# Gaming and the Idea of Innovation?



## Ryukouki (Oct 24, 2013)

​I do not know about you guys, but gaming as of late has been feeling a bit "stale." Gaming as of late has been getting easier, and sometimes, developers focus too much on the graphical aspect rather than the gameplay and innovative aspect. I have always wondered what would be the perfect game system that mixes fun and innovation, or what would be the perfect game that mixes difficult challenges with a unique gameplay system. I feel that I am not alone in thinking that some of the games from the past several months are more of the same old thing, rehashed over and over again. Therefore, I would like to open up a bit more of a discussion as to where innovation could be implemented into games and consoles.​​[prebreak]Continue reading[/prebreak]​​Let me start with a broad question here. What exactly makes something innovative? We can certainly use the dictionary definition, which states that innovation is something that features new methods that are advanced and original. I find that something is innovative if it can combine uniqueness with exciting features, while keeping me engaged with the feeling of "I do not want to stop playing with this product any time soon..." This definition will vary amongst other people, of course. Everyday innovative objects could be the Apple iPod with the scroll wheel back in the old days, the Nintendo Wii, or the tablet. Sometimes, these items are superseded based on the trends in their respective industries. In terms of video games, you can call games like _World of Warcraft, The World Ends With You _(Nintendo DS), or even Pokemon "innovative" because they changed the landscape of the video gaming industry.​​A little bit of a deviation here, but I recently started hearing a lot of positive things about the video game _Beyond: Two Souls_. From what information I have gathered, when the main character dies in the game, there is no "Game Over" scenario; instead, the story will shift around who is alive or who is dead. I have not seen that in gaming before, as to me, game over often feels like the developer saying I did not play that part right and that I need to be "punished" in a way. I find that idea very interesting and if I had a Playstation 3, I would love to try out this game. Looking at things from another angle, when would innovation be considered going too far, or innovating in the wrong direction?​​An example I would like to look at here is the XBOX ONE from Microsoft. On their big press conference day, the console was touted and lauded by the company as one that would revolutionize the video gaming industry with all of these cool features. As we all know, the reaction was so into the negative and caused such an uproar that Microsoft ended up changing their policies to quell the horde of angry gamers (Daily Reaction). Where is the line going to have to be drawn to say that innovation in this case has gone too far? Is it innovation in this case? While Microsoft might find their idea interesting, the vast majority has shunned the console.​​Personally, I found that the latest generation of consoles has not moved me as other generations have in the past. At this point, it looks like a war of who can get the shiniest console with the slickest visuals. Games have not moved me in the slightest as they are revamps, remakes, ports, or something based off of a previous idea. I find this regrettable as developers are starting to try too hard to attract their casual crowd to pull in money, while forgetting somewhat about their hard core audiences. These next generations just use the same old ideas that were from previous generations, but instead of giving us a simplistic "formula" of sorts such as:​​*A+B = C*​​they give us:​​*3A+4B = 6C*​​You kind of see the idea... or at least, I hope you do. I feel that developers these days are taking the "lazy way out" and just take the root formula and change a few numbers around. We can look at the sports games that constantly return year after year after year, with minor graphical enhancements or new players to keep up. I recall the release of the Nintendo Wii, and how nobody had really seen gaming with motion features. It may have been attempted in a minor format, but the idea never really took off the ground. When Nintendo did it, it was the craziest thing around because it was just so "new." If I recall correctly, it sold a good number of units. I still remember getting a Wii two weeks before launch through my father and selling it close to $1000 on the street because of the hype surrounding the device from the innovations. The lady that bought it, bless her, thought it was the most unique gaming system in quite some time.​​

_Looking at a spec table of the next generation of consoles, nothing really seems to "pop" out in terms of overall features. Prices continue to rise and features continue to drop..._​​Let's go back to the initial topic starter: Where can developers innovate their games or consoles? Should developers start listening more to their fans? Should they not worry much about the money gained or lost in the process, and create a game that fans have been dying for? In terms of consoles, where could consoles be changed to be more innovative? What would be the perfect "dream game" or "dream console?" Since the vast majority of gamers has heard of the Nintendo Wii and the idea of motion detection gaming, ideas similar to it were created by Playstation (Move) and Microsoft (Kinect), but had lesser impact. What could developers do to implement better innovations? Is thin the new thing that needs to be pushed out? Is it necessary to hash out updates once every few months to just show off a specification bump? If developers listened to their fans for video gaming concepts and ideas, do you think that gaming would have been significantly different today? There is a poll above, so please feel free to vote on that, and I would love to hear your comments.​​


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## Rob Blou (Oct 24, 2013)

imho the consoles are more innovative than the games  The wii was a great innovation, the kinnect too and I really love my 2nd gamepad on my wii u but .... there's not a lot of games that take full advantage of these technologies  the wii has probably 30 great games and the rest is pretty much gimmicks and non quality games. The kinnect (imho) has 0 great games and the Wii U is struggling right now but I'm sure it will pick up and hopefully the games will innovate. 
Seriously, I'm sick and tired of action games (FPS, Sandboxes and all that crap) I'm a JRPG fan and I think it's sad that a lot of JRPG are now influenced by the west and become more and more like an action game. I would have loved to see real innovation in the JRPG genre ... the should keep what works and make the rest better.


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## gamefan5 (Oct 24, 2013)

Yay another great article!
I'll give my thoughts on it a bit later. XD


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## Tom Bombadildo (Oct 24, 2013)

I think at this point in time, with the current technological limitations, there really isn't all that much to improve upon/add when it comes to games. Most genres are getting to the point where not much can be improved in terms of gameplay, IMO we've pretty much seen all that we can with shooters and RPGs and such.

And really people these days don't want innovation, they just want what the previous games had. For example, Rob Blou above me. "I'm a JRPG fan and I think it's sad that a lot of JRPG are now influenced by the west and become more and more like an action game. I would have loved to see real innovation in the JRPG genre ... the should keep what works and make the rest better." AKA "I just wanted what they had before (but y'know, better duh), not these innovations changes " It's hard to "improve" on something that already works well, it's hard to "innovate" certain genres when adding to them changes what they are.

