I have come to a sad revelation lately that the future of gaming is slowly grinding down to a dead halt. It seems to me that the golden age of video gaming is beginning to wane and lately we have been seeing alot of cookie cutter video game formulas. The industry itself has lost a great deal of it's innovation and I believe that the nature business is to blame. Video gaming has become less of a hobby over the last couple years and more of a major business. This is the reason why video gaming is losing it's innovation. Major companies seem to be developing games based on proven formulas of success and now many titles all seem to be carbon copies of previous ones. Now I am fully convinced that it falls on the shoulders of the amatuer game designer to pick up the slack and start putting out the truly innovative games. For example, most major MMORPG's follow either the Everquest or Ultima Online success models. Most RTS games follow the Command and Conquer Generals style, and I have not seen a good RPG since Black Isle and Troika closed thier doors. Does anyone agree with me that the entire industry needs to be shaken up with some truly innovative new designs for all types of games? Players need more freedom and less graphics. They need more features and replayability as opposed to rehashes of successful titles. Can we as developers or future developers stop believing the world is flat and start explosing the other side?

I'm afraid this is largely a case of rose tinted glasses. The 'good old days' were populated by just as many awful movie license cash ins only they were shoddy platformers back then. It's easier to remember all the quality titles from yesteryear.

Katamari Damacy
Ico
Gitaroo Man
Eye Toy
Wario Ware

No originality, I don't think so. The fact of the matter is that there will always be shit amongst the pigeons no matter where you choose to feed them. There are shit films, shit books and shit TV shows. There were shit games years ago and there always will be but there is still plenty of quality. If you disagree, I suggest you provide an original product and then we'll follow.

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Original post by Cian OConnor I have come to a sad revelation lately that the future of gaming is slowly grinding down to a dead halt. It seems to me that the golden age of video gaming is beginning to wane and lately we have been seeing alot of cookie cutter video game formulas. The industry itself has lost a great deal of it's innovation and I believe that the nature business is to blame. Video gaming has become less of a hobby over the last couple years and more of a major business. This is the reason why video gaming is losing it's innovation. Major companies seem to be developing games based on proven formulas of success and now many titles all seem to be carbon copies of previous ones. Now I am fully convinced that it falls on the shoulders of the amatuer game designer to pick up the slack and start putting out the truly innovative games. For example, most major MMORPG's follow either the Everquest or Ultima Online success models. Most RTS games follow the Command and Conquer Generals style, and I have not seen a good RPG since Black Isle and Troika closed thier doors. Does anyone agree with me that the entire industry needs to be shaken up with some truly innovative new designs for all types of games? Players need more freedom and less graphics. They need more features and replayability as opposed to rehashes of successful titles. Can we as developers or future developers stop believing the world is flat and start explosing the other side?

It's interesting how i've seen so many people continually post the same ideas about how the industry is dry and there's no innovation anymore but luckily for us this isn't true at all.. Granted since the games industry grew to a multi-billion dollar one, there has definately been a great "swell" of clones and overall tired and dry games but that doesn't mean the number of new and innovative ideas have been reduced, it just means they are harder to find amongst all the 'trash'..

Also the fact that games themselves have grown so much in size and scale and the amount of effort needed to put into a game has increased so much, it means the number of innovative ideas which is needed to put into a single title to make it successful has also increased dramatically.. No longer will simple "space invaders" or "q-bert" stlye gameplay please the masses of gamers out there since there own expectations have risen due to improvements in graphics quality and experience in playing better games in general..

The fact is that as a gamer, once you've played a new innovative idea and you realise that it's successful and works, most gamers would come to expect such a level of quality from then on and so developers now have to work extra hard to put more into there next iteration, just to keep the gamers happy and wanting more.. since gamers constantly hunt for bigger and better gaming experiences its impossible to say that the games at present are lacking since, if this was the case then it wouldn't justify the swell in the number of gamers in the world which has increased almost violently..

When I was younger we used to ask my friends dad if he wanted to play video games with us and more often than not he'd reply negatively.. Nowadays its my friend who has to beat his dad off the console just so he can get some game-time for himself, showing that the variation in the types of people who play games has also increased over time..

Basically the new ideas and original IP's are definately out there, the only difference now is that there are much fewer now in ratio, due to the fact that they require much more effort and money to implement and the fact that theres already so much variation on the market that its much harder to come up with something that is new and will guarantee that you make the green paper at the end of development..

mmorpg's have bearly scratched the surface.

Lets see, we have thousands of people all playing together at once and all the designers can muster up is - click on monster to increase level and do some other novelty stuff on the side.

There are innovative games out there.

