Game Originality: Any Left?

Kamalot writes "In a world where 85% of games are solved with a gun, where are the original and innovative ideas? Adrenaline Vault has a telling editorial about the state of creativity in the game industry, the constant re-hashing of sequels, and a look into the future when technical achievements are no longer the driving force. What happens when every game follows a tried and true formula? Where do the new ideas go if we can't have games like Viewtiful Joe, Shenmue, and Jet Grind Radio? Did innovative, rather than mainstream, games send the Dreamcast to an early grave rather than the PS2's more bland, yet conforming, lineup of titles?"

If only a few people like your game...

No matter how good it is, it's not going to sell. A certain degree of conformity is necessary. That said, I'm sure there are people out there who are clearly smart enough to be able to combine A Good Time (TM) with Something New (TM) that Everyone Can Enjoy (SM).

Re:If only a few people like your game...

The problem is that the industry has reached such a highly commercial and competitive level that it's almost imposible (and getting worse all the time) for small companies to enter the business.

The consecuence is that the games are coming from the same sources, the same creators and the same distributors, and they are not going to take the risk of losing the easy money they're making by releasing a new and original game. So we always get a new version of a product that has a proven market.

Re:If only a few people like your game...

It's more the complexity and cost that is the barrier to entree and the damper on innovation.

But personally I think that this is just a short dip in the curve; at the moment, it just takes a lot of time and effort to create content and a feature rich enough engine to make a game which is polished enough to be sold.

However, that's gonna change. At the moment it's still quite complex to modify games to any real extent. I'm not saying it's gonna get easier per se, but it is gonna get easier to get more done (subtle distinction, but very important).

Every itteration of game engines makes more possible: automatic, procedural and easier content generation and integration; more transparent game rule changing...thgis is being worked on right now. Look at Deus Ex 2 and Halflife 2...the lipsyncing-tech in HL2 and the attribute-techture-tech in Deus Ex make life so much easier...it takes out a chunk of grunt work (which is exactly what automation and computers should be doing).

So while at the moment it takes huge sums of money and years of manyears(?) to create a game, in the future engine licensing will be more and more frequent. And as engines get more and more userfriendly and take more and more of the grunt work out of gamedev'ing, more and more time will be available to play around with game ideas and styles.

And that also means that modders will have an easier time doing the same. And that is, nowadays, where the real innovation in gameplay experiences come from.

Re:If only a few people like your game...

And as engines get more and more userfriendly and take more and more of the grunt work out of gamedev'ing, more and more time will be available to play around with game ideas and styles.

Wishful thinking. Easily mod-able game engines, while allowing non-professional programmers to essentially create their own games, are the shackles to which game creativity is bound.

What makes Counter-Strike all that different from multiplayer HL? Slightly different objectives? Different models and sounds for players and weapons? Some new maps? Not exactly innovative.

I'm not saying I know what the answer is, I'm just arguing that easily modifiable engines that hang around for five+ years is certainly not it.

Re:If only a few people like your game...

So what about [can't remeber the title]? It's built on Halflife, but it puts a team leader in a coordinating, top down view, ordering the rest around. The teammates then run around in the 3d view, building bases, defenses and moving into position (as directed by the teamleader) to mow down the opposition. Think a cross between an rts and a fps, but with more tactics involved.

Saying the engine is the limitation means you're blaming your tools...and everyone knows that that just means you're shifting the blame from where it belongs: you. All I'm saying is that the better the tools get, the easier it is...it lowers the barrier to entry, meaning more people try and thus we get more and better stuff to play with.

Anyway, doing that game needed a deep understanding of the tools...now imagine what those guys could have done with an easily modded engine (which HL just isn't...people do it casue it can be done, not because HL is an easy engine to mod); they'd have done it faster, with better gfx, more content and could have spent more time and effort on the game mechanics itself.

Re:If only a few people like your game...

So what about [can't remeber the title]? It's built on Halflife, but it puts a team leader in a coordinating, top down view, ordering the rest around. The teammates then run around in the 3d view, building bases, defenses and moving into position (as directed by the teamleader) to mow down the opposition. Think a cross between an rts and a fps, but with more tactics involved.

Microsoft Headquarters?

Re:If only a few people like your game...

Easily mod-able game engines, while allowing non-professional programmers to essentially create their own games, are the shackles to which game creativity is bound.

Not any more than conventional forms are a "shackles" in any other creative medium. Think about things like limericks, sonnets, haiku, comedy, landscape painting, TV sitcoms, anime, mystery novels, buddy cop films, science fiction tv, books, comics, movies, etc... in each case there are rules that govern the form, some more strict than others. In some cases, the challenge gets to be how to break the rule of the form while maintaining the form-- on the surface at least.

Indeed, while the Infocom z-machine isn't quite a "video game" it shows very much that a properly designed game engine can be a platform for creativity. I am sure there are creative Doom mods out there. But think of how many sim-type games there are where the possibilities are endless if you expose somewhat the internals of the engine: car, flight, city, wargame, etc. Then think of some other game systems that exist, like card games (both conventional deck and collectible), RPGs (non-computerized), board wargames, etc.

That said, the one video game I'm waiting for is "fantasy football", only when you think "fantasy" think Tolkien. This was a game that was included in a Dragon magazine I had back nearly 20 years ago and it was hilarious. And even in this case, look at the constraints of form that enable such a game to be readily understood by new players: the whole fantasy genre informs the choices for monster/players and the basic sense of what the game is about.

Re:If only a few people like your game...

I'm not saying I know what the answer is, I'm just arguing that easily modifiable engines that hang around for five+ years is certainly not it.

I think people said (and say) the same thing about Flash: most things produced with it are awful. Sites that use it to the exclusion of normal navigation are even worse.

But at the same time, Flash has caused an explosion of amateur animator's work to be available online. A lot of it is awful, but some of it is good.

As the tools get better, less and less focus is made upon the technical ability with the tool (though we will always appreciate excellence in design). This allows the right people to do something.

Consider this: most of the best stories in our culture were at one time oral tradition: It was the only medium accessible to your average storyteller. Print was out of the picture.

Over time, advances have made it so that, now, any damned fool can write a story that could be viewable by the whole world. This lower technical barrier to entry has resulted in more crap, but it has also resulted in more good stuff being available.

My point is that once the rendering aspect of an engine stops being the selling point (Carmack believes this will be true Real Soon Now, and I am inclined to agree with him), the focus will shift to making the engine a tool instead of the centerpiece. We are seeing the vestiges of this right now.

One of the few truly innovative mods I've seen for FPS games has been Natural Selection [naturalselection.org]. Not 100% original, but certainly quite a bit different from your average mod. It really tweaks with the team dynamics: something I haven't seen done successfully in any mod to date.

When short, playable, proof-of-concept games can be cranked out about as fast as a rough draft of a short story, we will see great innovation in games (note: and be of about the same quality, depth, and length as said short story).

Also, I am interested in the techno system of creativity: one person puts out something that's "pretty good." Other people come upon it, play with it, and one or two will come up with something much, much better. This willingness to play together gives us quite a bit in creativity.

The problem right now is that, to play with a game you pretty much have to entirely recreate it or be very familiar with the coding style of the programmer involved - and that's if you have access to their code and can use the engine that they use.

Text-based adventure games had some elements of "quick to crank out" and "can play with another's code", and that was without as big of a following and without the internet (until modern times, and some of the stuff coming out now is quite good - though I have never had the knack for text adventure games, sadly enough).

These are just some thoughts, let me know what you think.

Re:If only a few people like your game...

In this respect, video games are a lot like expensive hollywook blockbusters. The amount of money that goes into production is prohibitive for small art-house flicks (or games). Those who shell out the money would rather invest in something tried and true than something scary and new. Perhaps even more a factor, the tastes of the market tend to be pretty bland and repetetive. People don't necessarily want something new, or at least, what they want to be new isn't predictable enough to spawn much investment in new things.

Producers invest in what is profitable, which really just means what will please the most people the most predictably. New things may please some people a whole lot more, but some people a lot less. And if you make someone happy enough to buy the game, he doesn't need to be made any happier. If we all reluctantly go to see the next Vin Diesel summer hit, knowing its a bad movie, well, we still spent our money on tickets. And if we all reluctanlty buy the next action-packed first-person-shooter, knowing its the same as all the ones before, we still shelled out enough for the game. Making more people happy enough to buy the game is profitable. Changing people's lives with new art and ideas isn't.

