"The game business has succumbed to High Concept Disease."
The more things change, the more they stay the same. In a column just as true today as it was at the time of its writing, this reprint from the February 1998 issue of Game Developer magazine by game designer J.C. Herz blasts the industry conservatism and the retreading of familiar ideas.
Like most people who write about digital entertainment, I get a blizzard of press releases every month from game developers. The releases usually go something like this:
First, there is is an exclamatory headline, in ALL CAPS and punctuated by lots of exclamation marks, announcing that this product is the Next Big Thing. The release proceeds with a couple of paragraphs about how the game is a breakthrough in its genre and loads of turbo-charged prose about the technology: game engine, pixel count, graphic virtuosity, and so on, and so on. And this is supposed to get me really excited about the game. But more often, it reminds me of that scene in Big, where Tom Hanks, playing a kid trapped inside an adult's body, looks at the prototype of a really complicated, expensive toy and says, "I don't get it. What's fun about that?"
I mean, sure, everyone likes pretty graphics. But at the end of the day, if it's just another Doom clone, who cares? You can pack more pixels onto the screen, but if there's nothing original in the game play, if the game harbors no independent spirit or innovative design, there's nothing to brag about. It seems as though the authoring tools are getting more and more powerful, and designers are getting more and more lazy. Anyone can talk about advances in modeling, voxels, antialiasing, and all the rest of it. But do those technical statistics make a game any more fun? Have we made any serious breakthroughs in game play since the arcade salad days of the 1980s? Have we made any quantum leaps, fun-wise? Is Postal any more thrilling than Robotron? I think not. It's just better looking.
Which is why all of us wax nostalgic for the "classics," I suppose. Because fifteen years ago, graphics pretty much sucked. So you damn well better have had some heart-pounding game play. Because if it wasn't inherently, structurally fun, you were nowhere. The extreme limits of the available technology forced programmers to actually think, to bang their heads against the wall about game design. And look what we got: Pac-Man, Tempest, Defender, Asteroids, Galaga. Games that arguably stand up to the orgies of texture-mapping and merchandising currently available. Because it was impossible for games of that era to coast on eye candy and a great marketing campaign. The standards for innovative game play, in a very real sense, were higher. Those games were more different from each other than today's. Because apparently, the game business has succumbed to High Concept Disease, transmitted in some nasty backroom encounter with Hollywood ("Yeah, it's like Myst meets... Ridge Racer. Tomb Raider... with an Asian chick. It's like Mortal Kombat... with a twist.") Inevitably, that's what happens when the financial stakes rise to a certain level and the payroll balloons. But it's sad to see an industry this young in a rut this deep.
After all, this is no time to be conservative. At the moment, everyone with a couple of SGI workstations is piling onto an audience that's completely saturated. Adolescent boys only have so much allowance money to spend, and there are dozens of Doom imitators squeezing them for it. You can't just turn up the attitude -- we've hit the ceiling, attitudinally, and it's called Duke Nukem. It's time to turn a corner. Given that the market is sclerotically glutted, this industry's long-term survival requires that game developers code their way out of the friggin' box. And that doesn't mean hauling out a stack of market research that says the female market is underserved or that there's a exploitable niche of retirees with personal computers. This isn't about dragging out the Ouija board to determine what will sell. It's about forgetting the formulas for a second, maybe even turning off your computer, staring out the window (if you have a window), taking a trip, or maybe like, reading a book.
It's a vision thing. Everyone's looking for inspiration in the same places. Look elsewhere. Everyone's taking the same risks. Take some different risks. You'll make mistakes, but they'll be new mistakes. Interesting mistakes. They'll teach you stuff. No one can learn anything new cranking out another "Mech" title. (I await a barrage of venomous e-mail from incensed "Mech" animators -- hit me with your best shot.)
There is so much talent out there -- odds are that if you're reading this, you're a highly creative person who, instead of engineering database software or going to law school, chose to work on video games. It was an insane and inspired choice. You have no excuse to be conventional. If you're reading this, you probably fell in love with video games because they were incredibly thrilling and fun and unlike anything else you'd experienced. So you have no excuse to stamp out cookie-cutter products. If you're reading this, you probably spent a lot of time learning to use highly specialized, arcane technical skills. Why use that hard-won expertise just to showcase new technology? The technology is not of prime importance. It's only important because it allows you to express your vision, which is the real point. It's not about tools.
