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[Zia]

Boy am I glad he's making a game without guns and the shooting of people.

But SpyParty isn't a game about guns and the shooting of people. ; )

 

[Jaded Alyx]

I expected duct tape.

 

[atomsk]

I would rather see gamers say something like "I'm looking forward to what's next from From Software, Patrice Désilets, or Frictional Games."

I always measure my excitement for any given project by Studio and/or Director/Producer

But at the same time if I keep hearing a team I'm unfamiliar with has made a great game, I'm not going to ignore that.

 

[TriGen]

I always measure my excitement for any given project by Studio and/or Director/Producer

But at the same time if I keep hearing a team I'm unfamiliar with has made a great game, I'm not going to ignore that.

That's the thing, I bet the people that buy only the mainstream sequel stuff don't even know who made the game.

 

[captmorgan]

I`m really looking forward to spy party 2

 

[Satoho]

We have free will as humans and should exercise it by realising when we are in a fishbowl of 'in this case' an appetite of sameness.

You have the power to wake up tomorrow and say "You know what?! I won't buy the game EVERY SHOOTER" because I believe that for my mind to develop I have to try new experiences (which is what games are about) and play a game which will stimulate my mind if I give it time and a positive attitude.

What you guys buy controls what the AAA titles look like, and frankly I'll choose the unpopular opinion that these big companies have at least 10 times less originality than indie titles and I know where my money will go.

There is MUCH MORE TO GAMES THAN "Shoot and Kill/Destroy", and people who don't use this formula are the saviours of gaming in today's remake/rehash/HD/morepolygon minded piranhas. FIN.

 

[davepoobond]

thats not a problem with games, thats a problem with HUMANS

we want to have the familiar. who are you trying to market your games to? Humans or Aliens? Humans like things that are the same as other things they have seen. Things that are different instinctively scares us and makes us question whether or not the game will be good or whatever.

thats why we have something called genres. if humans actually wanted true variety all the time, there wouldnt be something like that.

 

[Combichristoffersen]

I get his point, but as long as the games give me what I want, why should I complain? I get giddy as a little kid every time AC/DC releases a new album, even though they, Motörhead and Status Quo (all bands I enjoy) have basically been releasing the same album over and over again for the last 30-40 years.

 

[Sol..]

It can be the same ol same ol. I just want games to display a level of detail and attention to every single nook and cranny of the game like it was made by a bunch of people who are on the same page and actually like what they do and are good at it. You feel it a lot in all other mediums. Probably felt it in games like six times ever. But that's just me. I feed on expression.

 

[Alx]

thats not a problem with games, thats a problem with HUMANS

we want to have the familiar. who are you trying to market your games to? Humans or Aliens? Humans like things that are the same as other things they have seen. Things that are different instinctively scares us and makes us question whether or not the game will be good or whatever.

thats why we have something called genres. if humans actually wanted true variety all the time, there wouldnt be something like that.

Humans do feel secure in familiar environments indeed, but they're also curious and like to explore new things. That's why we have videogames now, as an alternative to pushing cards or throwing stones in the water.
Having genres and conservative rules isn't a bad thing (like everybody here I have my favorite genres/licenses that don't change much over time), but it shouldn't be the only thing.

 

[semiconscious]

People generally find familiarity to be comforting...

very true. & it's always been one of my main problems with people ...

 

[makingmusic476]

I think amid the mainstream gaming crowd, a preference for sequels is a genuine problem, but amid the hardcore crowd, it has more to do with developer pedigree.

We tend to find interest in games that are from people we can trust to make good games, as opposed to going after the unknown.

Tri-ace fans had a strong interest in Resonance of Fate, thatgamecompany fans had a strong interest in Journey, Team ICO fans are longing for the Last Guardian, and Naught Dog fans can't wait for the Last of Us. Same for Bungie's new IP or any new ideas Miyamoto decides to bust out.

Hecker mentions Double Fine's kickstarter, but those people merely want a new ADV from a source they know and trust. It could be an ADV that makes use of numerous modern tricks of the trade, and possibly innovates in many ways, but because it's an ADV it gets lumped in with barely evolutionary sequels?

