1 votes
A thought on modern game design...
01 April 2012
I've been playing games for as long as I can remember. I was about 5 years old when Super Nintendo was released, and I can recall some of the first games we had for that system: Super Mario World, WWF Super WrestleMania, TMNT Turtles in Time, Krustys Super Fun House. Excluding WWF, I feel like these games were original, and they had to be in order to be enjoyable. The console had a 21mhz processor, 16-bit graphics and 128KiB RAM.
Modern game consoles are much more powerful, which has largely lifted the restrictions and opened up a wide range of possibilities of what games could be. And I think therein lies the problem, when you're free to do what you want, creativity takes a back seat. What you're left with is games that are generic rehashes of 100 games before it, but they sell because they have pretty graphics or lots of bloodshed.
Publishers still put out some creative, original games. But when I think about how original games used to be: Mario Kart, Sonic, Donkey Kong, Zelda, Yoshi's Island, TMNT, Star Fox, even NBA Jam, I simply don't see that level or volume of creativity today. There was a time in the early 80s when games lacked creativity and people thought that video games were dead. Then Nintendo released the NES and that all changed. What that says is people like original video games!
Sadly after 25 years, the most original games I can think of are the same ones we had back then, those made by Nintendo. They're still making Mario and Zelda and the lot. Games like New Super Mario Bros and Sonic the Hedgehog 4, as much as I enjoyed them, are simply recreating the games we had two decades ago. I think it's about time we got some new ideas that'll last us into the next 20 years.
Continuing with that said before, I think when you're faced with major limitations, be it low hardware resources or limited inputs, it forces you to get creative and the result shows in the final product. So rather than trying to utilize every bit of power provided by the game console, I think developers should try defining some artificial limitations when designing their next game. This is a set of boundaries that must absolutely not be broken. I think the result would be quite interesting, to say the least.
Modern game consoles are much more powerful, which has largely lifted the restrictions and opened up a wide range of possibilities of what games could be. And I think therein lies the problem, when you're free to do what you want, creativity takes a back seat. What you're left with is games that are generic rehashes of 100 games before it, but they sell because they have pretty graphics or lots of bloodshed.
Publishers still put out some creative, original games. But when I think about how original games used to be: Mario Kart, Sonic, Donkey Kong, Zelda, Yoshi's Island, TMNT, Star Fox, even NBA Jam, I simply don't see that level or volume of creativity today. There was a time in the early 80s when games lacked creativity and people thought that video games were dead. Then Nintendo released the NES and that all changed. What that says is people like original video games!
Sadly after 25 years, the most original games I can think of are the same ones we had back then, those made by Nintendo. They're still making Mario and Zelda and the lot. Games like New Super Mario Bros and Sonic the Hedgehog 4, as much as I enjoyed them, are simply recreating the games we had two decades ago. I think it's about time we got some new ideas that'll last us into the next 20 years.
Continuing with that said before, I think when you're faced with major limitations, be it low hardware resources or limited inputs, it forces you to get creative and the result shows in the final product. So rather than trying to utilize every bit of power provided by the game console, I think developers should try defining some artificial limitations when designing their next game. This is a set of boundaries that must absolutely not be broken. I think the result would be quite interesting, to say the least.
1
). So many great memories. I understand that some of the concepts were unexplored back then, it was kind of "easier" to be creative. But still, greedy publishers, retarded DRM solutions that punish those who buy legal copies and peple who crave for another CoD or MoH are destroying the gaming industry. It's just... sad.
People accept and buy the crap and that is the crux of it. e.g. EA can splash out making the same generic title year after year with minor changes. Fans don't think 'hmm this should've been a patch' and are happy spend another £40 on it. If they didn't EA and others wouldn't make it. I'm very sad to remember the once great development studios that EA had bought out and essentially drove them into the ground.