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Game Industry Has Lost Its 'Spark'?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the only-if-you're-crotchety dept.

Gamasutra is running a short interview with game designer Chris Crawford. The discussion in the article centers around Crawford's assertion that the games industry is no longer a creative place. "I haven't even seen any new ideas pop up. The industry is so completely inbred that the people working in it aren't even capable of coming up with new ideas anymore. I was appalled, for example, at the recent GDC. I looked over the games at the Independent Games Festival and they all looked completely derivative to me." I'm not sure I agree. What do you think? Is there anything creative left in the games industry, or are we going to be playing Halo 6 and Final Fantasy XVII ten years from now?

2 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. One word: by MaggieL · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Spore.

    --
    -=Maggie Leber=-
  2. I can think of a few by Bastian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Katamari Damacy, Uplink, Darwinia, Spore looks interesting. . .

    I think that there might be a bit of "time compression" going on in this article. Original games were few and far between 10-20 years ago, too. I certainly remember back in the 8 and 16-bit era when it seemed like every single game put out by anybody for any system ever was a side scroller.

    Besides, video gaming's youth is gone. I don't see why it's such a big deal that so many games resemble other games nowadays - it was easy to try new ideas in 1985 when not so many ideas had been tried. I'd like to see the people who whine about lack of originality try to spend some time coming up with a new idea that's good. Maybe folks could try harder, but (1)I seriously doubt that nobody is trying (2)trying to sell a formula that's known to sell is part of business, and it's not going to change. You might as well shake your fist at the sky for raining, it'd be just as useful.

      Of course, an article that says, "Gee, it's really hard to come up with novel games" probably wouldn't sell as well as yet another jaded guy bitching about how things were better in the past. (How original.)