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Innovative, Original Games Have No Chance
In interviews with game developers this week, the tone seems to be that innovative, original thought is no longer welcome in the games industry. That definitely seems to be the tone behind IGN's interview with Okami producer Atsushi Inaba, and MTV's interview with Bioshock's Ken Levine (distracting flash site). Atsushi, speaking about the art style in his critically acclaimed but poorly selling adventure game, had this to say about originality in games: "You use the word 'difficult', but I think that it is becoming almost 'impossible' for an original game to succeed financially. This can't be blamed on anyone but it's a simple fact that an original game doesn't appeal to the majority of gamers." Meanwhile Levine, talking mostly about the level of art he's trying to create with the title, had this to say about some of his fellow designers: "Most video game people have read one book and seen one movie in their life, which is 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Aliens' or variations of that. There's great things in that, but you need some variety." While most of the rest of his comments are somewhat mild, he reiterates throughout that they're trying to do something that gamers may not "give a crap" about. What do you think? Has the industry gotten to the point where retreads are all that will sell, or is there still room in the marketplace for original ideas?
Innovative, Original Games Have No Chance
Well then. Since that's settled, Let me get back to Madden 2008: Platinum edition.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
The overwhelming majority of the cost of a game now, seems to be having ever-more-detailed graphics, higher-paid actors, etc. If you want innovation in the game structure itself, it shouldn't be costly (it seems), to do a sort of "proof of concept" in Flash or C# or whatever works on a PC, and if that gets popular, then you know that that's the kind of thing gamers want.
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All fantasy games are the same fantasy game. Vanguard, DDO, WOW, Everquest...
Elf? Check.
Dwarf? Check.
Fighter? Check.
Rogue? Check.
People don't want fantastic fantasy. They want familiar fantasy. The equivalent of peanut butter and jelly on Wonder Bread or a hot dog while mom and dad eat that weird lasagna stuff. Fantasy gamers have the taste of a 4-year-old.
One word ... Nintendogs
... "Know your audience"
The fact is that most "inovative" games break the standard rule in any creative pursuit
If you're trying to make a game that is different then you should probably look into who the demographic that will be interested in your game is and focus on making the game good for them.
The problem is that if you need 200 people to make a game, you need to persuade so many committees of finance experts to give you the money that the chances of finding someone who will panic at your idea are stupidly high.
Finding the money for a game that needs 20 people to make is a lot easier and less risky, because even if it's a flop, you aren't taking the whole publisher down with you.
Of course, ideally, you do the whole game yourself, on your own, sticking 100% to the creative vision you had, without needing to persuade *anyone* about the validity of the idea, and taking all of the risk yourself. I've gone many years reading big name industry celebs saying how that's not possible any more, despite the fact that I do it for a living, and I know a fair few others who do so as well.
Of course, if you would rather not make a game at all, than make one on a low budget, then that's a different matter. But personally, if I could make a 'triple a' WW2 FPS clone with 100 people, or an original, inventive 2D budget game on my own, I'd do the latter, even if it will never make me rich.
But generally, he's right, there is a lack of originality in mainstream games (spore is a good exception though).
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
While I can't speak for consoles, original ideas still find their way to PC, I always find a handful odd, little known company's games on PC shelves (or rather lists as I shop mostly online.) Defcon and Darwinia spring to mind. Those games were both etail and limited retail before they also came to Steam. Steam provides a plethora of indie games, many of which are unique and intersting like The Ship. Steam has so many indie games that they infact have their own browsing tab.
Demented But Determined.
Have you even played Okami? It's an incredible game that didn't sell well because it's not called Zelda. Had Nintendo put it out, renamed 2 characters, and named the game Zelda it'd have sold over a million copies in one day. Gamers are, as a group, a bunch of fucking brand-obsessed idiots. Look at every console flamewar since the 16-bit era for proof.
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Face it, the entertainment industry thrives on mediocrity. Whatever works is endlessly ripped off and stripped of whatever made the original good by committees of overeducated, undertalented hacks. Anything new is shunned and mocked, until it becomes popular at which point everyone is suddenly it's biggest fan.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
My wife and I are playing through Okami now. It's one of the most fun games I've played on the PS2, with lots of interesting things to do and see, and the art is just beautiful.
Kudos, guys.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
I know that a platform isn't a game, but the Wii has really thrown out what home gaming has mention. Not to mention that it's gotten... rather good reviews; people seem to love it. So, originality seems to be not entirely out of the question for something in the industry to sell well.
I'll also point out that "gamers" is a rather illusive term today. Nintendo among others have realized that female gamers have different ideas of what makes a good game as well as "older" gamers as well. And that's only two of the markets that are only beginning to be tapped.
Basically, although it may be true that the traditional "hard-core gamer" may prefer to stick with the same type of game over and over, other types of gamers may actually prefer more original content. Of course, we won't know for a fair number of years if this is true, but I wouldn't count original content out just yet.
