Lost innovation

News & General Discussion
1

So without me going into my usual rants about the modern age decadence of industry video games or the masses flooding indie dev to make a game designed to sell rather then something that reflects personal morality or life experience I have to state this explicitly. Although this didactic representation that I will explicitly personify may seem quite rudimentary, it seems that even though we tacitly understand the issue at hand, the general population has an increased level of ineptitude when approaching video game design.

For the past few years I have been able to hold my tongue at the amount of horribly designed games that are being developed with this over diversified focus on monetary gain. Now granted money is a means of living but it seems this idea grasps the entire industry and we are kept in this vicious cycle.

Just so most of you don’t assume I am psychotic, my thesis is based on the idea of level design personification in helping the immersion process. So instead of an explicit direction of me saying “hey mario, do this, this and this”, it refers to a tacit connection that is embedded with in our minds. This consistent methodology in believing that the human race is stupid and can not work out that a right direction key moves right, or that one of the keys may get you past and obstacle with out testing and this explicit representation is absurd.

So we congratulate each other on stale repeated concepts. I understand aesthetically, programmetically and audio wise they are all incredibly impressive. But the creativity and lack of treating the player as an intelligent being is lost. I did a prior test with this scenario during the “slender” fad. Now this was an incredibly stupid fad, I created a game in less then 8 hours to test whether a social fad can ultimate lead to maximised monetary gain, believe it or not that game equated in quite some money. Despite how bad it handled, despite all the bugs, people would PAY for it. Had I developed the same game, labeled it a different name, it would have completely died off. I purposely constructed a title and game play to represent the familiar to the player.

This has therefore reminded me why I will never develop a game based on a prior concept, narrative or mechanic. The main focus on my thesis is on prior retro games (i.e. Original mario, contra, and megaman) with all there lack of direction and non spoonfed techniques. Why can’t we bring this idea back? It is happening indie games. Antichamber, Limbo and Braid are the best examples of this. Little explicit direction creates the ultimate immersion, new ideas that have no been completed.

I know the reason why games aren’t like this anymore. You try telling a company that has a 1000 people working 5 years on a game not to include explicit control instructions and how to overcome obstacles they will face. The entire casual gamer market will be lost in user frustration and the more hardcore game players will focus feel an obligation to play, even if spoon feeding is evident because when you pay for a game. You don’t want to play it for 10 mins, even if it is bad. You have this “I payed for the game so I at least need to get a few hours out of it”. This is not the same mentality with everyone but as a general population it is.

Just to point out. The current generation and my generation are filled with apathetic young adults and teenagers that have the expectation that the world will be handed to them on the platter. Students these days can not think logically about hows to approach an issue and when they need help they ask the teacher for an explicit solution.

I supervise a class of advanced programming at university during workshops, I analyse student behavior and psychological expectations when dealing with a non-spoonfed principle. Nearly all of the class, if a step is skipped or all information is not given or is assumed from a prior week just lose it. They a lot of time contemplating continuous no relatable scenarios and even a few give up. If I don’t give this explicit representation then they would be lost, this is not good especially in a programming scenario but it seems to be a reoccurring factor within every facet of life.

Food for thought.
Too long to read?
Then don’t read it.

2

I think that a big part of this is the democratization of game development as touted by Unity and others… to put it into other words, it is the turning of game development into casual development accessible by the masses under the supposed promise that everyone has the ability to be a game developer. Rather than talk in terms of game genres, if we treat the development process itself as if it had some genres, the old-days of development would be considered hard-core developers. Gradually the core has become softer and higher level with more and more abstraction. It’s now fairly easy to create quite good games, even great games, with absolutely no scripting/text-based programming. That was practically unheard of 10-20 years ago. So now because the barrier to entry has radically diminished, and because engines have been trying to constantly appeal to bigger audiences (to stay competitive and make more money), game development has gone casual.

Pair that with the ever increasing impact of computers/games in society spreading out to the casual gamer and people who never ever would have played games 20 years ago - eg talking about the 40-50+ year old females and even your grandparents. The widening of this audience has made games and their creation more accessible to a much wider selection of people, which includes huge numbers of people that in terms of hard-core developer ability really have very limited understanding of game design, programming concepts, etc… so now you have your grandmother making a game on her ipad and you can bet her skillset is most likely not going to include hardly any technical background or aptitude for game design, so the kind of stuff she’s going to create is going to be quite ameteur-seeming and distant from the really tightly perfected game core of old.

