Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Stagnating
WhosFat
Member Posts: 92
Games have hit a brick wall. The only game remotely innovative coming out or has came out in the past 5yrs is Spore and even there it's just promises.
Why can't we get any innovation in games today? I mean wtf.
RTS: Brain dead games. Get the biggest baddest army you can in 5min and attack. omg you won. Woopie! Nothing has changed since the genre has been invented. A little variation, but still ALL THE SAME. Since Starcraft, Warcraft, and AOE every single freaking RTS is almost a carbon copy of the others. MMOs and RPGs have more variations than RTSs.
MMORPG: lmmfao. Not really a whole lot out. Basically the same 2 games with 100 different graphics mods.
[b]FPS/[b]: Not a single market changing innovation since Doom. Granted, this don't really require a whole lot of innovation but still.
RPG: Same thing as MMOS. Different Graphics different story, same game.
Racing: Can't really do a whole lot with racing. But Mario Kart was the best one ever.
Fighter: C'mon now. Something a little different than Tekken, please?
Action: the only place were developers seems to have innovative ideas. How about expanding them to different Genres please? Thanks.
Comments
Look at music and movies and you will see the pattern games are facing.
As soon as someone does a bit of music or a movie that works (even if its 50 years old) all anyone else wants to do is variations on the theme.
When they did that remake of Mean Machine as "the Longest Yard" I basically realised that Hollywood is completely out of creative ideas. I mean the move was B grade at best in 1974 when it was made, but was saved by Burt Renoylds acting... cant even say that for the new one... it was just tired garbage.
Same with music. If people like Bittany Spears have thier way we will be listening to variations of "Hit me One more time" (Id love to) in 2070 and it will probably continue to sell just as well.
Games are no different. Someone goes out on a limb and makes something new like Westwood did with Dune 2 and the result is 10+ years of near identical but slightly different RTS games. The same is true of MMO's. Vanguard whilst it has some new bits, is dissapointingly similar to too many other games and generally unimaginative at its core.
You can say what you like about American Mcgees Bad Day in LA, but at least the guy tried to make a new sort of game. Ok it failed badly, but I really think reviewers should have gone easy on him since he tried so hard to innovate.
The only hope (and its a good one) is that considering gaming (especially MMOs) is one probably the biggest growth sector of the entertainment industry in terms of new customers. In a few years the so called "hardcore" will basically be the mainstream and devs are not going to be able to get away with releasing the crap they throw at us today. Games will have to evolve or risk being sidelined by whatever the new form of emerging entertainment will be.
I remain optimistic that the best is yet to come.
+-+-+-+-+-+
"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
-+-+-+-+-+-+
"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
The reason I came up with this post is because I just got Warhammer: 40k after seeing all the reviews for it and all it's awards for "Best RTS of 2006".
Yeah, well... I'm pissed off. The game is trash. I already played this game, it was called AOE. It's got a little warcraft, starcraft thrown in but still it's just a repackaged game. I blame the people giving out these awards and the consumers for nominating and buying such filth.
I just got done playing it for the second time. 30min I beat 7 other computer players. I don't like playing against people because it's just boring.
Wow that truly illustrates that games at the end of the day, are about personal taste.
WH40K actually got me back into RTS gaming. I was right into it from C&C etc but lost interest after all the crappy ones of the last 2 years or so. But 40K was awesome, its really a surprise to hear you didnt like it. Friends and I still play a lot of it at lans when we hook up....
Horses for courses... thats fer shoore
+-+-+-+-+-+
"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
-+-+-+-+-+-+
"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
Your argument is like a two legged dog with an eating disorder...weak and unbalanced.
I wonder if part of the issue is the list of genres the OP mentions and I'm not blaming the OP here. All the gaming magazines use the same catagories. The problem with those categories is that there would be a tendency to work within the those categories so that it's easy to market the game, and as has been mentioned, mimic the previously successful games of that genre.
To some extent, the gaming industry has become a victim of its own success. Because there's more money in a successful release, more money can be spent on development and so the cost of producing a game to meet today's market is so huge that companies cannot risk failure.
It's certainly the case that game designers showed far more innovation 20 years ago. Thinking back to my ZX Spectrum days, there was a huge range of different types of games, and it was amazing how programmers managed to fit some of those games into 48K RAM! Of course, graphics were so much simpler and a game was often the work of one person, allowing some crazy idea to be made into a game in a way that we don't see at all these days. Plenty of those games failed, of course, and we only the remember the good ones. I don't think the current industry could risk that many failures.
Even though I like the Theme of it much more than any other RTS I've ever played, it's mechanics are still exactly the same as all the others. But, even there... it doesn't give a whole lot to advancements. Sure it's got a couple things and units can be upgraded individually, but it doesn't really have a huge tree like AOE.
The capturing of Strategic and Critical points when you still do it in the same manor as every other RTS ever made. It doesn't really offer much in the ways of newness and originality. That one minor thing doesn't really change the whole game for me.
But even there, C&C was entirely too easy imho. Same tactics, the most helis you can produce in the quickest amount of time and you win.
I would have to say the best and most original RTS I have ever played is the Close Combat series. Totally unlike anything ever made and very realistic. You don't have direct control of your soldiers and sometimes they even freak out and run around screaming, just to get shot by enemy machine guns.
I never really thought of it that way, but you're right. All of the older games could be made by a single person allowing any programmer with enough time on his hands to try any crazy idea he could come up with. Such as Sid Meirs Pirates or Tetris. But today, you have too many factors to worry about for any Joe Bob Programmer to create a game that could actually sell on the open market and compete with the multi million dollar budget games. That's kinda sad really. Makes you realize how much the game industry is going to slow down over the next few years.