Re:If only a few people like your game...

Actually things *aren't* like Hollywood in that respect. Right now, there is a market for AAA games, which correspond to Hollywood blockbusters. And there are markets for B games (think Trailer Park Tycoon, etc), kids games, and very niche games (thing hex-based, turn-based war games), which correspond to Hollywood B movies, Hollywood kids' movies, and Hollywood niche movies.

But there is really no "art house" business model for games. Instead, you see "art house" games, like Rez, or Shenmue, produced and marketed as AAA games, and then failing in the marketplace. This is a major bummer, and if someone does develop an art house model, where a high concept game can be made relatively cheaply, and designed to break even on relatively modest sales, I hope they become stinking rich billionaires, because it would be rad.

That all said, that doesn't mean there isn't innovation in the AAA, B, kids, and niche catagories. The fact that art house games don't succeed commercially doesn't mean innovation doesn't exist.

Put another way, just because a game is from EA and has super high production values doesn't mean that it isn't innovative, or can't be innovative. And just because Rez and Shenmue didn't sell 10 milion units doesn't mean innovation isn't appreciated.

Re:If only a few people like your game...

I'm sure there are people out there who are clearly smart enough to be able to combine A Good Time (TM) with Something New (TM) that Everyone Can Enjoy (SM).

Like, say:

• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. -- an FPS based around some odd Russian sci-fi around Chernobyl. Not only does it look like a cracking good FPS, but it has an original idea behind it that shapes the entire game!
  
  Well, er, we hope. We'll let you know when it's released.
• Republic -- set in a fictitious eastern Europe country, where you have to build up a political movement and eventually overthrow/take over the government. A political game, no less.
• Splinter Cell -- a game where you're supposed to avoid hurting people! Owes a lot to Thief, though.
• Duke Nukem Forever -- a game where patience is more important than an itchy trigger finger.

Amplitude?

Come on, lets not leave out Frequency and Amplitude, one of the most original, and best PS2 games.

Dreamcast

Done in by not enough money to push a continuous marketting campaign. It had the games, Soul Caliber, Tony Hawk, Worms, come to mind, as well as the chance for online gaming.

I'll always love my dreamcast. The amount of extras that people made for this thing were immense. I have CD's with NES emulators and every NES game out there, as well as Sega's Master System. I believe there was even a VCD player.

Re:Dreamcast

Also done in by the fact that people weren't buying games for the system, instead doing things with NES emulators, Sega Master System emulators, VCD playing and game piracy.

Re:Dreamcast

True piracy was a concern, but originals always ran a bit better and smoother I thought.

I don't count NES Emulators, etc against the system though, they were one of the reasons I got one.

As far as I know though, being able to burn games came along after the Dreamcast had been on the market for sometime. They had a great lead over their competitors when compared pricewise.

This thing was selling $100 and then $150 less than the PS2 and the xbox and you got great quality games, no one ever knew about it.

Re:Dreamcast

There's two VCD players and two commercial mp3 players, plus a couple noncommercial ones.

The Dreamcast was probably also done in by piracy. It was just too easy to play copied games, you didn't even need to mod your DC. At least on the Saturn you had to have a modchip. (Sega CD games have no copy protection, either, but not everyone had a CD burner then.)

I want a "MacGyver" game

Where you have to build bombs with sticks of chewing gum, and solve problems with your head rather than a gun.

Re:I want a "MacGyver" game

What about the collection of "The Incredible Machine" games?
In many of those games my solution rarely if ever matched the solutions that the level designers came up with.
Not caring how the puzzle was solved allowed virtually unlimited creativity in those games.

Re:I want a "MacGyver" game

It will have to go down one of two paths, neither of which will sell:

1) The materials and resulting bomb are completely unbelivable to anyone with a 5th grade education and people won't play it because it's 'too fake'.

2) The materials and resulting bomb are completely realistic and the game developers will be arrested as terrorists under the Patriot Act and probably be executed.

Come to think of it, I might buy a copy of option #2...

Re:I want a "MacGyver" game

Sheep Raider for the playstation (one). You play Ralph Wolf, trying to steal the sheep from Sam Sheepdog's herd, just like in the old Looney Tunes cartoons.

I know, it sounds like a stupid kid's game, but it's actually a thinking man's puzzle/stealth game(in the vein of MGS). I think the cognitive dissonance between its play style and subject/theme is the reason most people never gave this excellent game a shot.

The originality is in how...

You tell the story, not in the story itself. The works of Shakespeare have been re-imagined for hundreds of years now. Hollywood has been retelling the same stories for a century.

The originality comes in your setting, your imagination and adding your own flavor to the game. While the rare original book, movie, tv show, play or story comes out...mostly they are all just different takes on a common theme.

The Magnificent Seven and the Seven Samurai are the same movie, but both are considered classics.

So, is there originality in new games? Yes, but maybe you are not looking for it in the right place...

Re:The originality is in how...

The originality comes in your setting, your imagination and adding your own flavor ...

Maybe Baz Luhrmann should be designing games?

Stop Complaining

I'm always wary about comments that seem to reflect the "why aren't things better?" mold of thought. Obviously, there are impediments to producing a novel game concept, but if someone came up with a really catchy idea, I think game execs would sign on.

What if Miramax had told filmmaker Kevin Smith that no one would watch "Clerks" and suggested he develop a marketable teen sex comedy instead?

This is a red herring. Clerks pushed boundaries in several directions. If game designers have not done so, perhaps it's simply because there aren't enough people out there pushing the envelope. Time and patience will result in more games. Complaining won't.

Re:Stop Complaining

Wrong.

"but if someone came up with a really catchy idea, I think game execs would sign on."

I was working for a game review website a couple years back, and my boss said something during a "lack of originality" conversation that sticks with me to this day.

"Nobody ever gets fired for making the same game."

However, you DO get fired for making a stupid original game. *cough* Viewtiful Joe *cough* So what do people do? Make crappy remakes.

Here's the other reason why no catchy ideas get made into games. The game industry is the biggest "incestuous" industry out there. By this I mean that if you have a job in the industy doing something, you getting fired, only means you work somewhere else doing the same job within 3 weeks.

Look at the requirements for Game Designers. *ALL* of them require 3-5 titles shipped. Nobody cares that they sucked, they think the experience is more valuable than the talent. Every one who's ever picked up a controller thinks they can design the Next Big Thing(TM).

The problem is that there are several people in design positions now who couldn't design the Next Big Thing(TM) unless it involved them taking a photocopier and someone else's design of The Next Big Thing(TM).

Since they're in the industry now, they'll be there forever, or until they get tired of it. Where complaining about the lack of creativity MAY not get results, it's been fairly obvious these past few years that sitting there and doing nothing DEFINITELY won't get results.

Everyone's trying to produce an average seller. Licenses sell titles to the uninformed, and game review websites are bought for the price of a few free games and banner ads. Truth is, there aren't enough people left in the industry who actually care about making a good game anymore.

If you don't believe me, walk into a store and try and count the number of games that you wouldn't be personally embarrassed of. Ask any tester you know how many games they tested that tehy wouldn't play again to save their lives. The industry is stagnant...sitting on your ass and letting them try and figure that out isn't going to solve crap.

There's always originality.

You just have to look for it. I'm not going to post a long list of original games, for a few reasons. One: the list will be nit-picked incessantly, and that's not really the piont, and Two: What I consider original, you may not. The point is that just like buying a car, or watching a movie, or choosing a book, you just have to separate the wheat from the chaff. Is there less originality in games now than there was X number of years ago? Yes. It's a fact of any developing system. Stephen Jay Gould says (paraphrase) that "As a system matures, it becomes harder to stand out."

The longer we go, the more things that will be done, the more games will have been done before. It's like the Southpark episode where Butters tries to come up with a scheme for chaos. "Simpsons did it!" The conclusion: Of course the Simpsons did it. They've been around forever. And as Chef points out, the Simpsons stole some of their stuff from others before them. It's not necessarily about doing new things. It's about applying your (hopefully good and sensible) take on those "tired" ways of doing things to put them into new light.

News?

In every field of human endeavor the work done is 99% derivative, and it has always been that way. Look at writing, music, film, science, hell, look at software in general. The truly original works stand out, so we tend to think they are more common than they actually are.

Derivative isn't bad. There are games that are derivative, but a hell of a lot of fun (Civ 2, for example). Games that are derivative crap would have been crap even if they were the first in their fields.

