Have you seen my Kotaku feature this month? It's a bit dear to my heart. You may have noticed a trend in my writing lately -- I asked you how many of you have hobbies and interests outside of games (only 12 percent of you said you have "many"!), and I've been interested in diversity in general -- how imaginitive we are, how well games support imagination, and how valuable the work of non-traditional developers is.
Essentially, I've been frustrated with the narrowness of our culture and the way we repeat the same conversations over and over; the way we point vigorously to the same handful of titles to prove we're making progress, the sameness of blockbuster games -- and most frustrating of all, the virulent unwillingness so much of the core gaming audience seems to possess toward change.
I've been frustrated with developers and publishers, too -- I have had enough Tolkien, Star Wars and comic book derivatives to last me my whole life. I see us living in an echo chamber, creating both products and a culture around those products that are of interest only to us, and that stand no chance of breaking out of the feedback loop of insularity that prevents games from getting the respect they deserve alongside other media. We're supposed to inherit the future, not remain a niche.
We need a freakin' life, guys. Sorry.
Anyway, this month I talked to some influential folks about what inspires their work -- the question at the core of the piece is whether creativity in games is dead or constrained beyond hope. If you missed it when it went up a couple days ago, check it out!
Then have at it, commenters -- I know there are some of you already itching to point out to me once again the breadth and richness of comic books. While you're at it, you could also make a long, long list of games that defy paradigms to show me how wrong I am. You could even get really righteous and defensive, if you want; this is an open forum, after all.
You could, but then you'd be missing the point.
But if you like the feature, gimme some Digg love, would you? I mean, it has Tim-freakin'-Schafer in it, and I want people to read what he had to say!
40 comments:
Come Leigh that is so unfair! Anime also has a huge influence on games!
Actually you tend to ignore the one area where gaming does reach the main stream more than any other, sports games. While it can often be looked upon as something frat boys do while waiting for the next issue of Maxim to arrive, sports games have a huge appeal. My guess is more people have bought a console to just to be able to play Madden more than any other game.
The biggest reason that games have trouble broadening out is that their narrative ability just isn't fully developed so they have to rely on cultural clues to be able to push things along for their audience. And the audience for most games is still males age 15-30. You don't see the same sort of tropes for casual internet games meant for women 35+, they have an entirely different set of tropes they use.
The kinds of breakthroughs I'd like to see in game mechanics (mostly in social modelling to allow for deeper generative storytelling) are often out of the grasp of indies (since you need a solid foundation game ontop of which to stack those meta-mechanics) and too risky for the mainstream. Shame.
True enough. I'm definitely not part of that 12% with more hobbies outside of games, but the need is there.
At the same time, there's a lot more variety than some folks are willing to acknowledge, as in Lewis Denby's piece on your very own Gamasutra titled "Why Gaming Has Grown Up."
Though Denby does acknowledge the need for more intellectually stimulating material (which would come hand in hand with diversifying premises out of WWII/Tolkien/Star Wars/Superheroes, but I think it also underlines how important diversifying the actual genres (and thus gameplay conventions/methods) is to enabling more creativity in the writing/design phase.
I mean, think about all the current genres available in mainstream, "hardcore" titles. Most all of the genre conventions we work with today most effectively facilitate gameplay that's best suited to those premises. FPS gameplay are great for shooting-people themes, and third-person action is a good enabler for superhero games, etc.
So increasing the amount of genres (and genre-blending) that we do in our games is key to making that happen.
For example, maybe accepting more games that play in the same rigid, self-imposed structure as eroge and H-games or visual novels (that you wrote much about on GameSetWatch) can help along designs that have character interaction or branching narrative as their base components. Not that eroge etc. are more creative themselves in premises/design, but that they're just so absent outside of Japan.
More genres = more gameplay types = more diverse content, right?
This is coming from a girl who Twitter's 90% about video games (and 10% about the usual boring Brooklyn indierock).
That would be because people follow my Twitter because I'm a video game writer. I really doubt 3,000-odd people follow me because they care that much about the rest of my life.
If it's boring, you know where the unfollow button is, right?
Hope you feel better, Leigh. :)
I totally agree with you. In fact just last night I made a related post on my own blog about my burn-out related to the game industry. I didn't start off as a "gamer" but have worked on games so I've gotten a good idea of how insular it can be.
