General Discussion

I just responded to the thread on what was your first gaming love and while reading some of the responses I started thinking about how games have evolved in the last 30 years or so and how things have perhaps started to slow down and that perhaps 20 years from now the games may not be quite as different from what they are now as we imagine them to be.

For example, I think it's becoming increasingly more difficult to come up with innovations that make a game radically different from the ones on the market.  I remember 20 years ago when you would go look at video games, there was a very large selection of games with a wide range of different features.  Today it seems you can almost classify every game in about 10 seconds just by looking at the box.  FPS, RTS, RPG, MMORPG, puzzle, etc.  And when you look at the features, many of them have the same or very close to the same feature sets.  Back 20 years ago that wasn't the case.  Even games that you might consider the same genre for example an RTS might have wildly different feature sets because things were not quite in place yet to really define what features were required in an RTS.  Every game developer was coming up with their own ideas of what to put into the game and you got a lot of variety.  Today it's much harder to come up with something original because a lot of stuff has been tried and everyone pretty much knows what works and what doesn't and it's really scary to try to go away from that design.  That wasn't an issue 20 years ago when thinking outside the box was part of the norm and expected by gamers.  Everyone tried to push the envelope and come up with something new and original hoping it would work.

But that was when it was fairly inexpensive and quick to develop a game.  It was easier to take risks because if they didn't pan out, you really didn't lose much.  With games like MMO's it's very difficult to take those same risks with a 3 year development project that you have spent millions of dollars on.

So maybe it has nothing to do with developers these days, but simply the reality of how games are made today that there's not as much innovation.  Could it be that we've hit a little bit of a wall when it comes to game innovation and the only thing that really changes much anymore are the graphics and how soon before even those are pretty much maxed out and every game has top of the line graphics and even that becomes an area that's tough to distinguish yourself from the crowd?  Has the technology finally caught up to our imiginations?  Is there very little left that hasn't been tried?  Or perhaps it will take another great leap in the fundamental design of games to come up with something really different.  Something that is still out there that hasn't been explored at all yet?

A good game is NOT about innovation. It is about implementation. Ideas are dirt cheap. You put 10 relatively bright people in a room for 3 hours and you will have a long list of new ideas that you won't be able to implement in the next 10 years.

Putting graphics, gameplay, code together, OTOH, is nontrivial and a lot of work. Just look at WOW. It is successful because of polished and good implemention, not radically new ideas.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

A good game is NOT about innovation. It is about implementation. Ideas are dirt cheap. You put 10 relatively bright people in a room for 3 hours and you will have a long list of new ideas that you won't be able to implement in the next 10 years.

Putting graphics, gameplay, code together, OTOH, is nontrivial and a lot of work. Just look at WOW. It is successful because of polished and good implemention, not radically new ideas.

 

True but innovation can make for one hell of a franchise [look at Halo 1].

Originally posted by nariusseldon

A good game is NOT about innovation. It is about implementation. Ideas are dirt cheap. You put 10 relatively bright people in a room for 3 hours and you will have a long list of new ideas that you won't be able to implement in the next 10 years.

Putting graphics, gameplay, code together, OTOH, is nontrivial and a lot of work. Just look at WOW. It is successful because of polished and good implemention, not radically new ideas.

 

I agree.  No where did I say anything about making a good game.  I'm just saying that it's getting harder and harder to innovate.  To come up with something totally unique.  A lot of games today get a lot of criticism for not being innovative enough.  I'm simply wondering if that's a fair criticism of the developers or perhaps it's just an inevitability because of the way games and game development have evolved.

I think its not the gameplay ideas that is the issue.  I find the biggest problem is creative writing and storyline development.  You can have the same gameplay but if you have a great storyline players will enjoy it.  I find a lot of games at the moment are too 2 dimensional.  In fact I just finished a really good storyline in Pirates of the Burning Sea and I realised after that the actual activities in the mission was pretty standard.   Hire great story tellers I say. 

Good discussion.

There hasn't been a loss of innovation but instead a narrowed focus on proven game designs. If I am forking over 20 million as the owner of a game company, I will research the industry and try to base my game off only the most successful. This being WoW, etc...$$$ Why would I ever want to create something innovative (as a businessman) and have the potential for huge loss when I could clone WoW?? I want to stay with what works and has proven to make huge $$$.

But yes, game companies are run by businessmen and not gamers. This explains the lack of innovation IMHO.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

A good game is NOT about innovation. It is about implementation. Ideas are dirt cheap. You put 10 relatively bright people in a room for 3 hours and you will have a long list of new ideas that you won't be able to implement in the next 10 years.

Putting graphics, gameplay, code together, OTOH, is nontrivial and a lot of work. Just look at WOW. It is successful because of polished and good implemention, not radically new ideas.

 

So yes, put it together right, but please put it together right with new stuff.  We already have WoW, we don't need another one.

Maybe you are just looking in the wrong places.

I see innovation everywhere. Real innovation in gaming all over the place.

Perhaps you have lost perspective by comparing the rate of inovation in all the major innovations over the last 30 years, with the amount of innovation seen between any two consequetive titles today.

Was there really such a big jump between Zalaga and Gorf?

Am I really suprised that LoTRO is more or less the same as WoW?

Here is a little of the innovation I have seen recently.

Crysis played on triple wall projectors. (Surround Cinema).

Webcam games that place my filmed image into the game and allow me to interact with objects.

Guitar Hero.

The console controller. (Not least the one on the Wii).

Head tracking sensors for flight sims.

Satelitte mapping for real world level creation.

And my favourite, mind controlled games.

http://www.emotiv.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn9e0Z5-FH4&feature=related

Mind Control man. F'in Mind control. Hands free gaming.

Innovation in gaming is alive and well, you just aren't looking in the right places.

If it is massive innovation you seek, try not just looking for another title from the same genre.

I remember endless space invaders and pacman clones,endless side scrolling shooters,endless side scrolling beat em ups,platformers,racing games...are you trying to say that there was loads of innovation back then?because there really wasnt.

occasionally something like streetfighter 2,doom or diablo would come along and shake up a genre,or a game such as tomb raider would change the way a genre works,but theres nothing to say future games wont do the same.in fact i can think up a few titles from the last few years that are radically different from pretty much anything out there.

Don't forget that technology plays a huge part in gaming.  In 1992'ish I was selling PC's and we were told that CPU's will never go higher than 50Mhz because they would melt down.  With every technological evolution (which is less than 2 years these days) the gaming industry can pack a lot more punch into their games.  The other key issue is broadband.  Imagine 6 years ago we were all on 512kbps or something less.  These days we are talking about 20mb+.  Remember for all MMO's they have to scale it for mass audiences online.  Unfortunately this means less moving parts and AI to speed up the FPS.  A lot of the time they have to work on illusions to make the game feel more intelligent than it is.  Its really picking up now with AoC, WAR and other titles coming out with almost stand alone PC graghics and hopefully storyline.  I am excited to see what they will have in 5 years because there will be senior developers out there who have uber ideas but can not implement them...yet.