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Where are all the new games? Go into any computer game shop, and they’ll tell you something similar to “Over there on the left, sir.” But when you get there, you’re still looking for the new games. Y’see, originality in gaming is dead. Almost. It’s actually on life support, and the doctors are debating whether to pull the plug.
Games companies have one priority: Make money. Yup, every company in the world has that priority, but there is one difference: adaptation. In most businesses, the customer says “I want…”, and the business says “here you go”, but with games companies the opposite applies. They say “have this”, and you say “I dis/like this”. But overall, the customer has very little say in what games companies produce.
Actually, as a side note, I used to go to some groups run by games company Codemasters, where we’d play beta versions of games and tell them how much we liked them. Changes did get made because of this, but things like this are very rare and we were a very small part of their audience.
Taking Codemasters as an example, I’ll show you one of the ways the gaming industry has changed: They started out with games like Dizzy; fairly simplistic adventure games. But they absolutely rocked. I downloaded a Spectrum emulator just to play them – nearly 20 years after they were first released. Can you imagine wanting to play TOCA Touring Cars in two years, let alone 20?
The reason you (probably) wouldn’t, is that there will be better racing games out – there are already in fact (sequels like TOCA 2, which I’ll come to later)
Back in the day, anybody could make a game. Sat alone in your bedroom typing codes out of a magazine, you could all have been a programmer (and a geek, but whatever ;) ). From there, slight adaptations of the code could take you into any one of billions of possibilities for games. Now though, you need a huge team of programmers, musicians, voice artists, QA testers, graphical designers etc etc (as another side note, Championship Manager 1 took two people to make the entire thing. Championship Manager 2001/2002 took well over a hundred [I would count from the game, but there are way too many]). Employing this many people to make a game that might not make any money is a very risky business, so the games companies really have to cut back on chances they take, and there are two major ones:
Sequels sell. Books, movies or games, they always sell (although never as well as the original.) One of the main reasons that they sell so well is that the idea is already there for the customer: Most sequels pick up after the first, so characters, ideas and history is there for you – this saves a hell of a lot of time for the makers, as they assume that everyone who plays the sequel has played the original, so they don’t need to introduce as many of the concepts. Additionally, a lot of the advertising is done already, so there are less people to sell the idea to.
Look at the Pokemon phenomenon. I can think of at least 9 games off the top of my head (Gold, Silver, Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, Pinball, Stadium and Stadium 2), all of which were released in about 3 years of each other. Nobody can tell me that releasing the same game with minor differences FOUR times (Red, Blue, Green and Yellow) is anything but a ploy to get as much money out of children as possible – especially with a catchphrase like “Gotta catch ‘em all”.
Overall, it is a lot simpler to release a sequel that people are already familiar with and will probably buy than to have to go to the effort of creating a whole new concept.
The game engine will be similar too, with enough improvements to justify calling it a “sequel” rather than an “expansion pack” (which is another bullshiznit way of creaming off the consumer – why the hell weren’t these “improvements” included in the original game?)
Other than sequels, the other type of game that is prevalent these days is the TV Or Movie Tie-In ä. These come off the back of Current Popular TV Show Or Movie ä, and is loosely based on the characters and / or plot. The reasoning for this is similar to the sequel, in that a lot of the characters are already there for you. You know who the hero is, who the villain is, so these concepts don’t need to be put over in the game. Kids know the characters too, and a lot of kids have a Playstation these days (you know that the Playstation really made it when it overtook Nintendo as the generic term for a console), so when they go out shopping with mummy and daddy for a birthday present, they will want the game with James Bond on the cover rather than the one with a random, non-specific picture – because when you’re 7 years old, you care more about who is in the game rather than how it plays; not many 7 year olds will read a gaming magazine or website to check out what to buy – they’ll look at the pictures.