I'm not too worried about games becoming "stale" or "samey", though. I'm not the kind of person who can't stand X genre and will only play Y, as long as they keep releasing games that I can enjoy then I'm fine. What I'm really worried about, though, is how easy gaming is becoming these days. Games like Dark Souls and Demon's Souls are nice, but artificial difficulty can only go so far.


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## Rob Blou (Oct 24, 2013)

Tom Bombadildo said:


> I think at this point in time, with the current technological limitations, there really isn't all that much to improve upon/add when it comes to games. Most genres are getting to the point where not much can be improved in terms of gameplay, IMO we've pretty much seen all that we can with shooters and RPGs and such.
> 
> And really people these days don't want innovation, they just want what the previous games had. For example, Rob Blou above me. "I'm a JRPG fan and I think it's sad that a lot of JRPG are now influenced by the west and become more and more like an action game. I would have loved to see real innovation in the JRPG genre ... the should keep what works and make the rest better." AKA "I just wanted what they had before (but y'know, better duh), not these innovations changes " It's hard to "improve" on something that already works well, it's hard to "innovate" certain genres when adding to them changes what they are.
> 
> I'm not too worried about games becoming "stale" or "samey", though. I'm not the kind of person who can't stand X genre and will only play Y, as long as they keep releasing games that I can enjoy then I'm fine. What I'm really worried about, though, is how easy gaming is becoming these days. Games like Dark Souls and Demon's Souls are nice, but artificial difficulty can only go so far.


 

I agree with you on a lot of points ... it's true that we want old stuff, however not everything old is good and the problem is that they are changing a lot of what was good and keeping what was not so good (FF13 I'm pointing at you) :S. They remove the world map, the huge amount of content and exploration, dumb down the combat system and the storyline ect ect. I think it is possible to innovate while keeping a good formula (Xenoblade did it to a certain extent and thats why a lot of people are saying it's the best JRPG of this generation). Skies of Arcadia innovated in the world map area by making it in the sky with a flying ship and it was amazing! What saddens me the most, is when I hear SE saying that they can't do a remake of FF7 cause it would take them 50 years ... in other words: It's impossible for us to make games with the scale of old JRPGs because of the evolution of graphics  Great graphics are impressive for 15 mins and then you get used to it ... great games are impressive through the whole game.


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## Gahars (Oct 24, 2013)

"Innovation" gets thrown around so much that it's little more than a buzzword at this point.

For what it's worth, I'm all for experimentation, but I think people have to remember that "innovation" and quality are two very different things. Just because you're doing something differently doesn't mean you're doing it well. Just being different for the sake of being different is no better than keeping to the status quo; hell, in many cases, it's outright worse.

Take motion controls, from the Wii to the Kinect to the Move. It was different, sure, but did it improve games as a whole? Nope. Sure, there's a rare few exceptions here and there, but those are very specific cases and usually limited to very specific genres (party games, mostly). Even on the Wii, if a game controlled well, it was often in spite of the motion controls, not because of them (Twilight Princess, Mario Galaxy, etc.).

You could apply this to Xbox One's original policies, too. Sure, they would've been different, but they wouldn't have been particularly good, and at the end of the day, that's what matters most.


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## calmwaters (Oct 24, 2013)

You see, I just don't care about the hardware specifications for these systems. As the picture shows, they're all the same. They can't keep touting graphics as a reason to buy a game: all three engines have the same power. What I care about are quality JRPG's that aren't necessarily innovative, but provide me hours of entertainment (I'm looking at you, Super Paper Mario). Plus JRPG's are really repetitive, so you've got to come up with an interesting idea each time you make a new one. And after 14 Final Fantasy titles, there's not much they can do in innovation, so they need to kind of fake it to make it seem as enjoyable as the last 3 games.

While I'm on this subject, I believe all games are repetitive: you repeat the same process over and over again. This is why so many of you find modern games easy: the graphics have changed, but you're still roaming around with machine guns on Xbox Live adding to your kill count. The dance and music games are the same too; you will have more success innovating in other game categories.

So yes, developers do take the easy way out because they just rehash the shooters and dance games; they've just got different names. How many first person shooters are there, excluding the Call of Duty, Halo, and Mass Effect franchises?


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## Tom Bombadildo (Oct 24, 2013)

calmwaters said:


> So yes, developers do take the easy way out because they just rehash the shooters and dance games; they've just got different names. How many first person shooters are there, excluding the Call of Duty, Halo, and Mass Effect franchises?


 
Mass Effect isn't a FPS. Also, Battlefield, Half Life, ARMA, Bioshock, Borderlands, Counterstrike, Crysis, Dead Island, Far Cry, Killzone, Resistance, Medal of Honor, Quake, Unreal series, and on and on and on and on. And not all of these series are just "rehashed" either. So...point is moot.


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## Black-Ice (Oct 24, 2013)

Nintendo try very hard to be innovative with consoles.
I feel while Sony and Microsoft just try to fight each over and build upon the same things, Nintendo actually try hard to deliver something new with every console.

brace for impact...


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## Tom Bombadildo (Oct 24, 2013)

Black-Ice said:


> Nintendo try very hard to be innovative with consoles.
> I feel while Sony and Microsoft just try to fight each over and build upon the same things, Nintendo actually try hard to deliver something new with every console.
> 
> brace for impact...


 
>Innovative
>Shit gimmick they give up on ;O;O;O;O;O;O;O;O;O;O;O;O;O;O;O;O


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## Black-Ice (Oct 24, 2013)

Tom Bombadildo said:


> >Innovative
> >Shit gimmick they give up on ;O;O;O;O;O;O;O;O;O;O;O;O;O;O;O;O


 
Nah, Nintendo's "gimmicks" have always been the focus for them.
Which is good imo


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## calmwaters (Oct 24, 2013)

Tom Bombadildo said:


> Mass Effect isn't a FPS. Also, Battlefield, Half Life, ARMA, Bioshock, Borderlands, Counterstrike, Crysis, Dead Island, Far Cry, Killzone, Resistance, Medal of Honor, Quake, Unreal series, and on and on and on and on. And not all of these series are just "rehashed" either. So...point is moot.


