FEATURE-Video game industry faces 'crisis of creativity'

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The video game industry is facing a hardening of the creative arteries as aging gamers' tastes increasingly shift toward sequels and games based on movies, industry participants said this week. With more and more titles chasing the success of their predecessors and content owners digging deep into their libraries to tap older material for quick fail-proof conversion into games, the industry is faced with a question more serious than rhetorical: What's new?

"The gaming industry will shrink unless we start to see new games," said Toru Iwatani, who created Pac-Man, one of the first video games to become a worldwide hit. One of the industry's first huge hits, published by Namco Ltd. in 1980, Pac-Man crossed gender lines and became a huge hit with women. At the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California, a gathering of industry insiders where the talk is more about how games are made than how they are sold, the dearth of new titles and the increasing cost of developing games was a common theme at keynotes and panel discussions.

News source: Reuters

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#1 sodapop on 27 Mar 2004 - 09:40

Well, They are pretty much all the same these days.

#2 MaceX on 27 Mar 2004 - 09:49

splinter cell 2 is cool, short though :/

#3 pete_moriarty on 27 Mar 2004 - 11:38

yer they are right. developers should spend more time on being creative than just on making good graphics etc.

#4 CheeseCow on 27 Mar 2004 - 12:44

I would say that Nintendo are one of those few companies that value gameplay a lot - their games aren't just scrapped togehter for the heck of it.

But I don't think this is a fair question, stuff like the UT assult and onslaught mode are pretty new. Ask the same question to the music makers, and what will they tell you?

The "THE NEW" is going to be "THE OLD", just mixed and blended in ways never seen before. The same should apply to games, and there is no reason for it to mean the end of the gaming industry, nor the creativity.

I wish that they spent more time & money on the music. There are many games where the music is average or below, it would add that special something to a lot of games.

(4 replies) #5 spIdeZ on 27 Mar 2004 - 16:22

Sorry, but I completely disagree with you. Nearly all of Nintendo's games are sequels and they lack a lot of polish. They don't make games with good graphics (barring Zelda WW), they don't put in any new features or online play, all their games are very short, the music is alright but nothing to write home about.
Here's some examples of their great creativity:
- Mario on a jetpack. NOW THAT'S REVOLUTIONARY

This game had bad graphics, was too short and easy, they rushed it (many levels had 2 times to collect red coins to make the game longer), it was buggy (after you beat Bowser people still told you to save the princess)

- Zelda WW - awesome technical feat (at least I thought so) but the plot completely sucked. Rescue your sister? Please. Add that to the fact that the game was way too short (4 dungeons? what the hell) and way too much time spent waiting to get to the island.. Leave it to Nintendo to ruin their flagship series. Also...is it possible for them to ever not use a musical instrument? Oh wait nevermind...they can't possibly change the formula of their games, that would make them have to think!

- Mario Kart - how many times can they use the same tracks and still charge $50? Online is missing, the major feature millions of players were clamoring for.

- GBA Link - completly gimmicky but Nintendo treats it like the next major thing instead of online. Sorry Nintendo, but no way in hell am I buying 4 GBAs just so I can play FF:CC like it's meant to be!

- Donkey Konga - ANOTHER music game? This should have been a free flash game on their website or something, not a full release!

- Luigi's Mansion - only reason it even sold at all is because people thought it would be good cause Nintendo made it.

- Pikmin - wow, Nintendo can actually still make games that aren't sequels or spin-off cash-ins! Too bad that Nintendo made you rush through it, leaving literally no replay value. Even more ironic, Nintendo once said that they would never do like Pokemon and add more useless types of Pikmin. Then came the Pikmin 2 announcement, and whadd'ya know....2 new kinds of Pikmin.

And yet, even though many of their games often pale in comparison to 3rd party games, THEY STILL ALWAYS GET DELAYED!

Nintendo.....your days are numbered. Maybe not for being in business, but for being in the hearts of the fans you used to always bring a smile to.

Last edited by 2211 on 27 Mar 2004 - 16:37

#5.1 Mav Phoenix on 27 Mar 2004 - 21:46

The water effects in SMS were the best on any platform, and still are I don't see how you can say it had bad graphics. In addition all your other comments are subjective and a lot of people would see it the other way (at least on some of your points).

And the plot for Zelda TWW is so much more than just saving your sister, did you actually play through the whole thing before posting?

#5.2 CheeseCow on 28 Mar 2004 - 11:11

Your views are subjective, and I can't tell you that "you don't feel like that". But I think perhaps I wasn't clear. When I say good gameplay, I mean games that are fun to play for a long time - a good concept. It doesn't need to make you goo "w00t", but instead you will still enjoy them after 5 years. When I say polished, I mean that they feel complete, there are no nasty glitches or annoyances. That it is well planned and executed.

