Innovative, Original Games Have No Chance 225
In interviews with game developers this week, the tone seems to be that innovative, original thought is no longer welcome in the games industry. That definitely seems to be the tone behind IGN's interview with Okami producer Atsushi Inaba, and MTV's interview with Bioshock's Ken Levine (distracting flash site). Atsushi, speaking about the art style in his critically acclaimed but poorly selling adventure game, had this to say about originality in games: "You use the word 'difficult', but I think that it is becoming almost 'impossible' for an original game to succeed financially. This can't be blamed on anyone but it's a simple fact that an original game doesn't appeal to the majority of gamers." Meanwhile Levine, talking mostly about the level of art he's trying to create with the title, had this to say about some of his fellow designers: "Most video game people have read one book and seen one movie in their life, which is 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Aliens' or variations of that. There's great things in that, but you need some variety." While most of the rest of his comments are somewhat mild, he reiterates throughout that they're trying to do something that gamers may not "give a crap" about. What do you think? Has the industry gotten to the point where retreads are all that will sell, or is there still room in the marketplace for original ideas?
ok. if you say so. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well then. Since that's settled, Let me get back to Madden 2008: Platinum edition.
Suggestion (Score:3, Insightful)
Fantasy is the worst (Score:2, Insightful)
Elf? Check.
Dwarf? Check.
Fighter? Check.
Rogue? Check.
People don't want fantastic fantasy. They want familiar fantasy. The equivalent of peanut butter and jelly on Wonder Bread or a hot dog while mom and dad eat that weird lasagna stuff. Fantasy gamers have the taste of a 4-year-old.
Nintendogs (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact is that most "inovative" games break the standard rule in any creative pursuit
If you're trying to make a game that is different then you should probably look into who the demographic that will be interested in your game is and focus on making the game good for them.
Stop spending millions on them then... (Score:5, Insightful)
Finding the money for a game that needs 20 people to make is a lot easier and less risky, because even if it's a flop, you aren't taking the whole publisher down with you.
Of course, ideally, you do the whole game yourself, on your own, sticking 100% to the creative vision you had, without needing to persuade *anyone* about the validity of the idea, and taking all of the risk yourself. I've gone many years reading big name industry celebs saying how that's not possible any more, despite the fact that I do it for a living, and I know a fair few others who do so as well.
Of course, if you would rather not make a game at all, than make one on a low budget, then that's a different matter. But personally, if I could make a 'triple a' WW2 FPS clone with 100 people, or an original, inventive 2D budget game on my own, I'd do the latter, even if it will never make me rich.
But generally, he's right, there is a lack of originality in mainstream games (spore is a good exception though).
The PC still hosts original thought (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nintendogs (Score:3, Insightful)
Dogz was out first, and Tamagotchi before that.
Re:Must Not Be a Good Enough Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, that's ONLY a problem with games (Score:3, Insightful)
Okami Rocks (Score:2, Insightful)
My wife and I are playing through Okami now. It's one of the most fun games I've played on the PS2, with lots of interesting things to do and see, and the art is just beautiful.
Kudos, guys.
What about the Wii? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll also point out that "gamers" is a rather illusive term today. Nintendo among others have realized that female gamers have different ideas of what makes a good game as well as "older" gamers as well. And that's only two of the markets that are only beginning to be tapped.
Basically, although it may be true that the traditional "hard-core gamer" may prefer to stick with the same type of game over and over, other types of gamers may actually prefer more original content. Of course, we won't know for a fair number of years if this is true, but I wouldn't count original content out just yet.
Re:Build it...and we may come (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, Crazy Taxi was damn fun.
Too Original or Badly Timed? (Score:4, Insightful)
As for originality selling, Katamari Damacy (to name one) has had enough success to get not only a PS2 sequel but a version on the PSP. Even more recently, Nintendo has seemed to be all about originality with the DS and Wii, and they certainly aren't suffering.
Unfortunately, new home console titles cost $50+ a pop. That's a lot of money to invest, and I don't think it's unreasonable for gamers to go with "safe bets." I also suspect that if an "Okami 2" was released on the Wii (the painting aspect would seem tailor-made for that console), and of course it was good, it would sell like gangbusters. Then again, at that point the same complaints would be made by someone else that people are only interested in sequels...