 
I think what I meant are all the games where you run around in first person and don't actually control a character a la Batman: Arkham City. It doesn't get boring to keep playing these sorts of games? I mean, the ideas might be different, but they're all still in first person. Why try to make something that is in third person and is fun when everyone likes playing these series?



Black-Ice said:


> Nintendo try very hard to be innovative with consoles.
> I feel while Sony and Microsoft just try to fight each over and build upon the same things, Nintendo actually try hard to deliver something new with every console.
> 
> brace for impact...


I could seriously not agree more. Nintendo isn't even trying to compete with these companies; they just release games on their system and hope that that'll be enough to lure in gamers. Sony and Microsoft are involved in a massive battle over who can have the better multi-purpose entertainment system as opposed to just having a game console (this is just my opinion, though). I thought the Wii U would sell because it had a tablet, which are immensely popular with people nowadays. But apparently it takes more than a tablet with internet connectivity to peak people's (and other gamers) interest.


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## trumpet-205 (Oct 24, 2013)

The last innovation in gaming industries was really the Wii, which sparked the movement motion gaming.

However with Wii U, Nintendo backed away from that and opt for gamepad mimicking tablet. Gamepad honestly doesn't have that wow factor that motion gaming has.


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## emigre (Oct 24, 2013)

Black-Ice said:


> Nah, Nintendo's "gimmicks" have always been the focus for them.
> Which is good imo


 








calmwaters said:


> I think what I meant are all the games where you run around in first person and don't actually control a character a la Batman: Arkham City. It doesn't get boring to keep playing these sorts of games? I mean, the ideas might be different, but they're all still in first person. Why try to make something that is in third person and is fun when everyone likes playing these series?


 

You can say the same about every genre. 2D platformers? You jump a lot. JRPGs? You grind a lot. FPS is just an easy target for people to point and say "huh dud rehash."


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## naxil (Oct 24, 2013)

innovations= play the same GAMES on different HW (with the same SAVES). Console need to BE OPEN and game need to be EDITABLE!
How much editor do u see for Console gaming (not think about homebrew mod, but i talk about official game editor).
Gamers need to be free, and play the games every time and everywhere (tv,tablet,pc,console,smartphone)


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## mj0ln3r (Oct 24, 2013)

I think the Oculus Rift (VR) will be "the next big thing" and a gigantic leap forward for games and entertainment. I don't own one or even tried it myself but following the progress reminds me of the 3D graphics explosion during the 90s. Motion controls should find new life in a virtual world too. When it's released for the PC I imagine MS/Sony/Nintendo will rush to support it or create their own versions.


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## GameWinner (Oct 24, 2013)

mj0ln3r said:


> I think the Oculus Rift (VR) will be "the next big thing" and a gigantic leap forward for games and entertainment. I don't own one or even tried it myself but following the progress reminds me of the 3D graphics explosion during the 90s. Motion controls should find new life in a virtual world too. When it's released for the PC I imagine MS/Sony/Nintendo will rush to support it or create their own versions.


Sony already has a VR set planned for next year.


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## Gahars (Oct 24, 2013)

calmwaters said:


> I think what I meant are all the games where you run around in first person and don't actually control a character a la Batman: Arkham City. It doesn't get boring to keep playing these sorts of games? I mean, the ideas might be different, but they're all still in first person. Why try to make something that is in third person and is fun when everyone likes playing these series?


 


calmwaters said:


> I think what I meant are all the games where you run around in first person and don't actually control a character a la Batman: Arkham City.


 


calmwaters said:


> Batman: Arkham City


 


calmwaters said:


> first person


 
Could you at least pretend to know what you're talking about?


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## calmwaters (Oct 24, 2013)

Gahars said:


> Could you at least pretend to know what you're talking about?


 
No, I'd rather be an idiot than a hypocrite.


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## Foxi4 (Oct 24, 2013)

calmwaters said:


> No, I'd rather be an idiot than a hypocrite.


 
See, here's the problem...



#Dat_First_Person ;O;

The fact that _you've clearly never played the game_ aside, why exactly would you blame the camera perspective for any of the game's shortcomings? I mean, I could say the exact same thing about RPG's - they're mostly top-down, aren't they, like, all the same? Aren't they boring clamwaters? 


Black-Ice said:


> Nintendo try very hard to be innovative with consoles.
> I feel while Sony and Microsoft just try to fight each over and build upon the same things, Nintendo actually try hard to deliver something new with every console.
> 
> brace for impact...


Uh-huh - because the transitions between Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Light and Game Boy Color brought so many innovations to the table. Or the transitions between DS, DS Lite, DSi and DSi XL. Or between the NES, SNES, N64 and the Gamecube.

What's up with people constantly saying that Nintendo always had a _"gimmick"_ or always _"innovated"_ with each and every system? The only ones that stand outside of the widely accepted norms are the Virtual Boy, the NES, the Wii, the original DS and the Wii U - all of their other systems either continued a previously started trend or simply blended into the mainstream.

Coincidentally, two of those systems are flops, which underlines an important subject - innovating for the sake of innovating isn't good - what matters are good innovations which change the market for generations to come, solutions that matter and improve the status quo.


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## Black-Ice (Oct 24, 2013)

Foxi4 said:


> Coincidentally, two of those systems are flops, which underlines an important subject - innovating for the sake of innovating isn't good - what matters are good innovations which change the market for generations to come, solutions that matter and improve the status quo.


 
Couldnt read most of this post as it was formatted in dark blue ;--;

However I caught this bit
The only reason Wii U is a flop is the fact that it's games library is limited and sorta eh.
The ability to switch between the pad and the screen is cool, the whole Idea of the Wii U is great, and if it had the games to back it up, it would have loads loads more sales.
Cant say much for visual boy, never had it, but the innovativeness of the Wii U isnt what let it down,


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## Foxi4 (Oct 24, 2013)

Black-Ice said:


> Couldnt read most of this post as it was formatted in dark blue ;--;
> 
> However I caught this bit
> The only reason Wii U is a flop is the fact that it's games library is limited and sorta eh.
> ...


_Wat? Dark blue?_ You know I never use _"stupid"_ formating like that, the forum must've derped. It looks okay on my end, but I removed formating and re-applied italics where needed just to be sure. 

