Where are the Big/Fun Ideas?

[Silent Protagonist]

I'm sure this is largely a case of remembering the good and forgetting the bad but here it is.

What happened to the games that took a ridiculous but interesting premise and got creative with it? The two examples I would give are Psychonauts and Grim Fandango. The creators of Psychonauts created entire levels based on what they thought it might look like in someone's mind in various states. Want to see the world through the eyes of a paranoid-schizophrenic(Milkman)? How about the internal turmoil of a manic-depressive(the retired actress)? Psychonauts let's you. Better still the takes were fun and creative. Grim Fandango took a fun and interesting look at a possible afterlife based on the tradition of the Day of the Dead. How about Government bureaucracy and sleazy salesmen selling you plans for your journey to eternal rest? Demons insanely devoted to the modification of cars or maintaining pneumatic tubes? Why not!

The point is it seems like games no longer really want to create a fun and interesting universe to put there game in. Plenty of games explore deep subject matter but it all seems to be done in same-y genre trope environments like post-apocalypse, war, or medieval fantasy. They never seem to start with a big or fun idea and run with it, universe and all, but seem to just squeeze whatever message, theme, or idea into a default factory spec box.

The closest a more modern game comes to this that I can think of is Portal 2 or Bioshock.

What is your take?

 

[Wayneguard]

I'm gonna have to agree. Games like Gex and Conker just don't get made anymore it seems.

 

[Rumpsteak]

Developers are given to much money too make the game and too much is spent on inefficient marketing. It's because of this that any premise that isn't trending in some way is unlikely to get picked up by a publishing studio as it wouldn't be perceived to be likely to sell enough copies.

There is more to it of course but no one wants to read a thesis.

 

[squidface]

I swear there's an Extra Credits episode about something like this. It really is about minimising risk. I mean take Bioshock - essentially it's an FPS with a difference. So people can still shoot their gun like they do in CoD but it's got an amazing story and everything else that makes it awesome. I guess companies and developers have lost too much money over the years now and games are a lot more expensive to make considering graphics and all the rest have come a long way for the games industry. So ensuring a game makes a good profit is important.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

While I haven't played it, I think Journey is a rather unusual idea. Same with Flower and Fez.

If you mean that games no longer seem to have a definitive spirit or original voice anymore, you'd largely be correct. Occasionally there are some that seem to have a fun premise.

No More Heroes/Lollipop Chainsaw
Never Dead
Dead Rising
Stacked (or whatever that nesting doll game was called)
3D Dot Game Heroes
Borderlands
Even Dragons Dogma had a distinct vision..that ultimately turned into a fashion trading dress up sim set in a medieval fantasy realm where your dolls follow you around spouting the same garbage over and over. At least if you peek at the boards over at GameFAQS anyways.

The only games mentioned in this thread so far that I have actually played are Dot Heroes, Borderlands, and Dragon's Dogma, so I guess I wouldn't know what Big/Fun ideas you are missing precisely. Some older games I think had Big/Fun ideas were:

Katamari Damacy (The whole premise start to finish is pretty bizarre and awesome.)

Tsugunai: Atonement (You play as a man cursed to lose his body and wander as a spirit, possessing people to advance the plot.)

Stretch Panic (You play as a little girl with a possessed scarf that can grab things.)

EarthBound (see Katamari Damacy. The R button was used purely to ring the bell on your bicycle, and the manual came with scratch and sniff cards.)

Ogami: Shadow King (You play as an evil shadow.)

Koudelka/Shadow Hearts (An atypical series of RPGs.)

The Professor Layton series (An atypical puzzle/mystery series)

Big Bang Mini (You fight using fireworks.)

Okami (Just fun)

Fatal Frame (The idea of fighting Ghosts with a camera.)

Forbidden Siren (Sightjacking and a very intricate plot.)

Silent Hill (F Resident Evil, this is the game that started Survival Horror.)

Chrono Trigger (Other than Radiant Historia I can't think of a game that incorporates time travel as a main plot point effectively.)

Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled (Best RPG on the DS, sadly it has no shortage of glitches.)

Plants vs Zombies (made tower defense cute.)

Primal (You play as basically the female prototype Ben 10. Jen 4?)

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (Sanity Meter and Lovecraftian Horror? Yes Please!)

Alundra (You are a dream walker. Nuff said.)

Soul Blazer/Art Raiser (You essentially have to kill monsters to recapture souls in order to repopulate the barren world. The latter also has a sim city like levels.)

Some you maybe haven't heard of, others you probably own. Some of them I can scarcely believe that they got the backing to be made at all even though I loved all of them. Some of them were hugely profitable, others fell into obscurity.