 

[Hot Coldman]

Us asking for sequels on internet forums isn't an issue. We can't just repeat the line 'give us new stuff' over and over. But we sure do need to be buying and talking about new things more. I wouldn't shut up about TWEWY for ages, and recently I've fallen in love with Stacking, amongst other things, so I'm doing my part, I feel... despite my unabashed love of rebuying Nintendo's shit over and over again.

I'll be getting Spy Party day one, too. Any developer ballsy enough to call the Wii 'two Gamecubes duct-taped together' has got to have some equally ballsy game ideas in his noggin, and Spy Party looks exactly like that. Just... hire a god damn artist already.

 

[Messofanego]

The last military shooters I bought were Republic Commando, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, and Full Spectrum Warrior. All squad shooters but played and designed very differently from each other.

I think it's been pretty good so far. Dear Esther sold 50,000 copies in 2 weeks. Clearly the system of the press and gaming audience, starved for variety, is working sometimes.

I do my part to keep my gaming library varied. Dear Esther (first person ghost story) is my favorite game this year, can't wait to buy I Am Alive (a true survival game), super excited for The Witness (Jonathan Blow), and about to get Journey on the 13th. As long as we're championing interesting games and recommending them to people, some good is coming out of the three-way system.

Although on sequels, I'll be there Day 1 for Mirror's Edge 2.

 

[Hot Coldman]

Oh god, The Witness better be worth the wait. It sure sounds neat.

 

[KorrZ]

It is my fault, I like sequels though so...

 

[Massa]

I don't have a problem with sequels as long as they improve on the original, which is usually the case, and if that doesn't happen they tend to fall off in popularity. There are also cases where the sequel is pretty much a "map pack" but the way those work is completely different to begin with.

Now this:

"There is an imbalance in the press between the amount of attention granted to pre-release games and the amount of criticism they get after the fact, Hecker said. Citing frame-by-frame breakdowns of a Borderlands 2 trailer, he made the point that writers are granular about their previews, but their reviews don't mention many large flaws."

Perfect. This is something that annoys me greatly as well, but when you think about it there's a contradiction here with the "always want more of the same" theory. The reason people anticipate future games, I would assume and hope, is that they're excited for new and different things. But when people spend their time drooling over new games instead of debating the ones that are out there we're not really improving things as much as we could.

 

[whalleywhat]

If I like a formula, I want more of it or for it to be iterated upon. There's room for this and interesting new experiences. Things aren't worthwhile just by virtue of being different.

 

[mclem]

I'm fine with everything else in that rant to the point that I want to give it a standing ovation, but what a shortsighted example that was. Asking people who aren't game designers what their dream project would be is going to result in a pined-for sequel nine times out of ten.

It's a bit more than that; "What game do you want made?" is a very different question to "What game do you want Kickstarted?". The first question is asking for any game that doesn't exist; the second, however, is asking for any game that *can't be funded in a conventional way*. In other words, the second is *assuming* familiarity with what you're asking for, because you *know* it won't wash with publishers.

 

[mclem]

I like how "sameness" means games that aren't fun. Not to say he doesn't bring up valid points but it always seems that this argument seems to allude to that point.

You could use the word "familiarity", and it means fundamentally the same but sounds an awful lot less unpleasant.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

We're at the ass-end of a loooooooooooooooooooooong console generation. Few new non-RPG IP launch this late in the game. Around 2014/5-ish this'll pick back up again, or if one checks out handhelds (who are in their new console generation) or PC, which doesn't really have generations in that sense.

He seems to not be considering that computer games are iterative, or at least they have been to this point. In part this is driven by technology. The technology of computer gaming is not mature and has continued to evolve rapidly for 30 years. There's a big draw in constantly improving the same basic game concepts.

From the perspective a creator, sameness may often be bad. From the perspective of the audience and/or customer, it may often be good.

However, I think his point can be understood better by moving laterally and observing that the games industry ruthlessly attempts to exploit what is popular even when that's NOT a productive enterprise. People buy each new Call of Duty because they're investing in the platform, to experience the next iteration of the ongoing game they want to play. That's fine. But the rest of the industry stumbles over itself desperately trying to say "LOOK! WE HAVE COD TOO! PLEASE BUY OUR GAME!"