Which is to say: Ask not what the medium can do for you...
Erin, I've played both. Spent far more time with MWO. Nevertheless, they do not represent all that can be done with the concept and I stand by my comment. We could use another Mech game.
I dunno. Most people aren't creative in the visionary sense. The majority of game designers are making the games they enjoyed playing rather than working on new products. Even the indies are stuck in the platformer rut.
Plus on the arcade we had the same glut of clones of original games as we do now.
I dunno if 'rut' applies to platformers in the indie scene.
They're common for sure, but I see that as the point. Everybody grows up playing platformers, so playing on their simplicity and those uniquely ingrained expectations is more effective.
You wouldn't see this trend in something less universal, like RTSs, because the departure from universal structures is the point.
I did not grow up playing platformers and don't particularly like them. So, no. Not everyone grew up playing platformers.
Platformers are probably the most common kind of indie game and in the end they aren't really that different from each other. I hate when people give indies a pass for the same crap that they give shit to the AAAs for. And I hate the majority of AAA shooters just as much as platformers.
Saying that indies are in a "platformer rut" is a bit like saying AAA games are stuck in a "first-person rut." A platformer is really just a name for a side-view game, you're merely describing a game's camera angle. That's way too broad of a category to dismiss as a "rut."
Besides, there are plenty of indie games that use a top down view, like Binding of Isaac, Hotline Miami and Retro City Rampage. Do you think indies are in a "top down rut" too? In reality it has nothing to do with a "rut" and everything to do with the fact that it's far easier for indies to make 2D games for a variety of reasons. But that's fine, because there's millions of things you can do with 2D that haven't been done before.
With the closure of Game Developer magazine, we'll be keeping its spirit alive by running older content from the mag. Partly for nostalgia's sake, partly because some things are interesting and relevant, even if they're years old. Some of this stuff offers nice perspective.
Also, we've run a dozen "new" stories so far today, if you'd like to read one of those!
Couldn't agree more if I had written it myself. One of the main differences between then and now though is the scale of investment in creating a game (a AAA game, anyway). More money means fewer risks will be taken. They have shareholders to please and such.
I think the glut of platformers out of the indie scene is more due to the fact that the design is accessible from a dev's standpoint. It's arguably easier to create a platformer than many other types of games. 2D graphics are "cheaper" and aren't shocking to players, yet there is still near infinite creative opportunity for mechanics and story.
Something else to consider is that the industry is now "over the hill", worldwide and immense. Dev toolsets, languages and operating systems are robust and often free. Everyone and their mom is making games. I compare it to the current state of novels. So many have been written and so many new ones are published every day that it is a sea of entertainment no one has the time to fully enjoy. Good luck writing the next groundbreaking, classic novel cherished for generations. Gaming has become a victim of its own success in this respect.
This article from '98 is pretty hilarious.. Not because the games business sat on it's ass for 15 years and is still stuck with "High Concept Disease", no creativity and game designers are still "lazy", cranking out Doom clones.
It's because people still sit here complaining about the same crap.
All I hear when I read articles like this is, "How come I don't like games as much as I did when I was a kid?!?!"
I say, "It's your fault for getting old and bitter, not realizing it and blaming the world."
The icing on the cake would've been the author proclaiming that PC gaming is dying and this is the last generation of consoles.
This article was written pre: Portal, Left 4 Dead, WoW, Minecraft, Angry Birds, etc. Bunches of entire new genres have been birthed, squeezed, refined and perfected. To say game developers are lazy and out of ideas is itself an old and lazy argument. I'm sure we can find an article from the mid 80s saying the same thing about Pac Man clones.
There's a sea of awesome-ness being created every day, it's your fault if you're too lazy to find it. Sure giant publishers are a fresh spring of non-creative ideas; they, by nature are risk averse and 13 years after this article you can change the word "Doom Clones" to "Call of Duty Clones". True. But someone innovates the ideas that they steal and mindlessly crush...
