A gem amongst turds?

[The Larch]

Every time you open a games magazine these days you find, in huge red letters, the genre of a game plastered over the top of a review. I've only just noticed Sar's thread about which genre Black&White fits into, and that brought a bit of a wry smile to my face as I've been thinking quite a bit about this.
In my opinion Black&White cannot be catalogued as belonging to any single genre... but the reason I've given this it's own thread is the reason for this fact:

Are games today lacking innovation and originality?

I've been thinking back to the good 'ol days of my Amiga 1200 when every new game I bought beared little resemblence to any other game - Railroad Tycoon was the first game I ever bought, civilisation had a totally different focus as did simcity, lord of the realms etc - you could claim them all to be management games yet each was fundamentally different and offered a completely new experience.

Flash forward a decade.

Halflife is Doom with 3d Graphics and a slightly different setting. Tomb Raider 456 wows the media with increasingly large breasts, while a multitude of 3rd person clones such as Severance or the Indy game embody essentially exactly the same experience with different graphics. Homeworld, Earth2150, Ground Control, Red Alert2 (etc etc etc etc etc) all exactly the same but with different graphics and minor gameplay changes.

Today the fundamentals are all the same, the differences between games purely cosmetic.

Enter Peter Molyneoux - ThemePark, Syndicate, Dungeon Keeper and Populous firmly under his belt. All utterly peerless, original concepts. And what is this he's holding? Why it's Black&White, the first game in years which is not a derivative of already existing design parameters for a PC game.
Suddenly people become confused - "This game is not a sequel, how strange! What genre can we classify this as?" they ask, not realising that it does not conform to a preset structure as every game for the past 4 years (with very few exceptions) has.

To my mind Black&White is stunning simply because no other developer even attempts to innovate anymore. Does it seem grander in a peerless environment than it actually is? Or am I mistaken to cast such a cynical eye over the games industry as a whole?

Can anybody point to a recent game which has completely changed the way we perceive a particular genre? Or created a new genre?
Tell me because I want to play it while I wait for Black&White to come out.

[MUNKYFUNK]

Zelda. Ocarina of Time.........You`ve gotta play this game if you have an N64

[DVS]

I have to disagree on some aspects of that post Larch. Whilst games thrived on innovation some ten years ago whereas now games tend to belong to a genre, that is not to say that the late 80s marked the high-point of PC gaming. Back then, PCs were a very new form of entertainment, thus it was inevitable that new genres were constantly invented. The original Grand Prix game on the Amstrad was the first of its kind - purely innovative. Now we have Geoff Crammond's very own version, the same-named Grand Prix 3. I don't think we need argue which took considerably more care, talent, passion and determination, even though nowadays, there are countless other F1 titles drowning us.
The same goes for most things. Take cars - the Sports Utility Vehicle, Mini-MPV, the Micro-car, the 3Dr Compact Executive - all unheard of ten years but now new classes of car are suddenly being created. It isn't innovation but simply the ability to locate a niche of market that hasn't yet been considered. Games, however, have had their main genres considered, so developers can now concentrate on tweaking and adding more depth to these genres to optimise the gaming experience, rather than simply trying to think what hasn't been done yet. A game which illustrates this point and a recent game which answers your final question is Deus Ex. On the surface, you could say it is blend of RPG and FPS, much like System Shock 2. On playing the game, enjoying its every crevice, you will soon realise you have not played a game like it before, a game with such depth, such freedom of play, such an absorbing world. It blends together so many of the finest cuts of other games whilst throwing in landslides of additional beauty that it's very, very hard to not stand out from the crowd as the finest game to date.
Black and White will be the same. It isn't, as you say, innovative but rather has merely borrowed, improved upon and added much to its predecessors, namely Populous.
For games belonging to history, it was easy to be good. Low budgets, neanderthal technology and a very concentrated and defined market. Now budgets have risen, but our expectations and technology exponentially so. Developers have to provide for increasingly large numbers of consumers demanding more than what they got last year, which is why the finest titles out their are like diamonds in a hill of dinosaur sh!t.
To prove my point - would you rather be playing the finest games this year has to offer or revert back to the simpletons of the 1980s?

[Edited by DVS on 03-03-2001 at 06:33 PM]

[The Larch]

Would i rather be playing todays games or those of yesteryear? Well, I still play railroad tycoon quite a bit actually - much better than rt2. But, that's more a question of improved technology allowing a better realisation of a game.

By your reasoning I could say PC gaming has now reached a zenith, a medium so explored as to prevent the exploration of new boundries. Is the platform really so restrictive? I don' beleive so.

There are exceptions, as I mentioned in passing - Dues Ex you mentioned (although I haven't played it). Shogun would be an example of mine. I find it difficult to think of any others however, and it would seem to me that there was a higher proportion of innovative titles even as recently as five years ago than there is today.
So, lets focus this - is this because all possible formats of interactive media have now been explored? Or is it because the industry is stagnating under the corporate-induced weight of Fifa sequels?
If the former where does that leave the PC in the longterm? Is the future an X-shaped box?

[Sar]

I much prefer SimCity 2000 over SC3K...

But I much prefer later FPS games (Q3, Nolf etc) over earlier efforts. I suppose it's what actually turns out to be a better gaming experience all round to me.

Conversely look at RPGs. Started off as a 2d, top down view affairs, with set quests and bosses to beat (Zelda 3). But now due to innovation and technological advances we have the likes of Everquest, Anarchy Online, Ultima Online 2, with their largely freeform worlds in which players make the story to a significant degree.

So what am I wittering on about?

Haven't the foggiest :P

[DVS]

Larch, you are clearly trying to do the philisophical "what are we going to do?" act when their is clearly no need. It's 11pm now and I can't really be too arsed to re-explain what I was saying as my above post is quite self-explanitory. I will re-iterate the main point though - I was not saying that games have lost all imagination and truly novel ideas have gone out of the window but merely we have explored all the main "genres" and now, it's the developers' jobs to explore these genres, blend them together, add to them in a way they see fit and a way that brings a fond tear to the eye of us longterm gamers. Shogun is an fps but the difference is, your character is 30ft tall. Railroad tycoon is Sim City adapted to trains. All modern games take inspiration from their 80s/early 90s forefathers but add so much more that they warrant being called true games of brilliance. Gaming is constantly evolving but with hardcore effort and vision by the developers rather than just "new ideas".
Btw, try Deus Ex. That game is stronger than any arguement that can be put into words. :wink:

[MUNKYFUNK]

After having a good think ( and a few beers). I`ve come to the conclusion that only 2 companies have really put alot of thought,heart and soul into creating original games over the past 2 decades.Bullfrog and Nintendo.

[The Larch]

I meant Shogun - Total War not Shogun MAD......oopsie :imu:

[Bapapapa]

I prefer the top down, sprite-based Sensi Soccer to any of the 3d polygon graphic fests that try to pass for enjoyable football games nowadays. The only one that comes anywhere close to the seminal Sensi is ISS PRO on the PSX.

This wittering lark is a addictive. :P

For the Old Skool gamers you can add DMA Designs to the original developer list namely for Lemmings & GTA and Sensible Software for Sensi, Cannon Fodder, Mega-Lo-Mania & Wizball/Wizkid.

Bullfrog did make original game 'concepts' but they didn't half get boring and repetitive after a weekend or so of solid playing. I just hope B&W doesn't pan out the same way. :O

[fatwaster]

What does it matter whether a game is innovative or not. As long as its fun to play its fine by me.

And i downloaded Sensi World Of Soccer the other day and i have to say its much better than FIFA. But thats got nothing to do with what i was saying.