It's a very fair assertion, I've seen Tom Chick talk about it before, even in reference to your beloved Metal Gear:
http://fidgit.com/archives/2009/01/metal_gear_solid_4_influenced_by_the_usual_suspects.php
The odd thing about this phenomenon is that it is so narrow. I can understand the reluctance to use period drama or post modern novels as inspiration, but why are so few games using well worn tropes like Westerns or Film Noir for inspiration? It's easy, the cliches are simple to grasp and lend themselves to games, but they're not even stepping a little outside their comfort zone.
It seems you're either right in the mainstream of games or, like Braid or The Path, wildly out of it. There isn't a middle ground, and it's that middle ground that will move the mainstream out of it's comfort zone.
I think that gamers can be really narrow minded sometimes (and i dont discount myself)we can rationalize all we want but it doesnt change the fact that sometimes we need to just set down the controller and go for a walk, do something with friends, go to a movie, anything really. Now i understand, some people have friends that live far away. I was in the same situation; alot of my friends lived at least a half hour drive from my house. But thats no excuse to sit in my house and chat with them on xbox live. I got my act together. now i do Alot of photoshop work with graphic design and ads for small businesses, i play rugby, I am a bike mechanic and lots of other things; but i still enjoy a good round of L4D or sommething.
On another note, me and other casual gamers are tired of being generalized as losers and obsessed people who don't do anything but gaming, when really we don't play all that often. And im not trying to be rude either, I just think its about time a bit of awareness was raised and casual gamers were treated better.
(disclaimer my english is average at best, i'm french)
Yesterday i have surprise my little sister, fourteen in a intense discussion about her latest manga "switch girl". The gimmick here is that the main character switch personnality to save her reputation wether she is home or in public place. Of course from the outside i couldn't see much difference from the usual, but for her it was a big deal, a revolution, since she have complain that all the other "shojo" manga was nearly the same. For me it was still about the same underlying value and structure...
It reminds me that when you are in a particular culture it's all about the details, we want the same junk only different enough to keep our interest. But actually the more we consume it, the more we became accustome to it (litterate) the more it becames difficult to get our "shoot". We get addict. Of course too much a variation it doesn't seems it's the same thing, and we must not change the core value or structure or we will end upset (waggle, casual, etc)...
It's all about the reward we get, the social status we acheive, the structured transaction that build with other people, that is our drug, our cocoon and our trap. If we change the core value and structure we are strips with the familiar, the connection, the power, the agency. It is too much demanding... If run away from this, we are back to some sort of child state. And we just don't want it.
We were train to be master of the thumb and pianist of the button. Introduce something else where we have not been train but with the promise of the same package and we are lost (waggle, balance board), ans more important we lost PATIENCE to dig it, we already master button isn't it? It became a sin when the core value and structure is washed away, something we cannot tolerate. It's just about the reward, it's about identity and identification, we create a balance at thing that we perceive coherency, with us but also with peers, we NEED that recognition. But sometimes we felt that there is something inherently wrong, that something is missing, REALLY.
But may be we trap ourselves with simulacra, when we do things because habit is comfortable, because the sameness gives the illusion of power, because we can rant from our great knowledge of the field, we make criticism as auto proclaim expert, because we can see through all this "shit", we may be frustrated, but are frustrated MASTER, we understand it all, that is what matter.
But maybe "getting a life" is about breaking our habit, i mean CURIOSITY. To dare fall back in a child like state of discovery, with the fear, but also the excitement. To accept embracing things with no prior knowledge, awkwardly engage in them, not knowing where it will lead us. To learn again, to explore again, and to leave mastery behind for a moment. It ask us to BREAK HABIT, but for that we need not only CURIOSITY, PATIENCE, HUMILITY and WILLINGNESS. Maybe that is what you called "getting a life" :)
Thank you for this insight
There are two separate problems here:
1. Lack of fundamental player actions besides violence or exploration ("Walk Walk, Bang Bang")
2. Shackled creatively to the ur-genre of fantasy/sci-fi/superheroes
The only games to successfully break out of this paradigm are also the most wildly popular: Wii Sports, Madden, The Sims. These have quite similar goals, so the real question is: How do we generate more games like these?
Supposedly innovative games like Braid and The Path aren't breaking the mold. They're free of problem #2 but still subject to #1.
