"If you immerse yourself too single-mindedly in your chosen art form, whether it's video games, movies, comics or whatever," he continues, "your work can easily become just a reflection of what others are doing in that field, rather than breaking new ground."
(this is what i meant here).
10 comments:
An awesome quote. I've known that idea for a while now, but I've never seen it put so succinctly before. Thanks!
Noah
Totally agree with that quote. Since videogames is still a relatively immature medium, now is the time to be experimental and look beyond the already established tropes.
However, it's part of a tricky balance to achieve. The struggle to be relevant and original will always persist especially with videogames.
Well said!
I think this will become especially relevant as the tech war settles down and the indie/casual market matures.
I agree with this.
If nothing else you can see evidence in it to the recoil to the Wii. While indie games push bounderies, they aren't as commercially successful nor try to change up HOW a game is played - just what a game can be defined as.
I also agree that games are an immature medium, but not from age alone. The games industry acts like a terrible adolescent sometimes. It glorifies violence, grittiness, and the sexualization of everything as being "mature." It wants validation but wants to be 'unique'. In essense, it wants to be like movies but not liked by Joe Sixpack. It wants to be insular - gamers making games for gamers - but reels when critically-recieved games don't reach mass market appeal. More importantly, they judge their metric of worth by comparing themselves to parallel endevors, rather than how well games are at being games.
It's getting to be how comics were (are?) - an industry of folks who were fans, now making 'their' games for themselves, rather than looking to what people at large would find engaging.
Not that I'm saying gamers can't make games. I do want a job, afterall =p
I see parallels to the music world.
I listen to a lot of drum n bass electronic music. I've been listening to it since close to the inception of the new style back in the early-mid 90s. In the early days, it was an exciting genre to get involved with. Lots of exciting new ideas and musical innovations occurred near the birth of the genre. It was all uncharted territory and it was a riot to be a part of it.
As time marched on, people began to identify "what worked" out of the various early DnB experimentations, and the genre solidified. Over time, the majority of tunes became very rigid in their style and followed basic rules based on what appeared to work- tempos around 175 BPM, bass kicks on the 1 and the upbeat of 3 with snares on the 2 and 4. Distorted and oscillating bass overlayed on deep sub bass. This became a sort of ideal that many producers shot for. With a few notable exceptions, the genre largely became focused on creating something as closely perfect to this ideal as possible instead of creating something compositionally challenging or adventurous. The genre has grown increasingly narrow in its definition and more creatively stale. However, this isn't all bad because many advanced production techniques have developed from this quest for the ideal DnB track. Those gnarly bass lines can get incredibly fearsome now. The drums can fly at exceptionally high speeds while still sounding crisp, clean, and powerful. The tiny details are where the innovation is at, even if the big picture is staying largely the same.
I feel that videogames are going through a similar process now. Game designers have largely been focused lately on the ideal first person shooter. Nothing's as ground breaking as Wolfenstein or Doom were in their heyday, but variations on the same theme get incredibly more detailed and powerful. Graphics are better, sound is better, storyline is told more fluidly, and shooting mechanics feel more natural. Still, it feels like a thousand different versions of essentially the same game and that becomes rote and a bit boring, but a lot has happened in the production quality over time.
I still enjoy the big budget games that come, but I'm keeping a closer eye these days on the indie scene. There is less risk for making creative leaps in game design in these smaller budget titles, and so we have seen several interesting game mechanics born out of that, whether it is the ever expanding Katamari, the time bending of Braid, the build-whatever-you-want of Crayon Physics, the meditative flow of Flower, or the anti-controls of The Path.
We just need to see some of these controls get worked into the mainstream with all of the graphical power of modern games for the budding indie ideas to flourish, at least until they get repeated enough to become cliches too.
Fo sho. This should be one of the Cardinal Rules of Creativity, if anyone compiled such a thing.
Basically, the industry needs to be less incestuous.
Wonderful quote by Mechner. I've had a feeling for some time that it's wrong to use others' work as a starting point for a new game. There are so many games that have not been made yet; haven't even been imagined. They sit, like fossils in the ground - waiting for the right person to discover them.
Penny Arcade referenced your article.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/1/11/
When will this gender specification end with most people. In school, there were no gender specifications between goths, geeks, jocks, or nerds. And there never should have been one between gamers. We are just as any other conglomerate, like minded people with the same passion for electronic media and entertainment. hopefully one day that gender segregation will end.
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