I love gaming and every year it gets better I think. Reading 13 years of articles saying the same thing gets older than playing 13 years of better and better Halo games.
I think people who are a bit dismayed at mainstream titles are expressing a sense that the industry could be doing better.
What if 13 years of articles saying the same thing has inspired developers to fill the sea of awesome-ness you enjoy today?
Indeed, some of the people who are writing these articles (and/or agree with them) have created the games you're alluding to.
EDIT: but i think you are right that there are a lot of gems out there.
---
As to your first point, there are people who play 20 year old games that were mainstream games in their day who don't play the mainstream games created today. So I think there is an objective difference in the quality (can of worms here) of yesterday's mainstream games and today's. And I think its perfectly natural for people to lament this fact and to wish they could share the same quality of games they played in their younger days with today's younger gamers.
Great read. Thanks for digging it out.
I recently considered to leave my current employer because our 2013 BIG PLAN is to be a "FAST FOLLOWER". Please, I'm not join this business to learn how to be an extremely efficient copycat.
Going back to say 1980 and then thinking forward the next 33 years, I think in general the focus in early games was on design, since technology was in its infancy. I think single player games really hit their zenith around 1996 with games like X-COM, Masters of Magic, Masters of Orion, Command and Conquer, Diablo, Heroes of Might and Magic 2, etc. I'm not big on shooters but there were probably some great ones then like Doom 2.
Then came Ultima Online and the ability to play with other people, a lot of other people, really transformed the industry. Everquest, Dark Ages of Camelot, Anarchy Online, EVE Online, World of Warcraft just kept pushing the envelope to eye popping levels.
Then IGE happened, and the parasitic effects of what I call RMT3 (gold farmers) just dragged the industry down and killed off numerous online games. The industry reacted by moving to microtransactions and limiting economic activity in games, thereby killing most of the social interaction.
Just as we were recovering from IGE we ended up with pay to win and skinner box based game design. Things got even worse.
So I would say that at the time the OP was complaining about design laziness, we were in the middle of the design renaissance for our industry. What came after wasn't just design laziness from 2005 on, it was business model laziness, and actions that became increasingly hostile to our consumers.
So I would say this article would actually be much more appropriate today than it was in 1998, as Kujel said. That said, I'm under NDA with a lot of progressive studios and I can tell you that with the passing of Zynga the near future is looking like a second gaming renaissance, at least from what people have been showing me. I've been publishing game reviews since 2001, and honestly what is in the pipe is really innovative, not just emulative.
I think it is all beautiful to say that developers should do new things never attempted before and all, but when you see the sales charts and the game reviews, trying to be very original is a risk most companies cannot bear.
We hear about five or ten "indies" that made it each year, but we don't hear anything but silence or undeserved assessment of the works of hundreds or thousands of game makers that don't get any reward for their efforts, and have to face the situation of doing something that will appeal to the masses (i.e. more of the same), or losing their jobs.
Art doesn't blend well with mass market (we have seen the same thing on film, literature, music, etc), and keep pushing the "you gotta be original" motto when the market knows that it is almost a death sentence on the business side will not change anything today as it hasn't changed anything 15 or 30 years ago. Idealism is beautiful, but it doesn't put any food on people's plates in this capitalist world.
art does blend with mass market, but people have to step up to art and be expected to do so because everyone is capable.
Mass entertainment products on the other hand meet people where they are and then keep them there. In fact they suppress desires to become better (healthier, more open minded, more analytical thinkers, more curious and knowledgeable, etc) people. They view people in the worst possible light and they have no expectations of them beyond that.
so you can very easily get the majority of people to appreciate and seek out art.... but... probably not if there are competitors selling products that exploit the reptilian brain. Pizza out sells broccoli.
I'm old. I have been gaming steadily since the early 70's and I have worked as an animator in games since the 16 bit era. I remember this article. It was a much different gaming world (mid to late 90's). It was all about the genres and the term "triple A" didn't even exist. Also, a huge leap in graphics and game size was made in a short period due to the introduction of the internet, Windows 95, CD-ROMs, and 3d software like 3D Studio. I went from painting with pixels to 3d modeling/texturing/animation in the span of one game.