Answers to your questions from a game developer

In a world where 85% of games are solved with a gun, where are the original and innovative ideas?

Still sitting on the shelves of your local EB, not being purchased.

What happens when every game follows a tried and true formula?

Publishers make money for little risk.

Where do the new ideas go if we can't have games like Viewtiful Joe, Shenmue, and Jet Grind Radio?

Not sure I understand that question.

Did innovative, rather than mainstream, games send the Dreamcast to an early grave rather than the PS2's more bland, yet conforming, lineup of titles?

Possibly, although I personally think Sony just plain did a better sell job in the mainstream media for the PS2 over the Dreamcast.

For anyone who laments "Why do companies continue to pump out this sludge?", the answer is pretty simple: because consumers continue to buy.

<speculation> Perhaps in these times of economic recession, people are more likely to go with the "sure thing" (guns, explosions, sequels, etc) with their entertainment dollar than with "riskier" purchases.</speculation>

Quantity

The Dreamcast didnt die because gamers dont like innovative games. Some chalk it up to its easy no-mod-needed piracy, though I doubt even that had much of an effect, being prohibitave to the mainstream non-techie gamer.

The Dreamcast died because Sega chalked up a laundry list of abandoned systems (32x, SegaCD, Saturn), and customers didnt want anything to do with it. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

I bought a Dreamcast on release day (9-9-99), and was an idiot for doing so. Sega wasnt in any position to back up another console, and to weather the financial drought before it turned profitable. EA's refusal to create titles for it didnt help either.

It was dead before it hit store shelves. And 85% of its library was indeed mainstream boring crap.

Everyone rants about the unoriginality in gameplay. But what do we hype up and get all excited over? Doom 3. Yay now we run around and shoot prettier monsters.

Fun innovative games do come out, and will continue to. And the bulk of the shelves will always be mainstream type stuff.

Thats the way it always has been - just look at the line up for your favorite nostalgia system (c64, NES, atari, genesis). For every standout there were 100 crapfests.

Nothing new here. Just nerd elitism. Sometimes those mainstream trigger finger games are just plain fun.

It's even worse than they say....

Games now are any of: 1) jump around to collect coins/stars/whatever 2) pretend to kick box/karate/judo something in an arena 3) FPS 4) hack and slash.

BORING

The good thing about Atari in the day was one of the basic requirements: A new game had to look like nothing else that had come before it.

If only more companies would do that today...

Re:It's even worse than they say....

The good thing about Atari in the day was one of the basic requirements: A new game had to look like nothing else that had come before it.

Yeah! I loved that! Like that battletank game with 99 games built into it... There was:

1. 2 tanks
2. 2 tanks with walls
3. 2 tanks with bunkers
4. 2 tanks with walls and bunkers
5. 2 tanks with bouncing bullets
6. 2 tanks with walls and bouncing bullets
7. 2 tanks with bunkers and bouncing bullets
etc.

(I know what you mean, though) ;)

-T

Look to yourself

I think a big part of this is that we may never have as much fun with games as we did when we started way back then.

We can then start looking at the games and argue that they are not as original as they used to.

But then again, my younger brother seems to be amazed and thrilled by all new computer games.

Tor

Re:Look to yourself

A very, VERY good point!

Remember, many of us are getting older and "have seen it all." Being jaded is an understandable reaction.

But remember: to a kid, everything is fresh and new. I think that's what people miss most about childhood.

Your grandkids are going to be just as thrilled with UT 2035, as you were with the original Castle Wolfenstein.

why i have a gamecube

I own a gamecube because I enjoy creative, challenging games. I see most PS2 and XBox games using technical merits to sell (more polygons! looks better!) rather than gameplay.

On the gamecube, you get a game like Pikmin. That is a really cool game, and certainly well done. Metroid Prime is a great example of something that really hasn't been done before (first-person adventure, not FPS). I think Nintendo has always been about quality over quantity.

To me, having to get the latest fighting game is just wasting money (more complex death moves!). Or getting the new NFL 2003 or whatever just because it has the new stats. I guess that's entertainment for some. But it's not what I look for. Even though I'm supposedly in the target PS2 and XBox demographic, I just don't find those games interesting.

What else is new?

We have this problem in every entertainment industry. He talks about it as if it's something unique to video games. Look at the one industry he tries to compare it to, movies:

> What if Miramax had told filmmaker Kevin Smith
> that no one would watch "Clerks" and suggested
> he develop a marketable teen sex comedy instead?

They did, it was the unwatchable "Mallrats."

> Or if Artisan had told the creators of "The
> Blair Witch Project" to drop the film in favor
> of directing a Friday the 13th sequel?

Well, they were pressured to make the even-more-unwatchable "Blair Witch II". Innovation comes in first-generation movies and games, poor sequels are just to be expected.

In the snow! Uphill! Both ways!

Where do the new ideas go if we can't have games like Viewtiful Joe, Shenmue, and Jet Grind Radio?

Oddly enough, I could swear people were making the same complaint in the '80s and early and mid '90s, and the games mentioned still came out. There will always be novelty and it will always stand out against the background of knockoff blackjack / deer hunting / FPS games.

Incidentally, I tried, really tried, to give Shenmue a chance, and it's certailnly beautifully executed, but waiting all day for it to get dark so I could look for sailors again ("Sailors? Not here. I'd try looking in bars.") just wore me out. Of course, I still play Doom because Quake is just too sluggish, so...

3 words...

Dance Dance Revolution [google.com]. This is telling proof that a game need not conform to make waves (and be profitable).

I think the writers of this article took into consideration only the games they personally play, and possibly what their paticular culture plays, without looking at some of the other large gaming cultures (Japan, Korea, etc.).

Lots of areas left to be explored...

And most of them are a result of the target audience that you're designing the game for.

Look at The Sims, for example, one of the first games to be massively popular with females 12-34. It can be, for all intents and purposes, a virtual doll house where your dolls interact on their own. One of the reasons the Sims Online has had difficulties is that most of the customizability that made the game so popular has been stripped out of the game in favor of anti-cheating and multi-player capabilities.

There is very little to do with violence in The Sims and a lot to do with role-playing, dress-up, and relationship management. I once heard a female cooworker describing how much better the game would be if the dolls could be made to be more customizable or if you could change clothes, jewelry or hair in-game.

For that matter, look at relationship and dating sims, which are very popular in Asia. These games range from tame and cutsey to pornographic. While it may be pretty lame and pathetic to interact with a virtual girl instead of a real one, that doesn't change the fact that these games are *very* popular and simply haven't been widely unleashed on NA audiences yet.

Another kind of game that is gaining more wide-spread acceptance in N.A. are the various profession sims or management sims. Most of these are builders, like the popular 'Roller-Coaster Tycoon' variants. Some are more detailed. I can't remember the title off-hand (Was it '911 Paramedic'), but there was a game recently in which the player took the role of a medical professional and had to make decisions on what kind of treatment a patient needed.

The different genres are out there, they just have to be explored more fully.

yeah, right

Some games that did rather well despite the lack of violence:

- Thief and Thief 2
- The Longest Journey
- Syberia
- Myst
- just about any Sim game

While 85% of the games out there might feature violence, I sincerely doubt that 85% of the *purchases* are of violence-oriented games.

Of course, if you're a college kid whose life revolves around Counterstrike and who uses terms like 'd00d!' then your perception of the matter is probably seriously warped by your personal experience.

Max

Contact the old masters.

What happens when every game follows a tried and true formula? Where do the new ideas go

I, for one, would recommend getting in touch with designers and programmers from the computer gaming giants of the '80s: Broderbund, Sirius, Atarisoft, Spectravision, First Star, HES, Epyx, subLOGIC, Spinnaker, MECC, Synapse... those guys put out some of the most original, on-crack, and wildly entertaining games possible.

Anyone remember Sammy Lightfoot? Crisis Mountain? Boulder Dash? Frenzy? GATO? Paipec? That was a true era of creativity. Imagine if that were applied now.

Console publishing economics

Games generally require conflict of some sort to provide a play experience because they rely on a story at least on some superficial level. There are exceptions (Tetris would be a big example) but by and large you need a protagonist and an antagonist. It's very easy to portray this relationship through violence. There's also some amount of visceral thrill in the simulated killing of other people.

This problem, as with the me-too syndrome, is an instance of a general case of problem. Videogames are expensive to make and from a business point of view are a very risky investment. Lots of games get made and only a few of them are profitable but those few wildly so.

