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XBox (Games) Entertainment Games

Former Xbox Director Targets Lack Of Originality 73

Posted by simoniker from the original-better-than-mary-kate dept.
Thanks to Indie Magazine for their report on former Xbox director Seamus Blackley's comments in a recent lecture regarding games and originality. Blackley suggests: "Why is it that we've lost the cultural edge? The reason is that today's games are not exploiting pop culture. We're being willingly driven by pop culture. We just crawl over one another to get access to IP [intellectual property] from other media. In this light you can really start to view the games industry as a marketing arm of the film industry or of the music industry." The article also points out: "Blackley added that with past IP and other people's IP being exploited there's nowhere for next year's sequels to come from and in turn, the industry is forfeiting its ability to create original IP." How do you halt this vicious cycle?
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Former Xbox Director Targets Lack Of Originality More

Former Xbox Director Targets Lack Of Originality

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  • Preach on Brother (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dr. Bent ( 533421 ) <ben.int@com> on Thursday August 21, 2003 @10:01AM (#6754608) Homepage
    "...you can really start to view the games industry as a marketing arm of the film industry or of the music industry."

    Damn straight. Sid Meier said that "A game is a series of interesting choices." And Sid is right. The problem with games made from other media like books, movies, and TV shows is that those mediums are non-interactive and therefore contain no choices. So in a game like The Matrix, choices get reduced to the level of "how do I accomplish my pre-defined mission in the most effecient manner", which is hardly interesting.

    Writers, who create books, movies, and TV shows, want to tell a story. A story has a linear progression from setup to conflict to resolution. It is the conflict and it's eventual resolution that makes it interesting. But a game does not need to have conflict (ex. Animal Crossing, The Sims) because, like Sid said, it's the choices that make the game interesting. Relying on a movie franchise to make your game interesting is like relying on a leather bound cover to make your novel worth reading.

    • Re:Preach on Brother (Score:3, Interesting)

      by leifm ( 641850 )
      I think this is why GTA has done so well despite IMHO being a buggy POS. GTA gives you more freedom than most other games, although it still has stupid scripted missions. My hope is that in the next few iterations of GTA that they lose the scripted missions, and instead just inform you of certain character's attributes and let you choose how to deal with that, sort of like the way the Sims works. So for example rather than a scripted mission where you kill Mafia boss x you would have the choice of killing,
      • So, absolute freedom and no scripted missions, eh ?

        You've obviously never worked for the mob.

        *snicker*
        • Actually I care about the interactive environments more than nonlinear gameplay. Duke 3D was a pretty much run of the mill FPS but the level of interactivity that was put into the environment added to it a lot.

  • Originality (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Metal_Demon ( 694989 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @10:02AM (#6754620)
    The problem with originality is that something can only be original the first time. It is my opinion that by the year 2010 nobody will ever have another original idea. It will all already have been thought before. Also I wanna mention that people worry entirely too much about being original and unique to the point that they sacrifice fun for originality. Doesn't matter to me if a game is sequel number 69 as long as it still has new content and is fun.

    Originality is so unoriginal.

    • Re:Originality (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It is my opinion that by the year 2010 nobody will ever have another original idea.

      I had that same idea years ago.
    • I've heard something like this before... oh yeah:

      "Everything that can be invented has been invented." --Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

      For more, click here [interstel.net].
    • Your views are not only closeminded but lacking in the basic quality of originality its-self, imagination! There will always be orginal thought as long as there are individuals being born that are orginal.
      • There will always be orginal thought as long as there are individuals being born that are orginal.

        I think the problem that scares some people is the possibility that individuals being born now-a-days aren't original. I remember a TV commerical that stated that, if you are one in a million, there are a thousand people just like you in China.

  • Lost the edge? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by freebfrost ( 650284 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @10:03AM (#6754634)
    I'm really not sure what his point is here.

    The biggest success on the Xbox is Halo, which was not driven by any IP (other than taking Niven's Ringworld). Movie tie-ins like Enter the Matrix and Pirates of the Caribbean do well, but not at the levels of a Vice City. In fact, most tie-in games suck and this is quickly reflected in the speed with which they fall into discount bins everywhere.

    Given the number of successful games (across consoles and computers) that are not movie-based, I don't see his point.

    • Re:Lost the edge? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Golias ( 176380 )
      Well put.

      He's clearly obsessing over something without any real rational reason. It's sort of like people who complain about the Internet becoming "too corporate." All the academic resources of the Web that were there back in the NCSA days are still out there. All the geek counter-culture is still around, ready to be found. If anything, such things are far more abundant. The fact that Toyota Motors and CNN have web pages doesn't change anything, unless you let it.

