Poll: Gaming Society
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AAA retail games industry peaked a long time ago. If you want innovation, it's indie all the way.
Why do people always claim consistently that all forms of art have completely lost it's innovation? Do you remember that decade when everyone was making just about nothing but 2D platformers? That's stagnation! For gods sake we had titles such as Magicka, Bastion and Frozen Synapse released this year, and lots of other games which might not have completely revolutionized gaming but stil quite successful innovative titles.
Nah. Been gaming since the early 80s and this gen is my favorite.
Portal 2, Bulletstorm, LA Noire and I'm sure many others all had lots of innovation this year.
The only bits I'm not a fan of are multiplayer being squashed into everything, annual franchise releases, motion controls and certain DLC and DRM policies.
Portal 2, Bulletstorm, LA Noire and I'm sure many others all had lots of innovation this year.
The only bits I'm not a fan of are multiplayer being squashed into everything, annual franchise releases, motion controls and certain DLC and DRM policies.
It depends on the perspective. Games now are more popular than ever and are making more money, but that also means taking less risks and if people are willing to buy the same repackaged shit why would you change it?
The past isn't better either. Sure they are a lot more creative games but some old graphics are hard to look at unless you grew up with them. Not to mention we spend the last 10-20 years ironing out kinks in game play to make it smoother, but also decided to iron out too much and some things are missed such as health bars in certain games.
Gaming seems to be more of a waves. There isn't a set peak but some eras of games are better than others. I would say we are on the downslope where we put technology in front of the gaming and fun aspects but that just means the next peak will be even better.
The past isn't better either. Sure they are a lot more creative games but some old graphics are hard to look at unless you grew up with them. Not to mention we spend the last 10-20 years ironing out kinks in game play to make it smoother, but also decided to iron out too much and some things are missed such as health bars in certain games.
Gaming seems to be more of a waves. There isn't a set peak but some eras of games are better than others. I would say we are on the downslope where we put technology in front of the gaming and fun aspects but that just means the next peak will be even better.
The important thing is to acknowledge the very nature of "innovation." The stagnation any one of us might feel is to be the very catalyst for the change and "innovation" we seek. It's counterintuitive to believe the lack of current drastic change is evidence that change is not on the horizon when, in fact, it is evidence to the exact opposite.
I remember a stagnation years ago on the Sega Genesis. Those hearty black plastic game boxes and colorful game booklets gave way to flimsy, cardboard boxes and sleeves; the booklets became blah black and white affairs; most importantly, the games themselves were become retreads of tired ideas and ceased to be fun or exciting anymore. I was a teenager and recall thinking, gaming has finally crested; it's over and the stagnation in titles, decline in quality, meant either I was outgrowing the hobby or gaming as an entertainment was dying... then I walked into a Toys 'R Us and saw a kiosk with what I never dreamed possible: Mario running around in 3 fucking D. The Nintendo 64 was an amazing, innovative machine and it whisked away any idea I had that gaming was dying. If anything, I thought it might have catapaulted out of MY reach; surely a home console capable to allowing me to control characters in 3 dimensions costed THOUSANDS of dollars!! Even the controller seemed alien, more like a plastic weapon than a viable means of controlling a character on-screen; my GAWD, what IS that joystick doing in the middle?!?
Point is, every industry, including gaming, is always on the prowl for the NEXT step of its natural evolution; the need for change and the change itself are two sides of the same coin; one cannot exist without the other.
However, I would worry that the bar has been set fairly high as gaming has attempted to be too mnay things for too many people all at the same time. Had you told me back in 2005 that my $400, 20GB Xbox would eventually let me stream movies and music, store entire, full-retail releases on its soon-to-be ten times bigger harddrive and that I could control all of this with a literal wave of my hand, I would have laughed it off as science fiction. But we're there now as this generation of consoles is basically coming to an end and stirrings of the NEXT generation are ruffling the feathers of the internet. The REAL question is what innovation is going to be good enough for gamers? Where can it possible go that will sate our desire for "more" and "better?" I don't question gaming; I question us.
I remember a stagnation years ago on the Sega Genesis. Those hearty black plastic game boxes and colorful game booklets gave way to flimsy, cardboard boxes and sleeves; the booklets became blah black and white affairs; most importantly, the games themselves were become retreads of tired ideas and ceased to be fun or exciting anymore. I was a teenager and recall thinking, gaming has finally crested; it's over and the stagnation in titles, decline in quality, meant either I was outgrowing the hobby or gaming as an entertainment was dying... then I walked into a Toys 'R Us and saw a kiosk with what I never dreamed possible: Mario running around in 3 fucking D. The Nintendo 64 was an amazing, innovative machine and it whisked away any idea I had that gaming was dying. If anything, I thought it might have catapaulted out of MY reach; surely a home console capable to allowing me to control characters in 3 dimensions costed THOUSANDS of dollars!! Even the controller seemed alien, more like a plastic weapon than a viable means of controlling a character on-screen; my GAWD, what IS that joystick doing in the middle?!?