And then you’ve got the swaths of younger folks who also see easier entry to the game world and they too are radically inexperienced and uninformed about what really makes a good game. The prospect of making games is a really appealing idea in this day and age, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that just because the tools are better the people using the tools have also improved along with it. There is an absolute tonne of really bad really ameteur games, thousands/millions of people developing what they call games which often can barely even be called a game, and latching on to the dream that you too can make a million bucks from it. Yet so many of those efforts are so incredibly ameteur and unpolished and not fun to play.

But it’s not just about games either it’s the whole social networking generation, the web 2.0, user-centricity, everyone has their own portable computer (mobile), everyone wants to be a blogger, everyone wants to be famous, the American Dream ™ which is proliferating around the world as everyone gets more connected (internet) and our lives are ever more infiltrated by the microchip. The young generation stepped into an already highly developed high-level computing world and that’s now their baseline so they expect more automation, ease of use, accessibility, social connectivity, laziness, coupled with all this extra free time to be individually famous and competitive. The tools are radically more advanced and available and all the barriers to cross-platform are being removed as we speak. The walls are all coming down and everything is opening up to be accessible to whoever wants it.

For me personally the amount of competitiveness, money-focussed design, trying to vie for attention like a bunch of hungry puppies, pursuing this often dead-ended dream of being famous or rich, etc… is really depressing and spiritually unenlightening. It takes all of the fun out of it. So in summary maybe I’ll say that I think this is part of a bigger spiritual disease which has world-wide effects as technology and money and competition become a much stronger influence in everyone’s lives. People need to go within more and listen to the still quiet voice to live a peaceful life of acceptance and authentic inner wealth. There is a huge march toward increased extroversion in all areas of life right now, plus everyone being pitted against each other in competition and comparison, and if you are more inner-focussed it is really not a very inviting world to be a part of. The rat race is only getting rattier. Even though in some respects it’s great that the walls are coming down and everyone is getting more unified/connected, at the same time there seems to be an increase in separation and apathy - the traditional family splitting apart, etc. It’s a strange world we live in, but when isn’t it.

There, I think my post was longer than yours. I win. Where’s my 99 cents? :wink:

(actually in hindsight I think I might be a little off topic since you were talking about innovation etc)

3

First off… you seem to be rambling a bit. You jump back and forth between some rather unrelated topics, not only that, you spent a lot of words to say what comes down to a confession that you didn’t pay attention to game design until recently.

Bad game design has been around forever. Poor cash-in products with flashy marketing and visuals (some just with marketing and name recognition or following a trend) have been the bulk of video game market since the Atari days.

All that has happened in recent years is that the market has grown to a point where big budget blockbusters are possible, and their gargantuan marketing campaigns opaque the smaller productions.

Another thing that has happened is that the internet has allowed for easy distribution of what can arguably be called a half-baked prototype to millions of people, and should this hit the right eyes, it becomes a meme or something else.

The Mario series still goes strong, and as big of a fan as I was of Mega-Man as a kid, the series is full of horrible game design decisions. In fact, the only reason I really got hooked with the series was not the design, but the art direction, character design and music. Without those, force me to play the game and I would likely had bashed your head in with the stupid NES cartridge. This is arguably why the franchise has died off in the last couple decades. They kept iterating on the formula, but the formula was never good to begin with. Some thought people just got tired of it, but look at Mario. Mario IS the same thing too, yet it has never gone stale. This is because it was always was good game design at the core.

There were over 1000 games published for the NES alone. Most of them were so bad you would be hard pressed to even have heard of them. Again, cant put enough weight behind this: bad game design is nothing new, if only now you notice it its because only now you pay attention. You may think today that X game you played as a child was great, but all it takes is to load that game back up and play it to realize maybe its just as bad as the games you seem to be annoyed are popular today.

