So who's gonna capitalize on the experienced gamer market?

[Original_Name]

Mm, spectacular post, but I don't think you quite understand my point. I don't mean I want more games that feel like pre-PlayStation era games. I'm asking where the originality has gone. That's the thing, I'm absolutely fine with huge, flashy next-gen graphics. Tons of money poured into video games. That's GREAT if you ask me. It's just that these beautiful coats of paint happen to be dumped onto turds. Old turds.

Digital Distribution is a Godsend. It's great that indie developers can develop some cool new twitch-shooters, or incorporate some weird idea into a 2D platformer, or even remaking an old game (The Sonic 2 HD game would be great for XBLA, PSN, or WiiWare). That's absolutely fantastic and a necessity in the industry. That doesn't mean I think the major developers should do the same, though. I think that they should use all that money they have, and all the creativity that they used to show in the past (and the indie developers currently show) and blow it to epic proportions! Games as innovative as ToeJam & Earl, Ristar, Ape Escape, Xenogears, Jet Set Radio, or Seaman are so rare these days! And you can't do things like Shenmue on a budget.

I understand that if laziness is an option (which horrifyingly gets companies MORE money these days), then the majority of companies will inevitably opt towards it. That makes sense. This is how I see it, though:

Point A.) The industry isn't as innovative or creative as it once was 10 years ago.
Point B.) The general gaming public are mostly gamers who have come into gaming only in the last 5-8 years.
Point C.) These people are more accustomed to less creative games, which most of us, who have played games from previous generations, are bored by.
Point D.) The gaming media (websites like IGN, Kotaku, Gamespot, and 1UP; magazines like IGN and GamePro) was also around in these older generations.

Thus, if a company, or a group of companies developed games on higher budgets which impress our group for their creativity, they would also impress the gaming media. Thus, this gaming media and gaming subculture would be promoting this new/old style of game development. If the company(/companies) actually advertise their products, it would attract the general gaming public, and they would play these games and say, "Wow, this is really innovative!".

It isn't production values which are the problem, it's what the companies are producing.

I personally do think that such an approach would resonate well in the current industry. The main reason why the more innovative games aren't selling well enough is because of lack of advertising. Valkyria Chronicles, for example, would've sold great with a nice TV campaign. It didn't have that. A new Jet Set Radio game would sell well with good TV advertising regardless of its relatively unknown IP, because it looks and plays so damn cool. Personally, I don't have anything wrong with the Grand Theft Auto franchise... sandbox gameplay is fantastic, and it did alot to bring it to the forefront of the industry. I've heard the most recent game tried to make a statement about the falsities and perishing of the American Dream... that's something I could stand behind. Social and Political analysis in videogames is a good thing if you ask me, because it hasn't really been done before. For instance, I'd support the development of a First Person Shooter set in the eyes of both an American and Iraqi soldier, even though I'd rather be playing a game along the lines of Jet Set Radio or NiGHTS.

If the more innovative concepts were more cherished by the industry, it'd please everyone. Then those of us who want our twitch-shooters can praise the advent of digital distribution.

[Original_Name]

As this thread slowly sinks lower from the top, I'm beginning to wonder if what I'm saying even makes sense.

[Jrecee]

I understand what you're saying but I honestly think it's more a sense of nostalgia you're after than quality games. I feel the same as you, and in the last couple years I've become less and less interested in the current wave of consoles and have started buying up classic games for my old systems.

In 10 years the kids who had an N64 or Dreamcast as their first game system will be talking about the glory days of the ps2 and how ps5 games are just rehashes with shiny paint.

Look back at the 2600-Genesis era and you'll see that there was just as much crap, cash-in stuff as there is today. Was that much effort really put into Cool Spot than was put into the latest Spongebob game? A lot of it I think had to do with he fact that production values were a lot less, and expectations weren't through the roof. You got 3 lives and 10 levels and it cost $60 so you played the hell out of it either way.

[elvis]

A good friend once said to me "Innovation is successful disobedience". Very true words.

Toward the end of the SNES's life, I saw a million and one platform and fighting games. All of them very crap, and very unoriginal. All the gamers joined together, saying "the games industry is at a stand still, and there's nowhere to go. We're stuck in a rut, and nothing original is coming out".

