I’ve been surfing the web to find the next game title I can waste my summer with only to find that most games currently in the market, if you scrape them with their fancy graphical exterior, are no more than clones of each other. So much for the “brooding, buzz cut (or hooded), anti-hero protagonist”, indecently dressed women, parkour antics, and “surprise! you’re the villain” themes. Although they are very successful in capturing the lucrative, emotionally ridden, angst-driven, male teen market, we haven’t really had the time to ask: have we really reached a plateau that we can no longer add something better (aside from very high-poly graphics that could eat all the processing power of your 6GB gpu) to the previous titles to come up with a newer, better game?
If you happen to say yes, then let me walk you through. The gaming industry is the fastest growing segment of the entertainment market generating revenues of more than $30 billion per year (which is roughly 400 games being sold every minute) surpassing film box office and music concert revenues in the US alone. According to an industry impact study conducted by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), in several countries, exports from games sales represent one of the highest exports and due to a substantial decrease in game development time and the opening of new avenues of sharing digital artifacts, game production is estimated to be well over 4 billion titles per year, including consoles and coin-op programs.
The million-dollar question now is: If this is the case, then why can’t we see more and newer game ideas concepts instead?
To understand this, let’s have a quick history recap. The first time mmo standards bar was set was in March 1999 by Verant’s (SoE) Everquest which brought fantasy mmorpgs in western mainstream. Launched with modest expectations, it quickly surpassed Ultima Online in subscriptions and was even named the best mmo. It features an extensive graphics that dominated any other game of its time and was the first to offer 3D first person gameplay. It was designed to for solo, group or raid style play.
Then came Blizard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft in 2006 which redefines mmo possibilities. They are currently in their fourth expansion (Mists of Pandaria), which is by far the most extensive expansion. Two opposing factions – Horde and Alliance, creates a sense of role-playing and advocates the game’s back story. PvP, unlike other games, is as strong focus as PvE as well as a heavy support on cross realm battleground, dungeon and zone contents.
Then in 2012, TERA introduces a true action combat to remove the boredom brought by auto-attack of targeted combat to be called the first ever “Realtime Battle System”. The ability to dodge enemy attacks and aim your attacks allows skill to be a major factor over gear/level.
As game designers we must be able to look at these games to see what they have done wrong and what they have done right and building on them to create better game systems instead of blindly cloning existing titles. One of the most common mistakes a game developer will do is staying too close to the original design and not being able to weed out what is good and build upon them. Nearly every successful game is followed up by a dozen lesser knock offs or stretched through so many sequels that whatever unique appeal it once held inevitably becomes tiresome.
Quick-time events, damsels in distress, brooding power-armoured space marines, overly simple puzzles (that are more of hassle than a challenge), morality meters, sandbox environments, zombies (including but not limited to – zombie-robots, zombie neighborhoods, zombie zoomorphs, even zombie-zombies) , vampires, really bad comic relief characters which falls flat as roadkills, bullet time, collectibles and fetch quests are some of the things that, in my opinion not just as a game developer but also as a gamer, have become so overused that they bore the hell out of you.
But don’t be confused though. Now while completely new and original ideas are certainly preferred and should be celebrated when attempted (they won’t always be good after all) there’s no reason that a game taking inspiration from or expanding on the idea of another can’t be great in their own right. Often originality comes simply from finding a new angle on an already well established concept.
¾ + ¼ = 1 