As for observing human impatience: welcome to human nature. Everyone is inpatient and that is a good thing. It’s what drives efficiency, and it’s what drives us to discover what we are actually good at. Unfortunately, society has attempted to shoehorn everyone in fields they are not interested in, either due to promise of profits or threats of failure. This results in more and more people that give up due to not meeting “instant gratification”, it’s not that the students could not have figured something on their own, its that they were forced into trying to figure stuff they don’t actually care about. This is not a new phenomena, this has been growing exponentially in the last 2 decades.

4

What you describe in you last paragraph there is what I think of as a spiritual disease. The tremendous focus on competitive extroversion and egocentricity is highly distracting away from people believing that they are valuable for just who they are and that they don’t have to do/achieve/succeed in order to have a place in the world. It’s all based on appearances and reacting to the world rather than being creative. It also increasingly emphasizes valuing how something appears rather than developing the spiritual vision of looking past appearances to truth. To be true to who you are, to be yourself, you have to have greater discernment and honesty and willingness to not listen to/buy into the ego dramas of the world. But those dramas are getting bigger and more valued by society and in the process our spiritual connection to our own selves is getting blocked out. Pretty soon the world really will be filled with zombies. We already are the living dead when we are not really alive in our own truth but rather just going along with the herds of mass unconsciousness which are being fed by capitalism and competition. How can anyone be truly innovative or inspired (“in spirit”) when the focus of the world is increasingly a matter of death, destruction, darkness and fear.

5

OK, let me make this simple.

-First, gamers just want to have fu-un!! (yes, I’m referencing that song)
-Second, There is no such thing as innovation, everything has been done. How do I know? I speak elders, and every problem we have now, they had it then too, and probably worse? The only thing new to this world, is you.

6

The reason why what I wrote seems out of order is because it is based on about 20 to 30 read journals, and prior personal experience. So to word all of that would take quite some time, I am quite a busy person so writing this only took 5 minutes without proofreading or correcting anything. If you would like to see results from my tests when I do that, I would gladly link you to my publication. This study will not be completed until the start of next year however.

It seems some of your current interpretation of points I was raising are not what I was getting at. Without giving away too much of my thesis it is hard to formulate this exact idea without telling you it directly, I use the term level design loosely because it is technically only part of level design which focuses around visual cues. But then I can’t go on with this due to patenting etc.

@Kinos, of course I know gamers want to have fun, I came from a heavy gaming background. But there is a difference between the types of fun that a player can enjoy, and as I have grown I like challenging games that treat me like a 5 year old child. All game content these days are focused towards adults but instructions are basically aimed towards kids. On your other note of innovation. Im talking about. Lets take the game angry birds, which was a rip off of seige the fort, its been ripped off to say something like critter crash. Where you throw bugs. These games have nothing going for them except the intent of monetary gain. The easiest explanation I can give is in this video by ego raptor I recommend watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM

7

Also while we are on this topic, in your signature you have zombie feast and tossing the dead. Why did you develop these, fruit ninja with zombies? If fruit ninja was not popular would this idea not have been done, was its intent on gaining simple money? This is not a personal attack, I have developed games similar. But why develop games about zombies or pirates or slenderman when its all sooooo over done.Just a question I am curious for an answer.

8

First, now it’s playing in my head (raving rabbids style). Nanananaaa

9

sorry, it got in mine too. lol.

10

Nintendo didn’t have a target demographic on release of the original mario, compare how they are structured these days in comparison to the first mario. You were dropped into the game world, no control direction, no real story other then the 3 second cut scene at the start, nothing. So if the game was developed these days, pop up dialogues would come up, explaining explicit direction, basically eliminating your discovery process.

I understand the forums may not have been the best place to post this, since most of it revolves around ideas of psychology, educational input in learning and gamification and not everyone has experience with that. Everyone talks about personal experience but I am basing this study around facts. We can all give what “we” think type answer, but the studies are there to foreground these efforts. I am going into the studies with an open mind hoping people rather not be spoon fed in instruction cues but if they are, determine if this consistency and familiarity is the cause.

11

Ok, First of all, thank you for looking at my signature. I appreciate it.

Second, Zombie Feast is zombie game, but I wanted to put a fresh take on the how zombie games are done. It’s more fun than drab, well that’s how I have it in my GDD. Tossing Dead was more of using a working formula to build our game on, then adding some cool stuff we wanted to put in. Download it and play the story mode, it’s pretty funny.

