Poll: Gaming Industry

[Pingieking]

Ah, yes, the innovative Wii. That one always makes me chuckle.

I don't know whether you mean that sarcastically/ironically/sardonically or not, but it's enough of a departure to induce MILLIONs of non-gamers to suddenly rush out and buy a console. There is something seriously wrong with the gaming industry for the simple addition of a hand-waving-thing to have so great an effect. And now that that train has long, long since left the station, Sony and Microsoft both are both going to try and jump aboard. How desperate is the gaming industry for new ideas that every odd notion attracts a stampede of customers and companies?

I meant that... not sarcastically, but perhaps ironically.

I've always found it kind of funny that the Wii (which I will agree is a novel and innovative console) has probably the least innovative lineup of games this generation. Other than Wii Sports and Wii Fit (is Wii Fit even a game?) and the third party low-quality rip-offs of those, I don't really remember playing anything that really stood out to me as "Wow, this is really different from the normal stuff". I don't really consider Wii Sports to be innovative because it's essentially what most people would come up with if someone handed them a Wii-mote and asked them to design a game in 3 minutes. I've found Flower, Heavy Rain, and Mirror's Edge to be more innovative than just about anything I've played on the Wii. Then again, I've probably logged more time on a toilet seat than I have on the Wii during the days that I owned one.

I'm not knocking on the Wii, I'm just knocking on the developers.

EDIT: Oh, I remember one innovative Wii game. World of Goo. Just that I associate that game with PC more so than the Wii, so I missed it.

 

[Thaius]

The same thing that happened to the movie industry. There are some people who do it just to make money, which fulfills Sturgeon's Law. But just because there's more crap out there doesn't mean there's less creativity. Even some of the franchises that have been around forever continue to be inspired (Final Fantasy XIII, for instance, is hardly a rehash of its predecessors). Creativity and art in games is thriving: you're just seeing the crap around it and thinking things are bad. There may be more crap, but there's a lot of creativity too: the ratio is still about the same.

The Final Fantasy example is a good one because as with all media art theres customer demand and branding. Familiarity is important to the customer and therefore the artist/director/designer need a middle ground, making something new will alienate people such as Final Fantasy XIII has where as art without change will stagnate and thus alienate your fans still. Making art costs money and the customers decide what they spend it on.

I actually like the way Final Fantasy does it. Each entry will be a completely different, wholly disconnected game that stands alone, independent of the others (unless its an expressly noted spinoff, like Crisis Core or X-2 of course). Each game also changes the battle system: even when they used the Active Time system for a while, they changed all the stuff surrounding its setup and character customization (the part of a JRPG battle system that really matters anyway). But fans do know that, when a new Final Fantasy game comes out, they can expect a good story, strategic turn-based gameplay, great visual presentation, a good soundtrack (the best if Uematsu is involved), and a 50+ hour fantasy/sci-fi epic. Familiarity in that we know basically what it will bring to the table, but novelty in that we do not know exactly how.

Of course that doesn't work for everything: if Master Chief was nowhere to be found in Halo 2, or if you didn't play as Snake in one of the main Metal Gear Solid games (wait...), that would just be annoying. But point being, Square Enix manages to keep that particular franchise fresh while still clinging to what makes the series great. Some of their more experimental moves haven't worked as well lately, but it's to be expected: it's not their first slow spell.

Didn't mean to turn this conversation into a Final Fantasy rant, just noting how the series uses these concepts. You have some good stuff to say, Veldt.

I'm one that can't stand the ignorant who say they're all the same and MGS2 is another great example that I forgot about though Master Chef isn't in ODST and Reach is he? I dunno thanks for the compliment and the little debuff humour though.

True, MC isn't in those games, but they're effectively spin-offs. They're expressly about the stories of other people: people that aren't Master Chief. The point is, if Halo 2 ended the way it did, and Halo 3 didn't involve Master Chief at all? Yeah, that would have sucked. If a game professes to be a numbered entry in a series, usually we want the same characters. As opposed to ODST and Reach, which are separate from the main story of the Halo trilogy. Final Fantasy was just in a position to do otherwise, considering their stories are each self-contained and the first game didn't exactly leave a direct sequel open: so they started from scratch for the second one, and it continued on from there.

And yes, those who say all Final Fantasy games are the same are doing so out of ignorance of the series, ignorance of the genre, and ignorance of Japanese culture's relation to video games (storytelling art in general, really). They annoy me too.