Point is, every industry, including gaming, is always on the prowl for the NEXT step of its natural evolution; the need for change and the change itself are two sides of the same coin; one cannot exist without the other.
However, I would worry that the bar has been set fairly high as gaming has attempted to be too mnay things for too many people all at the same time. Had you told me back in 2005 that my $400, 20GB Xbox would eventually let me stream movies and music, store entire, full-retail releases on its soon-to-be ten times bigger harddrive and that I could control all of this with a literal wave of my hand, I would have laughed it off as science fiction. But we're there now as this generation of consoles is basically coming to an end and stirrings of the NEXT generation are ruffling the feathers of the internet. The REAL question is what innovation is going to be good enough for gamers? Where can it possible go that will sate our desire for "more" and "better?" I don't question gaming; I question us.
Portal itself was an innovation; Portal 2 innovated by taking that same dynamic and crafting a uniquely fun and rewarding cooperative puzzle-solving experience. No, they didn't re-invent the wheel, but innovation is not necessarily defined as "brand new."Matthew94 said:
We haven't peaked by a long shot. There is still plenty of innovation this generation, people just like to *****. Mirror's Edge, L.A. Noire, Alpha Protocol, Red Dead Redemption, Heavy Rain, Wii Fit, Mass Effect, Little Big Planet, Portal, Super Mario Galaxy, Batman Arkham Asylum, Brink, etc. There is plenty of innovation out there this generation.
Many of these flopped despite being good games that had some problems. The consumer market only truly supports innovation if it is executed flawlessly on the first try. Which takes just as much luck as it does skill.
Many of these flopped despite being good games that had some problems. The consumer market only truly supports innovation if it is executed flawlessly on the first try. Which takes just as much luck as it does skill.
Of which, they are made by the same people. One was made for a class assignment, and one was made for commercial release. The same people made it. It's innovative. It's like if Notch made Minecraft as we know it free to play, then made a game called "Utopia" where he uses C++ and recreates and expands on Minecraft with the story. You can't take that innovation away from the same creator.Matthew94 said:
Well I for one have certainly never played a game where running across a certain substance speeds up my movement, or had to manipulate various substances and their bouncy gravity physics in order to proceed.Matthew94 said:
I have also never played a game where me and my buddy had to time our jumps in order to send eachother flying through portals in walls and smack into eachother halfway through the second jump in order to proceed...
There were loads of great little innovative ideas in Portal 2.
There are more new, non-sequel games being made than ever before. As for innovation;
AAA titles are as samey as they have been for many years. This is simply an effect of big business. You might as well bemoan the lack of original hollywood films and the endless comic-book-based sequel films, because it would be an identical debate. The difference with games is that AAA titles are now given AAA marketing budgets, with all the same glitz and glam as hollywood, which is why you percieve that these are the only games getting made, even though the opposite is true
Mobile and Facebook have created the 'casual' gaming experience, which is a fancy way of saying people who never bothered to buy lemmings or worms or donkey kong and/or didn't have a games console back in the day can now play those things for free in their lunch break/on the train home, on the facebook page / mobile phone they happen to have anyway. This has brought many new gamers onto the market, but in the rush to capture this vast market that has appeared practically over night and out of no-where, game makers have not taken risks but instead tried to just endlessly copy farmville and angry birds. Or they didn't have any marketing budget and sank with out a trace in the various app stores. As these platforms mature, games will have to innovate to catch people's attention in the already crowded space (and also as people get bored of angry birds and cut-the-rope clones). But you may have to wait a year or two for anything really significant (in size and meaning) to come along
Steam is where games that are a bit too big to be indie but have no million dollar marketing budgets end up. There is pleanty of innovation going on in this space where indie games that have grown to be a bit bigger than 2 guys in their basements live
Finally, there are loads of places where you can get information on the vast range of indie games out there, most of which are made more for the passion than the money and often have very innovative mechanics or techniques or fiction. I'm sure if you threw up a thread in certain games-review site forums you'd quickly get a long list of interesting indie games to play or places to find them and even talk direct to the devs
TLDR: There's pleanty of innovation, esp. in indie games, you just suck at looking for it
AAA titles are as samey as they have been for many years. This is simply an effect of big business. You might as well bemoan the lack of original hollywood films and the endless comic-book-based sequel films, because it would be an identical debate. The difference with games is that AAA titles are now given AAA marketing budgets, with all the same glitz and glam as hollywood, which is why you percieve that these are the only games getting made, even though the opposite is true