Second verse, same as the first? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fantasy is the worst (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Suggestion (Score:4, Insightful)
Thus, it becomes incredibly long and expensive... I remember when Rogue Squadron for the Gamecube came out back then... they had a small team mind you, but making the model for the larger star destroyers took 1/6th of the time allocated to make the entire game (of course, it was in paralelle so its not like it was slowing down the other parts of the game, but still).
I just can't begin to think how long a game like a FFXIII will take in raw man hours (everybody added together). It must totally insane.
Re:Fantasy is the worst (Score:3, Insightful)
There are no popular fantasy games (pen-and-paper or computer-based) that I am aware of which deviate from the norm, to any measurable degree. Talislanta's boast that it "has no elves" doesn't change the fact that it adheres to dozens of other fantasy tropes. WoW adding Blood elves recently only goes to show that even the expansions stick with comfortable territory. And why? Because most players don't want to play a Xzflrbg or a Gbrhsts. They want to play an elf or a dwarf or a human. Why? Because they understand it. It's a familiar taste.
Two Words: Guitar Hero (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What an ass... (Score:3, Insightful)
(No, I have never met Ken Levine. I have nothing personal invested in this. But to say of the lead designer of System Shock II "If he wants to make himself look better than his peers, perhaps he should do so by proving himself"...well, you should be embarrassed, frankly.)
Original? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Suggestion (Score:4, Insightful)
First, E3 is dead. Thank the lord. But what has risen from those ashes is the downloadable demo as a way to reach gamers. It's like we've taken all the work that goes into dropping demos on E3 machines and pushed it into the living room for a fraction the cost! Among XBox 360 gamers I know, they all love demos (well, at least they love having the ability to try demos).
The day may come very soon when innovation can compete head-to-head against hype-only games because the battle arena isn't banners on the web and TV commercials, but live on the console with controller in hand.
Re:What an ass... (Score:2, Insightful)
Lack of Innovation (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:ok. if you say so. (Score:3, Insightful)
Which reads to me as bullshit of the first order, most of the gamers I know are geeks and geeks in general tend to be movie buffs and/or book readers. Those may well be two of their *favorite* icons but its not all they know.
Honestly, I think there will always be some room for retreads of the same ground, incremental refinement, like well, madden or final fantasy... but there has to be innovation too, the mmorpg sector is a good example, people are going to have trouble detrowning blizzard as the mmo king with wow because every game they keep making is "just another wow with a different skin." Using his logic lotro should kill wow... but it has -zero- chance of doing that because it plays... just... like... wow.
I think the nintendo controller says a lot. It's innovative to control your games that way and its fun, it adds another element to game play to refresh it... games like katamari damacy are a good example too... they were cheap, they were innovative, and while they didn't sell final fantasy numbers, largely because NON-GAMERS never heard of them, gamers were there snapping them up... because they're bored with repeats of the same ol shit.
Shrug.
Re:Suggestion (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fantasy is the worst (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that the main problem is that the western genre fans have completely naturalized the conventions of that genre. A lot of them still think that the Tolkeinesque fantasy schtick is somehow classical, when it is very much built up from 19th century fantastic literature.
Marketting... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell, I'm incredibly surprised I don't see more game ads. I probably see more GameTap commercials, and generic "Playstation Portable" commercials, than all specific video game commercials combined. Television advertising, especially for this demographic, is at the HEART of your marketting of a game. It doesn't matter HOW innovative the game is, if the main stream doesn't pick it up, no amount of yelling and screaming about it is going to make it popular.
These are not small budget companies or low budget productions, if they can afford to make a game like Okami, they can afford some national NBC prime time spots, as expensive as they are.
That said, I absolutely loved Okami, and am very sorry to hear the creator is so dissolutioned, like this.
Re:What about the Wii? (Score:2, Insightful)
Back in the DS/PSP launch days, all you heard were articles about Sony predicting how much better the PSP would do than the DS... All the while, Nintendo kept releasing statements saying they were not in direct competition with Sony, and that each company had a different strategy. (Which is true. Nintendo was releasing a game console. Sony was releasing a movie player/MP3 player/image viewer/dishwasher which also happened to be able to play games.)
If I had to pick one reason I didn't like Sony, it'd be their arrogance and inability to shut up.
