Is the game industry running dry on ideas?

I recently got in a small conversation through twitter with a couple guys regarding 2k Marin's X-COM retool, and how Syndicate's recent flop might have made it impossible for people to say "this might not suck", seeing their relatively similar concepts (as in, First-Person Shooter reboot of an old strategy game), and that eventually railroaded into this question: What's more important when publishing a game, reception from the fans or the amount of copies sold in total?

Which brings me to the topic in question, considering the larger focus of the industry, and the fact that most developers seem to stick with what works in order to make games (hence the relatively large amount of Follow the Leader you see in new games), does this mean that new and original ideas are too much of a risk for developers to take? If samey, already done ideas sell so well, why bother making something that people may or may not enjoy? Discuss.

Minecraft. QED.

Bayonetta, Lollipop Chainsaw, Skull Girls, Asuras Wrath, Dear Esther.

I'm not seeing it.

Assuming this isn't just attention grabbing, yes, the industry is running out of ideas. The industry is always at a drouth for new ideas. When someone comes up with something different that works, one thousand people will flock to it. Space Invaders, Zork, Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros, Dragon Quest Ultima, Out Run, Mario Kart, Street Fighter, Doom, Super Mario 64, Pokemon, Half Life, Halo, Call Of Duty. Welcome to the gaming industry.

Scribblenauts, Epic Mickey, Ghost Trick...

Are complainers running out of ideas? Seriously, I hear the same complaints tossed around over and over, with no regard for what's actually true.

Tbh, I've heard similar thoughts expressed before, and they're starting to lose credibility in my mind. We're constantly finding games with new things to do, exploring new avenues of thought, challenging in new ways. And this was in 2006 when I first started hearing grumbling. Granted, we're likely to run out of ideas eventually, but it's looking to be a long ways off.

And it depends on how some ideas are Executed as well. You can take an unoriginal idea and execute into something that can be very different from a game that also had a similar idea behind it.

This. Dragon Age being a good example, or at least one which stands out in my mind.

Which is the exact same reason I started this thread in the first place. Christ, I'm not complaining, I'm trying to start a conversation.

Fan reception's probably more important, as it can establish/reinforce that brand loyalty that can really drive up a game's sales.

As for originality, I'd probably list Brink, Tribes: Ascend, Terraria, Spiral Knights, Team Fortress 2, Portal, and Serious Sam as games that stood out when they were released (excepting Ascend, which is still in Beta).

Going back a few, can I just say - Fuck Dear Esther. That game is not original if its just a bloody sim. Yes, it is a sim - its an audio tour sim. You go to a point on the island, and a prerecorded message plays for you.

AAA Gaming is starting to feel unoriginal now but that should not be a surprise because of the budgets involved and share holders not wanting to take risks.

From what I understand Brink pulled things from other games and just rearranged them. Not that that's bad, it's just not as "original" as you'd like.

For any industry to succeed, it needs mediocrity. I'm not saying originality needs to die, it doesn't. It just can't always be original. Those mediocre copycat games that come out give the players something to do between the really great, unique projects. The unique ones take a lot of time to develop. If we only had those, we'd be left with large pauses where the companies weren't making money on new games.

Besides, if every game was unique the companies would be wasting the major potential of the engines they wrote just to make each game. That's thousands of dollars wasted for only one game, when they could just keep pumping out more sellers with the old system.

Remember, jobs that work on credit, like farming, still get paid every year at harvest. Artistic careers like game design have to be paid at least as often. They can't do that if they're waiting for years to do new stuff.

edited 7th Apr '12 4:21:41 PM by Journeyman

To be fair, the industry has never been entirely original. As Cider pointed out, every time one person comes up with an original idea, hundreds of others will copy it. It's hard to imagine a time when Wolfenstein 3D was impressive for being full-roaming first-person when that's practically all games are these days, but its true.

I find that larger corporations tend to be the least creative (also love how someone pointed out Minecraft as an example of the industry maintaining creativity when that was an indie production), perhaps because they want to play it safe instead of risking losing all their valuable money... which they're going to lose anyway because nobody will want their games in a few years. But you can't educate a fool.

I think the industry is becoming more like Hollywood, but that's not a bad thing if indie games become more like indie movies.