Another reason that originality is gone in gaming is the demise of the demo. Demos used to be a fantastic way of getting into the game, playing a section to get a feel of the controls, the mood and the storyline. Many a time have I ripped the cover-CD off a magazine, installed a load of games and spent the afternoon choosing the next game to buy. But now, demos are usually 100mb+. On a 56k modem, that is at least 4 hours of downloading (source: http://www.gamegenie.com/downloads/dlcalc.shtml), although that is based on perfect network conditions and so could take double that. Why the hell would I want to go to all that effort for a game that you may or may not like?
Also because of the size, magazines are VERY limited as to what they can put on the cover-CD – three games and a handful of applications seems to be standard. Three games is hardly a lot for what the potential is, so the magazine has to choose fairly well known (i.e. hyped) games for the cover – giving new, original concepts even less of a chance of getting noticed.
All in all, it seems that new, original ideas have very little chance of making it these days, which is a shame because it only takes one of these games to make it huge. And in case you thought I was making things seem worse than they actually are, here are some statistics based on the top 10 sales for each console last week:
I took the top 10 selling games from eight consoles and the PC, giving a total of 90 games.
56 were sequels, giving a total of 62.2%
25 were tie-ins from movies / TV shows / books, which is 27.7%
Giving a grand total of 9 new games. 9. Fantastic news for originality, especially when SSX Tricky appears on there at least twice.
nikjohns
Games companies have one priority: Make money. Yup, every company in the world has that priority, but there is one difference: adaptation. In most businesses, the customer says “I want…”, and the business says “here you go”, but with games companies the opposite applies. They say “have this”, and you say “I dis/like this”. But overall, the customer has very little say in what games companies produce.
Actually, as a side note, I used to go to some groups run by games company Codemasters, where we’d play beta versions of games and tell them how much we liked them. Changes did get made because of this, but things like this are very rare and we were a very small part of their audience.
Taking Codemasters as an example, I’ll show you one of the ways the gaming industry has changed: They started out with games like Dizzy; fairly simplistic adventure games. But they absolutely rocked. I downloaded a Spectrum emulator just to play them – nearly 20 years after they were first released. Can you imagine wanting to play TOCA Touring Cars in two years, let alone 20?
The reason you (probably) wouldn’t, is that there will be better racing games out – there are already in fact (sequels like TOCA 2, which I’ll come to later)
Back in the day, anybody could make a game. Sat alone in your bedroom typing codes out of a magazine, you could all have been a programmer (and a geek, but whatever ;) ). From there, slight adaptations of the code could take you into any one of billions of possibilities for games. Now though, you need a huge team of programmers, musicians, voice artists, QA testers, graphical designers etc etc (as another side note, Championship Manager 1 took two people to make the entire thing. Championship Manager 2001/2002 took well over a hundred [I would count from the game, but there are way too many]). Employing this many people to make a game that might not make any money is a very risky business, so the games companies really have to cut back on chances they take, and there are two major ones:
Sequels sell. Books, movies or games, they always sell (although never as well as the original.) One of the main reasons that they sell so well is that the idea is already there for the customer: Most sequels pick up after the first, so characters, ideas and history is there for you – this saves a hell of a lot of time for the makers, as they assume that everyone who plays the sequel has played the original, so they don’t need to introduce as many of the concepts. Additionally, a lot of the advertising is done already, so there are less people to sell the idea to.
Look at the Pokemon phenomenon. I can think of at least 9 games off the top of my head (Gold, Silver, Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, Pinball, Stadium and Stadium 2), all of which were released in about 3 years of each other. Nobody can tell me that releasing the same game with minor differences FOUR times (Red, Blue, Green and Yellow) is anything but a ploy to get as much money out of children as possible – especially with a catchphrase like “Gotta catch ‘em all”.
Overall, it is a lot simpler to release a sequel that people are already familiar with and will probably buy than to have to go to the effort of creating a whole new concept.
The game engine will be similar too, with enough improvements to justify calling it a “sequel” rather than an “expansion pack” (which is another bullshiznit way of creaming off the consumer – why the hell weren’t these “improvements” included in the original game?)