There are several possible solutions to this problem. They are all difficult to bring to bear and it's not clear to me which (if any) of them will happen and how much effect they'll have.

One solution is to lower the cost of development for games - this is hard, despite the growth of middleware and tools, because games are complex products and the perceived demands of gamers is ever-growing. There's also the arms race of technology.

Another solution is to spread the money around so that the market is not so feast-or-famine. This is hard because retailers don't like to see margins lowered and companies generally operate on the philosophy that they'll have the "killer" game that will take in all the money. If everyone expects to get the lion's share no-one wants to lower their prices and thus their potential profits. It's a prisoners' dilemma.

Yet another solution is to reduce the amount of games that get made. Ultimately this is the most likely to happen yet it's the one I personally like least. Niche-market games will get killed first, followed by me-too genre games and eventually you'll have a desperate struggle between 2 or 3 publishers with a small range of mass-market but uninspiring games. The same retail profit gathered for less development dollars is a business win, however.

The last solution is to expand the retail market. Make games that appeal to more people, and increase the total amount of money coming into the sector. The more individual consumers you have, the more diverse their tastes and so theoretically you spread your development risk further.

I like the last solution best of all, of course, because it results in a broad base of games and plenty of creativity. The economics of business make it a tough sell to upper management at publishers.

One interesting thing that may change the market a lot is the will of the hardware manufacturers. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have a huge ability to shape the market because they have to approve all product concepts before they get too far in development - you could make the whole game without talking to them but it would suck to find out you'd wasted $5 million when they turn round and refuse the game - so they can shape the lineup of games. What their actions will ultimately be, I cannot say.

I have to agree

He had me until this paragraph:

But success doesn't have to come at the expense of originality. The film industry has proven that point. In one hand we have Hollywood blockbusters that can rake in $100 million in a matter of days. In the other hand we have a robust independent film community that allows moviemakers to create smaller masterworks of imagination. Many of these films manage to find an audience due to the efforts of distributors like Lions Gate Entertainment - who gradually push their movies toward profitability. What if Miramax had told filmmaker Kevin Smith that no one would watch "Clerks" and suggested he develop a marketable teen sex comedy instead? Or if Artisan had told the creators of "The Blair Witch Project" to drop the film in favor of directing a Friday the 13th sequel?

Clerks and BWP are 2 horrible examples. IIRC, both were made, and then pitched to the studios. There was no real risk to the studios, other than advertising, which was kept to a minimum. BWP was the first, and still best probably, at using the internet community as its major word of mouth platform. A true independent film (IMO) is something made for a few thousand dollars (maybe 50 max), that might make it into the college campus theater scene, makes a few buck more than it cost, and everyone moves onto the next. Not everything is going to be BWP or Desperado.

Video games are now big business. They are becoming the same as the music, TV, and the movie industries. Big budget, bland, built to the lowest common denominator.

Not Just In Gaming...

Look at Hollywood... there is a lack of originality there too. Look at the movies coming (or have already have) out this summer:

• Matrix 2
• X-Men 2
• Hulk (comic book)?
• Freddy vs Jason (god!)
• Dumb and Dumberer
• Rugrats Go Wild (tv cartoon)
• Charlie's Angels (sequel to a movie after a tv show... as if that wasn't enough)
• Bad Boys 2
• Tomb Raider 2
• Legally Blond 2
• Jeeps Creepers 2
• Spy Kids 3-D (aka Spy Kids 2)
• Terminator 3

Note: These are just the hideously obvious ones
OMG IT'S THE SUMMER OF THE SEQUELS.... RUN... RUN FAR, FAR AWAY... SAVE YOURSELVES!!!

Re:Not Just In Gaming...

You forgot 2 Fast 2 Furious.

An entire movie about people who make their cars faster through blacklight technology, strategic decal placement, random kanji, and oversized spoilers. I heard they even tried to give it a plot.

"We need this job done, and there's only one man who can do it."
"Uhh...the guy who just sank $40k into his Hyundai Accent?"
"Precisely."

I would be inclined to agree...

It seems to me that a lot of the games I find myself most into get attacked for being different.

One easy example is in fact a very popular game, but one that has endured some of the stupidest arguments in the history of video games: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind-Waker.

It's cell shaded; it frequently looks like a hand drawn cartoon. It recaptures the art direction of the classic SNES era Zelda game, seamlessly into a 3-d environment.

And it was attacked without mercy for being "kiddie".

Just yesterday I was at a Gamestop, playing through the demo of Viewtiful Joe. If you don't know, it's a 2.5-D beat 'em up, similar to Capcom's Strider 2 (for the playstation 1), except with bright colors and a unique take on the cell shading trend. It really stands out among the endless stream of tactical, deadly-serious games that are flooding the market.

And while one of the staff was really into it, the other guy working there couldn't accept that there was a helicopter flying around inside of a large cathedral, and that as Joe, I was jumping high into the air and punching said helicoptor in slow-mo to blow it up. As if the idea that a game could possibly be amusing and light-hearted was alien to him.

Viewtiful Joe is definitely my most looked forward to game of this year; I payed $10 for a Gamecube demo disc, solely for the 15 minute demo, which is really a ridiculous sum. It was worth it. I've played through this demo 5 or 6 times already and if the rest of the game lives up to this potential, it will likely be the best game of the year. (Like last year's Ikaruga).

I am a die hard Dreamcast enthusiast, and yes, most of the best games on the DC are unusual and edgy. Typing of the Dead, Rez, Samba De Amigo, Sega Bass Fishing, Bangai-O!, Shenmue, Chu Chu Rocket, Space Channel 5. Really, who knew a fishing game could actually be FUN.

In fact, the DC also hurt in the market for catering to old school gamers as well. Classic gaming styles such as 2-D fighters and top down, vertical scrolling shooters (like Mars Matrix, Giga Wing 2, and Ikaruga) just aren't as popular as they once were.

Perhaps Sega would have done better to cater to current trends instead of trying to invent their own, but I'll take innovative and intuitive gameplay over the trends of the week any day.

Special mention to the development teams at Sega, Treasure, Capcom, and Nintendo for making awesome, innovative games, at least now and then.

.

ICO

Personally, I thought Ico for the PS2 was a great game that didn't resort to inane violence or scantily clad women to get attention.

I don't think it was the most original game made, but fairly innovative in that you have to drag the girl around with you all the time, and try and figure out ways to get her places. Had to use my brain there for a bit. Fun stuff. :)

It's all about the marketing

There are thousands of game releases every year. Some are amazingly cool, but most of them are rehashed old themes or just plain crap. How do we know which ones to buy?

Simple...marketing. Which games get the TV display at Electronics Boutique? Which ones have cardboard cutout displays?

Most people can't afford to buy any game they want. They have to rely on others to tell them which games are genuinely good. Occasionally a game will get by on its own merits, but most of the time, it succeeds based on a costly marketing campaign. Just like music and movies.

And this marketing costs money, too, so companies decide to market the games that they are relatively sure will benefit the most from it. They don't bet on the little guys with no track record, they bet on the tried-and-true formulas. So, in the end, even an incredibly smart, interesting new title will sit on the shelves because it wasn't marketed well.

Sure, there's originality!

There are plenty of original games out there. Most of them simply don't do well, and those which do are copied and cliched into oblivion. Take for example:

Uplink [introversion.co.uk]: Every Slashdotter's dream game. Very innovative idea, properly executed, as well.
Escape Velocity Series [ambrosiasw.com]: While the series is not exactly new, it is still an excellent idea. Completely open-ended, and quite fun. Windows port coming soon.
Wulfram II [wulfram.com]: Multiplayer only. Free. Interesting combination of strategy and FPS. The graphics are a bit dated, although community-funded development work has begun on a new graphics engine. Addicting as hell.
Black and White: Never played, but very innovative from what I've heard.
The Longest Journey [funcom.com]: While it's very similar to the LucasArts adventure games, this game plays like a novel. That being said, if all novels copied each other, we would have stopped writing them thousands of years ago. Recycled concept, AMAZING plot.
Planescape: Torment: At first glance, this appears to be nothing more than a hackneyed D&D game/Diablo clone. Upon playing it, you begin to unravel a superb plot. Very little hack and slash.
Dance Dance Revolution: Never played it, but it's popular as hell (you don't get much more original than THIS)
Morrowind and GTA were both somewhat revolutionary in that they were completely open-ended, and created two of the most original games in two of the most hackneyed generes.
Frozen Bubble/Snood/etc. More proof that such simplistic games can still become wildly popular. Revitalized a dying genere.

