Does Gaming Need A Renaissance

Submitted by Shane Whitehouse on April 2, 2007 – 6:36 pm6 Comments

Lately, I have been playing a lot of games, but one thing that I have noticed is how games today don‚Äôt have the flair or personality that games from 80‚Äôs and even into the 90‚Äôs had. Some of this comes from the industry becoming more of a money driven business and less of a hobby driven business.

Think back to twenty years ago in the gaming industry. We had Sierra creating Quest games, Nintendo turning the name Mario into a household name. Games had charm and identity. And you had developers taking more and more risks. Leisure Suit Larry came out during this time and there were no protests. Moms did not unite around the world contesting the release of a game that had simulated sex and so forth. It was a great time for gamers and games.

At that time, graphics were not an issue. I remember being blown away by some of the graphics in Les Manley‚Äôs Lost in Las Vegas or Police Quest III. The HUD was so simple yet so complex in Gunship or M1A1 Abrams Tank Platoon. We made up for the graphics by getting games that immersed us for dozens, if not hundreds of hours.

Now I come into today and I see so many games out there, but none that really seem to push the envelope. Occasionally, you get a game like The Sims or a GTA that changes the way games are made, but then you get 500 look alikes that are trying to be like those innovative games. How many Half-Life clones have you played that were any good. Or have you played a good GTA clone? I would have to say that most of these games end up trying to recreate the same experience instead of trying to bring us something new and fresh.

I think that part of the problem is that some of the industry veterans that made games so popular are leaving or being put out to pasture early. We have some great people that either get shuffled out because the genres they work on are no longer popular or people that have to bounce from one design studio to another because their vision isn‚Äôt profitable. Yet some designers can put out a metric ton of stinkified crap and get to work another day.

Maybe I am just a cantankerous old coot that longs for the days of yesteryear. But a good way to back this up is to look at the recent raving over Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hitting Xbox Live. People were going nuts over this. They were posting at 2:00 AM counting down to the download. Do you seen anyone doing this for the Jaws Unleashed or Extreme Paintbrawl?

For now I will be happy that Bioshock might be a game that can be a diamond in the rough. Or try to play Shadows of the Colossus because of the beauty of the game. But a part of me wishes that publishers would take some risks and make this industry fun again.

http://www.farbot.com/ Paul

Starflight TOTALLY needs a remake. I would play it on a console in a heartbeat. The open-ended surface and interplanetary exploration was so cool. Random planets, random gravity, atmospheres, animals, and you never knew how far your all-terrain explorer could get, if anywhere.

I remember very little about it these days. I should probably take the concepts from it and draw out a game design, then maybe learn a way to write it in Java or Flash. In my other life when I don’t have a job or kids.
marc

i feel like part of it is that most of the stuff has been done before. i mean, think about already in 1192 when dune 2 was released. until then, nobody had really done rts games before (cue Herzog Zwei mention), so when it came out it really stood out. at this point most of the major genres have been invented and are pretty fleshed out. some creativity exists at the boundries (puzzle quest), but for the most part new games are all about refinement. nevertheless, we will continue to see inovation, it just may not be such a large percentage of the overall videogame scene.
Joe Haygood

Marc, I think you may be partially right. But sometimes, presentation is everything. In the end, isn’t GTA just another game with a lot of fetch quests. But the way it was packaged is what made it so different.
freelancer

While you are probably right I don’t really think anyone knows quite what to do about it. Nintendo seems to be the only company willing to take a risk and try something new. While the Ds caught on it remains to be seen what will happen with the Wii. If it fails I wouldn’t bet on seeing anything like it again and that would be a shame. In one maybe two generations gaming will likely have hit a wall graphics wise as once you get photo realistic where else do you go? I don’t see Microsoft or Sony as companies that truly want to lead gaming into any new territory. In ten years time If gaming hasn’t hit upon something fresh this culture will truly be left behind.
http://www.farbot.com/ Paul Munn

I keep hearing about how no new innovation is happening in the gaming space and then we see things like Katamari Damacy, the EyeToy, the Nintendo DS Brain Training games, Wii Sports, and Xbox Live. I think there’s plenty going on.

Most innovations aren’t great leaps today because great leaps are risky. Heck, most titles for the Wii haven’t taken the leap to using the motion sensing control properly yet, instead opting to wade into the pool instead of jumping in fully.

Remember making games is about making money. Unless you’re Microsoft. Then you make games and systems to marginalize and otherwise destroy the competition in the short to medium term and make money in the very, very long term. You fund the former by milking the last successful market you dominated.
http://www.farbot.com/ Paul Munn

Oh and don’t get me wrong when it comes to console innovations — the tilt control on the PS3 isn’t done at that well across the games available for it, either. It doesn’t work all that great in The Godfather, often mistaking one motion for another and it’s often tacked-on in other games.