.: Counter-point: Small changes in tired genres drives change in the gaming industry

By Jim Drewes - June 27, 2005

Debunking the conceptually innovative games

Another arena in which the innovation and forward progress battle is fought is in the realm of gaming interfaces. Some people believe that the way we interface and interact with video games will ultimately be a major driving force in the industry. But what happens when we historically examine gaming interfaces? Pong was controlled with a wheel. Atari added on to the single axis interface and used a double-axis joystick and one button. Nintendo evolved to a directional pad, plus two major buttons. This trend has continued until the present. On a console-to-console basis, interfaces have only changed as a refinement. The interfaces that failed miserably were things like the Power Glove. Change didn’t occur overnight. Change didn’t even occur drastically. Change was simply a refinement of tested principals. And those who site Dance Dance Revolution as a new form of gaming, and one that has changed the industry haven’t thought back and remembered the Power Pad. DDR interfaces are hardly innovative, and thus shouldn’t be argued as such. It was the small changes from game-to-game, and console-to-console that enabled DDR to be created. The idea of dancing on a pad didn’t bring about significant game industry shaking change. Instead, the gradual advancement of games in general through small, seemingly insignificant changes, is what manufactured games like DDR.

Many believe that change needs to occur purely on a conceptual level. The concepts of game play, and originality are thought to be the only things that push the industry forward. Certainly developing new concepts in gaming would serve the industry well, but that doesn’t mean that a game needs to be a completely new idea. Conceptually, games like Katamari Damacy are vastly different. Why does the entire idea behind a game have to be new for new concepts to be introduced? As an example, gamers find it hard to view the latest RPG title as innovative and fresh no matter how many new concepts are introduced. The reason this happens is because a new RPG is still just an RPG. Recently the role playing game niche has contributed some fantastic elements to the gaming industry, namely the idea of massive multiplayer online gaming. World of Warcraft is being played by millions of gamers worldwide. People have become so addicted to MMORPGs that individuals have lost their jobs, married an online acquaintance, or paid real-world dollars for virtual commodities. Yet critics are still complaining that RPGs are bland and lack innovation. How have peripheral or indie games that claim to be truly innovative affected the gaming community as profoundly as the advancement of the MMORPG? The answer is that they haven’t.

So who are the poster children of gaming revolution? Katamari Damacy? Lumines? N? Or perhaps experimental or student showcases such as Dyadin? Probably none of these games are poster children of gaming revolution. For starters, many gamers haven’t even heard of N, or Katamari Damacy. Didn’t Super Mario Brothers 3 do more for the gaming industry? Surely it brought more individuals into the gaming life even though it was just another side-scroller, and the third game to be released in the series. Didn’t Doom do more for the FPS genre than Wolfenstein 3D? Wasn’t World of Warcraft more significant than most of the other RPG predecessors? The revolution hasn’t come from sweeping changes in the industry. Change and advancement has come from taking an existing concept and developing it further. One perfect example of how change needs to come microscopically instead of macroscopically is to look at the development of The Sims. Contrary to popular belief, The Sims wasn’t an original idea. Back in the days of Apple II computers, I spent hours playing a game called “Little Computer People.” It was the exact same idea, where you had to attend to the needs of a digital person living in a house on your computer. It took decades of game refinement, developing the notion of user-created and life simulations through the other Sim games like Sim City, Sim Earth, etc. to create The Sims. Those little Tamagotchi pets that people used to carry around in their backpacks were also predecessors to The Sims. It wasn’t until graphics, hardware, gaming popularity, and video game interaction had been advanced to the appropriate level by so many small changes that The Sims was able to become a reality, and a blockbuster success.

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