It was an exciting time to be in gaming. I remember this article and I also remember that a lot of us didnt agree with it at the time. Yes, there was a lot of copying of hit titles but you had way more hit titles and originals back then. From 1995-1998 I can think of many great games across a wide range of genres...Dark Forces, Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, Command and Conquer, Tomb Raider, NHL 95, Gabriel Knight 2, Resident Evil, Myth the Fallen Lords, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Soul Caliber, Goldeneye 007, Mario Karts 64, Full Throttle, Ultima Online, Sid Meier's Civilization 2, Mech Warrior 2, Half Life, Grand Theft Auto, Descent, Grim Fandango, Fallout, Final Fantasy VII, Rainbow Six, Bladerunner (adventure game), Duke Nukem 3D, Carmageddon, Quake, Metal Gear Solid, Motocross Madness (a Microsoft game!), Thief, Age of Empires, Dungeon Keeper....and these are just the games I played.
There were plenty of bad games too but it is probably my favorite period of gaming. There were so many different types of games, even games that used FMV for the entire game!
I'm old too, and (as I posted) my experience is similar. A lot of great lessons were learned in this time that would be hard to learn in the current environment. Recently the focus seems to have been more on immersion than design, and mobile is undermining the whole value of immersion focus.
http://www.playhawken.com/
Mech Warrior?
http://mwomercs.com/landingpad
Granted, I have no plans to get an XB1, but it's still fun to see.
Plus on the arcade we had the same glut of clones of original games as we do now.
They're common for sure, but I see that as the point. Everybody grows up playing platformers, so playing on their simplicity and those uniquely ingrained expectations is more effective.
You wouldn't see this trend in something less universal, like RTSs, because the departure from universal structures is the point.
Platformers are probably the most common kind of indie game and in the end they aren't really that different from each other. I hate when people give indies a pass for the same crap that they give shit to the AAAs for. And I hate the majority of AAA shooters just as much as platformers.
No free passes.
Besides, there are plenty of indie games that use a top down view, like Binding of Isaac, Hotline Miami and Retro City Rampage. Do you think indies are in a "top down rut" too? In reality it has nothing to do with a "rut" and everything to do with the fact that it's far easier for indies to make 2D games for a variety of reasons. But that's fine, because there's millions of things you can do with 2D that haven't been done before.
And yes the AAA industry IS in an FPS rut. Did you think I wouldn't say that?
Also, we've run a dozen "new" stories so far today, if you'd like to read one of those!
kg
I think the glut of platformers out of the indie scene is more due to the fact that the design is accessible from a dev's standpoint. It's arguably easier to create a platformer than many other types of games. 2D graphics are "cheaper" and aren't shocking to players, yet there is still near infinite creative opportunity for mechanics and story.
Something else to consider is that the industry is now "over the hill", worldwide and immense. Dev toolsets, languages and operating systems are robust and often free. Everyone and their mom is making games. I compare it to the current state of novels. So many have been written and so many new ones are published every day that it is a sea of entertainment no one has the time to fully enjoy. Good luck writing the next groundbreaking, classic novel cherished for generations. Gaming has become a victim of its own success in this respect.
It's because people still sit here complaining about the same crap.
All I hear when I read articles like this is, "How come I don't like games as much as I did when I was a kid?!?!"
I say, "It's your fault for getting old and bitter, not realizing it and blaming the world."
The icing on the cake would've been the author proclaiming that PC gaming is dying and this is the last generation of consoles.
This article was written pre: Portal, Left 4 Dead, WoW, Minecraft, Angry Birds, etc. Bunches of entire new genres have been birthed, squeezed, refined and perfected. To say game developers are lazy and out of ideas is itself an old and lazy argument. I'm sure we can find an article from the mid 80s saying the same thing about Pac Man clones.
There's a sea of awesome-ness being created every day, it's your fault if you're too lazy to find it. Sure giant publishers are a fresh spring of non-creative ideas; they, by nature are risk averse and 13 years after this article you can change the word "Doom Clones" to "Call of Duty Clones". True. But someone innovates the ideas that they steal and mindlessly crush...
