November 6, 2008
Innovation comes from unexpected places to
long-established titles
By
Michael Lafferty
Some old
genres get some very next-gen facelifts and boy, what a great thing to see
There is an old adage about
standing still in a moving world, about how if you don’t move forward, you risk
falling behind. For the video-game industry, moving forward was something that
seemed to happen infrequently. It felt, from the perspective of a game reviewer,
that most developers were content to borrow from the past, make a few changes
but nothing that significantly changed the initial concepts or gameplay styles.
Stuck into a mode where
expecting things to be old-school, even if that ‘school’ was a year ago, can be
dangerous for the industry. We crave surprises; we thirst for change that takes
genres forward and takes advantage of the new hardware. Changes do not
necessarily mean just a shiny coat of paint that elevates graphics, but rather
taking the core elements and then bending them to try something new.
It rarely happens, and yet,
within the span of a couple of weeks, innovation has reared its head and in some
pretty unlikely places – a Tom Clancy title and a game from DICE/EA.
When one thinks of anything
attached to the Tom Clancy name, it has evolved to the point where it is solid,
but not totally fresh.
EndWar is fresh, and it may have some of the same mechanics at the core of
the gameplay, but the way it is all brought together smacks of innovation. The
real-time strategy genre has core elements – there are two or more sides, each
with tech trees, each with the ability to invest in upgrades, and each vying for
domination. These are usually in the point-and-click manner. You find a unit,
you click on it, you click where you want it to go and it goes. You click on it
again, highlight and click on an opposing force and it goes there and fights
said opposing force. Click wrong and you may work yourself into a corner.
Translating that to the consoles from PC was a challenge and credit goes to the
dev teams who tried. But the folks behind EndWar did it one better. You don’t
click on units, you speak to them. The Logitech headset that works with the game
is the control interface. It is a marvelous bit of engineering, not only in
concept, but in execution. You don’t have to speak slowly, you don’t have to
yell, you talk in a normal voice and the game recognizes it and does what you
tell it to do.
That is next-gen, that is
intriguing and a whole lot of fun.
Then there is
Mirror’s Edge, the effort from DICE and EA that is – roughly speaking – a
platformer combined with a first-person shooter – except you don’t do much
shooting. You platform jump, run, dangle, swing, slide, wall climb and perform a
variety of acrobatic moves within a vibrant living city. Without going into a
lot of detail, this is a game that really takes the concept of 2D platforming,
elevates it to first-person 3D and brings it solidly into the next-gen era.
From Mirror’s Edge
Regardless of whether either
game is critically acclaimed or not, what matters the most is that developers
are thinking in different ways, and trying to bring innovation back to the
industry.
It is about time. We have seen
some innovation in the storytelling elements of late with games that had
compelling characters and enough twists and turns to keep players wondering what
would happen next. The graphical upgrades have been evidenced with the power of
the next-gen consoles, but little has been done in terms of moving genres
forward.
Dokapon Kingdom from Atlus has done a good job of taking some diverse genres
and combining them to render out a game that has solid multiplayer elements,
like a party game, with some board game elements and role-playing aspects.
From Dokapon Kingdom
And judging from what has been
released in snippets, there might be more innovation on the horizon.
It’s about time. The industry
is still, in many ways, in its infancy. It is feeling its way around but in that
attempt, and with the goal to remain viable, we’ve seen a lot of games churned
out that are just rehashes of what we have seen before.
One had to wonder if
developers were focused on the financial bottom line, or just out of step with
the gaming community. Players grow, and as they grow in proficiency they are
likely to not want more of the same, but rather want games that challenge them.
As evidence, the online element is flourishing. Players would rather take on
other players than NPCs. Get into a shooter deathmatch online and, if your first
foray, you may be surprised at the skill level. These are generally not places
for the timid.
Finally, though, it seems that
developers and publishers are getting to the place where taking a few chances
(albeit well-thought-out chances) is warranted. Innovation will only lead the
industry forward.
Sure the bottom line is still
financial, but when one considers the entertainment value (especially in tougher
economic times), it makes sense to be diverse enough to make games as compelling
as possible. Consider the price for a movie and the length of time spent in a
dark theater, inactive, while you are being assaulted by video and dialogue. It
is a passive thing. Juxtapose that against the cost of a game that actually
requires something of you, something interactive. When you think about the
length of time spent in a game, and the game’s cost, it does not take an
economics major to realize that – for the most part – the better value is
playing a game (in terms of money spent per hour of entertainment value). You go
to a movie and drop $20 (or so for a single person) for two hours of
entertainment. You pay $50 for a game and get anywhere from six to 40-plus hours
of involvement and entertainment value.
This is why it is important
for game developers to think ahead of the curve, to learn from what has happened
in the past, and then to exercise that creative vision to move in new
directions.