12

I am incredibly opposed to developing a zombie game, doesn’t mean I don’t like them. With everything that I try to do, I focus on a mechanic in a game or a design I really really like. Then I spend a lot of time of trying to determine where the game could have been improved. So I applaud you on doing a zombie game and at least trying to take a fresh look at a topic. Just when I read : Fruit Ninja… with Zombies. It acts as the epitome of what I am arguing about.

When it comes down to it, without getting into specifics. More games should be developed in the same way as castlevania 1, contra, megaman, original mario, braid, limbo, shadow of the colossus, antichamber, dark souls etc, It is less about innovation and more about thinking the player is not a fucking brain dead moron like EA or some other AAA company does. I probably won’t respond to any more posts, people are opionative and what ever I write, people feel obligated to argue with this quote. I know it is an issue, no one will convince me that everything is fine in the games industry when not spoonfeeding a player because its not. Modern indie games and retro games have proved this. So I just continue with my research and keep developing my games in this way.

13

Actually, ALL that stuff was there in the box. It was in the back of the box, and it was in the extremely colorful manual that came in the box. Heck, the instructions went so far as to show you a diagram of the controller and point arrows at buttons so you knew what each button was going to do.

This was not put away from the player to make the game less obtrusive, it was stuck on paper due to technical limitations of the hardware at the time. Memory was very expensive, paper and ink were cheap.

Look at this manual for the original one-screen Donkey Kong game. You will see it even outlines the backstory (short, sure, but enough for a one-screen game)

Now look at the NES booklet. The details are extreme. Games today don’t go that far. First page is the backstory. Then they go to give you basic console information use information and keep going forward to even show you the basics of how levels are built, with a mockup map and all. Every attack is described, every enemy is displayed. Game tactics are already given away for you.

Heck the last page gives away “secrets” you think you were meant to discover on your own (had you never had access to the manual.) Double heck: MY NES (that came with the Mario+Duck Hunt version of this manual) even gave away the Warp Zones.

The Zelda one… that was gorgeous (it also provides some nice art so you can visualize those pixels a bit better in your head)

Again, this is not something to dismissed. The idea that you were tossed into a game and given no direction is flawed, it was not true. Not in commercial games anyways. No publisher shipped a game with these books.

Today, memory is cheap. Its easier to just add the instructions in-game. Nintendo still demands their games also include the paper booklet instructions (I think) but paper is getting expensive and companies like EA are just tossing the instructions in the game and removing the books out of the picture. Not to mention: it makes digital distribution easier. But back then, it was just a no-brainer to keep the game in the cart and the story, instructions and hints on paper.

Oh, and this is not to mention the extremely lucrative “Strategy Guide” industry and magazines with mini-walkthroughs full of game maps. Players had plenty of places to turn to (and did so often enough) when they got stuck on a game. Again, the idea that players used to be just tossed into a game and never needed any help is extremely flawed and missing some big historical points.

Your entire argument seems to only have in common the point of “hand-holding”, but as I shown here, this has been true since the first video game box shipped to stores with a manual holding your hand every step of the way, and the only reason you didn’t see it in game was because of technology limitations, not designer’s intent.

Then you better include the facts I just shown above. They were part of the product, not dismissible wrappers.

You can find more of these booklets here:
http://www.mariomayhem.com/downloads/mario_instruction_booklets/index.php, they may help you on your research. You can find more if you google around.

For the record: my best friend is a psychology major, my wife a medical researcher. I’m no strange to objective analysis, fact checking and difference of opinions in conclusions (even with all the facts you think you have at hand, conclusions can vary.)

This is not an insult, but its very easy to fall into the “facts” trap and dismiss everyone else you see question them, don’t ever disregard an opposing view with “I got facts, you just looking at anecdote” without first making sure that the other party indeed has never done his homework. It’s easy to become too arrogant with the Facts card (I done it myself) and it can have bad results. It’s best to hold a bit before you use it, try to see first if indeed there are other facts in the table that you have missed before you dismiss the argument.

