are mostly used in a linear way: trigger->play sample. There must be millions of ways to use sounds in games and modern PC's have the power to generate sound effect on the fly. Plenty of possibilities there.

2D: These days every thing is 3D. Sure it's handy to use 3D as you can use the hardware to do a lot you'd otherwise needed to do in software, but why don't we see some modern day 2D platform games or adventures?

Contest games: Instead of Yet another soccer game, how about we get something new? zero gravity ping pong in a cube for example. or some sport played in some far away country?

Bottom line is: The game industry needs to take risks again. With other words: we need more independend game developers.

Time for a revolution.

[rAiNsT0rm]

Sony and MS are the main offenders of keeping things formulaic and predictable. Even being a Sony fanboy and reviewer for four years has not been enough to overcome the truth of the matter: Nintendo's Revolution is my only hope of the game industry being brought out of this slump. Sony and MS are quite openly happy to keep things status quo and keep pumping out derivitive garbage while charging more and more... yay!

The game industry needs a good swift kick in the dick, and I sure hope Mario is the little italian plumber to give the boot.

Lets not forget the brain

[evil-osm]

If we're not exciting these eyeballs better than anyone else, people will go watch Lost.

Lets not forget exciting the brain. The eyes are doing quite well so far, lets get the brain back into things as well.

There's a difference...

[SanityInAnarchy]

...between "Innovation" and "Marketing".

By this, I mean a Marketroid got to design the DS.

There's absolutely NO point to touchpads other than people like my brother saying "The DS is awesome! It has a touchpad!"

And how original an idea was that? Touchpads aren't new by any means.

Or, let me put it this way -- it's exactly as much "innovation" as all the weapons in a Ratchet and Clank game. "COOL! THE SHEEPINATOR!!! I JUST TURNED AN ENEMY INTO A SHEEP!!!!!" Great, now you'll never need to use it again.