I'd have something to say about you telling your audience to get a life, but I think we got off on the wrong foot there. Keep in mind most gamers have lives. You're supposed to be on our side, not reinforcing these same old tired stereotypes (having a life apparently doesn't involve playing games, duh).
Anyway, I sort of agree that games could be a lot deeper and more involved. At the same time though, they're like any entertainment medium. A lot of the kind of books that end up on best seller lists are not what any literary critic would call "life-changing", but many people seem to think they are. Maybe the problem is that we're all snobs?
neoshaman -- that's actually a really wise point, that we're so immersed in games that things that may look "innovative" to us, look from the outside as if it's just more of the same going on.
I am supposed to be on our side, yes. But I don't think I'm doing anyone any favors by embracing everything we do (or don't do) without ever challenging it or questioning it. I never saw it as my role to blindly advocate for our status quo.
I spend much of my time trying to convince people those stereotypes have no basis in reality -- if anything, writing like this comes out of my sadness that the more I'm exposed to this audience, the less and less ammunition I have on hand to make that argument.
Keep in mind I include myself, too, in the "our" and the "we" :)
... and also that there are certain depressing sectors of the internet community I'm primarily thinking of when I make these criticisms, and our happy little corner here at SVGL is not among them. I love you guys.
"I asked you how many of you have hobbies and interests outside of games (only 12 percent of you said you have "many"!)"
Having more hobbies or interests comes at the expense of depth. There are only so many hours in the day. And you're talking to an audience of (generalizing here) geeks. Geek culture values knowledge. In particular, knowledge that other people don't have. If you go a mile wide and an inch deep, then there'll always be someone who knows more about a given field than you do. Hence the fewer interests/more intense specialization on a few.
Besides which, I'm not sure number of interests captures what you're looking for in terms of diversity anyways. There are some interests which are so general & commonplace or closely tied to gamer culture that they're not going to expand the lexicon of the type of games demanded/made by people having such hobbies (music, action movies, genre fiction, comic books, anime, board games, collectible card games, roleplaying games, even sports etc.).
The point is not that there's anything wrong with those interests, but that they're largely part of the dialogue already in terms of what gets made into games. One can have ten or twelve of these interests and not bring about the kind of diversity that you might see from someone who is really into one relatively esoteric thing like, say, an oulipo fanatic.
I'm not well-informed enough about the game industry to talk about this in a sophisticated way, but it seems as though in other media it has been important to develop avant-garde movements to advance things along--small groups who bring sudden massive changes to a medium--such the modernist moment in literature, or the early innovations of the Russians in cinema. My question is where that might come from in games. It seems to be much more complicated in media which are perceived as primarily commercial. Has TV ever had an avant-garde? And as much as I love US comics I think they suffered as a medium for going 70+ years (1890s through the 1960s)without a real radical moment. It seems like the various networks for distribution set up by the big consoles offer some kind of a place for innovative work, but is that true? Really, I'm curious.
Ah, what people disregard in order to make a point. I actually just sent C. Nutt the extremely messy leftovers of a project I'm working on now, which would probably serve better as a comment here in some respects.
"I don't think I'm doing anyone any favors by embracing everything we do (or don't do) without ever challenging it or questioning it. I never saw it as my role to blindly advocate for our status quo."
That was worth more to me, as questionining anything and everything is something more people should be able to recognize without becoming lost in their own selfish perceptions. What neoshaman stated has some appeal to me and at the end of the day---yeah...there's only so many hours for people.
I'm way too obsessive to have 'many' hobbies, I just have multiple ones which video-games rank highly on. Life's not that interesting to me outside of a game, so I don't spend much time there when I don't have to. =p
~sLs~
I'd count myself in the 12% by the way, perhaps I don't have 'many' hobbies, but those that I do I lavish as much attention on, if not more, than games.
In my (totally subjective) experience, gamers in general read more and watch more films than the average non gamer, but sadly they rarely read or watch out of their comfort zone. The kind of person who perpetuates this cycle is the kind of person who considers themselves a film buff when their experience is mostly limited to eighties action movies, or a big reader despite the fact that they never read anything but epic fantasy and pulp sci-fi. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with these genres, I'm a fan of them myself, but I think it's important to look outside them, and try and approach things a little different, and games are just a more pronounced version of this.