      Likewise, the fact that there are cra

  • Uh... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How do you halt this vicious cycle?

    How about by creating something original and not worry about immediate profits? I'm a firm believer that if a game is truly good, eventually people will find it and enjoy it. Granted, that's just in theory, as many golden games have been passed over for the years, but I'm referring to "gamers," not "Joe with the PS2" or "Bill with his XBOX."

    It may not sell as much as the latest Madden or Grand Theft Auto, but it'll find its market (the "if you build it, they will co
    • How about by creating something original and not worry about immediate profits?

      go for it [sourceforge.net]

    • Re:Uh... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by lidocaineus ( 661282 )
      Unfortunately, Sega has done this for years, and it's done nothing but make the mainstream think they have 'weird' games and contribute to them dropping out of the console hardware business.

      Nintendo is just like Sega, with a bit more marketing savvy and a nice cash cow (the GBA) to help things along Of course, like Sega, they are also getting lumped into that "games for the hardcore but eh response from everyone else" group. Meanwhile, the PS2 and the Xbox garner the biggest mainstream attention. Whil

  • Bah! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JMZero ( 449047 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @10:10AM (#6754693) Homepage
    This guy IS the problem. He thinks that a game is about its subject content. The same idiots think they can make another hit like "Grand Theft Auto" by including prostitutes and violence.

    A strong license will help a game sell, but in the end what matters is the game (witness the multitude of Star Wars games and their varying success). That's why the last few crops of "original games" have sucked so hard (think "Blix: The Time Sweeper"). While they may not have stolen subject content, their gameplay was derivative and lame.

    I can hear someone thinking, somewhere: "Maybe if they would have made Blix a little more edgy it would have been great - they could have hired Todd McFarlane (creater of Spawn) to design enemies."

    No! Maybe they could have made it a good game. Similarly, Star Wars: KOTOR would have been a great game no matter what the subject.

    • Re:Bah! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by n0wak ( 631202 )
      Exactly. Besides, isn't Blackley the same one that criticized Miyamoto for "holding the industry back" because Miyamoto wasn't making a violent bloody gangster game (in other words, the equivalent of a snobby "get with the times")?
    • Yeah, Blix was a real pity. The premise was so cool and reasonably innovative. (Can't expect games nowadays to look like absolutely nothing that has come before, what with tens of thousands of games existing already.) Executiong on it sucked; I could create several better puzzles with those capabilities in a couple of hours.

      Blix should be made into a poster child of failed potential in original video games.

      • Re: Blix: The Time Sweeper (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Damn right! That son of a bitch couldn't even find WMD in Iraq! Stupid UN weapons inspector!

        (Psst. The game name is "Blinx", not Blix. A Hans Blix game would be more entertaining.)

    • Re:Bah! (Score:2)

      by tc ( 93768 )
      This guy IS the problem.

      What are you talking about? This is the man who brought us Trespasser, one of the greatest video games of all time. Oh, wait...

    • Hans Blix did the looking at weapons thing, but you probably meant that blinx thing (the only 4d game other than 4d boxing).
    • How many /. readers, even as kids, couldn't tell the difference in quality between Super Mario Brothers game and movie?

      How many even bothered to see the movie at all, knowing from previous experience that crossover-media was usually worthless?

      Kids are not media whores, only their parents are. Kids know better, and by the time they start choosing their own games, they've already learned from the media-blitz titles parents unwittingly bought.

      Today the adage "Can't judge a book by its cover" is confusing fo
    • I don't think Star Wars:KOTOR would have been as successful if it wasn't in the Star Wars universe. One doesn't even need facts to come to that conclusion; there will always be Star Wars fanboys and curious go-getters who rent it because it has the words 'Star Wars', 'lightsaber' and 'Jedi.'

      If Bioware made the game about green teddy bears, who live under the earth and use magical pointy sticks but kept the same gameplay and graphics, would you have picked the game up? I don't know about you, but if I saw a

      • A license can have a great effect on how a game sells. However, what I said was:

        Similarly, Star Wars: KOTOR would have been a great game no matter what the subject.

        Now, this may not hold for all subjects (your subject has to mesh with the gameplay somewhat), but I think it's true (regardless of whether the resulting great game would have been as successful in terms of sales).

  • It's early yet. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xanderwilson ( 662093 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @10:21AM (#6754829) Homepage
    Haven't all new media forms tried to emulate its predecessors? Early films were little more than stage plays. Early television was just radio plays with pictures.

    Give it time. It's early yet.