Yeah, Crazy Taxi was damn fun.
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First off, I haven't played Okami (I haven't played any home console games for a couple months). With that out of the way, I would only wonder if the release of Okami was just badly timed, at least in the US. With the ridiculous amount of press surrounding the releases of the Wii and the PS3 (not to mention the big 360 game, Gears of War), is it really a surprise that a new PS2 title hasn't gotten the attention that it perhaps deserves? Had the game been released at the same time in the US as in Japan (April), it might have had a better shot at getting traction. As it is, it came out in September when seemingly the entire US market was frozen in anticipation of the new consoles.
As for originality selling, Katamari Damacy (to name one) has had enough success to get not only a PS2 sequel but a version on the PSP. Even more recently, Nintendo has seemed to be all about originality with the DS and Wii, and they certainly aren't suffering.
Unfortunately, new home console titles cost $50+ a pop. That's a lot of money to invest, and I don't think it's unreasonable for gamers to go with "safe bets." I also suspect that if an "Okami 2" was released on the Wii (the painting aspect would seem tailor-made for that console), and of course it was good, it would sell like gangbusters. Then again, at that point the same complaints would be made by someone else that people are only interested in sequels...
It seems like you could substitute ANY form of entertainment for the word "games" in that title. The companies chase money... if they see a blockbuster, they're going to rush to produce their own copy of that blockbuster's "formula." Same as with movies. Same as with music. Does it dumb down the landscape? Sure. Does it mark the "end of gaming as we know it"? I don't see why it should. Did Britney Spears & her million clones mark the end of music as we know it? Nope, not at all... it dumbed down commercial radio into a monotonous "sameness", but there's still people out there making interesting & innovative music.
#1 selling game in December, and the second-biggest franchise last holiday behind Madden, even though it only came out on one platform. Innovation and originality dead? Sorry guys, just because Okami didn't appeal to an American audience because of it's heavy reliance on Japanese mythology doesn't mean that originality and innovation in gaming is dead. Is Twilight Princess on the Wii not innovative? Someone already mentioned Nintendogs, but what about Phoenix Wright, Dance Dance Revolution, Lego Star Wars, Rayman Raving Rabbids, SingStar and Viva Pinata? Those were all top-100 selling games over the holiday. Just because "insert game here" didn't sell doesn't mean originality in gaming is dead. The rewards for making an innovative blockbuster have never been higher... just ask Red Octane.
Dude, Ken Levine doesn't need to prove himself. He designed Thief and System Shock II, and he executive produced Freedom Force, three of the most innovative big-budget games of the last decade. If he has criticisms of the rest of the industry, the man has earned the right to speak up.
(No, I have never met Ken Levine. I have nothing personal invested in this. But to say of the lead designer of System Shock II "If he wants to make himself look better than his peers, perhaps he should do so by proving himself"...well, you should be embarrassed, frankly.)
Okami is hardly original in that they added a paintbrush gimmick to a Zelda-style adventure game. Same thing goes for Viewtiful Joe with its side-scrolling brawler style, except that the Bullet Time gimmick had already been played-out with Max Payne.
I think he was using hyperbole to make a point. A point that inside the games industry, games tend to stick pretty closely to a group of preconcieved ideals. Ideals that are more or less based on Tolkein and Aliens esq sci-fi movies. Incidently, your sig rather strongly invalidates your own point while validating TFA. I'll give you a hint. When someone says a certain [i]thing[/i] is over used in the games industry, you should remove ads for such a [i]thing[/i] before you try and call bullshit.
The severe lack in innovation in video games today is caused by the game companies being tied to making games for the old, tried & true genres. These genres are now so full of titles that there is no longer any room for originality. Take the first person shooter (fps) genre. IT HAS BEEN DONE TO DEATH. There are so many fps games out there that you can choose any setting, play-style, weapons that you want to play with! And yet every time a new fps game comes out the developers try and call it innovative because it adds the tiniest of changes to the standard formula (such as rechargeable health bars Wooopie.) FPS IS DONE. many other genres have also been done to death as well such as: sports, racing, fantasy rpgs etc. There some genres that in my opinion are still open to a lot of expansion. Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs) for one still have a long way to go. The game developers need to get off of making MMOs with elfs, dwarfs, and orcs and start putting some interesting stuff into the mix. How about being a cowboy or bandit on the wild west? or being a pirate on the open sea? just now we are starting to see some originality breath life into this genre.
I don't buy this... not one bit. Sales of video games are almost completely, directly proportional to how much you put into marketting them, and how WELL you market them. I work at an NBC affiliated TV station, and was a board op around the time Okami was released, I surf the intarweb probably for over an hour a day, largely on game related material. I never ONCE saw a commercial for Okami at either of these places. So am I all that surprised to hear that it didn't sell well? No. Not really.