I think people need to learn that 'geek culture' doesn't need to be adopted whole cloth, that it's okay to like Blade Runner and Casablanca or Tolkein and Oscar Wilde. And by extension it's okay to dislike some of geekdom's sacred cows (and gaming has so very many of those) and eye them critically.
I love the comments about needing some new *genres* in video games. I'd never considered that before, and it makes a lot of sense.
I don't really think that that next evolution of video games needs to be for storytelling so that we can tell BETTER stories. I think that the next evolution for video games needs to be storytelling so we can tell DIFFERENT stories. I do think that a great many games fall into the whole "war-zone" trap (whether that's an actual war-zone or zombies, or an f-ed up city, or whatever)-- but those are easy to figure out, easy to convey, easy to think of a story for.
You escape. You survive.
Games where the goals are different are more difficult-- which might be a reason we don't see more film noir games. Noir has *amazing* action in it, but the places where *death* is a consequence of that action are few and far between. I think that Hotel Dusk actually handled that very well, in that most of the "death" animations were you going back to your room and staying there the rest of the night, not you suffering some horrible fate.
I think there's a strong connection between why we don't see that "middle ground" between repetition and innovation and the lack of consequence other than death-- because a lot of those genres have many other consequences, in addition to death.
@ "The sameness of blockbuster games"
Can't blame developers and publishers for sticking to a formula that has yielded serious profits.
All too often, innovative games fall dead by the wayside and the same derivative games succeed.
The burden lies on the gaming audience's shoulders to not only claim that they want more, but to back that claim up with their wallets.
@ Can't blame developers and publishers for sticking to a formula that has yielded serious profits.
But at the same time you don't see developers flocking around animal crossing clones despite that game sells more than halo 3
Film noir is an interesting one, because most of the time the protagonist doesn't win. Some games have tried to do noir – Max Payne, for example – but there's actually more to the genre than the comic book version. Most film noir is about a struggle for meaning in a cynical, sick world; sometimes its just about love. We haven't really got close to exploring the genre.
Part of the problem must lie somewhat in gameplay standards and, as you say, gameplay expectations. For the exploration of new genres, new ways of playing must be invented, and that can't be easy. Second, gamers love to reduce everything to efficacy and means–ends analysis, established control schemes and mechanics for "winning"; anything outside of the standard should be treated with hostile skepticism, etc. What we should be talking about is new interactive experiences, but then some gamers go, "No! I want my games to be fun!" Of course, there's no reason why there can't be space for both types of games.
As a developer, though, how do you go about delivering uniquely human experiences through the medium of video games, and will people pay $60 for that?
I think we are in the process of asking – and answering – some very difficult questions.
I think some effort can be made by increasing the status of awards and critical acclaim in gaming, as it is in film, to convince studios to invest outside the obvious commercial genres.
I mean, Transformers made tons of money and is every bit as trashy as the worst of game narratives, but film studios don't just churn that out, they look for 'Oscar films' as well.
Perhaps when game awards have the status of the Oscars (the easy way to do this would be to tie them into such existing awards) then I think we'll see more studios looking for critical acclaim as much as numbers.
Of course, that also requires critics to be harsher on games that re-hash the same old dross. You can't exactly call for originality while still rewarding derivative games with glowing reviews, it's self defeating.
The Escapist took on this issue a while ago and they used it to cite the differences between Miyamoto and most other game developers.
Today he's known for basing his games on his non-gaming hobbies, but he's been doing that since the NES with Zelda supposedly being based on his childhood experiences and imagination. The recently announced Shadow Tower for the Wii was inspired by a game the director used to play on the playgrounds of his childhood.
In general I just think we need more people from more diverse backgrounds making games.
As for me, I just game, work, and look for work. Sorry.
"... and also that there are certain depressing sectors of the internet community I'm primarily thinking of when I make these criticisms, and our happy little corner here at SVGL is not among them. I love you guys."
I know what you mean. When I read some forums comments, I die a little inside. It's sad but I almost lost hope for the medium. We jumped right into that kind of modern Hollywood state of things where 'Bang Bang' products rule the mainstream market (mainstream as us not the one we bitch about when talking about the Wii and our grandmas) and everything else is pushed back into little dark corners of the net where we need to search for quality.
Maybe I will be proved wrong in 40 years and a mainstream game we are overlooking right now will be looked upon as a jewel of gaming (like, you see me coming, Citizen Kane)..... but i doubt it.
