When you take a look at the modern gaming landscape, it’s amazing to see how far we’ve come as an industry and a medium. There’s lots out there now, and even more on the horizon, to get excited about. We’re at the point where there’s something for almost everyone- shooters, RPGs, adventure games, titles that explore human thought and emotion, abstract titles that require investment on the part of the player experiencing them. It’s a large industry, and that’s thanks to decades worth of innovation.
But that’s exactly what I’m here to talk about today – as much cool stuff as there is out there in the world of video games, there’s not much innovation going on these days.
Look at the AAA space, and the absence is most evident. Most major titles released over the past 2-3 years have either been FPS or a variation on open world RPG/action adventure (or, in the case of Far Cry , a combination of both). Now this is fine as long as the games themselves are well-made and compelling (which most of them are), but when that’s almost all we get, that’s when we start reaching levels of over-saturation.
Unfortunately, things aren’t much different when it comes to independant games either. Exposure is a double-edged sword. While there’s no doubt it’s a good thing that smaller developers are being given a larger platform for their works via Steam, PSN, XBL, etc., with that platform comes more pressure to deliver on time, within budget… basically all the pressures larger studios and developers have to contend with. As we just saw with Sunset developers Tale Of Tales, their approach to designing a game for major platforms was to pull inspiration from a popular indie hit- Gone Home . Sunset underperformed, and similar to what often happens with larger studios, they had no choice but to close their doors.
So, when so much money is at stake, what room does that leave developers to come up with fresh ideas and concepts? Well, one possibility is with the incoming wave of VR titles. Of course, a pessimist could argue that there’s even more money on the line in that world, so who knows? We could be facing the exact same problem if VR goes mainstream.
All I know for sure is that I don’t relish the idea of playing open-world action/adventure game after open-world action/adventure game for the next several years. There have to be fresh voices out there with the means to deliver on original ideas. I think it’s time to let them have their say.