Innovation not necessarily Indie?
As a judge for the Independent Games Festival, I’d be the first in line to agree with Jeff Vogel, who suggests in an article for RPG Vault that the truly innovative games won’t be coming from the indie gamedev scene, but rather from the big corporations:
But truly innovative games? The sort you’re only going to see a few more times in your lifetime? Those will come from Electronic Arts.
I would agree with the point Jeff’s making, and I do enjoy the dash of realism that he’s attempting to throw on the indie fanboys. After reviewing hundreds of indie titles over the years in the IGF (as well as reviewing hundreds of non-indie titles for the AIAS), I would say I’ve seen equal numbers of innovative titles in each camp.
The deciding factors for both groups is risk. Innovation requires lots of risk, otherwise everyone would be doing it. And clearly, as Jeff points out, a big developer like EA as a much larger safety net for assuming risk than does a one title, shoe-string budget indie developer.
Of course, if one assumes that many indie titles are products of love rather than products of the market, it would seem to suggest innovation as being more likely. Unfortunately, game development is not quite to the point where it can be driven 100% by creative vision. It still requires an unnecessary amount of technical skill. That may be (or rather, should be) changing, though.
The problem is that companies like EA are not in the risk-taking business. Well, that’s not quite right… they’re in the healthy-risk-taking business, the calculated-risk-taking business, but not the going-out-on-a-limb-crazy-person-risk-taking business. That’s left to the indies — or to the lucky few well-funded creative visionaries in our industry like Will Wright.
Of course, for those indies that are developed as an extra-curricular activity (and many are), then that’s the real opportunity for innovation. Those indies have the benefit of stability (their day job’s paycheck) while at the same time having the option to be incredibly risky. I think this is where we’ll see the real innovation in the indie market.
Where do we find folks who are financially stable while still having plenty of time and desire to craft indie games? Look no further than your local college or university (or even high school!). Their bills are paid, their room and board is covered, and they’ve got plenty of free time (and a burning desire to do stuff differently than those that came before them purely out of spite). Huh… kinda the same place where most musical innovation comes from, and lots of cinematic innovation.
But I think the real innovation kicker will be when technology is a secondary aspect of game development. That’s not an original statement, by the way, so don’t bother quoting me on it. Digital artists and musicians basically don’t have to speak in terms of “innovation” anymore as a buzzword because they can essentially do as they please with their craft. It either works or it doesn’t, but there’s little risk (in time or resources) in doing something different than what’s already established.
In game development, since you have to tackle a stupid amount of technical hurdles, and process hurdles, and resource hurdles just to get a reasonable representation of your idea, innovation (which usually requires an incredible amount of iteration) becomes very costly. In fact, the more innovative something is the more costly the iteration becomes. For example, to iterate on an FPS is cheap because you’re making minor tweaks to balance gameplay. To iterate on some unknown, unestablished genre, you find yourself turning the ruleset upside-down one day, adding six layers of complexity the next, and tossing it all in the garbage at the end of the week because it’s simply not fun. That’s expensive. That’s really expensive if you’ve got 100 artists and programmers supporting your efforts.
Of course, the indie doesn’t have the 100 artists and programmers to worry about when they innovate… they’ve just got that telephone bill and house payment sitting in their inbox with no paycheck in sight. The reality is that the indie is simply burning the candle at the opposite end than the non-indie. While corporate devs may be burning cash to innovate, indies are delaying any potential of cash in order to innovate. And both are left in the undesirable position of the end results still not being fun on even the most superficial or basic levels.
Hence, the reason why indies (and non-indies) end up rehasing the same games over and over. We already know they’re fun. We already know what works about them and what doesn’t work. We’ve got great ideas of what we’d do different, and we’ve got great ideas of which aesthetics we’d like to change.
Ironically, the problem facing our industry right now is that the defining trait of our medium, interaction, is the most costly thing to innovate with. That’s because we’re simply piggybacking from other industries on how to innovate elsewhere: art, music, graphics techniques… they’ve all been innovated in previously, and the iterative loops for innovating in them is well-established (and thus inherently less risky). Interactivity, on the other hand, is new and unique to game development — the defining trait of game development — and thus, no one has come before us to prove out it’s necessary iterative loop.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, though. One thing academics are bringing to the table is the same thing their students bring to the table: someone who’s got a bit of stability and the opportunity to take risks. That’s what we pay them for (or rather, what the colleges/universities pay them for). The academics, in their incredibly self-concious way, are helping idenity how to best iterate on interactivity.
I found your post on Gamedev.net…and out of curiosity I read what you published here.
I couldn’t agree more…and you know why?
I’m an academic myself, and I was struggling to establish my research on games (I especially focus on Game AI and game design, but I started in 3D graphics and mathmatical modeling).
In my old Uni it was too difficult, so I moved to Melbourne (Australia) at the City Campus of RMIT University.
I found a very different and positive environment: Everybody seems to be so thrilled by these new games stuff that we’re bringing, we have a Games Degree (which means students and the University blessing), and what I’m currently trying to do is to establish a SIG university-wide.
Then I’ll try to take over the city, and so on
Nice post and right point: Only Unis (being they students, lecturers or PhDs who do that) can take real risks and innovate the videogames world.
