Is there any innovation in gaming?

[Apocalypse]

I was thinking of some of the freedom of choice issues and turned based combat actually.

[Colon™]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Anyway my point about innovative was good innovation, im talking about Half-Life, Civ, Command & Conquer, Sim City. Not half-baked ideas, that while original, arent successful.

Well, I guess you could consider Half-Life to be Wolfenstein 3D clone and C&C to be a Dune II clone. Innovation that "falls out of a blue sky" so to speak, is something very rare IMO. Usually it's an adaption or a combination of elements that have been existing previously. (and that's a fact of life that goes well beyond gaming)

[Colon™]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
3. The Sims - love it or hate it, different from what came before, and a huge seller.

Actually, the late Microprose worked on a game that was pretty similar in scope before Maxis arrived to the scene with the The Sims. You determined the traits of a virtual character and controlled its activities in a virtual world. I've played a demo of it but AFAIK the game never got released.

[Nostromo]

The bulk of the innovation probably comes from the indie and handheld scene, where developers can take more risks, since the titles cost less to produce. It looks like Xbox Live will be a fine platform for indie developers. Geometry wars, for example, looks like a fun game.

Here are examples of what there doing on the indie scene:

http://www.gametunnel.com/articles.php?id=412

Paradoxically, a lot of gamers ***** about the lack of innovative titles, yet they don't buy them when one comes out once in a blue moon. No they prefer to buy highly polished AAA titles. And I have no problem with that. The Sims is the exception, certainly not the rule.

It also depends on what you mean by "innovation". If you really mean "revolution", then its true: revolutionary titles are rare. But revolutionary titles tend to be experimental, they tend to lack polish, rough on the edges. But if you're looking for innovative titles, not revolutionary ones, there are a good number out there IMO. Civ 4 certainly looks like one. Even Half-Life 2 was innovative.

[Nostromo]

Why Shipping Marble Blast Ultra On XBox 360 Is Important For Indie Game Developers, Part 1

I have been working on a post about basic things that you need to do to get started in the Indie Games business as part of my prerelease series before officially announcing the MBG blog, but changed my mind and decided to write about Marble Blast Ultra. I don’t plan on having the MBG blog just be a mouthpiece for GarageGames press and hype, but MBU360 is a groundbreaking product for a bunch of reasons.

When we first started GarageGames in 1999 one fear in the back of my mind was that indies would never have a shot at getting their products on consoles. All of the major boxes were tightly controlled by the manufacturers (Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo), requiring pre development approval, expensive development kits, upfront purchase of all inventory at inflated costs due to proprietary media, and many other huge barriers to entry. The only other way to get on consoles was to sell your soul to publishers that instist on owning all intellectual property, maintain tight creative control of the product, and many other bad things that we will go over in future blog articles.

As PC sales continued to become less relevant and went down year to year, my fears continued to rise. I had visions of PC’s becoming Web access devices where less and less people considered playing games. As an aside, I actually worry about “everything” since that is my nature and my job, but it turns out that the downloadable games market on the PC that was the main vision behind GarageGames is alive, well, and growing.

Even if the downloadable market on the PC had not blossomed two years ago, we had a meeting with Ross Erickson from Microsoft and David Nixon from Oberon that was the first step to fixing the problem of getting indies on consoles. David and Ross were working on the XBox Live Arcade download system for the original XBox which needed content, and they loved our game Marble Blast, as well as our published games Think Tanks and Orbz. In addition to liking our “next generation casual” games, they knew we owned our intellectual property as well as out technology and could bring it over to the XBox.

Immediately, I felt like this would be the key to getting indies onto consoles, so my earlier fears were about being locked out of the market were subsiding. All we had to do now was deliver three games, but again, the whole idea of GarageGames worked. GarageGames handled most of the technology port as well as Marble Blast, Bravetree (indie developer GG acquired in 2005) ported Think Tanks, and 21-6 Productions ported Orbz.

While XBLA for the original XBox was kind of a “dry run”, we all learned a lot from the experience, especially Microsoft. When they approached us to have an updated Marble Blast be a part of the launch portfolio for Xbox360, we could not say yes fast enough. We were amazed at the depth of thought they put into the design of Live Arcade 360, and were even more blown away when we actually got to work on it. The most important thing to note here is that GarageGames and several small indie game developers were give Alpha hardware and an equal shot at bringing games to market on next generation hardware at launch. Think about that for a second. Instead of giving Electronic Arts more of the scarce development kits, Fed-Ex brought one of the hand built Alpha kits right to our door! Even though we had signed the contract, we could not believe it.

