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The Perils of Pointless Innovation In Games
Negative Gamer is running a story discussing the need felt by the major game developers to create the next huge blockbuster, which often leads to innovation and change for their own sake rather than simply focusing on what makes a game fun. Quoting:
"There seems to be this invisible pressure to create something that is highly 'intuitive' and incorporates the highest level of innovation that we have ever seen. The problem is that the newest ideas put into games are either gimmicky, terrible in execution, or blatantly ripping off another title. On the other hand there are series that feel the need to completely revamp a game that played perfectly fine before into something completely new that falls flat on its face. ... There's a critical problem with popular, mainstream video games that isn't as large with other mediums; they are expensive to make and require a lot of time and effort put in to create something masterful. With that, games must take cautious paths. I fully understand the risks, but adding unneeded material to certain games is not justifiable."
... the author makes some good points but when he started lauding MGS 4 as the pinnacle of what good game design is I had to take a step back.
The amount of cutscenes in Japanese games is offputting while the gameplay is often lacking (or the companies don't have a clue of what was fun about it).
You can especially see how stale the JRPG genre has become by going "simple" (read: cutting corners, cutting the best parts out they had in previous games going way back to the early 1990's). I would love to run a JRPG company and kick a lot of crappy developers and so-called visionaries out, some JRPG dev's are seriously stagnating and backtracking in RPG's in recent years.
Also I couldn't stand FFX and MGS 4 for same reasons, too much cutscenes too little gameplay options. In FFX they simplified the weapon and armor system so radically I felt cheated. They also reduced the number, variety and quality of NPC monsters and did a worse job in terms of art for them, etc.
When "simplicity" means cutting corners it's bad game design.
While I enjoyed Shadow of the colossus, it too had major problems with the land being so barren and having to waste a lot of time travelling back and forth from boss to boss without much happening in between could be a real drag after the novelty of the big world wore off.
Truth be told many game developers don't really have much insight into what works and what doesn't in their games. I can't be the only gamer that feels like game developers of late are flailing around blindly in many regards in terms of what made their games fun.
The problem is that the newest ideas ... are either gimmicky, terrible in execution, or blatantly ripping off ...
This describes the majority of products marketed by infomercial. It is (once again) not unique to software.
Another area where developers fail constantly is that they don't seem to look at prior solutions, it's almost as if some developers don't actually play games themselves.
Only fools learn from their own mistakes.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
The problem is that the newest ideas put into games are ... or blatantly ripping off another title.
Newest ideas. Blatantly ripping off another title.
One of these things is not like the other.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
The problem is it IS broke, the developers are just trying to bury the broke under lots of pretty. let me give an example from my favorite Genre: The FPS. Do the FPS of today look more realistic? Yes, in fact they have probably gone overboard and made the specs too high, cutting a good chunk of their market out of buying their product. Riddick:EFBB frankly is about as pretty as you need to have good realism and still work on older hardware, but that in itself ain't the problem. What is the problem?
The problem is while the graphics have gotten some kind of pretty the AI has not only NOT gotten better, in more and more games it seems the bad guys are as dumb as a bag of hammers. And trying to cover up your totally pisspoor AI with multiplayer don't help. If your single player blows ass I'm not going to even bother firing up the multiplayer. In the old days it was easier to cover up pisspoor AI because the environments were sparse. You were in a hall, the bad guy was in the hall, pretty much all you could do was blaze on each other. Nowadays we have realistic environments which just make the pisspoor AI stick out like a sore thumb and kill the suspension of disbelief. If the enemy is some elite merc/Nazi/commando, whatever, and he doesn't notice when he walks into a field where I have piled his buddies up like cordwood? Kinda kills all that realism you are striving for. Or when I am standing in broad daylight not 30 yards away and drop his buddy not 2 feet from him and he just keeps tiptoeing through the tulips without even getting cover or opening up on me? Lame. Hell I've listened to my 15 year old play games and what I usually hear is "Who designed this thing? DUCK YOU DUMMY!"
Look, myself and the other gamers ain't asking for rocket scientists here. And we know how expensive graphics are. Most of us would be more than happy with 2003-04 graphics if they game was actually fun and gave us a good fight. But it seems like everyone is on a "my epeen is bigger than yours" graphics contest that ends up pricing many potential customers right out of your market. My machine is currently a 3.6GHz HT enabled P4 with a 7600GS. You would be surprised at how many machines there are out there with similar specs. It runs Bioshock and FEAR and most importantly lets me get my work done without needing to spend $$$$ in a dead economy on a giant epeen. Talking to lots of my fellow FPS players we have come to the same conclusion: most of the new games ain't fun. Sure they are purty as hell, but they are about as enjoyable as an Excel spreadsheet. The AI sucks, the collision detection is shoddy, weapon balance is shitty, etc. It just ain't fun.