Cheers
Incidentally, I’m trying to get my first commercial product to beta before I graduate college, and Facade, one of the most innovative games in recent memory, was developed by a GTech prof (Mateas) and a guy with a full-time job (Stern). Its true that most indie games are merely evolutionary, but there are a few projects to keep an eye out for. Those are (in no particular order) Chris Crawford’s Storytron engine (funded by some foundation), Santiago Siri’s Utopia (funded by Three Melons), and whatever Craig Perko is working on (funded by his nest egg from working at a data-base company). Anything I’m doing will be standing off of the shoulders of these giants.
But yeah, thats about it. Rag Doll Kung Fu was pretty good, and Mark is a really cool guy, he was working at Lionhead while he made that.
But seriously, fuck EA.
A few more points after reading your stuff on Game Dev 2.0
We’re seeing a push for a standardized code organization with Microsoft’s XNA and this thing Nintendo is doing with Freescale that I’m going to hear about next week at a vendor meeting.
However, drama engines like Storytron and Utopia provide the content platform of these more elaborate technologies, but with an added advantage: content creation becomes primarily an issue of writing and desing, and not so much a technical one. While this is perhaps more limiting in theory than a pure development environment where you could build anything, the constraints focus the artist/writer/designer on a new form of social/dramatic gameplay.
Either way, rapid prototyping is more easily done from a pure design standpoint, and from this process a system of metrics can be inferred that enables a better understanding of the dynamics and thus the needed content.
This is the approach I’m taking with Storytron, Santiago is already sortof doing it for me with his engine and the ensueing game.
You’re right about having a day-job really enabling someone to contribute to indie development. On that note, why don’t you e-mail me and tell me a bit more about what you do at EA, you’re history and skills, and if you’d possibly be able and interested in contributing to one of our projects at the soon-to-be-formed True Vacuum Studios LLC. Our first project, an interactive version of Naked Lunch based on the Utopia engine, will be distributed via Manifesto (provided THEY manage to get funded), which means fat royalties even for a small percentage share. It might be a nice alternative to drug use.
[...] Innovation not necessarily Indie? [...]
[...] Innovation not necessarily Indie? [...]
My comments might be slightly left-field…
But, what does a truly innovative game mean? In music, cinema, and art, all ideas are based upon previous ideas. I don’t think it’s any different in game development. Innovative games are generally referred to as those that are gimmicky, I think what the industry really needs are more games that are ‘fun’ and ‘long lasting’.
There are lots of so called indie “innovative games” out there, but the problem is that they don’t stick with the consumer. A lot of japanese game concepts are actually quite innovative, and may actually work very well here in the US if they were localized properly. Guitar Hero is a good example of such, rhythm games were all over the place when I was a kid in Asia, yet it’s taken 10+ years until a solid rhythm game appears in the market here.
I think innovative and fun games can be made through healthy-risk taking. Nintendo is a good example of such. It’s more of a problem of execs in major publishers here not seeing it…
You’re a smacktard.
I seem to have randomly found this blog… you have no idea about the things of which you speak. It is pretty simple to say: “I think that so-so will create innovative games…”, but it takes intelligence to explain WHY you think that so and so will create innovative games. This blog seems to me (At least this page) to say: “I think this and I don’t know why.”. Besides like the other guys said, what defines an ‘innovative game’? I think by innovative game you mean game with new ideas, original ideas (innovative means original, ideas not done before), that have an original twist that has not been seen before. The truth is, it is very difficult to create something innovative now, just about every story plot, or idea has been fleshed out already. Of course you could just take an old concept and re do it better than the original concept did it. You know what, fuck ‘innovative’, innovation is just a cheap buzzword being passed around now although it does describe the concept well. Like the others guys said, gameplay > new ideas. Who gives a crap if a game takes place in a universe we have yet to dream of, if it is absolutely not fun to play? There are two elements that a game must have, the first is gameplay, the second is a story (SP campaign). I think EA sucks for making unoriginal games like Spore and Battlefield 2 (honestly could you not pick a more generic name?). I think will wright is like EA, he is a business guy. Anything to make a big buck, his niche is innovation, AKA games that have not been done before. You build a game around gameplay and then add a story you do not go the other way around. There is a reason why halo is popular, it has a very Deep storyline (I am still making theories about it), and it is amazingly fun to play! I play Halo pc mostly I just cannot get enough of it, halo 2 is fun online but I do get tired of it sometimes. The reason why some games are never like hollywood movies is because games are meant to be fair, unlike movies (like in Gundam Wing where the gundam suits can blow up like 3 bagillion Zakus in cool explosion effects, and somehow only get seriously damaged when the story designers feel like making the gundam lose). They are Games after all, they are not made to look pretty or be unfair. How will you attract and keep an audience, if you give a small percentage of the player population an overpowered gameplay element, how will you keep that majority of players that get Owned playing? How will they not just throw their controller and shut off their system? Did chess become popular because it had gold jewels and diamonds encrusted in the figurines? No, it became popular because there were so many ways to win/lose, and was thus FUN!
@asdwgqwgbbzxb: Uhm… sure, yeah, whatever. I believe your conclusions speak for themselves.