Mobile and Facebook have created the 'casual' gaming experience, which is a fancy way of saying people who never bothered to buy lemmings or worms or donkey kong and/or didn't have a games console back in the day can now play those things for free in their lunch break/on the train home, on the facebook page / mobile phone they happen to have anyway. This has brought many new gamers onto the market, but in the rush to capture this vast market that has appeared practically over night and out of no-where, game makers have not taken risks but instead tried to just endlessly copy farmville and angry birds. Or they didn't have any marketing budget and sank with out a trace in the various app stores. As these platforms mature, games will have to innovate to catch people's attention in the already crowded space (and also as people get bored of angry birds and cut-the-rope clones). But you may have to wait a year or two for anything really significant (in size and meaning) to come along
Steam is where games that are a bit too big to be indie but have no million dollar marketing budgets end up. There is pleanty of innovation going on in this space where indie games that have grown to be a bit bigger than 2 guys in their basements live
Finally, there are loads of places where you can get information on the vast range of indie games out there, most of which are made more for the passion than the money and often have very innovative mechanics or techniques or fiction. I'm sure if you threw up a thread in certain games-review site forums you'd quickly get a long list of interesting indie games to play or places to find them and even talk direct to the devs
TLDR: There's pleanty of innovation, esp. in indie games, you just suck at looking for it
Portal impacted the industry more than Narbacular Drop did. Narbacular Drop was a game made for an assignment. Then those same people reconfigured their game into something much better. It is essentially the same game but one was a commercial release having a far greater impact on the industry proving the idea was so good people would pay money and one was a "Hey we made this game, if you wanna check it out you can for free". They essentially, revamped their own game bringing in a gun for the portals and remixing the story.Matthew94 said:
As well, it would be stupid to claim that innovation is robbed from a sequel if it refined its predecessors formula. That is what sequels do. Narbacular Drop is in line with the Portal franchise. The innovation gets credited to the same place. They were released 2 years apart and Narbacular Drop and Portal's reception are worlds apart. There are many people who were introduced to that gameplay model through Portal and not NDrop. Thus, it is a perfectly valid claim to make that Portal was innovative as it IS NDrop. You ave this version or that version and most people prefer the version under the name Portal.
Matthew94 said:
You are missing the point. NDrop and Portal are the same game. One was a commercial release and one was an assignment. It is the same game, the innovation came from the same place, the same people. It very well could be that the people that made "Doom" made a game before that wasn't a commercial release and was called "Cursed" but then revamped it for a commercial releqase and thus Doom was born. According that argument no game can ever truly be innovated because it is robbed by its very own alpha/beta stages.Matthew94 said:
I am not well equipped to argue that since I haven't actually played IP but it doesn't sound the exactly the same from what I read on it.
That is a cheap shot. Who did it before them? I could say that Doom was "just catching up".
I think my problem with you (and others like you) is that you refuse to admit when a small innovation is still innovation. Small innovations is how you get polish. Call of Duty 4 became a pop culture icon this generation because of small innovations to the FPS genre. But it wasn't innovative to you because you may as well play doom; "it's the same thing". I ain't saying it is a cause for celebration, I am saying innovation is abundant this generation as any other generation except maybe the late 80s but that was due more to the youth of the medium.
Sure, sequels are robbed of the innovation in the premise of the game but not in mechanics, storytelling, or UI. The premise of a game is not the only way to innovate.
Maybe. The reason we have so many sequels right now is because we are at the end of a veeeery long console cycle. When the new cycle comes around people will be forced to create new IPs, or try something new in some way. But graphics seemed to have plateaued right now though. They can't really get significantly better without some kind of big paradigm shift in the technology, which doesn't seem to be right around the corner right now.
While this gen for the most part peaked, each generation innovates in one way or another. Story telling, gameplay, A.I things like that.
We haven't peaked at all, it's just that our sense of creativity is now lost because everyone is trying to stick with something that sells; honestly it's all too much about politics and it's a shame that we have to suffer for it.
I do generally think the last generation of consoles was the best period for gaming. That doesn't mean I don't acknowledge the advances forward we have made, but there's also been a lot of baggage coming in this generation as well. But I do think this is just a rough transitional period, not the beginning of a long downward spiral.