I love gaming and every year it gets better I think. Reading 13 years of articles saying the same thing gets older than playing 13 years of better and better Halo games.
I think people who are a bit dismayed at mainstream titles are expressing a sense that the industry could be doing better.
What if 13 years of articles saying the same thing has inspired developers to fill the sea of awesome-ness you enjoy today?
Indeed, some of the people who are writing these articles (and/or agree with them) have created the games you're alluding to.
EDIT: but i think you are right that there are a lot of gems out there.
---
As to your first point, there are people who play 20 year old games that were mainstream games in their day who don't play the mainstream games created today. So I think there is an objective difference in the quality (can of worms here) of yesterday's mainstream games and today's. And I think its perfectly natural for people to lament this fact and to wish they could share the same quality of games they played in their younger days with today's younger gamers.
I recently considered to leave my current employer because our 2013 BIG PLAN is to be a "FAST FOLLOWER". Please, I'm not join this business to learn how to be an extremely efficient copycat.
Then came Ultima Online and the ability to play with other people, a lot of other people, really transformed the industry. Everquest, Dark Ages of Camelot, Anarchy Online, EVE Online, World of Warcraft just kept pushing the envelope to eye popping levels.
Then IGE happened, and the parasitic effects of what I call RMT3 (gold farmers) just dragged the industry down and killed off numerous online games. The industry reacted by moving to microtransactions and limiting economic activity in games, thereby killing most of the social interaction.
Just as we were recovering from IGE we ended up with pay to win and skinner box based game design. Things got even worse.
So I would say that at the time the OP was complaining about design laziness, we were in the middle of the design renaissance for our industry. What came after wasn't just design laziness from 2005 on, it was business model laziness, and actions that became increasingly hostile to our consumers.
So I would say this article would actually be much more appropriate today than it was in 1998, as Kujel said. That said, I'm under NDA with a lot of progressive studios and I can tell you that with the passing of Zynga the near future is looking like a second gaming renaissance, at least from what people have been showing me. I've been publishing game reviews since 2001, and honestly what is in the pipe is really innovative, not just emulative.
We hear about five or ten "indies" that made it each year, but we don't hear anything but silence or undeserved assessment of the works of hundreds or thousands of game makers that don't get any reward for their efforts, and have to face the situation of doing something that will appeal to the masses (i.e. more of the same), or losing their jobs.
Art doesn't blend well with mass market (we have seen the same thing on film, literature, music, etc), and keep pushing the "you gotta be original" motto when the market knows that it is almost a death sentence on the business side will not change anything today as it hasn't changed anything 15 or 30 years ago. Idealism is beautiful, but it doesn't put any food on people's plates in this capitalist world.
Mass entertainment products on the other hand meet people where they are and then keep them there. In fact they suppress desires to become better (healthier, more open minded, more analytical thinkers, more curious and knowledgeable, etc) people. They view people in the worst possible light and they have no expectations of them beyond that.
so you can very easily get the majority of people to appreciate and seek out art.... but... probably not if there are competitors selling products that exploit the reptilian brain. Pizza out sells broccoli.
It was an exciting time to be in gaming. I remember this article and I also remember that a lot of us didnt agree with it at the time. Yes, there was a lot of copying of hit titles but you had way more hit titles and originals back then. From 1995-1998 I can think of many great games across a wide range of genres...Dark Forces, Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, Command and Conquer, Tomb Raider, NHL 95, Gabriel Knight 2, Resident Evil, Myth the Fallen Lords, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Soul Caliber, Goldeneye 007, Mario Karts 64, Full Throttle, Ultima Online, Sid Meier's Civilization 2, Mech Warrior 2, Half Life, Grand Theft Auto, Descent, Grim Fandango, Fallout, Final Fantasy VII, Rainbow Six, Bladerunner (adventure game), Duke Nukem 3D, Carmageddon, Quake, Metal Gear Solid, Motocross Madness (a Microsoft game!), Thief, Age of Empires, Dungeon Keeper....and these are just the games I played.
There were plenty of bad games too but it is probably my favorite period of gaming. There were so many different types of games, even games that used FMV for the entire game!