What I mean by changing the status quo is innovation that becomes inherited by future generation systems and enters the mainstream as a comfortable solution, for example the D-Pad, dual analog sticks, rumble, a new, superior controller shape and even motion controls, though some love to hate them. Do you think that tablet controllers are such innovation? I have my doubts, as much as I consider it a very cool idea myself.


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## Black-Ice (Oct 24, 2013)

Foxi4 said:


> _Wat? Dark blue?_ You know I never use _"stupid"_ formating like that, the forum must've derped. It looks okay on my end, but I removed formating and re-applied italics where needed just to be sure.
> 
> What I mean by changing the status quo is innovation that becomes inherited by future generation systems and enters the mainstream as a comfortable solution, for example the D-Pad, dual analog sticks, rumble, a new, superior controller shape and even motion controls, though some love to hate them. Do you think that tablet controllers are such innovation? I have my doubts, as much as I consider it a very cool idea myself.


It could be a thought for the future, but noone will take it seriously unless we see some real quality uses of it on the Wii U, which I hope happens soon.
But as far as Nintendo have gone, the DS, 3DS and Wii are great examples imo of innovation and that worked really well. Wii U has yet to see its prime so I never judge it too harshly, give it time 
In terms of your post being dark blue, it happens you paste something into your post and continue typing, be it a video or a picture.


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## Guild McCommunist (Oct 24, 2013)

"Nintendo doesn't do gimmicks and cheap peripherals to inflate prices guys!"

Yes let's all remember those Wii Speak and Wii Fit and even WM+ games that were SO VASTLY USED.

We can all agree the best Nintendo product though was the Vitality Sensor.

Also being different isn't innovative. It's like dressing differently doesn't make you unique, it just makes you a massive cunt.

EDIT: I also felt like mentioning the Circle Pad Pro which was A) Nintendo going "oh shit sony made a two stick handheld we're right behind you guys!" B) one of the worst goddamn looking things on the planet and C) followed by two console models that are 100% incompatible with it.

Nintendo engineering at its finest.


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## Foxi4 (Oct 24, 2013)

Black-Ice said:


> It could be a thought for the future, but noone will take it seriously unless we see some real quality uses of it on the Wii U, which I hope happens soon.
> 
> But as far as Nintendo have gone, the DS, 3DS and Wii are great examples imo of innovation and that worked really well. Wii U has yet to see its prime so I never judge it too harshly, give it time
> 
> In terms of your post being dark blue, it happens you paste something into your post and continue typing, be it a video or a picture.


I don't really consider the 3DS to be innovative - it continues the tradition started by the DS, except with an added analog slider _(about 5 years late)_ and a 3D screen _(which was previously used in cellphones like the LG Optimus 3D)_ which doesn't improve gameplay per se, so I'm not going to consider it gaming innovation, rather an innovation of the display.

On the same basis I'm not going to say that the Game Boy Color was innovative because it added colour - not only did previous systems and devices use a colour LCD, the system preserved all the features of the previous one so it's hardly innovative, rather improved to catch on with contemporary technology. That doesn't make it a bad system - it's a fantastic system because it's built on a solid base of good technology, even if it's not innovative in any way.

As Guild mentions above in a slightly harsh language, innovation for the sake of innovation doesn't make a system _"good"_, it makes it _"different"_ which can go two ways - to the top or down the cliff. _"Different"_ on its own doesn't entail _"good"_, as proven by the Virtual Boy.


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## calmwaters (Oct 24, 2013)

Foxi4 said:


> See, here's the problem...
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I said, I'm not complaining about how a camera perspective is boring. If I would, I'd complain about Metroid Prime's camera angle or the camera angle on a side scroller. That's stupid. But, I do think only playing games that have a first person perspective gets really, really boring. 

But if you pick up a game that has a top down perspective and find it boring, it's probably not going to be because you hate top down perspectives: it's because the gameplay is boring or the story is boring or whatever. This is where innovation comes in: it creates a whole new world where the camera angle is the same, but the gameplay is really immersive. Now it's either getting harder to innovate like this or the developers are just being lazy. Either way, games don't grab your attention the same way they did many years ago and thus cease to be innovative. You just grab them off the shelf. And then you expect something different in each game so you'll have a reason for playing it. It gets hard to innovate in these when you've played 80 such games and know what to expect.

How many times do you have to play Monopoly before it stops being innovative? The board game or the game on the Wii? (which is just as fun imo)


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## Gahars (Oct 24, 2013)

Black-Ice said:


> But as far as Nintendo have gone, the DS, 3DS and Wii are great examples imo of innovation and that worked really well.


 

The Wii was a financial success, sure, but did its innovations improve or enrich games? Are games, on the whole, better for motion controls? That's for you to decide, of course, but the answer is no. I will add that it's very telling that Nintendo moved away from motion controls with the Wii U and return to something much closer to the traditional controller setup.

On the innovation front, the 3DS comes up far short. 3D, even 3D gaming, is nothing new. Besides, the 3D, despite being the (original) selling point and the basis for its name, is completely nonessential. It doesn't really add much of anything; it can actively detract from the experience in many cases. Nintendo's even stripping the 3D out for the newest version, and some of their big name titles don't even take full advantage of it (take Pokemon X & Y). If the 3D was an integral, important innovation, then the 3D should be absolutely essential to the experience. 

The handheld is succeeding, definitely, but it's succeeding in spite of the 3D, not because of it.


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## Foxi4 (Oct 24, 2013)

calmwaters said:


> I said, I'm not complaining about how a camera perspective is boring. If I would, I'd complain about Metroid Prime's camera angle or the camera angle on a side scroller. That's stupid. But, I do think only playing games that have a first person perspective gets really, really boring.
> 
> But if you pick up a game that has a top down perspective and find it boring, it's probably not going to be because you hate top down perspectives: it's because the gameplay is boring or the story is boring or whatever. This is where innovation comes in: it creates a whole new world where the camera angle is the same, but the gameplay is really immersive. Now it's either getting harder to innovate like this or the developers are just being lazy. Either way, games don't grab your attention the same way they did many years ago and thus cease to be innovative. You just grab them off the shelf. And then you expect something different in each game so you'll have a reason for playing it. It gets hard to innovate in these when you've played 80 such games and know what to expect.
> 
> How many times do you have to play Monopoly before it stops being innovative? The board game or the game on the Wii? (which is just as fun imo)


Exactly, but you maintained that you don't like first person perspective games because they're boring and only ever mentioned the perspective. There's a huge number of innovative and engaging first person perspective games with enough depth to them to drown and they're strongly distinct from each other.