Games and Films are getting similar

And have been for about 5 years now.

Think about it: Atari (or Infogrames, whatever) paid over $20 million to make and over $60 million just for the LICENSE to create Enter The Matrix. It features lame gameplay, bad design, and a boringness that is almost unparalelled (sure its fun for five minutes, but c'mon).

Any game venture nowadays takes a gargantuan undertaking, tens of millions of dollars.

Why?

Well, of course you have to release it on every platform imaginable. This means, to me, that at least one of those platforms is going to get shafted. Normally its the PC version(s). Why? Too many configurations. Even if you do release a PC version, you have to continue to bugfix it as old/new bugs pop up with old/new equipment.

Plus there's the raw talent. Finding a programming team to develop for up to 4 or 5 platforms (can't forget the GBA) is tough. Getting a GOOD team is even tougher.

Plus there's the actors/voice talent. You don't necessarily have to invest a lot here, but hey, it doesn't hurt to get a "big name" on the box. (I know Wolverine's Revenge isn't touting Mark Hammill, but it sure is mentioned a lot on the game/Star Wars Geek sites)

Plus there's the development cycle. Another reason that most games lack originality is that you have to take that original idea, put it on all of these platforms AND make sure its still original and current a few years down the road. When an idea is created for a game, its not fleshed out in any matter (generally) for many moons. This means that any second guessing, or, god forbid, realization that it's never going to work won't come until months down the road. And just think of all the cash already spent!

Anyone remember Prey? Or Duke Nukem Forever? An old joke, but its still viable in context. They either had a terrible idea, or the technology outran them.

I remember a few years ago John Carmack shooting for the most high-end system imaginable (at the time) as his minimum sys requirements for Doom3. This was something along the lines of an 800Mhz PIII and a Geforce2. Everyone thought he was out of his mind. Nobody is going to have something that downright uber in a few years, nobody!

But its that kind of brave thinking that makes good games age well and others turn to vinegar.

When I heard that Railroad Tycoon 3 (a fav series of mine) was going to be playable on a TNT2, you could tell instantly that its development cycle was either a long time coming, or the project manager just didn't have the balls to say "We're going to require a DX8 compliant card to continue." Sure its nice to play it on old machines, but eye candy coupled with great gameplay makes games that last, and aren't stifled by old standards its desperately trying to make pliable with its codebase.

Getting back on target, games are now million dollar "projects" and "ventures" and this means that a LOT of people who control that cash want to have their say, and want to have their approval on it. Just imagine if GTA3 didn't have its two predecessors, and the big boss executive didn't like the idea of stealing cars and running over people for fun (granted there's still Carmaggedon, et al, but work with me).

New gameplay concepts are generally taken in small steps. GTA had two top-down perspective predecessors, the FPS world was born with Wolfenstein 3d on a shoe-string budget, using a character that already had an established fanbase.

Any new, brazen concept is going to get killed at that stage. Concepts don't make executives happy, they want to hear about market forcasts and demographics and marketing strategies. There is too much bullshit involved in a big budget game to really introduce something groundbreaking.

I'm afraid that the GTA series will suffer the same fate of More of the Same. I mean, seriously, GTA: Vice City was little more than a bug fix release, with a larger playing area, newer vehicles, nicer engine, and some (slightly) improved AI. I'm sure GTA: Whatever will be the same way. A

Think of the tired Film Analogy

The way I see it, video games are in an era right now comparable to the state of cinema in the 20s and 30s. We've figured out the basic language of the format, and are only now starting to wade into the deeper waters of narrative-driven game-creation technique.

When films first appeared, the very idea of editing was radical; to cut the film into chunks that somehow approximated a jilted eye-movement that had narrative power. Then the rules about editing -- breaking the axis, 90-degree flips, screen-facing, etc. Once we had a credible language for the format, there was a period of stagnation, when we thought this is how films would be... lots of locked-off tripods, static shots, clearly framed heads speaking to the camera, etc. Sound, a technological innovation, pushed the format in new directions ("Who on earth wants to hear actors talk?). Now, look at what we do in films: swooping cameras, crazy filters, surround-sound, virtual cinematography... not to mention the arsenal of tricks given to us by the Leans, Hitchcocks, Spielbergs, etc. of the world.

Video games will go forward once we begin to truly master the art of nonlinear storytelling. I often suspect that our film past, while necessary to arrive where we are now, hamstrings us a bit in terms of expectations. People like to just turn their brains off and be entertained, and any sort of interactive medium is bound to be more work than that.

I once had an idea for a DVD 'film' that would just be scraps of video, selected at the user's whim, constructed in just such a way that you could do your own sleuthing and piece together the film in your own way. That's much more amorphous than what people are willing to go through. It smacks of work to many people.

Don't worry. We'll get there eventually. I do agree with the poster in terms of lamenting the current period, though. The video game industry now makes more money than the film industry and sequels to hit games will sell. It's a given. However, sooner or later, someone will come up with the video game equivalent of something like Memento or 2001, and things will shuffle again.

Re:Think of the tired Film Analogy

I once had an idea for a DVD 'film' that would just be scraps of video, selected at the user's whim, constructed in just such a way that you could do your own sleuthing and piece together the film in your own way.

Do they still publish "Choose Your Own Adventure" [gamebooks.org] books?

To follow the pirates into the cave, turn to page 45.
To run away screaming like a little girl, turn to page 13.

Those were the days.

We're in between two phases in gaming.

The following is a broad generalization of gaming. I ignore lots in the interest of getting back to work ASAP. Please look at the point and not what I failed to mention.

First there was 2D with a few colors. This let us do lots of basically animated board games. There were good ideas because people had been making board games for centuries.

Then we got to the scroller era and every game was the same. Run around, collect stuff. Some were better than others, but within a few years, the genre had run its course and most were just bad coppies of the few innovative ones.

Then we hit the 3D era. Everything now looks like Doom with a gimmic. Some of the gimmics are good, but most are just copies. These games always have lots of guns and flash because the other part of the game can't stand on its own.

What's the problem? There is no shortage of good ideas, the problem is that we can't code those ideas. Any game that doesn't rely on running around and blowing stuff up needs another goal. That goal always revolves around the need for some good AI. The only other successful major genre that I have ommited so far is the RTS game. These work because they are from a macro perspective. The individual AI sucks, but the whole scene behaves mostly ok. Anything that needs an artificial person to behave in a strategic or clever manner just can't be done yet.

When we can do an game where harder doesn't just mean bigger and faster but smarter, the market will explode with "I've always wanted to do this" ideas.

Lack of power in the right hands caused this.

I remember back in the day (back when NES was king and gas was just under a buck a gallon here in CO) when game publishers were not huge media conglamerates, but programmers who loved the games they created. Final Fantasy, Crystalis, Star Tropics, etc. all came from relatively small companies (at the time).

This is important, because it means that the resources required to make the game were in the best place they could be, in the hands of the people making the game. All the super-popular games of that time (even to date, occasionally) came from environments like this.

It's not that the creativity and innovation is gone (look at ICO, Fatal Frame), it's that the resources needed to afford such aren't where they're supposed to be.

Articles like this...

really should make true gamers think about the future of videogames, with Sony and Microsoft wanting to create entertainment hubs, and Nintendo's demise looming, I guess we're not very far from a Holywood Syndrome. Once Nintendo is out of the picture, the "true games" part of the equation will sucumb to more "interesting" business models such as "In-game advertising", more FMV, more pop music soundtracks, more movie-game translations, more "let's do what's in..." a.k.a "Bullet time on every production" etc.... it's the Industry's second death, and there will be no NES to save us....

Editorial Missed the "Real" Conclusion?

It seems that the original author missed the most likely result of the culmination of gaming (computer graphic) technology: Once every game looks real, once game companies don't have to make new engines every year for the new tech, etc. sequels will become less and less interesting to the mainstream consumer.

For example, why would someone buy Unreal Tournament 2010 if the graphics technology peaked in 2006? The same goes for Counterstrike, Warcraft, Everquest and the rest of the games whose sequels are mainly technology upgrades.

We should also look forward to the eventual plateau of graphics/sound technology in terms of video games because it will become cheaper and cheaper for people to make games - the longer the tech is available, the cheaper it is. Already we have individuals who do 3D modeling for ZERO money (unless Valve or Id or whomever buys their mod) and there will only be more of those folks in the future. For Neverwinter Nights, there are people out there writing ENTIRE GAMES for nothing because the tools are available to them.

