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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."
Ah .. yes .. office suites!
This sort of shit has been happening ever since there were companies competing for market-share of the same domain.
And I doubt it is even related to software alone.
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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.
Well, this is certainly the first time I've heard someone complain about innovation and change in gaming.
... blogger? looks pretty young on this article. I wonder if he recalls playing 2D sidescroller after 2D sidescroller? Or if he realizes that a lot of games come out based on the same engine and it really bores me when I realize that I'm just playing a re-textured version of Doom 3 (or whatever the first game was that used that engine).
The picture of the
On the other hand there are series that feel the need to completely revamp a game that played perfectly fine before ...
Then play the first game over and over. There are some people that prefer to play something different. Yes, at some point you should draw the line but there are so many games out there you should just read the reviews or rent it and avoid it.
Given enough competition, innovation is a very good thing regardless.
The problem is that the newest ideas put into games are either gimmicky, terrible in execution, or blatantly ripping off another title.
What you are complaining about does not sound like "innovation" but merely something that annoys you. How is it innovative to do any of those things? It sounds more like you're just upset about some franchise being ruined for a title or two so you needed to vent. This isn't "pointless innovation," it's copycatting.
My work here is dung.
The thing is, though, even though 98 out of 100 improvements turn out to be flops, those 2 out of 100 seem to have carried humanity from flint tools all the way to nuclear weapons and internet porn. Well, that's some improvement!
This is my sig.
With our budgets the conservatism is understandable. At the same time when you are trying to make a new product there is also pressure to be the one that stands out. So the creative process demands that you try new things, preferably early on in the project. I think the real problem here (sorry to parade out an industry truism) is not failing quickly enough. If a new feature or mechanic becomes a *big deal* and is not allowed to fail when it starts to suck, the investment of money and ego may require it to ship. However, trying new things when you have time to take the risks, and are not overly committed to shipping them, is the thing that keeps us evolving.
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Every time a sequel for a popular game comes out, fans (and detractors) will cry out if it uses the same gameplay as the previous game. "There's nothing new!" But if the developers change it up, then the fans will cry foul, saying they're "ruining the experience" or "fixing what isn't broken".
But, it seems like the video game media likes (and praises) innovation quite a bit, which could be why the developers do it. The fans will be upset no matter what, but at least they can try to get the media on their side, regardless of whether the innovations in question are any good.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
M-W.com defines:
Intuition:
1: quick and ready insight
2 a: immediate apprehension or cognition b: knowledge or conviction gained by intuition c: the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference
Innovation:
1 : the introduction of something new
2 : a new idea, method, or device : novelty
These two things, although they often overlap, are not the same thing. Intuitive means something is easy to use without having to work hard at it (Boy, this point and shoot interface in this first person shooter game is intuitive!). Innovation means that the idea is new (Wow, I never knew it would be fun to roll a ball of trash around and make it as large as possible until I played this game, katamari damacy!). You can innovate without having an intuitive interface. You can make a new game with an intuitive interface without bringing anything new to the table.
... 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 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.
I can see what's trying to be said, but look at games like Portal. They took a simple concept, portals, and built an entire game around this one simple idea. Sure the game is not long, but it's a brilliant game. It's loved by almost every single person who plays it. Not just enjoyed... loved. And if you listen to the commentary while playing the game, you can really see just how much thought and effort they put into even this simple game.
I just don't see the problem with this. Game creators should continually try to innovate. No, they're not always going to hit their mark, but occasionally they will totally nail it, like with Portal, and gaming as a whole will take one more step forward. That's a Good Thing.
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.
Geez, man, your first version was fine. If it ain't broke...
Citing Shadow of the Colossus as an example of why we don't need innovation is confused. SotC doesn't have a huge list of asterisks on the back of the box (you know, *Multiplayer! *Online Player! *User Modications! *Physics simulator!). Nonetheless, SotC stands out from the pack. SotC's innovation was omission--like it's wikipedia entry says, "The game is unusual within the action-adventure genre in that there are no towns or dungeons to explore, no characters with which to interact, and no enemies to defeat other than the colossi." It was unusual because of what wasn't there. Well-designed simplicity is innovation.
