I was browsing through the news on new releases on Gamer Feed today, and it seems like ALL the new releases coming out are either sequels to other games, or are based on movies. Where's the innovation? Where's the ground breaking stuff?
Where have all the good ideas gone?
I was browsing through the news on new releases on Gamer Feed today, and it seems like ALL the new releases coming out are either sequels to other games, or are based on movies. Where's the innovation? Where's the ground breaking stuff?
its on PC games.....where a small developer team (and i literally mean 1-2 people) can make a game and distribuite it to the world over the internet...
The really innovative and crazy shit is in Japan...a good bit of it gets released here but it's hard to find. Stuff like Gitaroo Man and Ribbit King.
Games are crap nowadays... nothing new at all...
Lucky we have all our old stuff where all the other kids suffer with "Tomb Raider 9598045", "The Sims Killin themselves" and "Tony Hawks Moon Base skater"
*sigh*
I'm waiting for Tony Hawk and his shitty games to head the way of the dumpster.
"I can still fit into my underoos!!
Mostly in Japan. All domestic innovation has been eaten by Chia pets.
scooterb: "I once shot a man in Catan, just to watch him die."
The higher costs of game development are the major factor in this trend. In the old days a couple of people could make a game in less than a year. Now, most games have large teams of people and development costs have skyrocketed.
Therefore, if you're a publishing company and you have a choice of spending all that money on Tony Hawk 15 (which is a proven money maker) or gambling on a new idea which could tank regardless of how good the game is, which would you choose?
D
i think a big part of the lack of innovation, other than the reasons that will be listed below ("OH NOES!!1! big business only cares about selling millions of copies!" yeah, go figure...business trying to do business.), is that we've hit a brick wall in terms of the physical input devices. games have advanced tenfold in the last several years, but the last innovation we've had for consoles beyond the original NES controller adding more buttons is the N64 analog stick, and in some cases, the dreamcast VMU. other than that, it's just a matter of adding and subtracting buttons...
the market has shown time and time again, that it will not accept add-on controllers good for only a game (or two). this is why your steel batalions and samba de amigos aren't ever going to replace GTA any time soon - they're just too expensive for most to take the plunge into, except the hardcore audience, and even then, most can't afford to, so these games are extremely few and far between. i can think of dozens of great ideas and avenues that haven't been tapped, if i could design a proprietary controller around it. for example, we have gitaroo man, why not a music game based around drumming?
if it came to be, while an affordable home version might be a ways off (a loooong ways), something like a drumkit to play the game could be implemented....in the ARCADE. but arcades are pretty much dead. think about all the creative control schemes dreamt up for the arcade cabinets of yore - marble madness, tempest, etc. this was the golden age of innovation to many of us, and now look at what the de facto input standard is - an SNES controller with 2 after thought shoulder buttons, 2 afterthought analog sticks, and a d-pad that looks cool, but is non functional. maybe once companies decide to start changing the way people interact with games again, we'll start seeing more good ideas.
Where were you people a few months ago? I knocked Tony Hawk and Gran Turismo in some thread about 6 months ago and people JUMPED on me. I got called an "ignorrant crock" and other lovely things.I'm waiting for Tony Hawk and his shitty games to head the way of the dumpster.
You know, I feel the lack of innovation is due to Sony's marketing tactics in the late '90's. Sony tried REAL hard to sell the Playstation to people who don't play video games buy advertising in nightclubs and college campuses, as well as focussing on 3-D to "wow" people over. And, unfortunately for some and fortunately for others, they were very successful at it. In doing so, they lowered the bar of standards on games so far that they allowed the market to get saturated with garbage. (Think of how many BAD PS-1 games there were. Percentage-wise, neither the Saturn, nor much before 32-bit, had such a wide range of bargain bin material.) Since Sony, and other developers, learned that they could put out a steaming turd and as long as it was in 3-D it would sell (because the main audience for games is different than it was before), they probably figured "why mess with success"? So, until video games become unfashionable again, I have a feeling it's only going to get worse...
sony is the devil, blah blah blah...yes, there are more bad games out for the original PS, but i'd bet it's safe to say it's probably pretty close to the same percentage as there were for any other system. i sure as hell remeber playing a lot of subpar mario-wannabe platformers back in the day, though revisionist history makes it much easier to brush the dirt under the rug. there were a lot of BAD NES, SNES, genesis, etc. games.
agreed though, tony hawk is a... *yawn*
i'm quite fond of GT myself, but then again i'm a car nut too. what pisses me off is 15 year old kids that think they're MAD TYTE JDM CAR XPERTS, YO! because they drifted a car in GT.where i can see some would say it gets boring, if you really try to get to the meat of the game and not blow every other car off the track with a 1000hp skyline, and score all golds off the bat the easy way the first time through, and not shy away from the enduros, it's a very deep and intense game. then again, that's the beauty of it, there are an infinite number of ways to play it.