"I am supposed to be on our side, yes. But I don't think I'm doing anyone any favors by embracing everything we do (or don't do) without ever challenging it or questioning it. I never saw it as my role to blindly advocate for our status quo."
I agree, but that's not what I was getting at. Criticism is fine, stereotyping isn't. What your statement conveyed to me is that gamers are a bunch of losers living out of their mom's basements. Me and at least one other commenter I'm guessing.
"I know what you mean. When I read some forums comments, I die a little inside."
Look at any forum of sufficient size on any topic, and you'll find comments that are irrational, inconsiderate of others or just plain stupid. I wouldn't let it get to me so much. If you'd take your cues of humanity from the something awful forums you'd probably hang yourself in a week. :-)
The problem is is that gaming has become just another business now full of mega corporations so your just going to get the same shooty bang bang every year because thats what sells. Just like film where you get the same kind of popcorn brainless blockbusters, and TV where you get the same Crime Show every year. Gaming used to have some weird ideas because it was kind of niche so you could get away with a lot more because you were nto going to sell millions of units. No one would dream of that back then.
So basically you have to look at the indie guys to see reall innovation and real new ideas. Since with megacorporations its all about the money and if the money is in overly muscled guys shooting aleiens thats what your going to get most of the time.
=)
This post makes me happy. Glad to see you're still maturing, Leigh.
I'm afraid I'll have to respectfully disagree.
If you look at any medium there are genre's that dominate. For example cinema has been traditionally dominated by the action film, the historical drama, the buddy comedy and the romantic comedy.
Now sure you've got innovation happening in the indies and the occasional studio film but even they mostly stick to the old forms. What's Juno if not a three act structured teen comedy? Sure it's a much more originally executed one than say American Pie but it's still fundamentally about the same stuff.
And if we take a step back from the 360s and the ps3s for a second and look at the wii or the PC we see a huge array of different games. In some cases these are serving neiche audiences but in others like say the Sims or Dinner Dash they're rapidly becoming the new mainstream.
Perhaps the onus is not on developers to create a more diverse range of titles but for the games press to review and talk about a more diverse range of games.
I entertain a myriad of interests outside of video games and geekdom, ranging from the violin to pro-wrestling. However, that fact is of minor relevance in this Biblical comment I'm about to write.
I've been working on a lengthy paper concerning the economy of the console gaming industry and the history of its market dynamics. The impetus for this project was Denis Dyack's outspoken views on performance oversupply and commoditization in the present games market pushing us toward the probability of a "One Console Future", which is a misnomer; Open Standard Future would be more accurate.
For those who've never heard of any of these subjects, you can check out numerous articles and pieces on the subject. This exchange between Dyack and Ben Hoyt also helps to dispel common misperceptions about the topic.
That being said, I'm finding that these dialogs over the insufficient diversity of high-profile game experiences (& by extension, the disparity between gaming and other mediums with respect to overall depth and creativity) are not really discussing the root of the problem here. Penetrating and understanding this fundamental defect necessitates an important realization: The average person's idea of free market economics is too simplistic.
Beyond the vague concepts of competition and profit, the essence of a free market is independent human action. It is the spontaneous order of goods, services and resources being allocated amongst individuals by the pricing mechanism. Thorough consideration of that definition leads to the factual conclusion that free markets can sometimes create situations where an industry may seemingly prosper but still fail because its underlying economy isn't sound.
Everything is a matter of degree. Console gaming is not a completely free market due to patents, Internet service monopolies, political kowtowing by the ESRB, and other factors. Such interference not withstanding, it is a technology-driven business that's been free enough to evolve into this strange beast which appears hulking and mighty, ready to develop a bigger brain and a more complex personality, but cannot actually do so because it has to expend nearly all its energy on consuming ever greater amounts of food just to survive.
An oft-repeated platitude in our collective debate over the insular limitations of video game content is that "games are big money now so whaddya expect." Our dear Leigh and other voices in the gaming community are apparently railing against this sentiment. In her Kotaku feature this month, Leigh asserts: "The commercial nature of the games biz may constrain the risk inherent in breaking new ground, but that's not a sufficient excuse – all art is commercial."
