(January 10, 2012 06:45:53 AM)Chloe Wrote:  Take a look at Journey. That's an indie game, but the way it's been promoted so far makes it difficult to easily classify it as such. Bastion too is a HUGE title, but still most definitely indie. And of course, it's not just gamers that are noticing these games... Business men are too, and probably contacting the people responsible and asking them to come play in the big leagues. All in all, the success of indie games will definitely boost up the creativity of major titles.

Yup! They'll snatch up those creative minds and stick them in a desk so they can make more FPS rehashes! Hehe, I jest (Even though it's partially true).

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Development cost for games could have a big factor into this, take a look at 2011 it was mostly sequels. Majority of people are just happy sticking to what they like.

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I'm in a special program at my Uni that specifically studies innovation. One of the theories presented to us was that of "the limit of innovation".

The theory basically says that there is only so much innovation a consumer can take in from a product. For example, Microsoft Word, when people were introduced to things like multiple fonts and spell check. It was really amazing! But with each successive version of Word, it becomes clearer and clearer. There really isn't much you can do to make a better word processor...

Basically, every idea has a limit of how innovative a it can become by simply improving upon it (or in our case releasing sequels).

The problem with innovation in the game's industry is that it's a business. The only way to guarantee good numbers on your quarterly reports is to "go where the money is". Right now that's FPS games and open world games.

There are always creative ideas. It's just that, whenever someone has a good idea. Everybody else stops trying to have good ideas and tries to feed off the good idea someone else had.

Then with EVERYONE trying to improve the same idea. We see the limit of that idea's innovation a lot quicker.

Case in point: If a million rhythm games did not come out after Guitar Hero. The music game genre may not have been run into the ground.

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Only so many ways you can make a wheel. It's still a wheel. But replace it with a rocket, and you have a whole new set of destinations!

Wow I'm so philosophical.

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@Kioran, Adam - You guys seem to be misunderstanding my comments on the FPS genre a little. By no means do I think the genre itself it dying, anyone can see it is by far the most popular genre out there at the moment. But I do think that the genre, in my humble opinion, suffers some blandness due to the fact that so many games come out so often that (at least to my mind, and admittedly I am not an FPS fan so I am biased) offer basically the same thing as each other. Your counter examples are fair enough, and I am not saying that there aren't avenues out there that are trying to innovate. I guess that I am just personally frustrated with publishers in particular that they seem to limit scope for creativity in the genre.
Maybe the die hard Call of Duty fans will never cease to love the game and keep buying it for the next 20 years. In which case, my worries are unfounded. But I think the entire issue (as stated in my original post) spreads further than the FPS genre in any case.

My actual point is that I'd like to see some genre creation, if that is at all possible, rather than just honing and developing current genres. And the only ones that do that, that dare to do that, are the indie developers at the moment.

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A new genre entirely would be cool, but if you just add "innovation" to the FPS market, the FPS kiddies aren't going to stick to it, and the people who are jrpg/rpg fans aren't going to like it. Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with call of duty going bankrupt and dying, but I can think of other franchises that have been around for a lot longer, that really have changed just as little over time and are still doing fine. I don't think I need to name that franchise, people will start throwing poop at me.

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Given enough saturation in the market, it wouldn't be too surprising if Call of Duty do goes the way of Guitar Hero. Activision is good with over-exhausting their IP's.

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Im just gnnr troll for a bit but FPS and CoD aside.... can we not forget about FFXIII? I remember when I first heard news of the gameplay elements that FFXIII would be implementing into its systematic "fast-paced" JRPG game, I was really hyped up that the next mainstream title in the awesome series was taking a different approach from the slightly diversing ATB and TB system that partially made what it "was" today. Watching the first CG trailer of Lightning fighting hordes of soldiers inside a train was, to me at that time "mind blowing". And then I watched the trailer of actual gameplay footage showing Lightning, the modified Active Time Battle system and the command menu. I bet everyone really wanted to get their hands on this the first time they saw this but, was what we really saw "innovation"? After playing this disappointing game (I'm a FFFanboy everyone!) I pondered on what was wrong with the game, what separated it from its predecessors and ultimately, WHY I did not feel satisfied playing this game at large. Tbh, I didn't like the story, the characters were a bit too exaggerated and hard to relate to and it simply felt "Dumb" compared to playing Final Fantasy X. Gosh, what was with Snow's bragging about "I'm the hero that and I'll save the world" nonsense the game? Thats just plain boring. point here: Yes, todays games are losing innovation. Dev's should be seriously considering what "is" innovation and not make it a part of gimmick's play. In FFXIII's case, there really wasn't any innovation. Trying to steer the series towards a more fast paced genre away from the tradtiional TBS is a big NO NO. Sure, there may have been at least 100 other ways to innovate this deeply loved series but they made a bad call. Creativity is something that's becoming more and more demanding these days due to lame iterations that seemingly fails due to lack of innovation. Im praying that future titles will become more diversive and original and not make 2012 "Year of the sequels" again. Innovative stories, innovative gameplay mechanics, innovative graphics that make an innovative experience. That is what this generation needs once again. I end my trolling. Now.

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