_"Borderlands 2"_ plays differently to _"The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim"_ which in turn plays differently than _"Fallout: New Vegas"_ - all those games have different settings, different styling, different characters, different stories and use different rendering techniques, they're all distinct from each other. You put all first person games into one basket and that's as much a stretch as me putting 99% of JRPG's into the same basket.

By the way, again, _"Batman: Arkham City"_ isn't a first person perspective game - it's third person.


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## calmwaters (Oct 24, 2013)

Foxi4 said:


> Exactly, but you maintained that you don't like first person perspective games because they're boring and only ever mentioned the perspective. There's a huge number of innovative and engaging first person perspective games with enough depth to them to drown and they're strongly distinct from each other.
> 
> _"Borderlands 2"_ plays differently to _"The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim"_ which in turn plays differently than _"Fallout: New Vegas"_ - all those games have different settings, different styling, different characters, different stories and use different rendering techniques, they're all distinct from each other. You put all first person games into one basket and that's as much a stretch as me putting 99% of JRPG's into the same basket.
> 
> By the way, again, _"Batman: Arkham City"_ isn't a first person perspective game - it's third person.


 
Hmm, I should've said shooters.

What, like Metroid Prime, Half Life 2, Wolfenstein 3D? Yeah, same camera angle, different gameplay mechanics, not boring. And I know Batman: Arkham City is a third person title. (I should've just written my original thought *smh*)

Well, JRPG's are JRPG's; nice basket. But there are different eggs in this basket, some of which are good and others have cracked shells. And there are tons of eggs in first person's basket too. But they're all different, just like JRPG's, and you can find cracked eggs in this one as well.

But once you keep getting games like Borderlands 2 or Skyrim, then it gets boring (and by boring I mean not innovative). These new games just blatantly steal, if you will, characters and level designs from these games, repaint and remodel them, and put them in their own game and release it as something innovative, crying "well, we've got purple highlights and it runs at 1080p; this game is the greatest game ever (and is really innovative because of this)."


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## Foxi4 (Oct 24, 2013)

calmwaters said:


> Hmm, I should've said shooters.
> 
> What, like Metroid Prime, Half Life 2, Wolfenstein 3D? Yeah, same camera angle, different gameplay mechanics, not boring. And I know Batman: Arkham City is a third person title. (I should've just written my original thought *smh*)
> 
> ...


So... JRPG tropes are perfectly fine even though the great majority of those games are practically clones of each other... but _"Skyrim"_ and _"Borderlands"_ which are nothing alike aside from the perspective are boring...? I just... don't understand how you can think that. 

Carbon copies exist in _every single genre_ of video games, what you're essentially arguing here is the inferiority of shooters/first person games due to some make-believe qualities that are brought over to different titles.

You started off sensibly by saying that there are cracked eggs in both basketes which _I agree with_ and then reverted back to the _"they're all the same"_ statement which is blatantly false - why?


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## calmwaters (Oct 24, 2013)

Foxi4 said:


> So... JRPG tropes are perfectly fine even though the great majority of those games are practically clones of each other... but _"Skyrim"_ and _"Borderlands"_ which are nothing alike aside from the perspective are boring...? I just... don't understand how you can think that.
> 
> Carbon copies exist in _every single genre_ of video games, what you're essentially arguing here is the inferiority of shooters/first person games due to some make-believe qualities that are brought over to different titles.


 
Whoa, you got me: I hate carbon copy games in shooters first person styles the most.  Metroid Prime was still fun, though... obviously. I can't think of any other first person games I've even played.   Hum. So I'm not going to really get innovation from those types: I think they're all the same.

Waits for the yelling and screaming. Hopefully not.


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## Foxi4 (Oct 24, 2013)

calmwaters said:


> Whoa, you got me: I hate carbon copy games in shooters first person styles the most.  Metroid Prime was still fun, though... obviously. I can't think of any other first person games I've even played.  Hum. So I'm not going to really get innovation from those types: I think they're all the same.
> 
> Waits for the yelling and screaming. Hopefully not.


 
No yelling and screaming, I just forgot to add that _"Batman: Arkham City"_ can hardly be considered a shooter... cause, y'know, Batman _never uses guns_. Parents got shot and all that, childhood trauma. The game's actually a Third Person Perspective Brawler or just _"an action game"_.

...I have a sneaking suspicion that you just don't like the great majority of action games in general _(unless they're Japanese, well d'uh!)_.


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## Black-Ice (Oct 25, 2013)

And now we slide into the phase where the western gaming guys drop the nukes all over JRPG's.


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## Foxi4 (Oct 25, 2013)

Black-Ice said:


> And now we slide into the phase where the western gaming guys drop the nukes all over JRPG's.


 
Naw, we learned our lesson a long time ago - dropping nukes on Japan is not cool. 

//Tasteless Joke


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## Dork (Oct 25, 2013)

It looks like this "next-gen" era of consoles is really not innovative in the sense that it's more of the same from last gen. We had huge jumps from the 4th to 5th generations, we even had jumps from 6th to 7th gen, but this gen is just a more "powered up" version of last generation consoles. Hell disagree with me all you want but the Wii U is probably the biggest jump, since now we will finally see some of Nintendo's titles in HD. I'm just going to go PC + Wii U this time around, PC for all my multiplats and Wii U for all my Nintendo games.


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## TehCupcakes (Oct 25, 2013)

Love this article, but the table you included is completely pointless. Of course no "innovation" is going to pop out in a table of _Basic Specs; _that table doesn't list the things that are new and different about the systems!