All the good game ideas are in japan. Games like mister mosquito, Parappa, Monster Party, etc. all came from there.
I consider my self a very non-mainstream gamer, as I don't like GTA, Halo, Gran turismo, Tomb raider, the sims, tony hawk, etc. So it drives me crazy, seeing all these games sell well and get tons of sequels and rip-offs while games that I truly enjoyed sell poorly and end up on clearance for $4.99. (Ex: Whiplash, Beyond good & Evil, Mega Man X7, Mega Man Network Transmission)
By the way, I always thought It would be cool to play a game where you assume that you are playing as the good guy, only to learn at the end that you were the evil and the "Enemies" that you destroyed were the forces of good. Wouldn't that rock?
"First, we have aspirin. A common cure for things that aspirin cures. Leads to.....rabies."
Sony and Microsoft bought up all the innovation and hid it in the same place GM and all the gas companies are hiding the hydrogen powered cars.
Nice one.Sony and Microsoft bought up all the innovation and hid it in the same place GM and all the gas companies are hiding the hydrogen powered cars
As for me being a "revisionist", I will say that I did live through all those eras, and I feel a lot of the bad 8- and 16-bit games have an interesting flavor to them, and are worth playing sometimes (even Last Battle!) I guess the reason that I feel the way I do about Sony (God love 'em) is that the Playstation catalog is HUMONGOUS. I at least know SOMETHING about just about every NES, SMS, SNES, Genesis, Saturn, whatever game. With Playstation, it's impossible to keep up because there's so many. And often when I investigate an overlooked title, it ends up being a "been there, done that and done it better" experience.
Oh the innovation is out there, it's just drowned by the tons of ads for sequels and movies...
Ever wonder why Rez wasn't really hyped? or why R-Type Final was never in a commerical?
Originality does seem to be somewhat lacking lately... it'd be excellent if we could all make games based on our own original ideas. I mean, I have a few... long ago, I thought up of this concept for a shmup, named "Absolution," but the project didn't go beyond the realms of my mind, so it's just a pipe dream. There is innovation, but like several have already implied, it's not where we often look. The very sad thing here is that Greed (shameless licensing) and Lust (more emphasis on tits than gameplay) are gradually becoming greater threats in the gaming universe. Those two things are beating the shit out of good ideas. Tis a shame... there probably will be a crash soon, I dunno. But as I have said before, what follows that would be a golden age, a Renaissance.
Innovation... eh, it can never be truly lost. Keep looking. Just don't look towards Madden 20XX. BURN!
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To go with our esteemed poster from Mexico, PC's are where the original games are these days. I just finished Starscape (saw it on adds on Nuklear Power's comic) and it's a wonderfull game, and something I can see being done on consoles. It would be too much money to do it that way, though.
So I tend to buy console games that are casual games and save the hard core stuff for the computer.
Many good reasons listed allready on why this is these days -- but original games ARE out there! You just need to look harder for them -- and be willing to play computer games.
"Four o'clock and all is well.....wish I was in bed, Sir."
-- Guard in the Imperial City, Oblivion
Have games ever really been inovative as a whole?
No.
I think that gaming needs an independent scene like film. A place where art and creativity come first and money second. Also money can still be made in small buget artistic film (see Mirimax) and this could be true in gaming.
Best creative off the wall game that I have found in the last few years was Stretch Panic for the PS2.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, dosen't go away"
Phillip K. Dick
Re: Where have all the good ideas gone?
"There are no new ideas. Only different methods of expressing the same thing."Originally Posted by punkoffgirl
In general that means all literature or videos have been done before. For games, it means virtually all ideas were tried in the 70s and 80s. Today we are just playing upgraded versions (better graphics/sound) of the past.
Kind of a self-defeating post you have there, especially since Beyond Good & Evil is French and Whiplash is by Crystal Dynamix / Eidos.
Here are some other ones: Freedom Force, almost any Blizzard game, Thief / System Shock / Deus Ex series, Max Payne, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, Unreal / Unreal Tournament, and many others. It's true that American developers don't fare as well on the console systems, but I would never go so far as to say that "all the good game ideas are in japan."
I would also agree that the PC is the source for lots of the innovation - although it isn't always popularized / advertised / made known to the general public. A good example is Moonbase Commander - if anybody can find it it's probably cheap, and is a definite twist on turn-based strategy.
You are startled by a grim snarl. Before you, you see 1 Red dragon. Will your stalwart band choose to (F)ight or (R)un?
Sequal maniacs are not only on current systems, but also, unfortunately on Neo-Geo. The last few releases are all sequals and fighters, in certain ways I'm glad they stop making games else my collection will be mostly sequals and fighters.
Long one are the days when we see a unique Neo-Geo game every month back in mid 90s.
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