Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Is innovation becoming a thing of the past?
Pappy13
Member Posts: 2,138
I just responded to the thread on what was your first gaming love and while reading some of the responses I started thinking about how games have evolved in the last 30 years or so and how things have perhaps started to slow down and that perhaps 20 years from now the games may not be quite as different from what they are now as we imagine them to be.
For example, I think it's becoming increasingly more difficult to come up with innovations that make a game radically different from the ones on the market. I remember 20 years ago when you would go look at video games, there was a very large selection of games with a wide range of different features. Today it seems you can almost classify every game in about 10 seconds just by looking at the box. FPS, RTS, RPG, MMORPG, puzzle, etc. And when you look at the features, many of them have the same or very close to the same feature sets. Back 20 years ago that wasn't the case. Even games that you might consider the same genre for example an RTS might have wildly different feature sets because things were not quite in place yet to really define what features were required in an RTS. Every game developer was coming up with their own ideas of what to put into the game and you got a lot of variety. Today it's much harder to come up with something original because a lot of stuff has been tried and everyone pretty much knows what works and what doesn't and it's really scary to try to go away from that design. That wasn't an issue 20 years ago when thinking outside the box was part of the norm and expected by gamers. Everyone tried to push the envelope and come up with something new and original hoping it would work.
But that was when it was fairly inexpensive and quick to develop a game. It was easier to take risks because if they didn't pan out, you really didn't lose much. With games like MMO's it's very difficult to take those same risks with a 3 year development project that you have spent millions of dollars on.
So maybe it has nothing to do with developers these days, but simply the reality of how games are made today that there's not as much innovation. Could it be that we've hit a little bit of a wall when it comes to game innovation and the only thing that really changes much anymore are the graphics and how soon before even those are pretty much maxed out and every game has top of the line graphics and even that becomes an area that's tough to distinguish yourself from the crowd? Has the technology finally caught up to our imiginations? Is there very little left that hasn't been tried? Or perhaps it will take another great leap in the fundamental design of games to come up with something really different. Something that is still out there that hasn't been explored at all yet?
Comments
A good game is NOT about innovation. It is about implementation. Ideas are dirt cheap. You put 10 relatively bright people in a room for 3 hours and you will have a long list of new ideas that you won't be able to implement in the next 10 years.
Putting graphics, gameplay, code together, OTOH, is nontrivial and a lot of work. Just look at WOW. It is successful because of polished and good implemention, not radically new ideas.
True but innovation can make for one hell of a franchise [look at Halo 1].
Another great example of Moore's Law. Give people access to that much space (developers and users alike) and they'll find uses for it that you can never imagine. "640K ought to be enough for anybody" - Bill Gates 1981
I agree. No where did I say anything about making a good game. I'm just saying that it's getting harder and harder to innovate. To come up with something totally unique. A lot of games today get a lot of criticism for not being innovative enough. I'm simply wondering if that's a fair criticism of the developers or perhaps it's just an inevitability because of the way games and game development have evolved.
I think its not the gameplay ideas that is the issue. I find the biggest problem is creative writing and storyline development. You can have the same gameplay but if you have a great storyline players will enjoy it. I find a lot of games at the moment are too 2 dimensional. In fact I just finished a really good storyline in Pirates of the Burning Sea and I realised after that the actual activities in the mission was pretty standard. Hire great story tellers I say.
Good discussion.
There hasn't been a loss of innovation but instead a narrowed focus on proven game designs. If I am forking over 20 million as the owner of a game company, I will research the industry and try to base my game off only the most successful. This being WoW, etc...$$$ Why would I ever want to create something innovative (as a businessman) and have the potential for huge loss when I could clone WoW?? I want to stay with what works and has proven to make huge $$$.
But yes, game companies are run by businessmen and not gamers. This explains the lack of innovation IMHO.
So yes, put it together right, but please put it together right with new stuff. We already have WoW, we don't need another one.
Maybe you are just looking in the wrong places.
