The art of gamemaking: dying?

[FurinkanianFrood]

How many video games are there really?

If one looks at the vast masses of games that have been made, how many basic types of game have there really been. (I'm not counting genre-classifiable games that differ greatly from the norm here, that would be ludicrous).

I appreciate the nuances of quality games in a genre (shmups, fighters, puzzle, etc) as much as many others, but once a particular style of play within a particular sub-genre reaches it's zenith, and has been endowed with sufficient (though not excessive) graphics, sound, control, character (or fascinating abstraction), etc, what is left to do........

Someone once (and I really don't feel like looking this up) said that (more or less) all of the legitimate art movements with regards to painting had been discovered, sufficiently developed, blossomed, and then given way to other movements in turn. In other words, with nothing new to be created, painting was "dead".

Of course, that was complete BS, as there is no real upper limit to creative media (IMO anyway)

However, one can't help but notice that there seem to be precious few new game archetypes cropping up (with a few exceptions: KD, a few of N's projects and such).

Where are the new Tempests and Yar's Revenges? (that sounds a bit awkward, eh?) LOL

Where is the next Defender, or Adventure, or Pitfall?

What of Pacman or the great adventure games of yore?

The reality IMO, is that it's much harder to really create something, and so corporations just keep adding transisitors to fool people into buying new junk that will become obsolete in a few years time.

Not only do corporations expect us to waste our money on stuff to replace perfectly good stuff we already own, but they make sure as many of their employees as possible live in countries with lower wages, which feeds the twisted regimes that run those countries, depresses wages in the US, and all the while politicians are encouraging them to rob the world blind, spurred on by the business interests that own them.

So why do we buy stuff that has no benefit over what we already own (PS3 and XB360 jump to mind immediately)?

We are told what impresses us. We are told what is cool.

Do we really need the latest generic 3D action game or FPS #393,239,047 in our family room?

The few companies that actually try to do something interesting often get mocked for it, while people gush love all over consoles with psychotic processor designs that don't belong on this plane of existence.

The artisitic spirit that somehow existed in some folks in the golden days of Atari seldom sees the light of day. The beautiful abstraction of Qix has been murdered by the tacky realism of the modern sports sim.

It almost seems as if world culture as a whole has fallen into a nothingness borne on a sea of ignorance, an ocean of decadence and mindlessness.

Where are the great novels? What the Hell is up with the dreck polluting television, radio, theatres, music stores?

WIth all of these, and with games, it seems to me that there will always be a few souls left to provide something for people with some taste left.

Blessed are the "insane", for they alone are those who are not.

[Bronty-2]

How many video games are there really?

If one looks at the vast masses of games that have been made, how many basic types of game have there really been. (I'm not counting genre-classifiable games that differ greatly from the norm here, that would be ludicrous).

I appreciate the nuances of quality games in a genre (shmups, fighters, puzzle, etc) as much as many others, but once a particular style of play within a particular sub-genre reaches it's zenith, and has been endowed with sufficient (though not excessive) graphics, sound, control, character (or fascinating abstraction), etc, what is left to do........

Someone once (and I really don't feel like looking this up) said that (more or less) all of the legitimate art movements with regards to painting had been discovered, sufficiently developed, blossomed, and then given way to other movements in turn. In other words, with nothing new to be created, painting was "dead".

Of course, that was complete BS, as there is no real upper limit to creative media (IMO anyway)

However, one can't help but notice that there seem to be precious few new game archetypes cropping up (with a few exceptions: KD, a few of N's projects and such).

Where are the new Tempests and Yar's Revenges? (that sounds a bit awkward, eh?) LOL

Where is the next Defender, or Adventure, or Pitfall?

What of Pacman or the great adventure games of yore?

The reality IMO, is that it's much harder to really create something, and so corporations just keep adding transisitors to fool people into buying new junk that will become obsolete in a few years time.

Not only do corporations expect us to waste our money on stuff to replace perfectly good stuff we already own, but they make sure as many of their employees as possible live in countries with lower wages, which feeds the twisted regimes that run those countries, depresses wages in the US, and all the while politicians are encouraging them to rob the world blind, spurred on by the business interests that own them.

So why do we buy stuff that has no benefit over what we already own (PS3 and XB360 jump to mind immediately)?

We are told what impresses us. We are told what is cool.

Do we really need the latest generic 3D action game or FPS #393,239,047 in our family room?

The few companies that actually try to do something interesting often get mocked for it, while people gush love all over consoles with psychotic processor designs that don't belong on this plane of existence.

The artisitic spirit that somehow existed in some folks in the golden days of Atari seldom sees the light of day. The beautiful abstraction of Qix has been murdered by the tacky realism of the modern sports sim.

It almost seems as if world culture as a whole has fallen into a nothingness borne on a sea of ignorance, an ocean of decadence and mindlessness.

Where are the great novels? What the Hell is up with the dreck polluting television, radio, theatres, music stores?

WIth all of these, and with games, it seems to me that there will always be a few souls left to provide something for people with some taste left.

Blessed are the "insane", for they alone are those who are not.

I agree with a lot of your points but... melodramatize much? "Blessed are the insane?" :roll:

[njiska]

I like to answer your rant with the following quote from Katharine Isabelle.

"You do these Canadian independent movies, you build up a name, and then you've gotta do shitty TV episodes just to pay your bills. It's hard to build your career when you keep on having to backtrack to do crappy things to pay for what you're doing. So it's kind of a weird situation."

That statement is a prefect analogy for the videogame industry.

We're getting some really good quality games (Shadow of the Colussus, Resident Evil 4, almost every DS game to come out since august) but the fact is to gpay the bills studios have to pump out a lot of reprocessed, unoriginal tripe.

The fact is that gamers who love insightful, awe-inspiring, quality games pale in comparision to the number of chowerhead idiots who love Madden, GTA and anything the prompts blood and pussy.

Warren Spector was right, things need to change, but they won't. Every form of entertainment in history goes through this path and it's not going to change.

[Graham Mitchell]

You have expressed every concern and complaint I've had about gaming since about 2000.

The truth is that video game companies have figured out what appeals and what makes money. They're not into taking risks with an "out-there" title because a) the costs and required amount of labor of game production in this day and age are astronomical compared to those in 1982, or even 1993, and b) anything that is artsy or deviant runs the risk of being a serious commercial failure and a financial liability (look at Shenmue). As such, publishers are not going to run that kind of risk.

Money poisons art and leads to its eventual dilution. We are now starting to seriously feel the effects of that. The only resolution to that conflict that I can think of is independent game design backed financially by the big publishers like EA or Nintendo, but it's never going to happen. It would cost too much and there's no guarantee that the investors would ever get results from doing that.

Don't completely lose hope, though. As you pointed out, we saw Katamari Damacy, and Nintendo is still going to bat for us. It's just that the tastes of people like us are going to be catered to less and less over the coming years, so stock up on classic games for the drought.