In short, I believe technology will advance until it reaches the point where incremental sequels will not be able to compete with their predecessors and innovations in gaming will become more common again.

Install something for fun

In my whole life the most interesting and even intriguing adventure was to install Linux From Scratch [linuxfromscratch.org]: you never know what's broken next and what is the fix for it, you learn a lot, you ask people online for advise and thus socialize with them.

I know, for video-game funs it sounds weird, but old guys who played adventure games on old TTY mainframe terminals will understand what I mean.

waah waah

Bitch, bitch, bitch. Moan, moan, moan.
Bitch, moan, whine.

I'm sure people were complaining in 1979 about how Galaxian was just a Space Invaders clone, and how surely that indicated that originality in the video game medium was dead.

Why aren't there any original games being made? That questions is logically flawed. Why aren't original games on the best-seller lists? Simply, because people would rather play something more familiar.

Of visual fireworks

Even at the cost of being a bit off-topic, I found one exceptionally insightful part in that editorial.

[John Carmack] believes it won't always be necessary for programmers to pump out new engines for each successive generation of releases. This could mean that it might not be long until technical innovation is no longer a driving force in interactive entertainment - at least provisionally.

I am personally eagerly waiting for this to happen in games. It has already happened in the niche area of computer demos. Just marching eye-candy and stunning visual effects on screen no longer gets the group nothing more than a few yawns. The real works of art with concept and possibly even *gasp* plot get all the appraising - and for a reason. There was a time when computer demos pushed the limits and showed what quite rudimentary setups were capable of. I really, really wish the trend saw a comeback.

Originality is, however, dangerous. It takes a certain kind of genius to design and device game with new ideas and working plot. They are far and wide apart, which means that 99% of all the games will, for the forseeable future, remain sequels of sequels and rehashes of the lowest common nominator.

Adrenaline Vault's David Laprad can blame himself

Where do the new ideas go if we can't have games like...Shenmue...?

In the case of Shenmue, hopefully into the garbage. Someone at Sega seems to have confused "innovative" with "boring," "pointless," "repetative," "plot-free," and "wildly unrealistic."

Anyway... back on topic...

The editorial is off base. As any creative industry grows the core of the industry becomes conservative, unwilling to take the risks necessary to create truly innovative work. But just because the core does doesn't mean that everyone will. Some companies will realize that you don't need to sell millions of copies to be successful and will happily make modest profits with smaller markets making truly innovative games. The original Counterstrike was just such a case, it popularized the modern SWAT style game and refined into the basis of many multi-player games. Pop Cap Games [popcap.com] has done phenominally well with their little games, most notably Bejeweled [popcap.com] Something genuinely original? How about surprisingly addictive game about building bridges, Chronic Logic's [chroniclogic.com] Pontifex [pontifex2.com]. How about a hard to explain that can only be inaccurately described as action puzzle play matched with turn based stategy, Moonbase Commander [moonbasecommander.com]. Check out the Independent Games Festival [indiegames.com] for bunches more of genuinely new and interesting games.

Of course, certain genres are completely unreasonable for small publishers, like massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Or are they? How about a MMORPG without any combat? A Tale in the Desert [centralserver.net]. A puzzle based MMORPG? Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates [puzzlepirates.com].

Thanks to internet distribution, it's becoming more and more economical for a smaller company to reach out to a global audience.

So, there is lots of great new game ideas. Sometimes they even escape from big, conservative companies. So why don't we see them? Why aren't more people aware of them? The problem isn't that a lack of new ideas, the problem is the journalists themselves! By focusing on the big budget rehash games, spending time giving us pointless "preview" coverage over and over ("We still haven't actually played the game, but boy, it sure does look neat. We look forward to its release in forty-eight months") instead of seeking out and publicizing great stuff from small companies. It wouldn't take much to get the general public looking for these games, helping to encourage further innovation. Because the journalists hype them so, the game industry is still stuck in the idiot "Big budget, big payoff" gamble that the movie industry is. With a few small budge success stories we could see big companies realizing that quarter or half million dollar risks don't have huge rewards, but they also lack the possibility of becoming catastrophic failures [planetdaikatana.com].

If you're worried about the lack of innovative games, go looking for them, they exist. Point them out to your friends. And if you're a journalist, don't just bitch, tell your readers about what gems you do find!

I agree....

I have to agree with you... there really isn't that much inovation out there. The only things I could think of that are truly groundbreaking are: 1) Dance Dance Revolution (Yeah.... it's just for the kids... but you have to admit that it's quite different from anything out there) and 2) The Typing Of The Dead. I'm not sure if too many people know about The Type of the Dead but basically they took The House of the Dead and instead of shooting zombies with a gun, you have a keyboard and each zombie has a word you have to type in order to kill it. Surprisingly, it is very addictive and the first I've ever seen of anything like this. I think we need more of this type of thinking in the gaming industry.

Finally, somebody recognizes the Dreamcast...

I have felt the exact same way about DC and PS2. When the DC came out, it seemed that every week, some completely original game would be released. Remember Seaman? Where you spoke to the artificial fish through a special microphone? Or the way Space Channel 5 gave a new spin on the memory type games (no, it was very different than Parappa). Or Soul Calibur, the best fighting game ever released (yes, it pwns Tekken). The list goes on and on - the mentioned Shenmue and Jet Set Radio... some memorable RPG's, great multiplayer games, sports games that quickly rivaled anything that the lame EA franchises have come up with, Crazy Taxi, the innovative Samba de Amigo with REAL maracas (yes I have a pair, and it's fun)... Virtual Tennis, the best tennis game EVER made, Phantasy Star Online, one of my favorite online RPG's (not massively-multiplayer), which had FULL support for ethernet connections, including a great port of Quake 3 Arena, with an easy to use DC mouse and keyboard to go with it! The accessories were also as innovative as the games.

Hopefully that covered almost everything. I own GC, PS2, and X-Box, and they mostly gather dust, except for using my X-Box as a media player. Since the demise of the DC, there have been nothing but sequels, and it seems that even Sega has lost its flair for video game perfection. Hopefully there will be another era in video games that isn't driven by profit margins, movie licenses, and sequels. This hasn't just been related to Sega, even Nintendo's proven franchises are becoming more and more lackluster. Please people, stop buying Wrestlemania games and try something new for once. The DC proved that innovation is still possible in a crowded market.

Some original games do sell...

The Sims, Wolfenstein 3D, Unreal Tournament, Mario Kart, Pokemon, Myst, Parappa the Rapper, Super Mario 3d, Ninja Gaiden, The Legend of Zelda...

Each of these sold better than "Legends of Wrestling" _BECAUSE_ of their originality, because they appealed to a new crowd. The Sims is the best example of this.

Of course, some ideas just don't cut it. Sewer Shark. The Sims Online. Anything for the Jaguar. It's not always because the game sucked -- sleepers like Jet Grind Radio, Star Control 2, Shadow of the Beast, Radiant Silvergun and Panzer Dragoon Saga happen all the time and either miss their audience or are otherwise stutter started into obscurity.

The Dreamcast was killed by speculation and nothing else. Everybody who played Crazy Taxi with me when it first came out loved it. Most of them waited for the PS2 anyway -- because the PS1 had a huge library and Sony was making promises to shake the very earth. It's not ORIGINALITY that killed the DC. That's just stupid. ORIGINALITY was the only think that prevented it from doing a complete "Saturn fail."

innovation = Easy to say, difficult to do

I have two friends that I know back from the university. We are always in discussion of our next gaming project. Well, we have not been able to make anything!!! anytime we started, we found out that someone else has done the same before us!!!

3d Shooters ? done to death.

Online rpgs ? too much work for 3 bedroom coders.

Puzzle games ? done to death. We even tried 3d battleship!!!

Adventure games ? well, no one had the talent of storytelling. But this is a field that shows more promise than any other. Basically, you can do whatever you like.

So, what you can really do ? even big companies don't have the resources to pull cinematic experiences. It's not that the hardware does not allow it. It's time and resources. The current market simply does not justify too high costs.

Even if you think about any other type of game, its been done to death. The only real innovation is combining formerly separate categories.