And most of those CODalikes fail because the audience is already being served. It'd be like trying to start a mainstream sport called "Baseball II" which was just like baseball except with a few minor cosmetic and rulesheet differences. It wouldn't go anywhere. Baseball already has its audience.

In this sense, I think it is still the industry's fault for wasting so much time, talent, and money chasing blue birds that it is never going to catch. How many fresh games could have been funded these last five years, to see if another big thing might catch on, if millions hadn't gone to failed COD clones?

I'm not sure the food analogy is solid there at the end. Entertainment is a bit more subjective than the hard science of what someone needs in a survival sense.

However, his best point is about the gaming press. The press does a terrible job of emphasizing the things that it should be emphasizing. However, man alive, have I heard laments from a few writers in the gaming press. It is often the people at the top, editors and publishers, who dictate the state of gaming journalism. That "tough investigative reporting" people often ask for wouldn't be published even if it was performed and the writers know it. Publishers aren't going to encourage writers to draw attention to an innovative game because they just want to make sure their organization is doing a great job hyping Mass Effect 3.

Another word for innovative is unrelatable. If you create an entirely new experience, how do you sell that to players who won't understand it easily? (See: any Akitoshi Kawazu game). Everybody wants innovative games, but they don't want to put in the effort to learn them.

I think you can see a bit of this in the way that people tend to like one or two games from a particular genre, but never grow to love the genre as a whole because their base understanding of the genre has such a small sample size.

World of Warcraft, for example, didn't translate into more MMO players because for a majority of the players, WoW was the first and only MMO they played - and they had trouble relating to other MMOs because they though WoW was the definition of the genre rather than a particularly polished outlier. Other examples include Final Fantasy Tactics fans disliking every other tactical game or people who won't hate JRPGs (but love Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VII).

I think amid the mainstream gaming crowd, a preference for sequels is a genuine problem, but amid the hardcore crowd, it has more to do with developer pedigree.

We tend to find interest in games that are from people we can trust to make good games, as opposed to going after the unknown.

Tri-ace fans had a strong interest in Resonance of Fate, thatgamecompany fans had a strong interest in Journey, Team ICO fans are longing for the Last Guardian, and Naught Dog fans can't wait for the Last of Us. Same for Bungie's new IP or any new ideas Miyamoto decides to bust out.

Hecker mentions Double Fine's kickstarter, but those people merely want a new ADV from a source they know and trust. It could be an ADV that makes use of numerous modern tricks of the trade, and possibly innovates in many ways, but because it's an ADV it gets lumped in with barely evolutionary sequels?

Wisdom, wisdom, and wisdom.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Games are supposed to be repetitive and formulaic. In the case of something like Call of Duty if people want to play the same game regularly every week then updating it regularly is just something that is going to happen if people are interested.

Asking us here to be clamouring for new exciting ideas is not really fair. Sometimes new exciting games come out and some or even most of us like them. But just saying that a game is something new is not a good sell since many "new" things tend to be not that great. We have been on the wrong side of developer egos too often when they come up with some amazing new idea that turns out to be faddish and more fun for them to play with than us. And we have 20 year old games without updates that we love that are too "old and boring" for these developers to touch with a barge pole.

But I agree with how it is sad that we can't appear less like tribalistic fanboys when thinking about what the future games might be worth waiting for.

 

[Typographenia]

This is somewhat on a thread idea I have kicking around for a while. He says to buy variety, but how do consumers influence game development of new things they might personally want?

For example: If a large number of people all wanted an exciting game based around submarines, how do we manage to let devs and publishers know? It feels like the only real power consumers have in directing the industry is through either choosing to but or not. Is that the only extent of a say the players have in influencing what gets made?

I would love, love, love having more variety, but, from the stance of a consumer, it doesn't feel like there is any good way to make that feeling known without just causing a mass shift from property X to property Y because a number of people bought it instead.