I see innovation everywhere. Real innovation in gaming all over the place.
Perhaps you have lost perspective by comparing the rate of inovation in all the major innovations over the last 30 years, with the amount of innovation seen between any two consequetive titles today.
Was there really such a big jump between Zalaga and Gorf?
Am I really suprised that LoTRO is more or less the same as WoW?
Here is a little of the innovation I have seen recently.
Crysis played on triple wall projectors. (Surround Cinema).
Webcam games that place my filmed image into the game and allow me to interact with objects.
Guitar Hero.
The console controller. (Not least the one on the Wii).
Head tracking sensors for flight sims.
Satelitte mapping for real world level creation.
And my favourite, mind controlled games.
http://www.emotiv.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn9e0Z5-FH4&feature=related
Mind Control man. F'in Mind control. Hands free gaming.
Innovation in gaming is alive and well, you just aren't looking in the right places.
If it is massive innovation you seek, try not just looking for another title from the same genre.
I remember endless space invaders and pacman clones,endless side scrolling shooters,endless side scrolling beat em ups,platformers,racing games...are you trying to say that there was loads of innovation back then?because there really wasnt.
occasionally something like streetfighter 2,doom or diablo would come along and shake up a genre,or a game such as tomb raider would change the way a genre works,but theres nothing to say future games wont do the same.in fact i can think up a few titles from the last few years that are radically different from pretty much anything out there.
Don't forget that technology plays a huge part in gaming. In 1992'ish I was selling PC's and we were told that CPU's will never go higher than 50Mhz because they would melt down. With every technological evolution (which is less than 2 years these days) the gaming industry can pack a lot more punch into their games. The other key issue is broadband. Imagine 6 years ago we were all on 512kbps or something less. These days we are talking about 20mb+. Remember for all MMO's they have to scale it for mass audiences online. Unfortunately this means less moving parts and AI to speed up the FPS. A lot of the time they have to work on illusions to make the game feel more intelligent than it is. Its really picking up now with AoC, WAR and other titles coming out with almost stand alone PC graghics and hopefully storyline. I am excited to see what they will have in 5 years because there will be senior developers out there who have uber ideas but can not implement them...yet.
In this genre of gaming, I truly believe that innovation is becoming an increasing part of the future. The MMO world is barely minutes old in comparison to the traditional gaming industry. Its only really since the subscription success of WOW, in the western world anyway, that the industry realises how much money there is to be made. Traditionally when this happens in other industries there is a wave of everyone hurrying to grab a piece of the action / revenue with low quality replicas. Over time, as users become more savvy and demand a higher level of quality, the industry will start to differentiate itself and become unique to generate the mass appeal - this is where the innovation comes in.
I think many people are far too quick to dismiss this genre as dead or sterile but for those who have been playing for many many years (since EQ1 and Ultima), I think there is a growing sense of this is the foundation to a real exciting period.
I remember when everyone wrote off the FPS genre saying every game was just another boring Doom or Castlevania rip off - now look at Stalker, Crysis and Gears of War - games that try to innovate in small ways and attract huge revenue and appeal.
MMO's are still babies, give it time.
To err is human....to play is divine
Innovation isn't becoming a thing of the past. But I do agree the fact that developers are putting their graphics and gameplay on the first road instead of new gameplay features. Many good exemples of the way it should be are already posted here. But I think you can also find some things in MMO's like the PVP only game Fury many great new never before shown features !
Yes and no. Innovation is currently not the highest thing on the agenda of new MMO makers, but on the other hand we have the sad yet heartening trend for new MMO's to fail and either be cancelled or chug along with barely any subscribers.
The MMO market is hotting up; hopefully to the extent that lazy developers will not be able to get away with the slipshod buggy crap they've been releasing in the past. The more competition in the genre; the better games I think we'll see.
I agree. No where did I say anything about making a good game. I'm just saying that it's getting harder and harder to innovate. To come up with something totally unique. A lot of games today get a lot of criticism for not being innovative enough. I'm simply wondering if that's a fair criticism of the developers or perhaps it's just an inevitability because of the way games and game development have evolved.