As far as I'm concerned, Nintendo wins hands-down on the innovation side. The Wii U is more unique than either the PS4 or Xbox One. People aren't making a very big deal about it because tablets have saturated the market so it feels like a glorified tablet. Furthermore, it's taking a while for the game market to get up to speed on the Wii U to really unlock its potential. I believe whole-heartedly that they are coming, however. Yes, just like the other game companies, Nintendo rehashes a lot of previous ideas and creates a shinier version of an old game... But they also come out with new games every now and then.

Take a look at Wonderful 101 and tell me that's not innovative. Sadly, from the demo I played, the gameplay is a bit flat and too easy... Probably because it's targetted at a younger audience. So maybe it isn't a stellar game on its own. But maybe down the line it will inspire a game that _is_ - a game that fixes and adds on to what has already been done. The game industry is all about evolution, and you have to give time for games to build on each other.

Xbox and Sony? Sports games, FPS, and RPGs. These are practically the only genres these companies know. (Or at least, the others are overshadowed by the mass of gamers talking about these rehashes.) They haven't talked much about their plans for innovation with their next consoles, but both intend to include some sort of second-screen functionality. (Xbox SmartGlass and PS Vita, respectively) However, much like the previous generation, these come with the cost of a separate device - they are not included in the system. That means they are doomed to the same fate as PS Move and Kinnect in comparison to the Wii library. Nintendo knows that if you want innovation to be a part of your future, you need to put it right up front - you can't just add it on.

As a side note that I will not fully elaborate on, it isn't really the role of the AAA gaming industry to innovate... That's what Indie games are all about. Big gaming companies have deadlines and corporate junk to worry about so it's much more difficult for them to take a risk on innovation. Indie games don't have the same restrictions, so although they may not get the same attention, that's where the innovation comes from. This is where the evolution begins... Big game company takes an idea from small game company and makes it into a big game. But by this point, it's lost of some of its originality because we've seen so many other games try to emulate indie game X because it was so popular. For a much better explanation of this, here's a post from Chucklefish, the developers of Starbound: http://playstarbound.com/previous-release-date-delays/


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## Guild McCommunist (Oct 25, 2013)

Dark S. said:


> It looks like this "next-gen" era of consoles is really not innovative in the sense that it's more of the same from last gen. We had huge jumps from the 4th to 5th generations, we even had jumps from 6th to 7th gen, but this gen is just a more "powered up" version of last generation consoles. Hell disagree with me all you want but the Wii U is probably the biggest jump, since now we will finally see some of Nintendo's titles in HD. I'm just going to go PC + Wii U this time around, PC for all my multiplats and Wii U for all my Nintendo games.


 

>innovation
>Nintendo's titles in HD

pls.

There's a lot of neat features in this next gen like cloud services and video streaming. But of course everyone will shit on them even though I think the PS4 cloud gaming stuff will be really cool and hey, who wouldn't want to stream their games to Twitch or uStream?


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## Dork (Oct 25, 2013)

Guild McCommunist said:


> >innovation
> >Nintendo's titles in HD
> 
> pls.


 
smash bros looks gorgeous m8



Guild McCommunist said:


> There's a lot of neat features in this next gen like cloud services and video streaming. But of course everyone will shit on them even though I think the PS4 cloud gaming stuff will be really cool and hey, who wouldn't want to stream their games to Twitch or uStream?


 
OnLive left a bitter taste in my mouth, and I personally don't like streaming since I don't actually "have" the game. Hell even digital downloads are better since I actually have the game's data on my HDD. The ability to stream directly to big streaming sites without external hardware is pretty cool though, I just hope it's as good as advertised.


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## Guild McCommunist (Oct 25, 2013)

Dark S. said:


> smash bros looks gorgeous m8
> 
> 
> 
> OnLive left a bitter taste in my mouth, and I personally don't like streaming since I don't actually "have" the game. Hell even digital downloads are better since I actually have the game's data on my HDD. The ability to stream directly to big streaming sites without external hardware is pretty cool though, I just hope it's as good as advertised.


 

I forgot graphics = innovation has this entire thread become so dumb it turned cyclical? 

Also by "game streaming" I'm thinking more of the PS4 streaming its games to my Vita so I can play them on other WiFi connections. That's really neat.

Hell even being able to "pass" the game to someone by streaming it to their console is really neat. It's essentially the same as passing the controller over but across an internet connection.


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## Dork (Oct 25, 2013)

Guild McCommunist said:


> I forgot graphics = innovation has this entire thread become so dumb it turned cyclical?
> 
> Also by "game streaming" I'm thinking more of the PS4 streaming its games to my Vita so I can play them on other WiFi connections. That's really neat.
> 
> Hell even being able to "pass" the game to someone by streaming it to their console is really neat. It's essentially the same as passing the controller over but across an internet connection.


 
Well, OP asked an extremely vague question, and by definition better looking graphics are innovative, it's honestly really nice to see HD Nintendo titles.

And yeah, forgot about those features, those are pretty neat, I hope you enjoy them.


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## Ryukouki (Oct 25, 2013)

Hmm... we seem to have gone full JRPG in this topic. Interesting turn of events. When I wrote it, I initially had no specific audiences in mind, as I would like to open the discussion to as many people as possible...


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## Fishaman P (Oct 25, 2013)

Something a lot of people overlook is the game's sound.

For one, they just don't make in-game music like they did anymore.
Second, sound engine development has stalled.  I'll bet serious money that 1998's Zelda: Ocarina of Time has a sound engine that matches or beats all next-gen sound engines.


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## Celice (Oct 25, 2013)

Fishaman P said:


> Something a lot of people overlook is the game's sound.
> 
> For one, they just don't make in-game music like they did anymore.
> Second, sound engine development has stalled. I'll bet serious money that 1998's Zelda: Ocarina of Time has a sound engine that matches or beats all next-gen sound engines.


You don't really need a sound engine it used to be, seeing as how most games are capable of streaming actual recordings now, instead of having to have a MIDI-esque playback system working.


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## Psionic Roshambo (Oct 25, 2013)

I think gaming is experiencing it's "Simpson's Did it!!!" moment. Where everything has been done to death and there really are not that many new concepts left. Sure every once in a while we will get surprised with a Tetris or Katamari but for the most part those are few and far between.


