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?
Re:Suggestion (Score:2, Interesting)
If you think... (Score:4, Interesting)
Take something like a Slayer out of the Games Workshop universe and pop it into Tolkien or WoW and there would be bloodshed. A Slayer is basically a suicide bomber without the bomb. Thorin would think the Slayer was a vicious savage. The WoW dwarves would wonder what this whole notion of "dying to avenge a previous loss" was, considering that the dwarves (and the rest of the Alliance) pretty much invariably win the wars they get caught up in and if they don't, hey, death is a very temporary state of affairs in the WoW universe.
In terms of game mechanics, anyone who could say that Vanguard and WoW were the same game has clearly never played either and should probably keep it that way. I'm not trying to be elitist, its just that they're two very, very different beasts. For every structural similarity ("Hey, tank/healer/DPS with emphasis on loot collection!") you'd come up with many more differences that are almost fundamental in nature (WoW: Crafting should be open to everyone and not get in the way of gameplay. Vanguard: Crafting is gameplay, if you're HARD CORE ENOUGH TO HANDLE IT. WoW: Dungeons should be open to everyone. Vanguard: Dungeons should be open to you if you're HARD CORE ENOUGH TO HANDLE IT. WoW: Fast travel should be open to everyone. You should be able to teleport immediately, fly within 2 hours, and have essentially permanently increased non-combat movement speed by the mid-levels. Vanguard: Travel should be slow so that you will quit if you're not HARD CORE ENOUGH TO HANDLE IT. etc)
Disclosure: Yeah, I'm more of a WoW person than a Vanguard person. What can I say, I'm not hard core enough to handle it.
Distinction (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it really that difficult to make a game with a scaled down dev team and resources?