Creativity, a Problem for the Gaming Industry?

Steeda95GT writes "A Reuters story reprinted at Forbes.com is an interesting read, saying that 'The gaming industry will shrink unless we start to see new games'. It talks about how the ratio of original titles to sequels is dropping dramatically, but it also goes on to say that upcoming sequels (Doom 3, Halo 2, Half-Life 2, GTA: San Andreas) will be successful only because their predecessors were."

I know one sequel I want to see...

[Jonin893]

Sorry, Sam & Max's cancellation is still upseting me. http://www.savesamandmax.com Nothing wrong with sequels. GTA3 was vastly better than GTA1 and 2. Just because it's a sequel doesn't mean it isn't going to be creative. Just think about the amount of Final Fantasy games, or a lot of the Nintendo games. Pretty much every incarnarnation of Mario has been very creative and original. I think part of the problem may be piracy and the fact that the top selling games like Half-Life sell an ungodly amount of copies more than other solid selling FPS games like No One Lives Forever. Thus, people copy what sells big, not what works.

i blame EA...

[Anonymous Coward]

and many other large western publishers. they centralize development, buy up little studios, and limit their creativity. the independant studio's demise is part of the problem. the other part i feel is the decline of japanese developed game sales here. look at many of the top selling games today. compare that with years past. NOT TO SAY that western developers arn't good at making games, but the japanese show a mastery of game design that is seldom matched in the west. look at the top selling games in japan and you see that the tastes of eastern and western players are going in oppisite directions, and that limits the industry.

Imminent death of net predicted

[0racle]

This [google.com] thread dates from 1989 and contains the phrase "Imminent death of net predicted" at least 6 times, with the first one appearing not long after the creation of Usenet. "Imminent death of net predicted" had a long and possible proud run.

Re:Trust

[TomHandy]

Regarding the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The guys who came up with the original comic book (that later spurned the cartoons, games, etc.) were huge fans of the comic book "Daredevil" and the Frank Miller comic book "Ronin". They sort of combined various elements of those stories and came up with the Mutant Ninja Turtles idea (some of the references in the show were a bit more obvious than others.... i.e. Daredevil was trained by a guy named "Stick", so the Ninja Turtles' sensei was named "Splinter"..... Daredevil fought against a group called "The Hand", so the Ninja Turtles went up against "The Foot").

-Tom

Re:Perhaps people would buy original games ...

[bigman2003]

There is a huge difference in price between console and PC games.

Nearly all console games debut at $49.99. And many will stay at that price point for a long time.

On the other hand, PC games usually start out a little cheaper, and are discounted much more quickly.

Today you can buy Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow from Ubisoft for $49.99 on the Xbox. The same game (which just came out) is only $39.99 for the PC. And they were throwing in a free T-shirt if you bought the PC version. The T-Shirt sells for $14.99 separately.

Warcraft?

[MolecularBear]

what the gaming industry needs is a genre-defining game. something that breaks open a whole new gaming motif like doom and sim city and warcraft did.

IIRC, it was Dune2 and not warcraft that did the genre-defining in the area of RTS. Dune2 was a single-player RTS and I remember being blown away by the game. I believe that soon afterward Command & Conquer came out (made by Westwood, the people who produced Dune2), and Warcraft close to that. I could be wrong - is anyone here motivated enough to look up the release dates?

Re:Again with the Warcraft!

[Nasarius]

The game introduced the concept of Heros - special units that gained levels with battle experience. The various abilities they gained, the items they could purchase and use, the fact that they could be "rebuilt" once they died... these are very innovative concepts for an RTS

No no, they're really not. Warlords Battlecry [mobygames.com] did this about three years earlier, with much more depth.

Re:Again with the Warcraft!

[Xenkar]

I thought the whole idea of heroes was Kohan's claim to fame, which came out long before WC3. Of course there's probably a ton of other games that implemented heroes before Kohan did.

Re:Creativity?