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## Black-Ice (Oct 25, 2013)

Ryukouki said:


> Hmm... we seem to have gone full JRPG in this topic. Interesting turn of events. When I wrote it, I initially had no specific audiences in mind, as I would like to open the discussion to as many people as possible...


 
Thread topic -> Talking about games being *** -> Nintendo reference -> Nintendo sucks crew -> OMG you know what isnt ***? JRPG's! -> Western Power

Thats how it works


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## Taleweaver (Oct 25, 2013)

Hmm...I think the article is pretty well written, but if you ask me, it approaches the situation from a wrong context. The main question should be: "what would be good reasons to innovate?".

It's all too easy to point to the wii as a glimmering beacon of innovation that revolutionized gaming and was insanely successful with it...on hindsight. That sure makes it easier to forget the many innovation attempts that failed to catch on (why didn't the 3DS sold like hot cakes on launch day? It had freakin' GLASSLESS 3D!!!!). And with the amount of money involved into creating a game, let alone a gaming console, a huge amount of innovation is a huge risk with no certainty whatsoever it will pay off.

Also: make no mistake...innovation is pretty much the OPPOSITE of what the majority of gamers want actually pay for.
A small example: when guitar hero & rock band wasn't milked to death yet, a major complaint was that it wasn't really playing a guitar. So harmonix made rock band 3, which can also be played with an actual guitar. Of course that guitar is more expensive than the piece of plastic everyone had, so it turned out that what people wanted wasn't what became successful. End result: harmonix is pretty much broke (or completely...haven't followed it much).

I admit I haven't thoroughly read all the replies, but I do want to add that it's harsh to put the blame on the entire industry. On the Indy front, it's not hard to find innovative and interesting games. If you look at these presentations alone, there are a plethora of them. And mostly recent ones. So the question should actually be: why are gamers skipping over innovative games and go for sequels of sequels of sequels instead?


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## Guild McCommunist (Oct 25, 2013)

Black-Ice said:


> Thread topic -> Talking about games being *** -> Nintendo reference -> Nintendo sucks crew -> OMG you know what isnt ***? JRPG's! -> Western Power
> 
> Thats how it works


 

It's not our fault that the west is superior.

Anyway I think it's worth saying that innovation is mostly relative in this industry.

Let's take movies for example. What movies would you say are innovative?

It's really easy to argue a movie like Birth of a Nation. It gave us a ton of cinematography firsts that we still see in movies today. Now we won't really talk about the content but point is it's innovative.

Jump ahead almost 100 years later and what has been innovative? What in the past 40 years has been? There's a lot of movies that try new things, with cinematography and storytelling and special effects, but is any of that innovative? Jaws was a huge film but would say it's innovative? It was just a blockbuster. Outside of great cinematography, it's just a movie. What about Star Wars? The Godfather? Blade Runner? Titanic? Avatar? Dozens of other movies that we can say made huge leaps and gains but what would you consider innovative about them?

My point is that, with movies at least, you're going to have a very defined set of parameters of things that have already been done. You can't really change cinematography since it's all been done at some point. Being different is not being innovative. Being innovative is creating something so radical that it shapes the medium for the rest of its time. We've fiddled around (and still fiddle around) with 2D games for over 30 years, 3D games for almost 20 years. Can you really argue anything is innovative past the games that made their leaps and bounds here?

Successful doesn't mean innovative. Titanic isn't really innovative but Christ it sold really damn well. I don't see the Wii U as innovative since I feel motion controls already are taking a back seat. The new consoles have some motion control options, sure, but it's really not what Nintendo envisioned. It's not a motion controlled console, it's a console that has the ability for motion controls. Hell the PS4 almost seems to not even care, I mean it has them and uses the PS Move but every ad for it is your stick-and-buttons games. Their campaigns focus on graphics and games and features that aren't motion, like cloud stuff. The Xbox One as well, while it'll have its Kinect stuff, is focusing on using the Kinect as a supplementary part of the system to augment your experience. Using its voice and body recognition to interact with you as you play. Not necessarily jump up and down and wave your arms to play games.

The big thing to remember is that new =/= innovative. I can make a movie with cinematography no one has seen before but in 100 years of filmmaking there's a reason it was never seen: because it's shit. I can make a new console controlled entirely by your colon but it's not innovative, it's just a shit new idea.


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## Ryukouki (Oct 25, 2013)

Taleweaver said:


> Hmm...I think the article is pretty well written, but if you ask me, it approaches the situation from a wrong context. The main question should be: "what would be good reasons to innovate?".
> 
> It's all too easy to point to the wii as a glimmering beacon of innovation that revolutionized gaming and was insanely successful with it...on hindsight. That sure makes it easier to forget the many innovation attempts that failed to catch on (why didn't the 3DS sold like hot cakes on launch day? It had freakin' GLASSLESS 3D!!!!). And with the amount of money involved into creating a game, let alone a gaming console, a huge amount of innovation is a huge risk with no certainty whatsoever it will pay off.
> 
> ...


 

Hey, thanks for your feedback!  That's a better way to put it, lol, and I'll keep that rolling around if I ever roll back to that topic.  I feel like my view is "limited" in terms of playing games, so I like to write these and expand my ideologies.


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## Fishaman P (Oct 25, 2013)

Celice said:


> You don't really need a sound engine it used to be, seeing as how most games are capable of streaming actual recordings now, instead of having to have a MIDI-esque playback system working.


I don't know if you get what I'm talking about.

I'm not saying that OoT had high-quality sound files.
I'm saying OoT had revolutionary positional sounds, echoing, and a bunch of other great stuff.  Artifacts from limited sound channels barely ever show up.


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## tbgtbg (Oct 27, 2013)

Spend years and a lot of money making something innovative that may or may not sell or churn out a cheap sequel/clone to something that always sells when a new version comes out... hmmm...

Not that innovation is always good. Kinect might be innovative, but I don't want to have to pantomime throwing a grenade when I could just push a button and get the same result but faster. And not have to worry about throwing my shoulder out.