I'll try not to mutilate that statement beyond its recognizable context in my interpretation. So on the one hand we have those who resign to this fallacy that the need to profit in any large industry dooms the overwhelming majority of games to wallow in tits and guns. On the other we have Leigh & others like-minded who believe that the current commercial impediments to pursuit of risky ideas are artificial barriers used to justify the "real problem" of a self-perpetuating loop in our culture as it relates to game content. This second viewpoint naturally implies that the current foundation of the video game industry is solid enough to facilitate sustained and more regular investment in widely varying, substantive products.
If both of these arguments are wrong, they are wrong for the same reason.
The profit motive exists in film and television too, yet those mediums manage to produce alternative and meaningful stuff consistently. Say what you want about Hollywood's intellectual and artistic bankruptcy, but both the independent scene and the major studios put out Oscar-worthy movies (as Dante pointed out) on a yearly basis. By contrast, network TV can plummet into dullness more frequently, but we still have HBO and Showtime. The economic models of these two mediums do a far better job of lowering costs than many people give them credit for.
Gamer culture, among both players and industry folk, may indeed be replete with cliches and thematic excess. Though it's a counterproductive force, to be sure, it is merely a symptom of the disease - it is not the disease itself. Developers convene at many events to discuss "meaningful narrative and immersive art" because that desire to do creative work does exist. Creativity always manifests where there's opportunity. Right now, there is no opportunity. You can go on all you want about using influences outside those currently explored in games or "getting a life"; it all means nothing in the face of a business paradigm with increasingly dysfunctional, and eventually, nonfunctional, economics.
Knowledgeable, honest, and well-intentioned people both in the player community and in games journalism look at the sales figures, DLC purchases, and hardware adoption rates & assume that the industry has its commercial bases covered, leaving only artistic territory to be conquered.
This is all an illusion.
Numbers can be deceptive. That success and growth cannot be sustained for another two or three cycles as the basic state of affairs stands now.
We usually take it as an axiom that "it's all about the games." If it's really all about the games, about competition between software, then it should be no surprise that the proprietary console system always works better with limited competition and works best when one console reigns above the rest. There were noticeably more breakthroughs in the PlayStation and PS2 eras relative to now. Any negative effects on imaginative game design during the Snes/Genesis generation were largely neutralized by the lesser costs and lower staffing requirements of game development back then.
Today's situation is the worst yet in terms of longterm potential for video games: Three hardware monopolies with significant market share each, in an era when more time and/or money than ever is demanded by development, publishing, and distribution.
Production expenses for Xbox 360 and PS3 releases are astronomical, dwarfing anything we saw in the previous console generation and showing no signs of decrease that would make any real difference. The Wii has further fragmented the industry consumer base by creating millions more players unlikely to seriously explore other types of games.
In the aggregate, these pressures are exacerbating the split-market condition. Game companies, stretching beyond their ability to earn a healthy profit on any one of the major consoles, are starting to shrink and in some cases vanish. Third parties as well as the first parties have had to sell progressively more and more units of a title to merely break even. Digital distribution can alleviate some of the pain, but it cannot single-handedly save the day I assure you. Everything we complain about will only get worse with more console generations.
At the moment, I can see three believable occurrences in the market that would reverse this.
1. In a subsequent console cycle, one machine emerges as the runaway leader and captures nearly the entirety of the audience across all tastes and spectrums.
2. The economics will break down and force the console manufacturers into an open standard that could be made and sold by multiple hardware entities.
3. Radical innovations in game development tools and techniques will reduce the price tag of multi-platform development by massive margins.
Any one of these scenarios, or even a blending thereof, is quite possible. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
Nevertheless, something has to give, and sooner would be better, particularly in regard to the North American market. The United States Dollar has some serious inflation coming its way over the next few years. While the consumer electronics sector of the global economy is so full of productivity and efficiency that console gaming prices might likely be inflation-resistant, it is foolish to think that they could be inflation-proof.
I'm hoping to have the paper done and published in something approaching a timely manner. With more immediate obligations crowding my life, unfortunately, don't expect to read it in the near future.
At least, I hope my boringly long, multi-part comment will start getting people to talk about the invisible elephant in the conversation about video games and their inheritance of the future.
"We need a freakin' life, guys. Sorry."
Already have one, and it involves playing DOOM. Sorry.
Sure there are lots of little problems, but there is one big underlying problem.