Other than sequels, the other type of game that is prevalent these days is the TV Or Movie Tie-In ä. These come off the back of Current Popular TV Show Or Movie ä, and is loosely based on the characters and / or plot. The reasoning for this is similar to the sequel, in that a lot of the characters are already there for you. You know who the hero is, who the villain is, so these concepts don’t need to be put over in the game. Kids know the characters too, and a lot of kids have a Playstation these days (you know that the Playstation really made it when it overtook Nintendo as the generic term for a console), so when they go out shopping with mummy and daddy for a birthday present, they will want the game with James Bond on the cover rather than the one with a random, non-specific picture – because when you’re 7 years old, you care more about who is in the game rather than how it plays; not many 7 year olds will read a gaming magazine or website to check out what to buy – they’ll look at the pictures.
Another reason that originality is gone in gaming is the demise of the demo. Demos used to be a fantastic way of getting into the game, playing a section to get a feel of the controls, the mood and the storyline. Many a time have I ripped the cover-CD off a magazine, installed a load of games and spent the afternoon choosing the next game to buy. But now, demos are usually 100mb+. On a 56k modem, that is at least 4 hours of downloading (source: http://www.gamegenie.com/downloads/dlcalc.shtml), although that is based on perfect network conditions and so could take double that. Why the hell would I want to go to all that effort for a game that you may or may not like?
Also because of the size, magazines are VERY limited as to what they can put on the cover-CD – three games and a handful of applications seems to be standard. Three games is hardly a lot for what the potential is, so the magazine has to choose fairly well known (i.e. hyped) games for the cover – giving new, original concepts even less of a chance of getting noticed.
All in all, it seems that new, original ideas have very little chance of making it these days, which is a shame because it only takes one of these games to make it huge. And in case you thought I was making things seem worse than they actually are, here are some statistics based on the top 10 sales for each console last week:
I took the top 10 selling games from eight consoles and the PC, giving a total of 90 games.
56 were sequels, giving a total of 62.2%
25 were tie-ins from movies / TV shows / books, which is 27.7%
Giving a grand total of 9 new games. 9. Fantastic news for originality, especially when SSX Tricky appears on there at least twice.
nikjohns
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He said himself that changes were good. He's contradicting himself all over the place!
yeah but it was in 3D. Thats original to the GTA scene, plus it was a living city, also original.
Don't you ever want something different from a FPS?
That's what I was saying! If there's an adaptation good more fun and frollocks but it wears thin after a while and we're looking for alternatives!
That's what I was saying! If there's an adaptation good more fun and frollocks but it wears thin after a while and we're looking for alternatives!
nikjohns wrote:
That was the
> point I was trying to make. You have to look *very* hard to find them though.
No you don't! All those games are huge! I doubt anybody would hev trouble finding the no 1 bestseller on PS2, GTA3, would they?
That was the
> point I was trying to make. You have to look *very* hard to find them though.
No you don't! All those games are huge! I doubt anybody would hev trouble finding the no 1 bestseller on PS2, GTA3, would they?
Yes there are loads of sequels out, but I would definitely not say originality is dead. Rez, GTA3,Pikmin, Super Monkey Ball, Oddworld : Munche's Oddessey all come to mind, and I don't even have a mind! So there are still originals being produced... even if hidden behind the hundreds of sequels out there. You just have to look.
<>
Don't you ever want something different from a FPS? Even a twist on an existing theme has been difficult to find, and even then it is difficult to find a game that is new. An analogy:
McDonalds make Big Macs. I like Big Macs, so I have one every day. After a while, I get bored of the Big Mac. McDonalds don't do any other food I like, so I go to KFC and have some chicken.
With the gaming industry, the Big Macs are all the sequal games, and the KFC is pretty much non-existent.
<>
Sorry... :(
Don't you ever want something different from a FPS? Even a twist on an existing theme has been difficult to find, and even then it is difficult to find a game that is new. An analogy:
McDonalds make Big Macs. I like Big Macs, so I have one every day. After a while, I get bored of the Big Mac. McDonalds don't do any other food I like, so I go to KFC and have some chicken.
With the gaming industry, the Big Macs are all the sequal games, and the KFC is pretty much non-existent.
<
Sorry... :(
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