Check this out for new data to discuss.. Just posted it.
Linkoid
Adventuredesign

The big problem with the past 10 or so years of gaming is:

3d graphics



Now please let me explain before anyone jumps to conclusions.
Everyone was SO excited with cool looking graphics they stopped caring about the story, the combat system etc they just bought up whatever looked coolest (don't think I was above that either haha, I'm guilty like everyone else)
We were so entranced by this new technology and how real we can make these models look that we forgot the things we loved about 2d games. Tetris is one of the most addicting games and its graphics by todays standard weren't that great. Don't get me wrong there's been 2d marvels that were the same thing, pretty graphics with nothing else but thats exactly the point im making. We get obsessed with the shiny new toy and we don't care if it is long lasting or has meaning to us 2 years from the time we bought it.

The good news? THIS WILL CHANGE. Its already happening. We've seen the pop culture of "pretty graphics and technology now now now" before and we'll get through it. The novelty of pretty graphics will wear off and we'll see more good games come out, heck 2005 so far has had several great games I enjoy and stirs up those old 2d memories.

I agree with you Cian that I think the industry needs to be shaken up by newcomers, but hasn't it already? In a sense Blizzard blew away sony in a venue they have never entered before with world of warcraft. They aren't really a new comer to games but its their first mmorpg.

There was a game a long time ago for the SNES that was basically an advertisement for mayonaise. I can't say we've really changed from putting out crappy titles, I'd just say that there's MORE crap because theres more of a market now.

On the contrary...we need to speed through 3d graphics development NOW NOW NOW so that we can get past spending money on realistic graphics and spend it on gameplay!

Once photorealistic real-time games are produced, graphics wont have to be developed and gameplay will be the focus.

ghosted: The difference between 'then' and 'now' that I see is that in the days of SNES and prior bad games were KNOWN to be bad by pretty much everybody and so they flopped. These days bad games get 9.8/10 reviews and make millions of dollars in profits (except when the game isn't actually produced and a tech demo is released instead, as in the case of BigRigs). Games in the SNES days couldn't (IME) sell just because they had some nice graphics or excellent sound, because even when a game utilized the hardware very well it still only looked slightly better than average game. These days a few good artists and a graphics programmer can make all that is required to sell games, with no need to waste time and money on any other aspect of the game.

Vanquish I hope you are joking!! That would get rid of the whole "art" aspect of gaming!! "Realistic" objects? That's one problem with the VG art these days...they try too hard to make things look realistic...BOOO-ring! I LIVE in a realistic world. I want to escape reality. I'd rather play old school 2D action RPGs or even turn-based ones, than play some real-life dude. I'm also a fan of 2D, like Mr. Sheeblars.

Sheeblars, well said my friend, I agree with it all, and Cian. Yes there have been some crap games in the past but they were out of exploration, not duplication.

We see ten thousand no-name games out there that we have to filter through to actually find what's GOOD. The average "Sword Quest"s and "Return of the Doom Master"s just take up space on store shelves and waste our time when we want to search for a TRUE game. It IS about money. They don't create innovative games that much because they are leeches that suck ideas out of the ancient VG Gods and don't focus on what could really honestly make video games better.

Yep it's up to us fans to bring back the glory to the once ARTISTIC world of VG design. It makes me barf when I think of companies throwing out games just to get a profit and no more. Where's the fun? For example, Squaresoft released FF7. Some people hate the game. Most didn't. Square KNEW all those 10 million fans would buy FF8 just because of FF7's success and look at what a crap sack FF8 was. Square figured it could slump out on its efforts because hell, the fans would buy it no matter what.

You KNOW this kind of corruption happens all over the market. Those traitors!!

This reminds me of the game designers rant at GDC. There are so many people ready to say that innovation is dead in the industry and blame it on the big players.

My response is that without the big players we would still be a small po-dunk industry working out of garages. Now before people start saying those were the glory days lets try to remember what the glory days were really like:

- No tv or mainstream ads or coverage.
- A big hit sold 100,000 copies.
- Shelf space was maybe 1 small rack in a KMart.
- Funding by anyone but your rich uncle Steve was unheard of.
- Game developers were held in the same regard as super nerds.
- Gamers were held in the same regard as D&D players.

Now we have:

- Ads everywhere. TV, print, movies, billboards in time square, etc.
- Halo 2 is at 7 million copies?
- EBX, Gamestop, target, walmart, etc. all have a huge selection of games
- Funding is still hard to find but when you get it it's in the millions.
- There are now award shows for game developers hosted by Snoop Dog on Spike TV.
- Everyone is a gamer.

So the space as a whole is better now that it's bigger. As far as innovation goes sure there are tonnes of clones and sequals. But you're telling me that Kings Quest 3 wasn't a sequal? Or how about my favorite game of all time Ms. Pacman? A huge innovative leap past Pacman? Repetition has always been a part of this industry just like it's part of any artistic endeavour. That doesn't mean I don't still love to play Ms. Pacman. There is as much innovation in this space as any artistic medium if not more.

Another important thing to remember is that without the flood of copycats and sequals out there you wouldn't fund new games. Every crazy new innovative game is funded with money made from a boring, well selling copy cat.