It is harder because coding something unique + new art/graphics costs more and more. Thus, developers are prone to avoid the unknown which may cause runaway budgets.
If there is a cheap way of trying and testing new ideas, then we will see more of them.
So yes, put it together right, but please put it together right with new stuff. We already have WoW, we don't need another one.
I did not say that. What I said implies that the list of ideas are already a MILE long before any MMORPG starts implementation. The problem is to sort out the good ones vs the bad ones. You don't know which is which before you implement and test it out. Now that is expensive.
We don't need another WOW. But we do need another WOW in a sci-fi setting, or any other setting than fantasy. The sci-fi genre is very very inadequate covered by the MMO market.
People are drawn to games by innovation/new ideas. They'll stay in a game if the innovation/new ideas are implemented well and polished. It's great if you have imagination, but if you can't deliver, whether it's because technology doesn't allow it or you take a wrong approach, people will criticize and leave you because of it. People say they don't want the same 'ol, same 'ol, but if the new is crappy, they'll realize the same 'ol same 'ol is probably more fun than they thought. If a game with alot of innovation fails, I'm the kinda guy who'd say "Well, kudos to them for trying something new," but that's not enough to keep paying them a monthly sub.
I don't think it's dying, it's kind of the core, staying in the background but being advertised to attract people at the same time.
--------------------------------------
A human and an Elf get captured by Skaven. The rat-men are getting ready to shoot the first hostage with Dwarf-made guns when he yells, "Earthquake!" The naturally nervous Skaven run and hide from the imaginary threat. He escapes. The Skaven regroup and bring out the Elf. Being very smart, the Elf has figured out what to do. When the Skaven get ready to shoot, the Elf, in order to scare them, yells, "Fire!"
Order of the White Border.
The problem is what is innovative often doesn't sell. Case in point was Warren Spector's Deus Ex 2. Fans h-a-t-e-d it. It was innovative though.
If some dev came up with a new way to deliever content, if it's too foreign to gamers they'll complain about it. If they complain too much, the bean counters won't fund it. Without funds devs can't make a living.
DX fans would love to have the original Deus Ex just updated with new 3D models and better sound quality music (the same scores too). But there's no money in revamping old games, so the devs make potential flops.
Everything revolves around those dollar signs unfortunately.
I have IP that one day I hope to make into something, rather a movie via the internet or a game. But I would never sell it to a publisher so it can be bastardized. When selling it to publishers you lose rights, and like many innovators, they refuse to do so. It would rival any Star Trek or Star Wars world, and way more intricate, but it will never see the light of day for the masses because content isn't protected. Same goes for my sis, who was doing anime before it was cool, she could easily sell it, but won't, in this day of content thieves.
Thus, content innovation is slower than molasses.
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
Obviously you need both innovation and implementation.
I would suggest that EVE is probably the most innovative game recently released
Torrential
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
I think what is really needed is some sort of inexpensive game framework. There are already some MMO frameworks out there but they are mostly subpar and do not compare to up-to-date games.
If there were such a modular framework with built in sound/grafik/network/data control functions the devs wouldn't be limited time wise by the implementation. They could really sit down and try to make a good innovative game and not care about the sound module getting done before the deadline in 3 weeks. Right now they need 3 years just to implement basic functions which makes everything so expensive.
If the production cost of the games go down we will see a flood of new games and some of them will have innovative stuff. So far noone has started developing a truly modern gaming framework with cutting edge performance and quality. It isnt even in the interest of most developers. Being in a game project means that you have a safe job for the next years. With easy to use frameworks the game could be made in under a year and your secure job isnt that secure anymore.
I guess we are going to see releases of clones for years to come. Some may have a small piece of innovation and after 10 years we will finally have something that is different. People hope that small dev teams could create something innovative at a low cost but even if some did - noone would play the game because of bad graphics and sound + bugs. Unluckily the mass of players want top notch graphics and quality. This is expensive and thus the devs mitigate the risk of expensive games with riskfree game concepts.