 

[Brawndo Addict]

A lot of good points have been made already, but my biggest gripe is the idea that this is somehow exclusive to the game industry. Books, movies, music, hell, our entire cultural experience could largely be dismissed as endlessly recycling the same old things over and over. That's not some secret revelation he's uncovered about the games industry, it's a fundamental truth of the human experience.

Yeah, we eat a variety of foods because we would get bored eating the same thing every day. But when you decide to order Chinese food because you're in the mood, do you order from a new restaurant every time or do you order from the place you like the best? To keep the analogy going, the people buying COD every year are not eating the same thing every day, they're just ordering from the same restaurant when they're in the mood for a certain kind of dish.

I understand his larger point, but that really bothered me. I'll agree that the games industry has more room for true innovation than any other medium, but if we look at how the other mediums of culture have developed, they've also stagnated. Once you've created a base set of methods, ideas, structures, genres, etc, you just continue to reiterate on those.

Ultimately much of our culture, and its mediums, is based around entertainment like it or not. If the same old thing is still fun, or tasty, or whatever, it's considered successful. You might argue that true art isn't about having fun, but I'd retort that true art is never mainstream.

 

[bernardobri]

A lot of good points have been made already, but my biggest gripe is the idea that this is somehow exclusive to the game industry. Books, movies, music, hell, our entire cultural experience could largely be dismissed as endlessly recycling the same old things over and over. That's not some secret revelation he's uncovered about the games industry, it's a fundamental truth of the human experience.

Yeah, we eat a variety of foods because we would get bored eating the same thing every day. But when you decide to order Chinese food because you're in the mood, do you order from a new restaurant every time or do you order from the place you like the best? To keep the analogy going, the people buying COD every year are not eating the same thing every day, they're just ordering from the same restaurant when they're in the mood for a certain kind of dish.

I understand his larger point, but that really bothered me. I'll agree that the games industry has more room for true innovation than any other medium, but if we look at how the other mediums of culture have developed, they've also stagnated. Once you've created a base set of methods, ideas, structures, genres, etc, you just continue to reiterate on those.

Ultimately much of our culture, and its mediums, is based around entertainment like it or not. If the same old thing is still fun, or tasty, or whatever, it's considered successful. You might argue that true art isn't about having fun, but I'd retort that true art is never mainstream.

Pretty much this.

 

[Kodiak]

It's up to the developers to be brave and stick up for their best ideas.

I quit my job in social games because it was such a sad place drained of all creativity, now I'm trying to get involved with indie games because I believe that is where the most inventive and original games are coming from right now.

The reason I quit the company I was at was because they cloned a game that I loved. It really broke my heart to see them rip off something for dubious reasons.

 

[plufim]

Developers are scared to make drastic changes and lack creativity.

I suspect it is more that publishers won't let them.

 

[Messofanego]

It's up to the developers to be brave and stick up for their best ideas.

I quit my job in social games because it was such a sad place drained of all creativity, now I'm trying to get involved with indie games because I believe that is where the most inventive and original games are coming from right now.

The reason I quit the company I was at was because they cloned a game that I loved. It really broke my heart to see them rip off something for dubious reasons.

Zynga or Gameloft?

 

[BlazingDarkness]

I agree

Though I think the gaming press has a much bigger impact on all of this than I care to think :/

The media pretty much entirely directs the zeitgeist of the industry, the amount of exposure and accolades these same games receive year on year is almost solely responsible for what is perceived as desirable by consumers - a game with pretty much no exposure fairs extremely few odds at ever having a recognised demand, even if the industry is in dire need of something new

For as long as the gaming press is riding the wave of sequels, and having the likes of Call of Duty lauded as potential GOTY then we will forever be stuck in this rut we are in

One example to the contrary was Demon's Souls. It was pretty much ignored by the gaming media because it didn't 'fit' with the zeitgeist (and no doubt because they didn't receive a bunch of $ in their coffers) but it was clearly something gamers needed, and now there is demand for more of it. This is a case where a genuine demand was formed and it wasn't manufactured by publishers throwing money all over the place to get people interested

Basically I think the media is extremely cynical and it's throttling the industry, and the appetite of gamers

 

[Jason's Ultimatum]

Western games has pretty much dominated every genre this generation:

-Action
-Rpgs
-FPS

The only problem is that we're see too many FPSs that are all alike.