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## grossaffe (Oct 28, 2013)

Maybe gamers have become less adventurous.  Some of the best games I played when I was younger were games I knew little about.  I don't remember what game I was looking for, but they didn't have it in stock.  Browsing the selection, I happened to see Super Smash Brothers.   Didn't know what it was, but it looked neat, so I bought it.  Wasn't at all what I envisioned it would be, but it was awesome and I did not regret that purchase one bit.
I also recall looking for one of the Zelda Oracles games for the GBC, but they weren't in stock, but they happened to have one last copy of the dated Ocarina of Time for the N64.  I had not actually ever played any Zelda game up to that point, but I wanted some games for my GBC, but the back of the box on Ocarina of Time looked interesting, so I picked it up, and it was, again, awesome.

These days, there are so many games out there, that we have to narrow our search criteria so that we spend our limited resources on the games we think we'll like the most, but in doing so, I think we cheat ourselves out of so many types of games that we don't realize we'd love so much.  The last couple years, I'd been going back into the Wii's library and trying to uncover hidden gems that flew under the radar that I'd either never heard of, or I'd never given a shot, and I had a blast playing a lot of these games that just a few years back I would have weeded out of my potential to-play list because they didn't match what I thought I wanted to play.

So my question to you is, gaming losing it's innovation, or are gamers increasingly less likely to spend their money on something unknown when there are now so many titles that _are_ known for them to allocate their time and money?


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## Ryukouki (Oct 28, 2013)

grossaffe said:


> Maybe gamers have become less adventurous. Some of the best games I played when I was younger were games I knew little about. I don't remember what game I was looking for, but they didn't have it in stock. Browsing the selection, I happened to see Super Smash Brothers. Didn't know what it was, but it looked neat, so I bought it. Wasn't at all what I envisioned it would be, but it was awesome and I did not regret that purchase one bit.
> I also recall looking for one of the Zelda Oracles games for the GBC, but they weren't in stock, but they happened to have one last copy of the dated Ocarina of Time for the N64. I had not actually ever played any Zelda game up to that point, but I wanted some games for my GBC, but the back of the box on Ocarina of Time looked interesting, so I picked it up, and it was, again, awesome.
> 
> These days, there are so many games out there, that we have to narrow our search criteria so that we spend our limited resources on the games we think we'll like the most, but in doing so, I think we cheat ourselves out of so many types of games that we don't realize we'd love so much. The last couple years, I'd been going back into the Wii's library and trying to uncover hidden gems that flew under the radar that I'd either never heard of, or I'd never given a shot, and I had a blast playing a lot of these games that just a few years back I would have weeded out of my potential to-play list because they didn't match what I thought I wanted to play.
> ...


 

That's a very interesting question. These days, I find it could be a mix of both. You can get indie developers, whose names are not quite well known, and sometimes you get these indie devs that create an absolute GEM. And the series is sold poorly due to the fact that it's like jumping into the unknown, like you said. Spending on the unknown is part of the joy sometimes and personally, I'd love to see more games that can just completely "wow" me. Unknown or otherwise. Thank you for your feedback here, I greatly appreciate it.


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## grossaffe (Oct 28, 2013)

Ryukouki said:


> That's a very interesting question. These days, I find it could be a mix of both. You can get indie developers, whose names are not quite well known, and sometimes you get these indie devs that create an absolute GEM. And the series is sold poorly due to the fact that it's like jumping into the unknown, like you said. Spending on the unknown is part of the joy sometimes and personally, I'd love to see more games that can just completely "wow" me. Unknown or otherwise. Thank you for your feedback here, I greatly appreciate it.


 
My pleasure.  Topics like this are an interest of mine that I enjoy dissecting and discussing.


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## xwatchmanx (Oct 28, 2013)

Has gaming lost its innovation? No. Does there seem to be less innovation overall? Yes.


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## Ryukouki (Oct 28, 2013)

Very interesting to see the responses coming out here.  This makes me very pleased.

grossaffe If you have any ideas as to what you want to see discussed in terms of future articles, feel free to discuss it with me in a private message. I am always looking for new ideas.


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## newo (Oct 29, 2013)

The push to realism in games has killed innovation.  Real life is boring.  The only way to make better and more interesting games is to make unique spaces which are no copies of movies or space operas.


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## xwatchmanx (Oct 29, 2013)

newo said:


> The push to realism in games has killed innovation.  Real life is boring.  The only way to make better and more interesting games is to make unique spaces which are no copies of movies or space operas.


I half disagree. There is too much of a push on realistic graphics, I agree there. But I don't think realistic graphics are inherently boring or not innovative. Take a look at Halo: Combat Evolved, which changed shooters forever. Or Grand Theft Auto III, which revolutionized open world sandbox games. Or Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed II, which provided an incredibly impressive type of gameplay that balanced fantasy with historical events.


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## Guild McCommunist (Oct 29, 2013)

newo said:


> The push to realism in games has killed innovation. Real life is boring. The only way to make better and more interesting games is to make unique spaces which are no copies of movies or space operas.


 

These aren't real life, these are fantasies set in a real world.

Not everyone's fantasy is a space opera, sometimes it's just being an action hero.


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## Sakitoshi (Oct 29, 2013)

xwatchmanx said:


> I half disagree. There is too much of a push on realistic graphics, I agree there. But I don't think realistic graphics are inherently boring or not innovative. Take a look at Halo: Combat Evolved, which changed shooters forever. Or Grand Theft Auto III, which revolutionized open world sandbox games. Or Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed II, which provided an incredibly impressive type of gameplay that balanced fantasy with historical events.


 
Indeed, realistic graphics are fantastic if developers know how to make use of them. look at Ratchet&Clank A Crack in Time or Modnation Racers for example, the graphics are very realistic while giving a cartoon look overall, if you take your time and see the textures you'll see that are real life based and the light effects applied are realistic too, but the artistic direction is focused on a cartoon look. that make these games unique and I like it.
if trying to make a game that looks realistic and cartoonish at the same time isn't graphical innovation then IDK what innovation means.

Now the thing with the controls is a bit different, motion controls were a fad that lasted a little longer than usual and today nobody really cares about them. the best developers could have done is merge motion controls with classic gamepads like the Dualshock 3 and even the PS3 lacks games that take advantage of the Sixaxis, but I think an hybrid between motion and buttons is the best bet and there is no need to change that on the near future until a real virtual reality device comes to life and then you can start dreaming of powergloves and the such.


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