Not many new ideas for games

[ElPolloDiabl]

As well as many good things I might remember this decade as the decade when everything got dumbed down, especially computer games.
I can probably single out the console as the source of all the me too titles. If people are having a good time playing multiplayer, I guess it is providing entertainment.

There is obviously no risktaking in new releases and I'm sure the marketing department is pulling all the design strings. I heard recently that the creators of farmville are now bigger than Electronic Arts. I hope the industry learn a lesson from that. Not that you should make games for low spec computers... They should learn you have to be competitive and constantly evolve your games, not dumb them down and add more eye candy.

In the (not too) old days someone made a game because they wanted to see their ideas come to life. Nowadays it's all about the money.
Maybe the money just attracts people wanting to make a me too title and I'm ignoring the innovators.
Oh well, back to work on my own game(s), I'll put up or shut up.

[Khephren]

As well as many good things I might remember this decade as the decade when everything got dumbed down, especially computer games.
I can probably single out the console as the source of all the me too titles. If people are having a good time playing multiplayer, I guess it is providing entertainment.

There is obviously no risktaking in new releases and I'm sure the marketing department is pulling all the design strings. I heard recently that the creators of farmville are now bigger than Electronic Arts. I hope the industry learn a lesson from that. Not that you should make games for low spec computers... They should learn you have to be competitive and constantly evolve your games, not dumb them down and add more eye candy.

In the (not too) old days someone made a game because they wanted to see their ideas come to life. Nowadays it's all about the money.

I agree with you on major publishers, but I don't agree completly. Type in 'flash games' and you'll find many, many portals, all making money allowing you to play thousands of decent games. Many are Amiga like (personally, I think plants VS zombie and Zuma etc, would make ace Amiga games). Also, mobile app stores are chock full of bedroom coder games, many of a very high standard (well..not all). Same is true of XBLA. I play more XBLA games than £40 blockbusters. Handhelds like the DS also allow for small teams to create games they believe in, with out so much finiancial risk

[djrikki]

Nintendo must be doing something right look at Mario and all those Aunt Bessie's Brain-Training so called 'games' on the DS.  Simple concept, maximum interest and sales $$$.

Those Brain-Training 'games' are not too dis-similar to what bedroom programmers were churning it 20-25 years ago.... only it has a stylus and the average consumer is 'ooh wow ace look at this I can use a pen instead of a mouse and wow look it says I have the brain of a 16yr old this DS rocks its knocked 30yrs off my age!'

Sony and the first Playstation pretty much killed gameplay as it was all about the graphics.  I've never bought a games console in my adult life and I ain't missing anything.

I've played the odd game from time to time, buts its like omg this game has like 15 buttons and complex keypad combinations just to jump to from one platform to another!  Bring back the days when all you had was left, right, up and down and fire!

I've been playing Fifa 09 around at friend's house recently on his *spits* XBOX.  Great game I suppose but you are never 100% in control of the player so much 'predictive movement' going on, camera-pans, god damn advertising on the shirts(!), bloody perfect true to life haircuts and other such crap -  I remember Sensi Soccer it was just fun for hours at a time, you could win a game 10-0 and it didn't matter.  Perhaps am just getting old. =p

Games were meant to be an escape from reality, not to mimic life as much as possible.  Why is everyone so fascinated with FPSes and realism?

[klx300r]

...Games were meant to be an escape from reality, not to mimic life as much as possible.  Why is everyone so fascinated with FPSes and realism?

+ 1...graohics are nice but gameplay rules for me...I guess that's why I like it retro:afro:

[Franko]

Having only ever played and enjoyed VIC 20, C64, Amiga & SNES games, I can only say that games & decent gameplay died out long ago with the advent of consoles like the Playstation.

My nephew is one of those who has been into consoles since the first Playstation, I couldn't even name all the different ones he owns, but from what I've seen on them, all of the games on these various consoles he has all look the exact same to me, you now the mind numbing 1st person perspective type of run around and shoot or blow up everything.

Give me stuff like Loco, or The Feary Tale Adventure anyday...

[AJCopland]

When it comes to published games it's all publisher driven and that makes it a nightmare to get a new/different idea pitched most of the time.

If you're after innovation then the indie markets seem to be a thriving place. You should really be checking out TIGSource (http://www.tigsource.com/) for example and its indeie game database

Andy

[djrikki]

The best game I've played in the last 10 years is probably Dofus by french publishers Ankama Software.  I played it solidly for 4 years, a turn-based MMORPG that combines great gameplay with graphics.

But after the playing the same game for so long and two of my characters reaching maximum level it does eventually get 'same-y', but an amazing game really that harks back to the days when gameplay counted more than graphics.  I highly recommended it to anyone - just beware its highly addictive!

http://www.dofus.com/en

[commodorejohn]

I half-agree and half-don't. I can see where you're coming from, but I think you're reaching that conclusion by looking mainly at giant corporate software factories like Electronic Arts, who have indeed had a formula of "get marketing to write a spec sheet and then beat the programmers savagely until it's ready for a Christmas release, never mind the quality" pretty much since the Madden series became their bread and butter. There still is innovation and creativity in the gaming world, but it's more concentrated in areas where making a game requires less money and therefore involves less financial risk, so publishers, game companies, and individual creators aren't so afraid to try interesting things.

Portal, for example, started as a concept demo by a newbie team of developers and was upgraded into a small project Valve bundled with a couple of cost-reduced re-releases. A lot of people bought The Orange Box for Half-Life II and Team Fortress II, but everybody remembers it for Portal, which was unique, a hell of a lot of fun, and probably the best example of in-game storytelling yet produced.