It gets even better, but this post is running way too long. Tune in for Part II, where I actually explain why shipping MBU is important, and give some advice on how to get your product into the Live Arcade 360 downloadable channel.

http://makeitbigingames.com/blog/?p=7

[Nostromo]

Five Reasons Shipping Marble Blast Ultra on XBox360 Is Important For Indie Game Developers, Part II

Publishers and manufacturers are starting to realize that Indie Game Developers are a legitimate part of the business.

As a continued part of our amazement in partnering with Microsoft on the Marble Blast Ultra project for the XBox360, we ended up with the North American launch of the entire platform at our own little IndieGamesCon. A day after the European launch in Amsterdam, much of the Microsoft launch team were on red-eye flights here to Eugene, OR, USA. For the next three days, we had the world’s largest collection of XBox360’s in front of most of the US gaming press as well as 200 indie game developers.

While Mark Frohnmayer and I were eating lunch with Greg Canessa, head of the XBox marketing team, I asked him if we should we mortgage our houses to make XB360 games for Live Arcade download. Of course, his answer was yes, but you have to remember that his job for the last two years was selling the XB360 concept up and down the food chain. Turns out, he is probably right.

As promised, here are the five reasons (plus a bonus) this is important for Indie games developers.

1. Consoles are opening up to Indies. This is huge. Finally, indie game developers get access to millions of hard core game players, great input devices, and dedicated machines! On the flip side, the competition for this channel will go up in a hurry. All of the major game publishers are starting up games for XBLA. A year from now, there will be well over 100 games vying for player’s attention. Future blog articles here on MBG will address how indies can stand out in this market.

2. XBLA success puts pressure on Sony to add a download channel. Rumors are flying that Sony is already showing signs of cracking. In addition, Nintendo has stated they are looking for smaller, more innovative games for the DS and Revolution. Having more channels will increase your chances of getting a game published. Even though there will be “gate keepers” you will have to get around to bring your product into these channels, there will be a lot of possibilities.

3. Experimental Business Models. XBLA back end allows for add-ons, downloadable content, and access to a a huge community of players. This allows you to consider interesting, innovative business models like giving the game away free and charging for upgrades or game objects. Much more to explore here in the future.

4. Console development technologies available at Indie price. Again, I’m not here to simply plug GarageGames’ products, but our Torque Shader Engine 360 is such a compelling value that I simply have to mention it. TSE360 allows you to develop your product for the XBox360 without even having a development kit. Over half of our development for MBU was done on the PC, and we could even test PC vs. XB360 in multi-player. I’ll cover a step by step approach of getting your project onto XB360 in the future.

5. Proves that small companies can have a hit. We absolutely love Geometry Wars and thought it would be the break away hit since we first saw it at IndieGamesCon, but it was developed by Bizzare Creations, the non-indie developer of Project Gotham Racing. GarageGames is much smaller than BC, but we still have a lot of ex-industry talent. I would like to say that anybody can make a successful title for this channel, but it will take a lot of dedication, talent, and perseverance. It probably won’t be your first game.

6. Downloadable Console Games Can Make Money. Why this is important for Indie game developers is because it finally proves there is a market for smaller titles that are not “match three bubble poppers.” MBU is selling!! Without breaking any NDA’s we can tell you that MBU is selling faster than any product that I have created in my career. By just keeping one of the lowest “high scores” on a level that is not included in the demo, we can tell that at least 20,000 MBU’s have sold in less than four days. Accoring to this article on Joystiq, Geometry Wars was at 45,000 units a week or so ago, and was the number one title in the channel, “our Halo” according to Greg Canessa. At 800 Gamer Points for MBU vs. 400 for GW, MBU should become the highest grossing title in the channel within the next week or so. Wow, a Halo beater?

[Alex]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Yes, one game does indeed prove that all games are not innovative.

One game that represents a general trend in gaming nowadays. Pretty graphics and nothing really new in terms of gameplay. Doom 3? Same thing. Half-Life 2? I can't really see how "innovative" it was (but the first Half-Life was innovative).

Even Civ4... For us, hardcore civ gamers, it brings some interesting new concepts and details and enough twists to the gameplay. But for the rest of the world, it is just the old Civ formula with prettier graphics.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Alex
Even Civ4... For us, hardcore civ gamers, it brings some interesting new concepts and details and enough twists to the gameplay. But for the rest of the world, it is just the old Civ formula with prettier graphics.