    Alex.
  • it's not like any movie or music company has ANY ip that would be of use to make a game good or original.

    they don't own shoot'em'ups, they don't own first person shooters, they don't own rts genre, they don't own spaceships either.

    they don't own jack that could make a game awesome! you fight the cycle of making crappy licensed games the same way it has been fought since et, you just make good games and the gamers will play.
  • Remember when games *were* pop culture? How often do we geeks drop a quote from the games we play? How often do we complain about grues when it's dark? How often do we tell people to quit waving it like a feather duster?

    Games *made* pop culture. Now they're exactly as the article claims: "a marketing arm of the film industry or of the music industry."
  • Somehow I find it hard to see the VP of Capital Entertainment having any real creative game ideas. New thinking never comes from the top.

    But he does have a point: the XBox has been a wasteland for innovation. If I wanted fifty first-person-shooters to pick from, I would have kept gaming on my PC. The most creative thing happening on the huge black and green X is...Linux.

  • WTF? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Isn't this the same asshat responsible for the deplorably bad 'Jurassic Park: Trespasser' game?

    • Re:WTF? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      -1 Troll? Seems to me the poster raises a valid point, insofar as this Blackley person complaining about video games made from other popular culture media (movies, etc) is more than a little bit hypocritical. Trespasser (regardless of how "deplorably bad" it might have been) WAS a Jurassic Park tie in, and, other than convincing Bill Gates to enter the console market with a console built on hobbled PC architecture, is his SOLE contribution to video gaming. To claim that there's no great innovation in gam
  • As far as his quote about exploiting pop culture is concerned, when in the past have games ever actually been pop culture? Gaming has traditionally been an underground sport, with only a small population actually being gamers. It's only since the 32 bit era that the average jock you'd find living in a dorm room would spend any significant amount of time gaming. The reason the industry has lost its cultural edge is because it lost its culture.
    • It's only since the 32 bit era that the average jock you'd find living in a dorm room would spend any significant amount of time gaming.

      Uh, no. As an undergrad, I remember every third or fourth apartment in my dorm having an NES or Genesis. I remember Tecmo Bowl being especially popular. Even further back, I remember there being board games, TV cartoons, and breakfast cereal related to video games like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.

      There seems to be this misconception that geeks were the original audience f

  • Sometimes it goes the opposite way! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by shaka999 ( 335100 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @11:13AM (#6755459)
    Look at Tomb Raider and Mortal Kombat. Both of these went from video games into the movie theaters.

  • Nintendo Knows (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @11:20AM (#6755560) Homepage Journal
    Ask Nintendo.

    Mario, Link, Pokemon, Kirby, Metroid, etc.

    No original IP? Must not own a GBA or GCN.
    • Amen to that. At least Nintendo still manages to make some creative, different games.

      Even their "rehash" titles like Zelda, Mario, Metroid, etc. have originality and innovation. I fear the day when Nintendo is stampeded by Microsoft--that's when I'll retreat fully to MAME, my GBA, and paper RPGs.
    • It's actually kind of funny that the head of XBox development would be complaining about a lack of original content. Everyone else has original content, even the PS2 has some compelling exclusives. XBox has Halo and a whole lot of filler. Whose fault is that?
  • NONE of this will matter when Doom III comes out. It will change EVERYTHING!
  • Next year's sequels will come from this year's sequels, just as they did last year.

    Anyway, if this guy was right, we'd be spared movies like Tomb Raider, Super Mario Brothers, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.

    The Xbox's problem does have to do with content, but once Microsoft floods the market with Xbox 2's, the problem will largely vanish. Right now, though, game developers and publishers tend to be conservative in their choices and go for license deals. They have to make money or face g

  • i own that are based off of a film license.

    ...

    (still thinking)

    oh wait, there was that super mario bros movie!

    games based off of movies are CRAP. they are inherently unoriginal and i avoide them like the plague. same with most all games that are based off a license of any sort.

  • From Wired 11.01 (some irrelevant portions excised, check the article [wired.com] itself for more):

    "He is not helping things," says Seamus Blackley... He speaks for many game designers raised on Miyamoto's innovations - developers who admire the master's work but are desperate for something new.

    "At this point," Blackley continues, "Miyamoto is making games for his fans. Granted, there are millions of them, and it's smart business, but most are kids. He's not opening up adult audiences. He's reinforcing stereotypes ab
    • GTA3 is good, but it's not revolutionary. What Miyamoto could bring to a game like that would be incredible

      I think it should also be added that this quote shows he's falling into the same trap that leads to today's game industry: 'Lets make GTA3 only better'. Except that it started much further in the past, and GTA3 is actually a good example of a game that DOESN'T do that. It's why we have FPS, RTS, PC RPG and Console RPG genres so well defined, because everyone keeps doing them the same way someone else
  • When big money is involved, as it is in this case, safe choices must be made. Sure, you can go out on a limb once in a while and try an original idea. However, most of the time your investors will demand a reasonable profit forcast. This forcast can only be made if there are a large proportion of "sure things" in the pipeline.