If you just re-worded this rant to be against adding stuff for the sake of adding stuff instead of against innovation, then it would been making a rather insightful point. As it is, it's just flamebait.
Maybe you didn't like Mirror's Edge, but whatever problems it has are unique problems. Citing it as an example of what's wrong with the industry is deeply obtuse.
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.
I HAVE played on high, and you know what I find? Rubber band AI. They simply cheat by cranking out the bad guys armor or allowing him to pull off perfect head shots from a mile away while I am trying to make do with an M1 Garand. That ain't fun. That is like making yet ANOTHER WW2 shooter and then going "Oh it ain't hard enough for ya? Well how about this: I give your enemy heat seeking smart bullets and night vision that sees through walls and you get...a Colt 45 with six bullets. Oh yeah, and your character has a pulled groin muscle and limps to the left. Have fun!"
But of course that AIN'T fun, that is just covering up the pisspoor AI with heat seeking super bullets. There are times when that might be believable. A battle hardened German Sniper sitting in the top of a tower picking you off? That I can accept. The green ass grunt being able to "magically" know EXACTLY where you are even behind building and able to carry and rain down massive amounts of lead coated death? Not so much. A good example IMHO of "getting it right" would be Bioshock and FEAR. With the exception of a few glaring examples(bad guys trying to climb under a locker when a simple step over would do in FEAR. If you played it you know the spot) the AI worked. Compare that to MOH:Airborne where I have seen Nazi elite troops run to hide behind the SAME box that from the huge pile of corpses beside would give even the most retarded bad guy notice that perhaps that ain't the place to be hiding. All cranking the AI does on those games is paint a giant flag above your head that says "HE IS RIGHT HERE!!!"
And as for the above poster talking about how we "want" or tits and explosions? You ALMOST had it right and then veered off course bud. Do we want stuff to blow up real good? Hell yes! But the more IMPORTANT question is this: Do we honestly give a shit if the explosion uses realistic "blast physics" so that each fricking timber comes down in the EXACT right place as it would if you hit it with an RPG. I have talked to more gamers than I can count and we agree: Who cares as long as it goes boom?
Realistic physics is another one of those "epeen" bullet points that require a supercomputer to get more than 6 FPS that is being pushed ON rather than BY the gamer. As long as the explosions are big and fiery we are happy little campers. All that "my physics is better than your physics" crap does is give bullet points to ATI and Nvidia for their latest cards and pushes a hell of a lot of gamers right out of your market. As a PC repairman with 15 years experience I can say that the "sweet spot" in graphics is between a 6200 and a 7600 on the Nvidia side with the 6600 and 7600 being quite popular and widely used, with the X1650PRO being quite popular on the ATI side of the pond. None of the above cards are going to work with the "realistic physic" eye candy but you know what? At prices between $50-100 bucks they are still big sellers. Why in the nine hells would you want to get into a "sorry about your penis" battle with the other game publishers and cut so many potential buyers right out of your market? In this economy it makes NO sense at all, and I bet if you look at Nvidia+ATI sales records they are selling 10 to 1 on the under $100 cards compared to the $300+ cards.
Everyone in the game industry seems to be missing the forest for the trees. Allow me to point out a few problems with the way it is now: 1.-Graphics needing a quad core with SLI to keep from being a slideshow. You want to make pretty graphics? Fine, but learn what the words "degrade gracefully" mean. You are cutting your own throats by making system reqs too damned high. 2.-Crazy amounts of physics. See rule #1. 3.- AI that totally sucks or is rubber band AI. If you quit blowing your cash on graphics that price you right out of the market then maybe we'll see better AI than fricking DOOM in your game. They don't have to be smart, just not retarded without cheating. 4.-Totally bogus DRM schemes. The "only x activations" BS needs to go PERIOD. You ain't doing squat to the pira
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.