Prettier graphics? I'm still waiting for the Civ1 graphics mod for Civ4

[Colon™]

People were already complaining there wasn't any gameplay innovation back in the 90's. Nothing new under the sun really...

[Alex]

Originally posted by Adagio




Prettier graphics? I'm still waiting for the Civ1 graphics mod for Civ4

This is a hardcore civver. I salute you, my friend!

[Carolus Rex]

Originally posted by Sava


keyboard + mouse is completely superior to a stupid gamepad for FPS games... FACT!

there is no comparison...

This is true for me as well... Give me W, S, A, and D any day... However, I think it's just a matter of whatever you started out with...

My brother was a hardcore console gamer... He never got into keyboard and mouse when, for example, playing MOHAA on a PC... Habit formation...

As for innovation in games. Every now and then there might be some earth-shattering innovative thing (hardware or software), but I think evolution is the normal pace of change. And that's fine too.

Here's an analogy. Look at yourself in a mirror... What do you look like? The same as yesterday, of course! And yesterday you looked just like the day before that...

Regress like this 10-15 years and what do you see? Every day you look just like the day before, but compare the mirror image 15 years ago with the one today... Huge change!

In other words... In 50 years we'll all swallow a pill to enter the gaming world of our choice... No hardware even needed, perhaps? Some would say such pills exist already...

Carolus

[Carolus Rex]

Originally posted by Smiley

The next big one will be connecting directly to the physical world. Already, there are games where game currency can be exchanged for real currency, a first step in that direction.

Yeah, and a lot more than that is bought and sold creating connections between synthetic worlds and the "real" world.

I just finished reading a book about exactly that, Synthetic Worlds. The Business and Culture of Online Games by economist Edward Castronova (don't worry, he's a gamer himself and a witty writer).

He writes about how MMORPGs may affect, amongst other things, culture and real world financial systems. He also speculates about the long-term social consequences of online games.

I must admit I was a bit disappointed by the book. I guess my expectations were way too high after having read the following article (about the economics of Everquest):

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=294828

It's called Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier...

I just love that article! Scroll down and you'll find links to download it. It hasn't been published in a professional journal and Castronova talks a little about that in the book (you can sense his bitterness).

Referees for the American Economic Review (one of the most prestigeous journals in economics) dismissed it along the lines of "things that happen in virtual worlds are not real"... That letter of rejection will be a classic!

Carolus

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Colon™
People were already complaining there wasn't any gameplay innovation back in the 90's.

That's true too. There really wasn't much innovation in the second half of that decade.

[snoopy369]

Innovation comes either from new hardware, or new hardware abilities (ie, fast enough video cards to do X, or enough RAM to do Y), or feasibly new software abilities [DirectX advances, OpenGL, etc.] (though i'm not sure how much further that can go at this point).

Until a major new hardware advance comes, you CAN'T really have true innovation in gaming ... simply because we've had the same basic hardware setup for so many years, that pretty much anything (on a basic level) worth thinking up has been thought up. Maybe once in a really blue moon someone'll come up with something somewhat new, but it's increasingly rare.

Then some new major change in hardware (or software) will occur, and that will enable whole new realms of gaming. VGA graphics (or even VESA graphics), the Video card w/dedicated VRAM, the Mouse, the Joystick, the Gamepad, >640k RAM, DirectX, OpenGL, Pixel shaders ... all enabled some sort of innovation.

That's why the Revolution will be good for gaming, even if it turns out to be a failure as a console - it'll stimulate innovation, simply because of its controller, which is a new and different piece of hardware. The same will happen when they invent full body controllers, obviously, or on a smaller scale, more effectively integrate video cameras into gaming (they do that to a small extent now, there are a few games like the excercise game for PS2).

I don't think it's fair to blame game developers, though. You can't blame the ranger for not exploring new territory when he's forced to stay in the King's forest by impenetrable walls.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by nostromo
Paradoxically, a lot of gamers ***** about the lack of innovative titles, yet they don't buy them when one comes out once in a blue moon. No they prefer to buy highly polished AAA titles. And I have no problem with that. The Sims is the exception, certainly not the rule.

This I wholeheartedly agree with! There have been many innovative games that have sold crap. The poster child for this is System Shock 2, a game that blended FPS with RPGs, and was ranked very highly on critic lists, but never sold well at all.