By Erin Reynolds - June 27, 2005

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Conclusion

"Katamari Damacy" is by no means the only prominent example of innovations presently coming out of Japan. Of the three major console producers - Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo - Nintendo is actively challenging themselves to discover and utilize new, uniquely different facets of gaming. The recently released handheld system, the DS, serves as an example. The dual-screen and touch-pad control has opened doors for developers to create games of a whole new breed for this system. Two examples include new games featuring the ability to make music from essentially manipulating plankton ("Electroplankton") and another that claims to provide training for the brain ("Touhoku University's Future Technology Collaborative Research Centre's Professor Ryuuta Kawashima presents: DS Brain Training for Adults”)

Each truly unique game that is released opens more doors for further new innovations to be discovered, formatted, and potentially released. Every new prescient set provides the opportunity for a branching out from the status quo. This is how the gaming industry has always grown and is the only way it will continue to do so. Producers of America, wake up! You have been lulled by the ease of near guaranteed commercial success via fatuous ‘me-too-ism’ at the expense of losing a leadership role and the need to take the industry beyond the constraints of decades old creative achievements. Guide the process, don’t just lamely follow the trends. You must begin to initiate, not just imitate.

Unfortunately, and to be fair, there is truth to the notion that as games become more expensive and time consuming to make and bring to market, creating high-risky concept games will have ever higher stakes, and many developers will simply not be willing to play in this arena. Long term, it will likely cost them even more, but it is the prevailing reality. Peripheral stop-gaps, such as the new consoles that offer seductive opportunities to make games sweeter eye-candy through advanced technology will most likely backfire and further impede the growth of the gaming industry. Someone has to write the new songs, not just play the old ones on shinier instruments. While games such as "Katamari Damacy" exemplify the fact that solid gameplay always supersedes flashy graphics when it comes to the true value of a game, it will be the superficial, the cheap, the facade that continues to be developed and promoted at the manufacturing level rather than what counts - the game itself.

So what does all this really mean? Unless game developers as an industry begin to facilitate and actively encourage creative risk taking and experimentation, which might require no small dose of commercial courage, the entire market will fade from the lack of new and original games. Retail shelves will be stocked with worn-out redundancies, offering nothing more than the same mediocrity they have offered the consumer for the past decade.

Small and superficial flirts with change and innovation may prolong gaming’s vitality for a while. Maybe the large breasted girls will look a little more realistic, the environments may be a visually richer spectacle, and more celebrities may voice the characters. Perhaps, for some people, those improvements will satisfy. However, games will then only come to be defined as simple commercial endeavors meant to amuse those looking for a cheap thrill – perhaps a less exciting and only slightly more dignified version of the definition of pornpgrahy. If we accept that as the denotation of videogames, then once the novelty wears off (and advancements in technology can provide life support for only so long) people will inevitably lose interest and look to find new thrills elsewhere. Speaking for myself, I am going to get bored with playing the same "Duke Nukem" or "Metroid" knockoffs I have been playing already since my childhood. On the positive side, though, dulling of the gaming industry may go so far as to inspire me to put down the controller and pick up a book.

Read the opposing point of view article, Counterpoint: Small changes in tired genres drives change in the gaming industry here.

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1: The stagnation of an industry 2: Revolutionary games are the saving grace 3: Conclusion