Research is never entirely conclusive, you just stated your own study is not finished but you already are drawing conclusions and even setting forth accusations (not personal accusations, but accusing the state of the industry) and even once done it wont prove anything until peer review. Yada yada and all that.

14

I say stick to Japanese games, I feel like they’re the only ones that don’t spoon feed us, but I could be wrong. Most of the games you listed are Japanese so you might be on to something. I always prefer gameplay over story, hell, I like a story that doesn’t need explaining, like, “It’s a damn game, so just kill everything!!” That’s enough story for me!! If I wanted to play a game that was all story and no gameplay, I have Netflix. LOL.

15

Most of this information is common sense, I based most of the research of “facts” on key papers, then I do further research to ensure that its correct. Also you note that this is what the booklet is like, that is already dealt with, with a comparison testing of how many people referred to the booklets. If you watched the video linked, it was actually in there as well.

I also think you missed the point completely which I assumed quite a few people do. See thinking on just the spectrum of controls and abilities is not influenced based on in game experience. This is called the portal/gateway lens so the booklet isnt as much internal reference as you think. so I don’t take this as an insult and in the end you can believe to develop a game this way using my findings or develop it in a spoonfed way as most of the rest of the industry.

16

Technically no, most Japanese games spoon feed people the most. Check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1Fg76c4Zfg

17

Also glad you said this, I am one of those people that enjoy both. But I love emotionally investing games: like Heavy Rain or Limbo. The video I linked below should help the idea I am trying to put forth.

18

I may be missing your point here, but your OP seems to have a tone that you think this is a deterioration. If that is right, how can you realistically tell how many people looked at manuals in the 80s? Today’s experience cant ever tell you that because people today have been accustomed to instructions being inside their software by now, and assume the answer to any question is a Google search away. Without internet, and without in-game-instructions, players back in the day were much more likely to look at the manual.

Not if your point is there is a degradation on game design due to the increase of spoon-feeding. My argument is: this spoon-feeding has always been part of the industry.

19

To your first paragraph: This was evident in the retro games era and early games industry. Blame booklets or not, its irrelevant because we now have indie games that have personified this idea. These indie games do the same things as those retro games, without the booklets. So… theres your answer, I thought it was painstakingly obvious.

To your second paragraph: as Jonathan Blow puts it. When ever you promote an idea, no matter how true it is. A person first instinctive goal is to put the idea down. Games have been both spoonfed and not spoonfed for years. When indie games show the first form of pure non spoon feeding, it put a lot of AAA companies in a point of turmoil where they can be successful and not have to baby their audience, yet they continue to develop games with this spoon fed method. So therefore we have two forms of developed games, one where the focus is on a large demographic where spoon feeding ensures that a player will not be lost due to maximised risk that a game doesnt sell well could be detrimental to the company. I.e. what happened with THQ, secondly indie games show both sides of spoon feeding (most those that just copy the industry and want to make money), or those that actually use their brain to help other use theirs in games i,e, (braid).

Please don’t ask anymore questions, I feel obligated to answer them but the answer is so rudimentary that you should just look into the topic yourself if you are so compelled that it is wrong.

In the end I don’t care what method you choose, I believe not babying people and treating people with some respect is the way to go. But if you are aiming to just sell your game to as many people as possible, then put tutorials in everywhere and I guarantee you won’t lose anyone. But your game will not nearly be as effective if you allow a player free thinking.

20

Also another quick note on your first paragraph. You say, people are accustomed to the controls. You are thinking about your lifetime or your generation. You have to also consider younger children or even those that didnt play many games in the 80’s 90’s. Most people aged 8-15 won’t be able to finish a game like Braid without looking up a walkthrough because they feel defeated, a preconditioned emotion you feel based on not completing a “should have been spoonfed” event. Also Braid introduced a time reversal mechanic and time non effected mechanic that wasn’t that prevelant in games, so that just blows the question out of the water for what accustomed is. If you want to take it even further and break it down more. How do you know you are meant to move right in 2D side scrolling video game. You can base this on hand writing left to right, the adoption of Japanese take on american video games while developing the same idea, placing a wall next to the start location on the left, placing an objective in view to the right etc. There are a lot of small impulses your brain picks up, so your preconditioning could be something as simple as spikes, in real life they will cut me open so in a game I will avoid them to.