Interestingly, this seems to be happening at the same time that storytelling in video games is getting more and more subtle. If you go back and play something like Final Fantasy VI, it seems broad and hamfisted, just as '60s-era Fantastic Four, deep by the standards of the time, is now much less intelligent than many comic books currently on the market. Because of the Hollywood-ization of the industry, this is less obvious in AAA games, but you can still see it at publishers like Rockstar, and it really shines in the RPG Maker crowd.

edited 7th Apr '12 6:31:36 PM by feotakahari

Whenever someone says the game industry is running out of ideas, I just point them towards Atlus. The Shin Megami Tensei franchise is full of ideas that almost no one else touches on.

edited 7th Apr '12 7:01:08 PM by Zendervai

The only thing that has happened, is that the industry has matured enough to actually *have* a baseline of proven ideas to work from. The reason you didn't necessarily see constant clones before, is because you have to invent an original to clone first.

( and honestly, I question even that idea, as there were plenty of brainless clones all the way back to the 2600. Its just that, 20+ years later, we don't *remember* them, we remember the innovative quality titles )

I don't really think it's the industry running out of ideas, but companies resorting to known ways to make money when they don't have a completely original idea that's virtually guaranteed to be a hit. There seem to be three types of games at the moment: completely original games, games based off of other games but with new ideas added, and games that are barely different from other already-existing games.

Considering video game business is a pretty risky venture, it's not surprising that a lot of companies stick to unoriginal, but more profitable ideas about games. However, there is creativity to be found, even in games that aren't that original. Immersion. As long as they're designed and written well, enough that they can captivate the players and let them enjoy themselves, it's ultimately all good.

True, it wouldn't hurt to experiment more with new ideas. Maybe mix a few genres and add new gameplay elements. Most companies, especially the big publishers/developers still seem somewhat afraid of this, but I think they'll start to come around. Maybe some already have.

Posted by: Thorn

This. All the big-budget titles released these days are heavily tested, critiqued, and put through extensive market research to maximize their audience before release. Stick with what is tested, tried, and true, instead of losing everything over an uncertain gamble, right? It's good when a company tries to make a product with as much appeal as possible, but at the same time if you try to please everyone, you risk upsetting everybody.

On the other hand, a lot of people would say that Indie/small budget games are the most creative in the industry right now, but I'd have to say the opposite. Many of them seem to be trying to cash in on the perception of the hardcore crowd that the Old-School games were superior by making games with similar ideas, if not outright revisions. Notice how many games are trying to resurrect the "choose your own adventure" type of games? Or how many are more or less some sort of platformer, puzzle, or dungeon crawler?

There is creative stuff out there, like Portal, Minecraft, Stacking, or Journey. But guess what? Even those games are a derivative of some other genre. Portal, at it's Core, is an FPS with an emphasis on puzzles, Stacking is an adventure game with a unique mechanic for gaining powers and defeating via swapping bodies, and Minecraft is a Rougelike mixed with an RPG like Morrowind sans dialogue... you get the idea.

The truth is, we just have to realize two things. One, tropes are not bad: they are how we can relate and understand new concepts. And two, there is nothing new under the sun. Everything has been tried and done at some point or another (except maybe true VR).

Two things: Portal is not a FPS and Minecraft is neither a roguelike or an RPG.

eeeeh i dunno man, it fits the initials...

its in first person (FP)

and you shoot portals (S)

sooo technically~

Portal is a puzzle game. It has absolutely no shooter elements other than it being in first person and you having a gun.

By your logic, The Elder Scrolls is a series' of first person shooters, because they are in first person and you can shoot (arrows).

it was a joke jeez.

but in retrospect...

sure. i do shoot things in skyrim more than i punch them. also most of the time spent screaming and yelling about morrowind was while i played a char that shot fireballs.

oh but it was in 3rd person mode most of the time (probably why i suffered so much) so i guess that makes morrowind a 3ps?

edited 8th Apr '12 10:09:32 AM by Tarsen

Portal is actually based off of Narbacular Drop, to the point that Valve hired that game's team. Similar to how the team for Tag: The Power of Paint was hired for Portal 2.

edited 8th Apr '12 10:31:29 AM by hnd03