"I repeat Sturgeon's Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud. Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. are crap."
Theodore Sturgeon
In other words, great games are the exception not the rule. The rule is to find something that has already proven successful and copy the shit out of it in hopes of the same. Innovation and creativity carry a much greater risk than imitation and, though we like to believe that games are first and foremost an art out of our own existential need for legitimacy and acceptance, they are in fact first and foremost a commodity.
Your putting the cart before the horse by assuming that if they would just stop doing this or that they would make better games. They ask the consumer what they want, the consumer lies to them, they make crap based on the lie. You're assuming that the consumer is lying because they were told what to think by the industry yet New Coke is a good example of the consumer telling the industry what to think after the focus group fed them a pack of lies. These cookie cutter games don't actually fail to sell but rather fail to make money. That's more of an issue with resource management in production that acceptance of the game. Battlefield is just a Call of Duty come lately but it still sold more than six times as many copies as Bioshock Infinite. If your going out to make a game which route do you take? Heartfelt inspiration and creativity (Bioshock Infinite, 2.22M units worldwide, all platforms) or copycat of a magnificently successful existing franchise (Battlefield 3, 15.63M units worldwide, all platforms)? As you can see it isn't just focus groups that make then churn out the same old thing over and over again. It's also market research which seems to reveal that the same old thing really does sell better than something new and creative.
(sales numbers from vgchartz.com/)
Theodore Sturgeon
In other words, great games are the exception not the rule. The rule is to find something that has already proven successful and copy the shit out of it in hopes of the same. Innovation and creativity carry a much greater risk than imitation and, though we like to believe that games are first and foremost an art out of our own existential need for legitimacy and acceptance, they are in fact first and foremost a commodity.
Your putting the cart before the horse by assuming that if they would just stop doing this or that they would make better games. They ask the consumer what they want, the consumer lies to them, they make crap based on the lie. You're assuming that the consumer is lying because they were told what to think by the industry yet New Coke is a good example of the consumer telling the industry what to think after the focus group fed them a pack of lies. These cookie cutter games don't actually fail to sell but rather fail to make money. That's more of an issue with resource management in production that acceptance of the game. Battlefield is just a Call of Duty come lately but it still sold more than six times as many copies as Bioshock Infinite. If your going out to make a game which route do you take? Heartfelt inspiration and creativity (Bioshock Infinite, 2.22M units worldwide, all platforms) or copycat of a magnificently successful existing franchise (Battlefield 3, 15.63M units worldwide, all platforms)? As you can see it isn't just focus groups that make then churn out the same old thing over and over again. It's also market research which seems to reveal that the same old thing really does sell better than something new and creative.
(sales numbers from vgchartz.com/)