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[LittleTokyo]

Maybe I'm going crazy but I remember quite a few ad spots for Psychonauts...

 

[Chairman Yang]

Neither Jumping Flash nor Mario 64 were anywhere close to being the first 3D platformers--Alpha Waves (a.k.a. Continuum) was one (with polygons and everything) and it came out way back in 1991 for the PC. There might have been something even before that, in fact.

Actually, just about every innovative game has had some roots in some obscure pre-1995 PC game.

 

[donny2112]

As the issue of "first" keeps being brought up ...

It's not about being "first." It's about being the one to bring the genre to the masses. Nintendogs isn't the first puppy-sim. It is the puppy-sim to bring the genre to the masses, though.

i.e. It's not the first in existence that's important long-term, but the first to popularize it.

Also, I liked this quote from the article.

We looked at various things about the game like the age of the main character. The age of the main character affects who will be drawn to the game and I think our main character was a 10-year-old boy. So were we selling the game to 10-year-old boys or were we selling the game to an older market? Because a lot of the humor and the puzzles are for an older market. We thought we were safe because Zelda's got a young kid as a hero but that falls into the special rule of Zelda-can-do-anything-it-wants. I guess the rule is that if you're established, you have more room to experiment.

:lol True, true.

 

[rastex]

This ties back in with game theory. If everyone tries to make big money with little risk, they go for rehashes--and as a result, everyone is worse off. If publishers tacitly co-operated and each assumed some risk by publishing some innovative titles, the industry as a whole would be better off, and all publishers would benefit by drawing in more gamers and probably even having their innovative games sell more than in today's industry.

Amazing analysis. This is why Xbox Live Arcade is so exciting. Now there's a viable platform where indy developers can fund the game themselves with low risk and try out new ideas. If they hit a successful concept with one of the ideas, they can morph that into a larger game, or someone else will copy it in a full game. The DS and Revolution are TOO specific in terms of the game designs they effect to have a broader change of the industry as a whole