About the Dreamcast, all I have to say is that I love it. Today I read about the PowerVR tile engine: super pretty smart architecture for 3d rendering. It's a pity SEGA did not have the marketing hype. Because it's the PS2 hype that killed the Dreamcast: the big anticipation of the uber console that could do emotional experiences in 75 million polygons per second...damn lies by the Sony PR department. But it worked.

Tech as driving force

and a look into the future when technical achievements are no longer the driving force

Look at the movies - we've had them for a long time, and technology is still one of the main driving forces. If you believe this will change for either games or movies, you're just being narrow minded.

There never was originality

Since getting into MAME recently, I have played over 1,000 classic arcade games. They are almost always based on an existing game format.

Galaga is based from Space Invaders, and games like 1942 are based on Galaga, just that the terrain moves vertically.

Then games like Shinobi, are just like Double Dragon, Kung Fu Master, and many others where you navigate horizontally.

It goes further in gun based games like Operation Wolf, Duck Hunt, and Terminator. Also, with the many driving games, on to STreet Fighter game.

So, all in all, there have only been game format changes. The differences between games have been marginal and usually just in appearance/style.

OK, here is an idea I've had for a game...

The setting is in a movie theater during the days of silent films. The film itself is, of course, black and white but everything else is normal. There is a piano player on stage in the corner and a movie audience. The movie playing is a serialized "Perils of Pauline" kind of thing. You control what happens on the movie screen and how well you do effects how the audience reacts. The tempo of the piano player's music will warn you when things are about to get hairy and the text-screens during the movie (It's not a "talkie" remember) will provide clues as to what to do.

You get points for not only rescuing the "damsel in distress" but doing so in the "nick of time" using the most outlandish means possible. Your audience responds by remaining focused on the screen and coming back next week to see what adventures our hero gets into next.

On the other hand if say, she's tied to a railroad track and you rescue her before the train is even on camera, the audience will be bored and start throwing peanuts at each other and some will even get up and leave.

Also, if you fail and the damsel dies, then the audience is horrified and storms out the the theater in mass never to return.

anyway, that's the basic jist, I just wish I knew how to code it.

The FPS, like rock-and-roll, is dead and/or dying

If I were to somehow distill the inner workings of my mind and figure out the process my brain goes through when determining whether or not I enjoy a particular game, these criteria would be on the checklist (in no particular order). A Yes answer to each of these makes it a winner in my book.

• Is the level-to-level progression of gameplay suffiently complex that I don't feel like I'm following a dotted line from start to finish?
• Is the AI sufficiently clever that I'm not able to quickly determine and exploit its weaknesses?
• Is the single-player scenario/storyline engrossing, or does the game's appeal rely solely on internet play?
• Do I get to use my brain, or are rapid motor skills enough to get me by?
• Would I watch a movie or read a book based on the game's storyline?
• Does the wow-factor of cool graphics do more than just spit-polish a steaming lump of excrement?

There are more criteria, I'm sure, but that captures a large chunk of them. There are very few games I've played that meet those criteria (this includes non-FPS titles):

• anything by Bungie (particularly the Marathon series)
• the Myst series
• Diablo I and II
• Deus Ex
• Medal of Honor
• Splinter Cell (cool stealthy gameplay)
• and perhaps Castle Wolfenstein, but the final boss is waaaaay too easy.

Always something new...

Amazing levels of freedom and detailed world (Morrowind)
Thrill of sneaking up and tricking the enemies rather than killing them (Hitman 1 & 2)
Really challenging AI (announced in Halflife 2)
Atmosphere of real fear (Silent Hill 2)
Amazing plotline (Final Fantasy, since 4 or 5)
Easily extendable "create your own world" without quality loss. (Morrowind again, compare to average user-made levels in other FPP games)

These are but a few relatively new tricks that will not get old&boring anytime soon, and before they do, people will come up with new ones.

We're far beyond the times where everything could've been turned into a game: Brushing teeth, riding elevators, catching sheep, eating hamburgers... Nowadays all games need to have a plotline (not only some "intro legend" written in a paper manual), some 3D gfx, good music&fx, several hours of gameplay, more or less "closed ending" (at least a "main quest") - these are a must, and they make all games very similar to each other. But there's a whole big layer behind that, which evolves slowly but constantly and it's NOT just the looks.

Game sameness - churn and politics

To the many good critiques here, I'll add just two points: churn and politics. First churn.

Game publishers want to move volumes of product, and games that help this tend to be if not disposable than at least shorter rather than longer-lived. That means quick, linear scenarios - the kind best suited, of course, to the 12-year old target demographic. Despite their evolutionary polygonal distance from their forerunner in the old Atari Berserk, these are still only simple mazes for going zap! in. And a consequence of that aesthetic choice is that complexity goes out the window, along with ambiguiety, variety in problem-solving, and other open-ended criteria that most of us equate with "originality."

That said, three major games suggest a countervailing force: the Sims and the GTA3 franchises, and Morrowind. These are major commercial successes that flout the platform-hopping, find-key-open-door rattrap of most games, and point to a more dynamic and nuanced form of gameplay. If this continues, good things will follow.

Ironically enough for a form that traffics in sensation rather than ideas, another tendency to consider is political. Apart from horror and sci fi, there has long been a social and political context in video games. At the risk of simplifying, lots of games through the 70s and 80s reflected utopian leftist values - big bad corporations were always either releasing giant robots or leaving a scorched earth in which vigilante players had to set things to right (with a gun, naturally). Looking over gaming history you see this trend start to level off as gaming moves out of the garage and into the boardroom. Today, in many games, the enemy has been humanized (some would say dehumanized) as a projection of grim right wing urges: Arab or Vietnamese soldiers who must be eradicated in the service of "freedom" or "justice". (How congenial a trend this is to our rulers can be seen in the US Army even deploying its own game.) So our values - or at least as construed by those who control big-money game publishing - can also drive a lot of me-too game making.

Games are big business now: Sturgeon's law applies

Sturgeon's law: 90% of everything is crap.

As soon as an "industry" moves from a cottage/craft industry to big business, it will start degrading into conservative blandness until it too is 90% crap.

It costs lots of money to make games. Now would you, as a game company manager, rather spend $$ on a guaranteed hit sequel to your last game and have it out by September, or spend $$$$$ on a new, unknown, novel idea that may or may not make dollar #1 in profit, and won't be out until next spring at the earliest?

From a business point of view, creativity is dangerous and foolhardy. From a craft point of view, it's the very reason for existing.

We need to build up the infrastructure for a gaming cottage industry underneath (or beside?) the existing commercial gaming industry. That's where creativity will come from.

Games that make you smarter

I have thought about this a lot, being horribly addicted to video games and having woken up at the end of many a fourteen hour binge feeling empty like I had wasted precious life. Boy wouldn't it be great to become completely immersed in a game at the end of which you wound up speaking fluent Chinese or having acquired some other skill useful in the real world? I know that there are plenty of kids' learning games out there to teach phonics and stuff like that, but that's not what I'm talking about. Those are too pedantic.

What I had in mind was something more in the direction of Cyberchase, were the skill being learned was important, but almost incidental to the game play. For example, take all those Everquest-y RPG-y games out there where you're an ancient Greek warrior or a spy or something, and gradually require the player to understand what the characters are saying in their native tongue in order to advance, and after that require the player to speak back in the language. Presto at the end of the game you come out with basic understanding of French grammar and a vocabulary of 1000 words.

I know it wouldn't be easy to walk the line between educational and fun, but if someone managed it I'd be a slavishly devoted fan.

Re:Games that make you smarter

That is honestly one of the best ideas I've ever heard. If someone could find a good way to incorporate useful learned skills into a game, we might just start actually producing citizens that can read and write beyond a 9th grade level and have math skills beyond basic algebra.

The possibilities are astounding:

-A puzzle game that teaches advanced geometry and calculus concepts. Or an adduct to a game like The Incredible Machine that can teach many physics concepts.
-A city simulation game (i.e. simcity) that lets you incorporate network infrastructure, everything from global satellite WANs to 10 node small business LANs, with configurations on every router, switch, bridge, mux, etc in between.
-Something like Parappa The Rapper but using actual music theory incorporating keys, modes, chords, maybe even different instruments. (Hell maybe an electronic interface for keyboards, guitars, and other things....this may even already exist)
-As you said, an RPG type game that teaches language skills to ineract with the different players.

Man, I could think about this shit all day. Like you, I'm a terribly addicted gamer, and I'd love to spend time gaming where it might actually improve my intellectual pursuits. I'm in school now, how cool would it be to walk into a class already knowing the techniques to solving problems in the subject and just learning the theory behind it?