Why do we keep hearing this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, creating/selling original games is difficult. This has several reasons:
It must be original instead of yet another Elf-Bashes-Monsters or Space-Hero-Shoots-Monsters.
Familiar games tend to sell better - not just to customers, but to financers.
Like most new ideas, most original games are flops. Their ideas simply don't 'click' with the players. Often enough they have a small, fanatical fan-club, but this doesn't make enough money, especially when the financers insisted on huge loads of fancy graphics and whatever, pushing up the number of people needed to create this.
However, every now and then an original game comes out. And is a huge success. And has so many followers (coders and users) that this type of game soon becomes familiar again. Where do you think all the familiar games came from? Thin air?
But this doesn't happen often. You need very good, very original people. And seeing how most companies work (loads of average programmers (cheaper), concentrate on pretty graphics, large bureaucrazies) this explains *why* it happens so seldomly. They do not want to take risks.
Watch this space! In (at most) a year or so, we'll have this question again: "Where O Where Are The Original Games?"
Yeah, okay, but it works. (Score:3, Insightful)
Go ahead, try to come up with something new. A new class? A new race maybe? You might notice that in WoW all the playable races are humanoid. Good, now check slightly deeper, do you notice how all the equipment seems to work on them all? Could it be because it is simply a case of scaling the body and appendages rather then coming up with unique art for each and every race?
Imagine a centaur race. Brilliant. Fast, capable of being a mount to another player, large carrying capacity and definitly a different looking critter. Hell, they exist in the game already so it is possible. But oops. You need an entire new set of clothing/armour art, new moves and worse, you might even have to deal with the fact that horses just don't climb ladders to well or manouver in convined spaces.
Much easier to make everyone just a slight variant of human beings were they all got exactly the same performance anyway. Notice how tiny dwarfs run just as fast and jump just as high as a mighty orc?
Ah, but classes, now there you can go imaginative? Well, just try it. You got your basic tank. Up close combat, you can vary slightly between the level of armour vs dodging but that is it. You got someone who gets up close and personal. With that the ranger is next. He stays away from the enemy. You can give him all kinds of things to shoot/throw but basically it is a ranged character.
You are going to need someway to heal your wounds. A priest? A druid? A doctor? A medic? Don't matter what you call it, it is the dude who restores hitpoints.
You might want to add someone with lots of damage capabilty, say NUKE like. Oh but we need balance, so that person should probably be a bit vulnerable. So no close fighting skills to speak off. A ranged magic user? Doesn't matter what you then call it a sorcerer, a wizard or a jedi force specced character, it is a nuker. Heavy damage but vulnerable to direct combat.
Oh you can mix and match, bit of a healer, bit of a close combat, tada, one paladin.
The simple thing is that it has been done. People have sat and thought about this and came up with all the classes that you can come up with. Sure you can name them something different but then you sooner or later will have to admit that "our brilliant new class of the new enlightened order of Aeonites is what you would otherwise call a rogue.... oh okay a thief".
Maybe you can come up with an exciting new class but sooner or later you are going to have to let me know how to play it. Try doing that without saying anything like "it is cross between a X and a Y".
Old and familiar works because you don't have to waste time building everything up. Imagine the following.
"Old and familiar": You enter the tavern and your eye is immidiatly drawn to a beautifull full figured woman with chestnut colored hair and a smile to die for.
"New and exciting": Threatase (the term used to describe to multitude of combined entitities that for lack of a better term is "you" except that that would totally fail to explain it but since the real you controlling this make believe Threatase is a you anyway why bother) fascialte (I suppose a more corporal entiry would use the word enter but being a being of pure thought such a base move is beneath you) the TryK (what a creature concerned only with base needs could never understand) etc etc etc.
Sure, I introduced lots of new things before I got tired of it. Much simpler to just go with the old and familiar. What the fuck is goldplated latinum anyway? Yeah it is new, but mostly it sounds silly and I got absolutly no reference of why it is supposed to be so valuable. Star Trek writers could possible explain it but not in a 45 minute episode.
But yes I agree, did the tiefling in NWN2 really have to be a rogue. The first tiefling in computer games was nice and new and refreshing and we wanted more but not a carbon copy.
Yes I loved all the new races in Planescape Torment and reading their descriptions but that was a game of a bygone era. Nowadays deadli