---
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
This is a really excellent idea and I can possibly seeing something like this work. Imagine a software developer instead of developing a game, developing a game development system that game developers would use to develop new games. I'm sure this is done to some extent now, but I think a lot of it is done in house by the game developers. What tools do developers use today? Do they use the same ones or do they develop their own? My guess is that there is still quite a bit of overalap from gaming developers and perhaps this is one area that needs to change to cut down on the time and hence the cost of game development.
Some really good discussion here. I also appreciated the post that suggested maybe I just wasn't looking in the right places for innovation and that there have been some that maybe have been overlooked. That's a good point, but I still feel frustrated when I go to the store and walk down the software aisle and see what seems to be a lack of variety. I am only looking at the PC software however because for the most part I don't like consoles and cosole games. There's probably more innovation going on there than I'm aware of.
Sorry about necroing an old thread, but I had somehow forgotten about this thread and didn't see some of the posts till just now and I wanted to respond.
Evolution is common.
Innovation is rare.
Nope. It is not obvious at all.
There are plenty of good fun games that are just great incremental improvement over the old without any innovation. Halo 3, CoD2, WOW, Diablo 2 ..... the list is very long.
I wouldn't call Halo 3 innovation... it was short and really just the same game with better graphics cause it was on a new system. Innovation kind of defers when you're talking about different genres anyways. For shooters, it's not just looking better, it's story and adding twists to what normally happens actionwise in shooters... the latest thing that's changed is how you no longer have health points which was started in Halo 2 i think. for MMORPGs... innovation is completely different. people already know what all they want, it's just finding someone with the money and interest in creating it. An interesting setting, all kinds of crafting so people feel they have control over their own world and freedom basically, buying houses, maybe land and ability to kill others. i think what people want is to feel real ownership in an MMO and the ability to decide for themselves what to do and to not always have to be a good guy either.
To be honest though, i think innovation is going away as well. the biggest sign to me? the lack of just plain RPGs. companies are moving away from types of games that require real story and go for just flashy cool action kind of games. it's really sad to me though, the last time i could easily find a good new RPG to play was back when the first playstation was around. since then even the few RPGs that do come out... they're just all about the new 3d capabilities and honestly even the environment doesn't look that good compared to back in the sprite days when they did real work. I feel if RPGs go away, there wont be any real push to create good story's. btw... Xenogears best RPG ever story wise.
I have to edit because some might think i strayed away from the innovation topic. i guess it's just my personal feelings, but i feel Story is the most important to most games and it does take good innovation and creativity to not just recreate one that has already been done.
Mostly innovation will only end up as a cheap gimmick to drive a game. AoCs combat system, A new boomarang or way to throw a bomb on the Zelda Games. More depth into reality on a GTA game.
Its a new spin on an old style, or moreso it's "gimmicky" in that you change one certain aspect, that could be considered an innovative way of doing it, and you pass it off on something old.
Personally the only innovation I've seen lately has been Spore, and Wii Fit (the wii is totally a gimmick machine, but being gimmicky isn't a bad thing).
I think we'll start seeing less innovation and more connectivity... letting players be the dynamic content of their own games. Thats one reason why MMOs are popular in the first place, and it looks like they figure consoles need that ability if gaming is to move forward.
Read what I said CAREFULLY. I said Halo3 is NOT innovation but still a good game.
You do NOT need innovation to make good games.
Read what I said CAREFULLY. I said Halo3 is NOT innovation but still a good game.
You do NOT need innovation to make good games.
On the other hand, Halo 3 does contain some pretty innovative features, which bring added value to an already strong FPS title.Innovation is needed to turn out the most mundane of products, if they are to be successful. In terms of MMOs, it might be just that small change in the combat system which makes your game that much more enjoyable and a big seller. You never know...