 

[Kerub]

Final Fantasy - Current day Battle participant.

 

[AceBandage]

Didn't we have someone rant about the exact same thing last year at GDC?

 

[chickdigger802]

I suspect it is more that publishers won't let them.

Indeed. I recall when Sleeping Dogs was a True Crime game, they originally pitched that a Michelle Yeoh style of lady would be the MC, but Activision shut that idea down.

I'm sure this has happened to many other games.

 

[BlazingDarkness]

To add to more of what I was saying in my last post, take Assassins Creed III.
That game has had more media attention, more advertising plastered across gaming websites and playtime on websites like youtube, than the vast majority of other well regarded, yet barely recognised new I.Ps this generation - and all we've seen is one freaking teaser trailer.
The game will go on to be a serious GOTY contender, and will sell millions, and score an average of 9.5 across the majority of the western gaming press - despite what the game actually brings to the table - the content is almost negligible.
Sure, it could deserve all that, it could be an excellent game, but Ubisoft and other mega publishers have a death grip over the industry because the gaming press is pretty much their bitch.

 

[Mooreberg]

He makes some good points, but more emphasis should be put on the publishers. Look at how many well reviewed "EA Partners" games have come out and completely bombed. People who don't read forums or check out videos on GameTrailers are not going to know about a game that doesn't have a particular brand name attached to it and doesn't get any marketing on TV.

He is also giving the journalism portion of the industry way too much credit.

 

[Conciliator]

Yeah he's basically got it; the industry is increasingly focused on yearly/bi-yearly iteration and it is our fault. However, as others have said, if that's what you want then there's nothing to stress about. I can fault gamers who complain about a lack of diversity but then buy every new Modern Warfare iteration, even when they're not particularly excited about playing it(or are even fucking boycotting the thing). But there's also a huge chuck of gamers who are legitimately thrilled to play yearly iterations. *shrug* Get it how you live.

Also I think it's not as bad as it's made out to be. We have an increasingly important/cool/large indie game community that comes out with all kinds of weird great stuff every year. We have our Demon's Souls and our Bayonettas and our Mirror's Edges and our Human Revolutions every now and then, and even some of our 'Triple A' flagships, like Mass Effect, are not quite like anything else out there. Pretty good setup, all told. One too many military shooters ain't going to spoil the party.

 

[KingJ2002]

I like his points and i agree but i think that the industry has made many strides inside their sequels to bring new experiences... i dont think we should dismiss it because it contains a familiar story.

how many games were created this generation that delivered a story, a new experience yet failed commercially? there's a mile long list.

at the end of the day this is a business... and every now and then... companies deviate from "sequel formulas" to try something new... it's always good to introduce new things... but the sequels and "sameness" keeps gamers playing.

 

[Kacho]

He's not wrong at all. The market is the reason we're seeing so many me-too experiences.

 

[les papillons sexuels]

the only really unfortunate part is that his game is really just "the ship", except 1v1. So it's a bit like the pot calling the kettle black, except in this case, no one is asking him to make his game.

 

[SlipperyFishes]

http://kotaku.com/5892030/spy-party...s-and-developers-for-lack-of-variety-in-games



Man I wish this was recorded. I do love how this man talks. He makes good points that aren't really unknown to the people... but I do agree that reviews tend to be balls and quite often presentation/immersion/ god rays tends to weight in heavier than gameplay/polish/fun/etc.

How many reviews out there noted that ME3 missions are much worse than ME2 in level and situation design? Do people really want to hold off waves of waves of stuff for an arbitrary amount of time in 2012 in single player? How many reviews docked points that 'their shepard' from ME1 can't get their face right?

And that kickstarter thingie... wasn't there a thread on gaf with similar responses?

Japanese games suck.

Western games suck.

bah.

*goes back to play more ME3*

I know this is a really old thread, but I've been writing for my thesis which is due next week and came across the video for this which then linked me back here!

So here's the video you wanted, it's pretty good.