Originality is always possible

Originality in video games is always possible, but then again, the same holds true for TV and all we get is reality TV and sitcoms...

Since the discussion topic at top is somewhat open-ended, I'll just babble on a few points:

If every commercial game is made from a cookie-cutter template, I don't think it'll be that huge a blow. There are always independent shareware and freeware programmers ready to make something original even if it doesn't make a huge profit. If it really shines, it'll even have some viability on the commercial market. Look at Counter-Strike. Sure, it's another team-based fps, but it was so addictive, that now it's one of (if not THE?) most popular multiplayer game on the Internet. It was free when it started, and it's even free now, but you can still buy it in stores packaged with Half-Life (the game it runs as a mod for,) and it's even coming out for the Xbox in a while! I really don't think we're going to see a total death of originality in gaming... ever.

Video games are just like any other form of mass media. When they came out, they were all new and original (you wanna see some unique games? Get an old Intellivision or Atari!) but now that they've been around for a while, they've stabilized to the point where just like TV, movies, music, or any other mass media, they're 90%+ cookie-cutter fodder for the masses, and a few real gems that gather cult followings, or even widespread attention and longlasting recognition.

While it is true that the Dreamcast was a haven for original games with titles like Crazy Taxi, Shenmue, Jet Grind Radio, and a real model of originality, Seaman, I don't think that's what killed it.

[HISTORY CHUNK]
Every time Sega made a system, there was an achilles heel that dragged it down. The Master System competed with the NES and it's myriad of games and already widespread acceptance. The Genesis had few colors and terrible FM-synthesized sound compared to the SNES (and it's leagues of game developers from back in the day of the NES!)

The Game Gear, compared to the GameBoy of the time, had lush color graphics, awesome sound, and some nice titles. The GameBoy was cheap at around $100 (CDN), and as grainy and colorless as the games were, with their bleepy sub-NES (stereo!) sound, they had some exceptional gameplay to them, and some winning developers licensed to make them. It also didn't hurt Nintendo any that while the Gameboy would use 2 batteries for a week, the Game Gear would use 6 batteries for a couple hours! More playing is more fun. 'nuff said. 11 years later, Nintendo finds it can make a color screen that doesn't need a hydroelectric dam to power it, and they OWN the handheld market, competing with truly nonthreatening offerings like the GP32, NeoGeo Pocket (and hastily-released Color version,), and the Bandai WonderSwan, which to my knowledge, didn't even make it to these shores (unlike the first Internet-ready console system, the Bandai/Apple "Pippin.")

The Saturn was a 2D 256 color (?) system that was tweaked at the last minute to compete with the PSX's 3D prowess. Truth told, it probably would have amounted to the greatest 2D system ever, beating out even the Turbographix 16 and the Neo Geo. However, they chose to instead make grainy-looking off-color versions of Playstation titles, and leave all the titles that really showed off the system's strength in Japan.

Wait, where is Nintendo now? Well, with the N64, they pulled a Sega and built in an insurmountable flaw. Being cartridge only, the games could be either low-detail, low-content, or expensive like Neo Geo games. Contrary to what you'd think though, that wasn't what killed them.

You see, they were working on a sort of CD-addon for the SNES to match the SegaCD. This system would include an additional processor to handle the next-generation CD games. However, they got partway though development, and decided it wasn't worth their while. They were working with SONY on this project, and legend has it, it was even going to be called the PLAY

FAQ: How do I ship a clever game?

What sucks right now in the game industry isn't that you can't make clever games with new ideas, but that you can't get them funded. If you develop an unusual, refreshing game to completion, you can get wonderful deal terms and have surprisingly good odds of turning a buck.

Getting them funded to completion is the trick. Even veteran game companies are finding they need to pitch a sequel or a heavy license, and the deal negotiation still takes 3-6 months, during which time you can't make payroll and lose your employees to the monster first-party developers or in-house megacorp developers.

Angel funding generally doesn't work unless you know someone wealthy who really trusts you. Doing the angel circuit is incredibly challenging, and you still have to wait several months for the deal to sign and cash to flow, during which time your tasty team is disintigrating.

What I recommend to teams trying to do original content is find a way, by hook or by crook, to completely develop, debug, tune, and polish the game to completion, to develop their own ads, their own marketing plan, their own box art and box copy. This forces you to think through where the game can be sold, how, and for how much.

Handing a boxed, shrink-wrapped product to a publisher makes recouping your development costs trivial. Most big publishers have slipping product, and most big publishers, particularly publicly traded ones, need to ship a certain # of titles every quarter. There is a powerful demand for completed, fun games, but there is an over-supply of largely unwanted proposals and demos.

I did exactly this with Abuse and turned a $60k investment into $1.1M in royalties on a game that sold lousy numbers of units (though it was downloaded like crazy). I have friends doing exactly this sort of thing now, generally quietly, content to make money on games that they love making, even if they aren't over-exposed mega-hits.

They don't always have a $5M marketing campaign or a $5M art budget behind them, but good, fresh games are out there.

Some of us are still trying!

I participated this year in the Independent Games Festival (www.igf.com [igf.com]), which is the industry's attempt to encourage something like the art film scene for low budget independently produced games. There was definitely more variety there than in a random selection from a game store's shelves. One game had enough audio cues in it that it was playable by blind gamers. I mostly left the big company game development scene in the early 90s, after over a decade doing that, and I like to think my work is somewhat innovative too. But of course I'm biased there. (Hey, we did make the finals in the IGF, at least.)

One of the big problems in the hardcore gamer market is that most players demand millions of dollars in art and animation budgets to produce enough eye-candy to outdo the last round of hit games. This cost won't go away even if all the game engines are licensed and bring the programming costs down thereby. I think the real hope for innovation lies more in the mass market - even if a lot of them are out there now just playing online Hearts and Spades. They have a broader range of tastes and interests, and they've made games like Tetris and Minesweeper and Shanghai big hits, even without much of an art budget. Also they've made The Sims the biggest selling PC game of all time - it was expensive to produce, granted, but it certainly represents a developer putting out a new and different form of gameplay, and the market rewarded it. So I think there's hope yet. :X)

Origianlity = Risk

Originaly game making is wonderful, but from a business angle it is hard to push to the bean counters. Before any type of R&D project a business is going to estimate the future money to be made and then in corporate the business risk. For new developpments, this is very high, and pushed your value down to nothing, so why bother.

If you look around and see the market has room for another game where you tote hundreads of guns and have balls like churchbells and blow away all the pinko scum, you know it will make money, just add a cute new feature, like bullet time, or extra blood splatting on the walls and you sell your game. Same as putting "New and Improved" on a box of Tide.

Until the consumer quits opening their wallet for the same old thing you wont get much innovation. the only reason we can say "they innovated in the old days!" is because there were no video games to compare from. Same as old cinema. iturn of the century and into the 30's movies were innovative. today, they are variations on a theme.

Make innovation profitable, and you will have innovative games.

we could also get into the limitations of UI devices and innovate those and then games could go nice directions control wise. I mean have you played Enter the Matrix for the PC yet? Your left hand gets one hellacious workout with all the different control combinations.

Re:I blame the bloodthirsty media

Good grief, I never thought I'd see someone work the poor quality of video games into The Conspiracy.

Is there anything that isn't the direct result of whoever it is with the 260 IQ (because it would take nothing less to run The Conspiracy) running The Conspiracy?

No, wait, this post must be part of The Conspiracy, too, trying to throw you off the track! Keep digging and you'll find the truth! (Or is this a double-cross attempt by The Conspiracy? All I can tell you is no matter what you decide, The Conspiracy will render your body down for the oil it contains as soon as it gets around to you.)

Re:I blame the bloodthirsty media

What tripe. Popular games = what people want. No one is forcing people to buy anything. They buy what they want/like. FPS is cool, on occassion, with the likes of the original Doom and later improvements like Quake and Halflife. DeusEx? Damn-frickin-good. And, sorry, but RTCW is/was kickass fun...and there are plenty of Germans who play/enjoy that "nazi glorifying" game. Check out the network game servers...you will find plenty out of Germany and just about every other country in the world. It isn't about glorifying nazis. It's about teams fighting against teams in a really nicely rendered "world" with great graphics quality. It's just fun...I have played both nazi side and allied side, simply depending on which side needed players. There's no nazi glorifying going on (in single player mode, in case you missed it, the nazis were the BAD GUYS).