LateWhiteRabbit said,

But unfortunately, the indie world is full of crap. And clones. And even clones of crap.

Swap out indie for mainstream and that statement works just as well. The truth is that innovation and creativity are hard no matter what your budget. Too many people just copy some source of inspiration and run it straight into the ground. Look at the explosion of movie remakes of tv shows, cartoons, and movies from the 1980s. The directors and writers making these films all grew up during that time. In place of personal creativity, they are taking something they loved as a child and essentially making big budget fan fiction.

The same applies to game makers. When we sit down to create a game, our mind inevitable wanders to the ideas, themes, and styles of games we have loved playing in the past. Maybe that’s natural. Human beings are always looking to the past to improve upon it to create the future. Only too often we designers forget the “improve upon it” part. Or our “improvements” are not what everyone else considers to be better.

I observed something incredibly interesting several years ago when Fallout 3 was still in the pipeline. The Fallout community is infamously bitter and protective, so there was much vitriol on the forums about what changes Bethesda was making to the franchise. Well, after several months of this, one poster started a thread where he asked everyone to post their design document in as much or little detail as they wanted, for their perfect version of Fallout 3. Hundreds of posts, and no one agreed with anyone else on everything.

I agree with everything else. (And I guess I agreed with your first point, I just wanted to elaborate on it.) Games need an “author’s” voice. Someone to set the tone and direction of the game and keep it on track with a particular vision. I read an old article on Gamasutra from 2000, and I wish I could remember the writer’s name, but he said something that stuck with me. “Games designed by committee don’t result in a game everybody loves, but a game everyone least hates..

And I hope we have moved past the “edgy” phase as an industry. I like to view the history of the games industry in comparison to the development of a person. The late 70s and 1980s were our childhood, where we were amused by simple shapes and colors and played for fun to the exclusion of all else. The 1990s and early 2000s were our adolescent period, where we were obsessed with being “cool”, edgy, and impressing our peers while we tried to see as much female anatomy as possible. I am hopeful that we are now in our young adulthood or “college days”, where we still occasionally go to strip clubs or throw keggers, but are increasingly concerned with more adult and mature matters.

Indies have more going in their favor now than ever. Huge and widespread distribution channels, press and respect from industry sites and publications, and like you said, access to a huge amount of cheap and free tools to make games with. And even as an indie you CAN stay on the bleeding edge of technology – the UDK from Epic Games is available for free (25% royalty fees after you make your first $5000). And of course Unity is cheap and offers a wide amount of publishing options. Both it, UDK, and XNA all over ready to go options for porting games to mobile devices.

I always laugh when you talk about taking your own advice. It’s so hard, isn’t it? I fall in the same boat most of the time. Hopefully not right now, however. I am working on a short game using the UDK (and bleeding edge graphics – cause I am an artist and cry for my normal maps and custom graphic shaders at night ;P ) similarly themed as Jacob’s Ladder. No weapons. No monsters. No high octane action. No health meter. No way to die. It is basically a first person personal tour into madness where the environment changes around the player on the fly in real-time. Puzzles must be solved and the player must decide or discover whether what they are seeing at any given time is real or not. I want to play with players perceptions and force them to piece together what is objective reality from an elaborate fantasy or delusion.

So, uh, not exactly mainstream. Did I mention I have to finish the alpha for this sucker in 12 weeks? Why am I posting on here?! Jay, you and your thoughtful articles will be my undoing! ;P

Rampant Coyote said,

Even with a cutting-edge engine, it’s hard to maintain cutting-edge graphics. Maybe that’s less of a problem for you awesome artist types, I guess. 🙂

And sometimes I wonder how much sooner I would have been done with FK if I didn’t post five+ times per week. But then I decided that I really don’t want to know.

Bad Sector said,

And to add a bit of a opposite “force” to the topic, in your pursuit for innovation please don’t break what works 🙂

skavenhorde said,

Ugghhh I just got done with a mile long post over at rpgwatch discussing this very issue.

My take on it is if they try to improve what has been established then I’ll be a happy camper. For example: AOD improves upon C&C immensely. They aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel, but they are trying to perfect it.

Now on the other hand it can get too much of the same. Like Din’s Curse. I don’t like that game at all because it’s basically just a Diablo clone. However, Depths of Peril was sublime. It offered something interesting and new into the mix.

So either try to improve something by making it just a bit better or throw in some new awesome gameplay feature like the factions in Depths of Peril.

sascha said,

“designed by committee”

I feel that most new mainstream games are affected by this. They seem to be made by a committee of graphics card manufacturers.

Other than that I agree with all your points. I’m glad I got at least three game ideas in the cooker that cover all your points. Now I only need to realize them *groan*!

One other thing I’d like to mention on this occasion is that you ‘shouldn’t kill your favorites”! A friend some days ago told me that one should be able to “kill his favorites” to be able to finish projects. After some thinking I disagree with this however. Because what’s your point of making games if you kill what you love about it?! Maybe there are some people who want to make games just for the money or because it’s currently hip but for me the single most important requirement about creating games is passion! And passion comes from something you love. If you kill this, how can you still have passion for it?! Don’t kill your favorites, foster them!

Rampant Coyote said,

Yeah, that’s my understanding of the term too – a writer (or game designer) may be attached to a particularly lovely part of the their work which – often the scene or concept that was the inspiration for the whole thing – which in the end detracts rather than adds. It basically means to be humble enough to axe that parts that don’t work, no matter how much you’ve personally invested in them.

That’s a danger of being too much of a “lone wolf” indie — you may not have that support structure in place to help you recognize when such things need to be culled out.