Lack of originality

[Waffle_Man]

While it has been established that nothing original can exist, I feel as though I should explain why nothing original can exist.

Going by the definition of Original, "not dependent on other people's ideas; inventive and unusual," we run into the problem of everything literally being defined by the context of preexisting things. While interpretations can be far enough removed from the inspiration that an observer can't immediately recognize the source of origin, we are literally incapable of describing things without relating them to things we are already aware of. Sure, we might make it higher, bigger, smaller, rounder, what have you, but we're still ultimately restricted by prior experience. A vocabulary. The reason that you likely have very few, if any, memories from before you could speak is because you had no collection of ideas with which to define your experiences.

However, while the same general ideas are around, the context of communication changes. This is what allows something to remain fresh and aware of it's audience.

 

[The Night Angel]

I think it depends on how broad or narrow a view you take of the concepts of anything. the more you reduce something to its basics, the more likely it will seem similar to other things. That said, I believe that a lot of the time there is a lack of originality in many plot lines for movies, games and books, but it isn't due to plagiarism, it is due to the fact that so many things have been created already, and audiences like the familiar.

 

[Torrasque]

You can pretty much say that every thing modern is taking something from an old game/movie/book/etc. it is just the nature of development. Take Halo for instance. Halo has been one of the biggest game series of all time, single handedly giving Xbox a strong leg to stand on, and making shooters the dominant force that they have become. Games like Call of Duty and Gears of War have seen how successful Halo's regenerating health system is, and applied it to their games as well. CoD and GoW have also taken elements from Halo and applied them to themselves in order to bolster their own strength. Are they taking ideas from Halo and being unoriginal? If you want to be blunt about it, yes they are, but they are not downright copying Halo. Halo has shields and a health bar, while CoD has a slowly regenerating health that blots out your screen with redness. Halo has jumping and utilizes player control over cover, while GoW has wall bouncing and chest high walls. So while CoD and GoW have borrowed concepts from Halo, they have changed them so it isn't blatant copying. Halo itself took ideas from predecessors like Doom and Quake. Like CoD and GoW borrowing from Halo, Halo can borrow ideas from Doom and Quake and modify them to make them better or change them to make them more "Halo-y".
This kind of "lack of originality" is the kind that I love; good games build on the shoulders of good games, so they become great games.

Starcraft also borrows from other games. If you look at the races alone, you can see that they have a shocking similarity to Warhammer 40k races. Even how the races look and behave are close to the races in Warhammer 40k. Are fans of either mad from this? Some are, but most are able to say "you know what, I know that Blizzard got the idea for the Zerg and Protoss from the Tyranids and Eldar, but they have subtleties that make them unique" or they are just not whiny fanboy QQers.
Starcraft is a fucking great game, and it borrows ideas from Warhammer 40k, Command and Conquer, Warcraft, and probably many many other games. But they have not simply plundered ideas and passed them as their own (I'm not going to talk about WoW), they have learned from them and made them better. That is why Starcraft 2 is so fucking win, and why games between super awesome players are so much fun to watch.

TL;DR version: Originality is cool, but most people like to experience things that they are used to or familiar with. A new idea is always great, but they are so god damned hard to come by, and even harder to get people interested in it. It is much easier and much safer, to see what someone else has made, learn from it, and make a better one.

 

[ChaplainOrion]

Do you want to know the truth? There hasn't been many original idea for millenia. It all goes back to the Epic of Gilgamesh, which has been the template for every adventure story/movie/show ever. Back in the days of Mesopotamia.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I think unoriginality gets too much flak these days. Something being derivative doesn't make it bad, it makes it art. All art comes from something else, and most art comes from other art.

Exactly, and people that come up with stuff, are actually stealing it from real life. In all reality nothing is original except for what's happening right now. And even then they say "History repeats itself."

 

[Seses209]

So I was just thinking about how "The Hunger Games" has been compared to other such books/films (e.g. "Battle Royale", "The Running Man") that deal with the same dystopian fascist themes that include people being forced to fight each other as part of a reality TV show.

But not only that, how many fantasy novels and films (e.g. "Eragon") nowadays seem to heavily take inspiration from "Lord of the Rings", and many in the fantasy genre never seem to deviate from the typical medieval setting of elves, princesses being kidnapped, and a fight against a great evil trying to take over the world and whatnot. I think "Yahtzee" even talked about this in an "Extra Punctuation" article a while ago.

Can anything truly be original anymore? Have we exhausted the pot of ideas? Not even video games appear exempt from this, as many people back in the day compared the original "Crash Bandicoot" PS1 trilogy to other successful platformers, like "Mario" and "Sonic" (another obvious similarity being that they're both anthropomorphic video game protagonists with special abilities, but Sonic was by no means the first to do that).

By the way, I don't necessarily agree with the above sentiment. I'm just trying to throw it out there for discussion. I think that, of course, originality exists and perseveres due to inner creativity.

While we're talking about originality, let me share something I noticed a while back.
A lot of people say that Eragon is exactly like the Lord of the Rings, but is it? Let me explain, and please bear with me.

The story in its bases concerns a young boy, living with his uncle, in a world previously ruled by superpowered knight of justice who controlled a type of magic, but by now has been taken over by an evil Empire. The Empire is being run by a betrayer of said knights, who is opposed only by a small faction of rebels in hiding.
One day, the boy discovers a secret he wasn't supposed to, causing his uncle's death by said Empire. He is forced to go on the run by the starnge old man from the village, who instructs him in becomeing a superpowered mage-knight. On their way to the rebels, they meet a badass lone fighter, and the old man dies, but not before reveling himself to be one of the Superman-people of old, living in hiding.
The badass figther now teaming up with our ever so lonesome protagonist, goes on to rescue a princess who also happens to be a leading figure in the rebellion. It is with her help they find the rebels, and, with a huge helping from the newly powered hero, defeat the experimental superweapon of the Empire
Now, tell me the truth, but doesn't it sound like Paolini was trying to write a fantasy Star Wars?

 

[Redd the Sock]

As others have said, most things are bult from past things. They say that there's only 6 basic storylines and that everything is variations of those 6. I don't know if that's true, but only in the last 30 years has it been noticiable and deemed annoying. We look at Eragon as a fantasy Star Wars easially because we can access the original Star Wars with little effort whereas in the time it was made, even if we fully connected to the old Flash Gordon serials that inspired it, we couldn't go back to them as home video really wasn't viable yet. Today in our 100 channels and everything on DVD society, it's all too easy to find yourself overexposed to far more fiction than you can find truely unique because it's all there and we have the time to take it all in.

It's little wonder we're getting bored.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Yes originality can still be made, it's just harder to make it (it's pretty much my motto).

 

[Realitycrash]

Do you want to know the truth? There hasn't been many original idea for millenia. It all goes back to the Epic of Gilgamesh, which has been the template for every adventure story/movie/show ever. Back in the days of Mesopotamia.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I think unoriginality gets too much flak these days. Something being derivative doesn't make it bad, it makes it art. All art comes from something else, and most art comes from other art.

Exactly, and people that come up with stuff, are actually stealing it from real life. In all reality nothing is original except for what's happening right now. And even then they say "History repeats itself."

I think it depends on what you mean by "original". If you mean " have never, ever been done before in any kind of similar fashion", then no. If you mean "haven't been done to death, and puts an interesting spin on the classic variation of the theme", then yes.