Then we saw Doom. Not 100% original - first person had been done before as early as the Master System and NES dungeon crawlers, and FPS had been done with games like Wolfenstein and even as early as Battlezone which was a FPS vector tank game released by Atari in 1980. But finally technology had caught up and a whole other dimension (pun intended) was opened up for gamers. Doom introduced speed, variety and some basic physics (monsters fell back from being hit, your soldier had momentum, you recoiled from rocket launcher shots, etc), and much sexier graphics. From there we moved into hardware 3D acceleration.... and then stopped. 15 years have passed since then, and not much has changed in the FPS field.

I think until recently a lot of that has been due to hardware. Doom (and after it, Quake and co) took off not because it was new, but because hardware finally came to a point where it could deliver the style of gaming for that genre. Since then, not much has changed hardware wise. Yes, we have DirectX10, OpenGL3, hardware pixel and vertex shaders, and multi-gigahertz processors. But if you think about it, all we're doing is making prettier pictures. The world has concentrated so hard on the graphics-drawing hardware, it seemed to forget about everything else. We're still using input controllers and output displays made in the 1950s. 2D raster displays [monitors], keyboard, mouse, digital buttons, analogue joysticks - it's all 60 year old technology!

Of course, there's room for change in the story. Just like movies and books (both much older than video games), the story is what makes the game. With that said, that in itself is limited to story-heavy games. There are of course some games that are heaps of fun and have zero story (fans of puzzle games nod in agreement everywhere). So how do we move the non-story parts forwards?

I'm still personally waiting for the next evolution of gaming: the change of the input/output process. Gamepads in and monitors out are legacy tech, and need to change. There's been some start in that regard. We're seeing the WiiMote, Bemani (Beat Mania, Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Freaks/Heroes, etc) where the input controls have changed. That's certainly lead to some innovation, but I think it needs to go further.

Things that have interested me greatly in the last few years:

1) Truly 3D displays. Things like Johnny Lee's WiiMote head tracking hack:


We've also seen the Sega Master System 3D glasses, and the Nintendo Virtual Boy. Both great ideas, but I think they were just a touch too early. I'd love to see this idea tackled again on a modern console with plenty of grunt.

2) Real world gaming integration. The Sony eye-toy comes to mind, and once again this is just the tip of the iceberg. Here's a neat video of a card game demo done at E3 a few years back:


Another of a music system that is aware of physical items placed on it:


Random Siggraph stuff:



3) Totally different stuff. There was a great Slashdot article a while back on a guy designing a game for blind gamers - entirely driven by audio! Audio is something that really hasn't progressed other than just adding more channels. There's a world of potential for both audio output and input for games (there has been a little in mainstream gaming, the the NDS microphone, but it's been gimmicky at best).

Heck, there's even basic games now that allow you to push a ball back and forth by "the power of thought". A device straps around your head and measures brain activity (much like one of the receptors used on a lie detector), and you are rewarded for calmness. Nervousness and stress makes you slip backwards and lose the match (obviously making it harder to stay calm when you're losing). The demoed this at a kids science exhibition at my local museum/science centre a while back, and it was interested to see in action.

I think we're just in an awkward position at the moment. Just like the SNES and Megadrive were sitting at the tail end of 2D technology (with a solid 20+ years of 2D video gaming before them) and the industry was running out of ideas, we're at the same point now with current consoles. The Nintendo64, Sony Playstation and Sega Saturn all had 3D graphics and mixed digital/analogue inputs. How much has changed since then? Not a whole lot. Yes, we have higher resolutions, more colours and net play. But in terms of true innovation, we're still seeing exactly the same stuff getting pumped out.

I honestly don't think anything will change greatly until the hardware around the games changes to allow for something different.

You may remember the movie "Back to the Future II". Marty McFly is in the future, and enters a milk bar. In it is an old lightgun arcade machine with a bunch of kids standing around it wondering what it does. Marty plugs it in, turns it on, and aces the game, shooting all the bad guys. When done he stands back, looking proud. One of the kids in the milk bar says "oh, you have to use your hands?".

I wonder what gaming will be like when we no longer use our hands?

Until then, I can't help but think it's going to be a few years of mass-merchandise boredom while the mainstream continue to fund average games. But I'm willing to be patient to see what will come after it all.

[corn619]

I think Atlus and NIS games have a old school look, which appeals to experienced gamers. But innovate with new gameplay ideas. I like that old school look being a 31 year old gamer, but want new, innovative gameplay experiences.