You want to be innovative instead of trying to build the biggest epeen how about trying to build the most fun FPS? Serious Sam? fun. SoF I&II? fun. NOLF I&II? VERY fun. Deus Ex? FUN. See a connection here? None of these games were top of the graphics charts when they were released, yet folks still keep talking about them and coming back for another round because they were F.U.N. with a capital F. Quit trying to build games that need a fricking supercomputer just to get more than 6 FPS because in this economy folks ain't buying that many space heating "sorry about your penis" rigs. Focus instead on getting the graphics just "good enough" that they support your core gameplay which should be FUN. These new games feel like they been designed by committees using bullet points from what was a hit last year. But if at the end of the day you end up with a game that needs to have a quad core to play but is about as fun as sitting in on a staff meeting at Kinko's don't be surprised when myself and the other gamers refuse to plunk down $50+ for it, because it simply ain't worth it.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
the video game media needs to create content. writing about the new features is much easier than trying to spin "it is more of the same" into a full article.
Maybe because without innovation, any art form dies?
People who start thinking innovation is pointless are entering what is called the "old man" stage of their life. What they fail to realise is that it is hard to motivate a group of artists to do the same shit they did last year, and artists almost always are the ones driving any successful project. Of course you need to get your fundamentals right, but without innovation, there is no progress. Even if innovation flops, it still progresses the art.
While we're at it, why not ask why physicists work on pointless theories that won't pan out in the end, or ask why mathematicians design models that no one will ever use? The reason is because every once in a while, something catches fire and changes the way we think about things, and the only way to know if that will happen is to publish.
Jazz Jackrabbit was fun to play. It was zippy, on the hardware of the day. (First time I saw it, my immediate reaction was, "I didn't know a 386 could *do* that." On a 486 it *flew*.) It has interesting music. The characters and artwork were well-drawn. I don't know if it was _innovative_, but it was a good, fun game.
So then what did they do for the sequel? They decided that they just had to make it *different*. It used DirectX and ran on Windows 95, so it was *not* particularly zippy -- slower on a Pentium II / 233 than the previous game had been on a 386 SX / 16. The artwork and characters, if you compare them side-by-side, look like they probably took more effort to create (more shading, TrueColor, twinkle effects, blah, blah -- higher technical quality), but if you just sit down to play the game, the art in JJ2 doesn't look as cheery and fun (it uses duller colors), isn't in at all the same visual style, and, generally, fails to impress. It's not innovative, it's not particularly interesting, it doesn't bring anything particularly worthwhile to the table, and on the whole it's not as *fun* as the original.
Descent was a really fun game, addictive even. It was innovative -- the first truly 3D game. Not 3D as in flat sprites in a flat maze seen from an internal perspective, like Wolfenstein and Doom, but *actually* 3D: three-dimensional maps, three-dimensional robot enemies, three-dimensional controls, the works. And it was fun to play. Descent II was more of the same. A few new weapons, a bunch of new robots, some new textures for the mine walls, and now you could shoot out lights and darken a room, but basically it was the same game. And lo, it was a good, fun game.
Then they sat down to make Descent 3, and they said unto themselves, "We must not make another game like the first two. We must make this one New and Better and Different and Innovative." So they abandoned the efficient level architecture and rendering engine that made the first two games play smoothly on the hardware of the day, and they built an entirely new game engine that required a high-end (for the day) graphics card, with 3D acceleration. They introduced new weapons again, but they also introduced an entirely new look and feel, and it fundamentally no longer felt like the same game. When fans of the series complained about the onerous new system requirements, they were told, "If your hardware doesn't meet these standards, you are not part of the target audience." Apparently the "target audience" consisted of hardcore gamers only. And behold, Descent 3 flopped.
These are old stories now. Today you can buy hardware that will run Descent 3 smoothly for a beggar's pocket lint, plus shipping, on ebay. I suppose you can probably also get Descent 3 on ebay for $notmuch, but who would want to?
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
The problem is that there are too many similar games and sequels of successful series. So everything feels similar which generally isn't that fun after awhile. We're lacking variety which doesn't necessarily need total innovation. Companies do have to innovate and if,on their first try, it's not quite right that is not an excuse to go back to to the same old thing.
But innovation isn't just about completely changing everything. We don't need completely new control schemes to innovate. Just don't make every damn game feel the same.
Case in point, the BioShock 2 gameplay footage: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/47807.html?type=mov
Yes the graphics are nice but that was exceptionally boring to watch. If you give it early 90's graphics it's effectively Wolfenstein 3D. Where is the innovation in fun that really makes it exciting to those that have played most FPS games? There is none and quite frankly it looks like something to pass on. I don't care how many scripted sequences it has, we've had those, done properly, since at least Half life 1 and it's not really that exciting anymore no matter how good the graphics are.
I think we just need more variety. Look at Street Fighter 4. It's not really that innovative. It's SF but in 3D. But a lot of people think it's great. I personally think that's because you don't really get fighters these days. They've sort of died out. So to get one that's of decent quality is a great thing. So companies just need to quit copying each other and repeating so much crap.
But if game "X" was awesome fun, and the sequel is more of the same, how is that a bad thing?
*runs*