Between sleep, work, travel and eating time we don't have time to diversify, those spare couple of hours each day are usually used to unwind.
I have other hobbies alongside gaming, but who really has time for more than 3-4 leisure-time activities?
I read the piece, and I think I must have some kind of subconscious precognition, because I wrote something a few weeks ago which serves as my response quite well - a "presponse", perhaps? It's here, if you're interested.
Forgive the platform bias - while I think that part is true to a degree, I know there are exceptions. The site is PC-focused so I felt I should play that aspect up a bit more than I otherwise might have.
I still think the Wii has "invited" and broadened the gaming audience more than any other console to date. That said I feel as if it was a self-fulfilling prophesy of stagnation and "me too" software. Enough developers scoffed the concept due to their own "power fantasy" (only higher tech games mean anything or matter) and so we're left with a platform that brought a lot of folks to the table and never attempted to "graduate" them to more involved experiences.
Also developers and the core gamers look to "casual" games as something of a curse even though these games have every bit of merit as Pong or Tetris did when we were young. Making something simple and entertaining isn't some sin. Nor is a rehash on the same handful of genres/archetypes/settings more righteous.
We should cast aside what constitutes as a good or meaningful game based on the interpretations of fans, or possibly developers, if we're to broaden what games do. Continuing on this way will only guarantee the same space marine games sell well, why using so-called deep or artsy games as shields to validate ourselves from the outside.
Just to add my late 2 cents regarding creativity.
For me the "creativity's dead" kind of headline makes me jump and shout. Sure, it's done on purpose, I might be an easy customer, but it's such a silly statement...
It's the same with music & film.
Look at these, you will see the same landscape (whatever the style you're in): the same commercial stuff dominates the market and the sales.
Why? Because of the flow. Games (like films, like music) started in someone's basement. They grew to become an industry. The implication of this, given our economic system, is that it has to grow (ie make more and more money). How do you make something based on creativity grow? By duplicating.
The amount of genius is the same. But you will find genius more easily in a trickle than in a sea.
As far as I'm concerned, what I see in the game landscape now is that the independant games are going back (thanks to WiiWare, PSN, XBLA notably). It has become (almost?) possible again possible to create a game on your own in your basement.
That necessarily brings freshness in a staling industry.
That gives me hope.
Otherwise, the fact that most people buy the most hyped blockbusters is just something I have to accept and swallow, however hard it is for me to do so.
Beside a good old fashionned blockbuster is good once in a while...
So the commonly mass produced games are boring. Well that's a common place isn't it?
That said, creativity is certainly not dead. Never have, never will.
Actually another thing has come to my mind: this post is a call for change.
Yet in the very same blog, there was a post defending the classic gamepad... So a call for sameness...
I don't think you can have both... (^_-)
I don't know...I think this entire notion is just kind of stating the obvious about not only video games but all forms of art.
Look at films: you've got a wide range of genre's that are 99% of the time completely the same. Action films for instance, tell me which film this is: guns,car chase, one or two big explosions, cocky main character and fairly gratuitous violence. You can't tell me which film that is because so many films have those staples because...well, because it's popular. You'll still get the occasional original film but it takes time and vision for films to change, and usually it's piece by piece. Look at action films 10 years ago and you would notice that the difference between films back then and now is that there was less frequent cutting, the camera would often be still or focused on an event rather than moving all over the place and there will have been a lot less CG (or just as much CG but it will have been terrible).
Now these changes have happened throughout mainstream action films but you cannot pinpoint exactly where these changes took place specifically because it was a gradual thing. I feel that action films now are worse off for these changes but it's going to be at least another 10 years until the next set of changes has sunk in and the same applies to rom-coms, thrillers, horror flicks, music, books and video games.
If the current trend of video-games is becoming stale to you, there is nothing you can do about it unless you have influence in the video-game development community and even then, you need to wait for immitators to catch up and suddenly, we're back to square one because it's just people copying there influences rather than using it as an inspirational diving board for them to delve into their own pool of original ideas.
If you aren't content in the knowledge that you can only appreciate the 'different' games as much as you can, rather than expect a whole new wave of revolution in the industry, then perhaps that's your minds way of saying that you've moved on from video-games as they exist right now. You wouldn't be the first person to experience this (and I hope I've just mis-interpreted your point because I'd hate it if you had moved on from the medium as your insights are amongst the most interesting.)
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