  • This is a bit overblown (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Derkec ( 463377 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @12:42PM (#6756505)

    There are unique games out there, you just have to look. Most of them are not out for xBox, mostly because there is a big financial risk in launching that on a platform.

    Some examples:

    The Sims: It's getting older now, but despite taking the Sim _____ series title, it was really original in what it considered to be a game. Hey, take this family and uh.. make them cook stuff and go to work. Surprise, huge franchise and a massively multiplayer extension.

    Dance Dance Revolution: Gimicky peripheral games have been around, but this was a new take on the thing. You don't try to shoot bad guys or win a race, instead you're "dancing." Suprise! It doesn't suck and is a great party game because normal people (my parents) and even normal girls think it's fun.

    Nintendo's Cute games: Those Japanese have a stack of really, really weird cute games. I've looked at a bunch of comments and reviews and thought wow, that's odd. Never played them, but they generally seem original as heck.

    Odd Massively Multiplayer Games: Let's face it, Everquest is a MUD with pictures, not terribly original. But there are some differant ones out there. My favorite are a couple that have appeared where the players are businessmen and their holdings are active 24 hours per day. You just have to log in enough to keep things going straight. Very differant. Also, Planetside has really changed the FPS genre for me. Taking FPS into the massively multiplayer realm may have been obvious, but it is new and presents another oppurtunity to franchise. Couple cool and new programs in this department.

    When I look around, check out the upcoming and recent releases, I see a bunch of oddball games that I probably won't buy, but are look very differant from what I play. There are a lot of games out there take a look.

  • Originality comes from without (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sinistar2k ( 225578 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @12:50PM (#6756594)
    If console designers want to see thousands of original titles, they need only make their platforms open to garage development.

    Of course, independent development, while it does result in original content, doesn't necessarily dump cash into the Microsoft/Nintendo/Sony coffers, so it isn't creativity or originality that's the real issue here.

    It's properly licensed and royalty bound creativity and originality.
    • If console designers want to see thousands of original titles, they need only make their platforms open to garage development.

      Well-put. But consoles aren't generally where you innovate; consoles are where you make money. (Yes, there are exceptions.)

      Where's the innovation in games today? In mod development and the interactive fiction community. Coincidence that neither of these is profit-driven? I think not.

      Games have become incredibly expensive to produce, yet they haven't raised their prices to com
  • Perhaps if Mr. Blackley actually created a game, instead of constatntly talking about how bad games and gaming is today, he would hold a little more salt in my book.

    I mean, honestly, what has this guy done? PR for the Xbox launch, and then started his own studio...which has yet to put out any game. Enough talk Blackley, lets see some product.
  • The how about not turning to a designer who's cranked out 5 carbon copies of someone else's already released game in the last 7 years.

    Originality isn't going to happen as long as you keep recycling the same people to be the "creative driving force".

    Eventually, someone has to get fired for making the same game...otherwise, they're just going to keep doing it.
  • The Producers The guys who are in charge of anteing up the cash for games are often middle-aged businessmen whose last favorite game was Zaxxon, and everything they know about modern gaming comes from what they heard their nephew say. They walk into the office of a crew who had spent nine months working on a fighter, and say "My nephew just loves Grand Theft Auto, you need to make the game like that."

    The Parents The majority of videogames are sold at Christmastime, and they're gifts. Parents buy what look

  • Easy. Just make all new video games based off of reality television shows. Fear Factor for the PS2! Cupid for GameCube! Amazing Race for XBox!

    Hopefully, by doing that players will be so sick of just reusing ideas, game publishers will be forced into using fresh ideas from developers.

  • Microsoft takes the 20-year-old PC architecture, puts it in a PC-sized case, designs it around a Windows-based core using common PC components, then goes around trying to get PC game developers to write titles for their console -- and they expect the _games_ to be original???

    Microsoft designed the most un-original gaming console ever. They wound up with what many people predicted -- a completely un-inspired software library that looks just like your typical PC game (without getting any of the actual worth

  • I like Seamus Blackley, I really do. But its funny that he should talk about lack of originality and tie ins to other people's IP, because the last thing he worked on was Trespasser: Jurassic Park.

    Gee, Jurassic Park isn't one of those movie things that spouts endless tie ins and sequels that suck and just won't die. That's totally original. Though to his credit it is not a direct tie in to one of the movies.

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