[JeremyALogan]

everyone's bitching about how warcraft was based on something else, so wasn't revolutionary. what they forgot to realize is that neither was Doom [idsoftware.com]... anyone remember Wolfenstein 3D [3drealms.com] (originally released May 5, 1992.)? I'm sure there might have been some predecessors to that as well

Re:Again with the Warcraft!

[ibullard]

Heroes of Might and Magic [mobygames.com][mobygames.com] did this in a turn based strategy game in 1995, four years before Warlords Battlecry.

There I go...showing my age again.

Re:Again with the Warcraft!

[Nasarius]

I love the HOMM series, but again, the Warlords series did it first :-)
Warlords II [mobygames.com] in 1993 had heroes. It's worth noting that in both these games, multiple heroes are allowed, while in the RTS's mentioned, it's only one.

Re:Creativity != features; improvement != revoluti

[Fjord]

They didn't drop the over head perspective. It was one of the perspectives you could choose. It wasn't very good, though, since you can see more when looking forward.

Re:Again with the Warcraft!

[Corporal Tunnel]

I doubt you have ever played Warcraft III.

WC3 has no formations,

It has formations. There's even a button next the map to turn them on and off.

no unit stances (other than stand ground, attack move, move. I want guard, retreat, etc),

guard = patrol, retreat = uh, "move" in the other direction

no 'next idle builder/miner' button,

there is both a button for this and a hotkey(f8 by default).

no display of a unit's queued orders, no way to queue MOST of the orders in the game, the list goes on.

queued orders are shown with totems/flags on the screen, and little green boxes on the minimap. most orders can be queued, including building structures. I can't think of any orders off the top of my head that can't be queued.

Re:Creativity?

[Anonymous Coward]

but doom and wolf3d were both developed by the same people, so they (the people) were still revolutionary

Re:Which leads to the unspoken truth...

[Makarakalax]

It's not as much a problem as people say. I used to pirate a lot of games, but guess what, I was a kid. I couldn't afford any games! So me and my mates shared them around. Our group piracy led to us becoming obsessed with games as it happens, and I reckon we ended up buying more games between us because we pirated them around.

Nowadays I can afford games and I buy them. However I do play less games than I used to, I have less time, and perhaps it is also because it is harder to pirate the games heh. But nowadays I have money and will pay if I like something.

Software is an funny industry, you have to accept that some copying will go on because it is easy to do so. If the industry can't turn a profit with the traditional one person - one sale business model then perhaps they are looking at the economics of the industry incorrectly?

Re:Creativity != features; improvement != revoluti

[Jagasian]

I think that most people that love GTA3 and GTA3:VC have never extensively played the original GTA. Therefore they didn't miss the motorbikes or multiplayer in GTA3. They also don't realize that Liberty City, Vice City, and San Adreas were packed into the original GTA. They don't realize that the original GTA was a 3D game with open-ended "sandbox" gameplay.

These same people slam GTA3:VC for being too derivative.

Then you have the people that have been with the series since the original GTA. These types miss the multiplayer, but generally agree that GTA3:VC is the best GTA game so far. Each game has mostly improved upon the previous games, with a few notable exceptions such as multiplayer.
I would buy another GTA, as long as enough new quality content was added, and additional gameplay improvements were made. In other words, as long as the improvement made between GTA3 and GTA3:VC is made for the next GTA game... I will buy it.

Don't get me wrong though. I am always on the outlook for new revolutionary games. My current favorite game is Puzzle Pirates [puzzlepirates.com], which runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. It combines Ultima Online, Tetris, Puzzle Fighter, Bejeweled, and Pirates of the Caribean into one fun game.

Maybe not as revolutionary as some games, but it is revolutionary enough in my book.

Re:Not at all

[mr breakfast]

I don't know about the rest of the world but every time there is any kind of national poll of the nations favourite books over here in the UK, Lord of the Rings invariably tops the list. It is not purely a geek thing, or at least not in this country, it is a hugely popular book, enjoyed by a lot of people who will never read any other "fantasy" literature.