Hell, I'm incredibly surprised I don't see more game ads. I probably see more GameTap commercials, and generic "Playstation Portable" commercials, than all specific video game commercials combined. Television advertising, especially for this demographic, is at the HEART of your marketting of a game. It doesn't matter HOW innovative the game is, if the main stream doesn't pick it up, no amount of yelling and screaming about it is going to make it popular.
These are not small budget companies or low budget productions, if they can afford to make a game like Okami, they can afford some national NBC prime time spots, as expensive as they are.
That said, I absolutely loved Okami, and am very sorry to hear the creator is so dissolutioned, like this.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Strange - but every few years (months, by now?) we hear this again: no more original games possible, nobody wants them, waaaah!
Yes, creating/selling original games is difficult. This has several reasons:
It must be original instead of yet another Elf-Bashes-Monsters or Space-Hero-Shoots-Monsters.
Familiar games tend to sell better - not just to customers, but to financers.
Like most new ideas, most original games are flops. Their ideas simply don't 'click' with the players. Often enough they have a small, fanatical fan-club, but this doesn't make enough money, especially when the financers insisted on huge loads of fancy graphics and whatever, pushing up the number of people needed to create this.
However, every now and then an original game comes out. And is a huge success. And has so many followers (coders and users) that this type of game soon becomes familiar again. Where do you think all the familiar games came from? Thin air?
But this doesn't happen often. You need very good, very original people. And seeing how most companies work (loads of average programmers (cheaper), concentrate on pretty graphics, large bureaucrazies) this explains *why* it happens so seldomly. They do not want to take risks.
Watch this space! In (at most) a year or so, we'll have this question again: "Where O Where Are The Original Games?"
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Go ahead, try to come up with something new. A new class? A new race maybe? You might notice that in WoW all the playable races are humanoid. Good, now check slightly deeper, do you notice how all the equipment seems to work on them all? Could it be because it is simply a case of scaling the body and appendages rather then coming up with unique art for each and every race?
Imagine a centaur race. Brilliant. Fast, capable of being a mount to another player, large carrying capacity and definitly a different looking critter. Hell, they exist in the game already so it is possible. But oops. You need an entire new set of clothing/armour art, new moves and worse, you might even have to deal with the fact that horses just don't climb ladders to well or manouver in convined spaces.
Much easier to make everyone just a slight variant of human beings were they all got exactly the same performance anyway. Notice how tiny dwarfs run just as fast and jump just as high as a mighty orc?
Ah, but classes, now there you can go imaginative? Well, just try it. You got your basic tank. Up close combat, you can vary slightly between the level of armour vs dodging but that is it. You got someone who gets up close and personal. With that the ranger is next. He stays away from the enemy. You can give him all kinds of things to shoot/throw but basically it is a ranged character.
You are going to need someway to heal your wounds. A priest? A druid? A doctor? A medic? Don't matter what you call it, it is the dude who restores hitpoints.
You might want to add someone with lots of damage capabilty, say NUKE like. Oh but we need balance, so that person should probably be a bit vulnerable. So no close fighting skills to speak off. A ranged magic user? Doesn't matter what you then call it a sorcerer, a wizard or a jedi force specced character, it is a nuker. Heavy damage but vulnerable to direct combat.
Oh you can mix and match, bit of a healer, bit of a close combat, tada, one paladin.
The simple thing is that it has been done. People have sat and thought about this and came up with all the classes that you can come up with. Sure you can name them something different but then you sooner or later will have to admit that "our brilliant new class of the new enlightened order of Aeonites is what you would otherwise call a rogue.... oh okay a thief".
Maybe you can come up with an exciting new class but sooner or later you are going to have to let me know how to play it. Try doing that without saying anything like "it is cross between a X and a Y".
Old and familiar works because you don't have to waste time building everything up. Imagine the following.
"Old and familiar": You enter the tavern and your eye is immidiatly drawn to a beautifull full figured woman with chestnut colored hair and a smile to die for.
"New and exciting": Threatase (the term used to describe to multitude of combined entitities that for lack of a better term is "you" except that that would totally fail to explain it but since the real you controlling this make believe Threatase is a you anyway why bother) fascialte (I suppose a more corporal entiry would use the word enter but being a being of pure thought such a base move is beneath you) the TryK (what a creature concerned only with base needs could never understand) etc etc etc.
Sure, I introduced lots of new things before I got tired of it. Much simpler to just go with the old and familiar. What the fuck is goldplated latinum anyway? Yeah it is new, but mostly it sounds silly and I got absolutly no reference of why it is supposed to be so valuable. Star Trek writers could possible explain it but not in a 45 minute episode.
But yes I agree, did the tiefling in NWN2 really have to be a rogue. The first tiefling in computer games was nice and new and refreshing and we wanted more but not a carbon copy.
Yes I loved all the new races in Planescape Torment and reading their descriptions but that was a game of a bygone era. Nowadays deadli
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You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.