I would say that many PC games lack the polish, mainly because they have to accomodate such a large range of PC specs, and it is expensive to make say 8 different versions of every backdrop. I think the menus(and a bit of in-game graphics as well) in C&C Generals (and ZH) are good examples of this, they don't scale well when you use a resolution that isn't a multiple of 800x600.

#5.3 skatepawn on 29 Mar 2004 - 03:50

yo super smash bro melee was the reason why i bought a gamecube... i still play it all the time with my roommates... i dont think ive played a game so much ever... and metroid wasnt bad, dissapointing ending tho.. but nintendo owns

#5.4 PseudoRandomDragon on 29 Mar 2004 - 13:18

Super Smash Bros (origonal) was a classic. I was so good at that game with Ness.

SSBM had improved graphics and music, as well as more characters, but for some reason the gameplay just wasn't as stimulating. That is the problem with a sequal to a game: the gameplay suffers unless the game is changed radically.

(1 reply) #6 altermind on 27 Mar 2004 - 16:47

considiring this is what I do... I know what they mean

also... something they don't know is...... all the *highend* ppl.. the ppl in managment don't want to take risks defining a potentually new gaunra

*I can't spell*

#6.1 Mav Phoenix on 27 Mar 2004 - 21:49

I agree with your second point but there is plenty of room left for creativity (this is my field as well).

#7 Blax on 27 Mar 2004 - 18:10

spIdeZ...maybe you should try the games before you complain instead of jsut read?

o and btw..you can play mario kart online using warppipe...

#8 Nodiaque on 27 Mar 2004 - 18:22

yeah, using something that's not build-in....

#9 spIdeZ on 27 Mar 2004 - 18:23

Blax, I own all of them except Donkey Konga and GBA Link.

And yes I know you can play mario kart using warp pipe, but not very many people use it. Many people don't know about it or don't have the supplies to hook the GC up to their computer.

#10 Fanon on 27 Mar 2004 - 21:51

I have to agree with this. The last truely great games I played were Jedi Knight 1 and UT. Since then, I've played a bunch of blah games - with nothing keeping my attention for over 3 months (BF1942 is the exception - I'm still playing that - DC baby!).

I am a team player. I love games that require team-work. I love BF1942 and Tribes 2 style gameplay. I play CTF and Onslaught for UT2k4. If more quality team-based games came out, I would play those in a heartbeat.

#11 Dayon on 27 Mar 2004 - 22:08

meh. ::nods sagely::

#12 HeavyTwenty on 28 Mar 2004 - 01:19

Battlefield 1942, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Call of Duty, and Day of Defeat are my favorite games although they are all pretty much unoriginal (the most innovative was BF1942, which basically was Tribes 2 or Halo meets WW2). As long as a game has solid gameplay, then the game will do fine.

(1 reply) #13 Suddenly_Dead on 28 Mar 2004 - 03:37

I have to say that the problem with sequels isn't in my opinion about the lack of an new story or such, but the lack of many if any new gameplay elements at all. New sequels are beginning to turn out looking less like a totally new refreshing game and more of a big update. Battlefield: Vietnam isn't appealing to me for this very reason: it just looks like battlefield 1942 in vietnam (which a mod does, though likely not as well). I mean, I'm not sure if they could have really changed much, but the graphics and stuff could have maybe used a bigger refresher, or a new (good) single player mode included.

Personally, the game sequel (and game overall) that I'm looking forward to most this year is Tribes: Vengence, mostly because they're doing so many fancy things to it that Tribes 1 and 2 never had, or completely changing those that they did (including adding a good singleplayer to what has been a totally multiplayer franchise). And the Tribes gameplay has always been a bit set apart and neater than other FPS games imho.

#13.1 Fanon on 28 Mar 2004 - 04:14

I agree on Tribes. I think part of the reason it was set apart was the fact that it was an online team based game. Another big reason is the huge maps, vehicles, and jet packs. Great games, imo.

#14 oo420oo on 28 Mar 2004 - 21:54

Game companies need to reach out to us gamers to look for ideas. Originality doesn't come on a cd...

#15 MitchShrader on 29 Mar 2004 - 00:35

i dont REALLY want creativity, exactly. what i want is gnarly monsters with technicolor innards to splash about, and nifty weapons, and gurls with large *features* and cheats and lotsa levels and new monster and weapon and gurl expansion packs. Lots of innards. Lots of splashes. Great Sound effects. Who cares about plot? monsters, guns, gurls, sound effects. Do that. creativity is for statues.