To get even smaller and cheaper, La-Mulana was made entirely by three Japanese guys in their spare time as a love-letter to the MSX home computer and released as freeware. Yet it's not only a solid Metroidvania-style platformer, it also incorporates an interesting story into the gameplay Portal-style, by dropping hints and bits of narrative in among all the stuff you have to explore and building puzzles around its themes.

So I'd have to disagree. There is new and interesting stuff out there, you're just (understandably) looking in the wrong place.

(P.S. I wouldn't use FarmVille as an example of something to aspire to, even when the alternative is EA-style pablum. FarmVille and the other Zynga titles are big business for the same reason heroin is big business. It's not a game, it's a goddamn Skinner box.)

[jj]

I think some of you are missing some gems because of blindness.  yes there are a lot of similar games out there but some of them are the best of the genre.  Gears 2, MW2, dead space resident evil 4  etc
 
Also Mario Galazy is so full of ideas and nintendo does do simple games well, but the main idea is usally simple with lots and lots of cool ideas thrown in

[runequester]

The problem is it costs many millions to produce a game, so you only get something genuinely fresh, when you have someone with a proven track record.

Lots of cool indie games out there though. Check out gems like World of Goo f.x.

[Ilwrath]

I guess I'm not one of those people who look back at the past with rose-tinted glasses.  It's easy to look back and cherry pick 10 or 20 great stand out titles from back then.  And conveniently forget about the mountains of crapware that was out back then, too.

I think modern gaming is pretty darn good.  Yeah, there are a lot of me-too titles.  But it's fairly easy to find the one or two titles that rise to the top.  Not really any different from the old days.  

And, if you're looking for innovation, check out flash portals like Kongregate.  There's a lot new ideas and new takes on old ideas bouncing around in those.  Same with the mobile market.  

Plus, we have it WAY BETTER in some ways.   Take modern simulators.  I loved Papyrus Indianapolis 500 for the Amiga.  And I COULD go back and play it any time I wanted... But why?  Any modern SimBin title features way more cars, way more tracks, and way better driving physics.  (And if I really want realism, First Racing League is out there...)  Fighter Duel Pro was awesome.  I loved it!  But seriously... Go back and play it?  Heck no!  Give me IL-2 Sturmovik.  The bar has been moved sky high compared to those days.  

I never understood the EA bashing, either.  Yeah, EA sells a lot of incremental update sports games.  Is that a problem?  I fully agree, NHL 11 is basically NHL 10 with a few bugfixes, puck bounces, and new hitting animations added.  Is this a bad thing?  Is selling an incremental update to the best NHL game I've ever played something to criticize them for?  I could go back and play Wayne Gretzky Hockey on my Amiga...  But what does it have that hasn't been completely surpassed?

In short, there's still areas in modern gaming where new ideas shine.  And we often have the best versions of old ideas readily available.  I don't really see the point in blindly picking a few crappy titles and clucking on about innovation and quality being dead.  You may have to look for it a bit... But haven't you always?

[orb85750]

Many games have taken a typical Hollywood sci-fi/action route -- sell the eye candy.  Marketing to teenagers?

[B00tDisk]

So many Amigoids idea of good gameplay seems to entail simplistic platformers or shooters; frankly I have no patience for the zillionth 32 color Mario-alike.  Games for me either have to have technical depth (flight sims) or a rich story (RPGs, like the SSI gold box games and others), or elements of both; the nightmarish sci-fi background of the Half Life universe is a good example of this.

"Oh," many of you decry, "it is another boring PC FPS." - yes, because it's on the PC.  If by some miracle Valve allowed it to be ported to other systems and a build was released for the Amiga, I know the game would be embraced by the same detractors.

Game "play", anyway, is a vague and indistinct concept.  Yes, you might (wrongly) think that there's no difference between, say, Doom and the System Shock games (to go all retro on you) but utterly depthless sprite-hoppers like the SotB series, The Killing Gameshow, etc. etc. - those are the same games with different sprites, fact.

[Amiga_Nut]

Something done well with all that Ghz today that couldn't be done before is fine with me. You can't compare 64 player Battlefield 2 on PC with Green Beret/Commando/Beach Head on an old 8 bit and I'd rather be playing Colin McRae Dirt 2/WRC 2010 than RAC Lombard Rally on ST/Amiga too. But I would rather play Ruff n Tumble over gay mario shit on any Nintendo crap with their crayola colours and baby graphics hmmm

I also see people complaining about Playstation but isn't Wipeout 2097 on Amiga one of the greatest achievements we've seen in the community? Thing is both PS and Saturn had 2D gaming abilities that no PC or Amiga could ever touch and many shmups exist for both.

A good game is a good game, and what is good about consoles is their games use every last ounce of mhz left in the system, witness Killzone 2 on a 12 foot screen and then go back to playing Bruce Lee on C64? I think not

What has been lost though is your ability to write such games on locked down hardware. With the exception of Blitz 3D on PC it is pretty much a dead end. Bedroom coding is dead...good games are just as rare as they were in the days of Amiga, 90% of which were badly programmed or ST ports when it came to arcade/action games. There are probably only 10 games on Amiga which wouldn't look out of place in a MAME cabinet to be honest. Ditto C64.

[koshman]

I also don't agree with the OP. Gaming is different today, I miss some things, true, but on the other hand games have advanced soooo much. It's really difficult to compare e.g. last Metal Gear Solid game to the original Metal Gear. The presentation of the story is so dramatic, touching and plain awesome - it's more than a game and it's great.
A gamer is a gamer - I can play UFO for hours on my Amiga and then go and play God of War and enjoy both. And graphics quality matters, it really does. The aforementioned GoW is really a pretty standard game, nothing truly innovative or addictive, but the graphics are simply so beautiful that I just like playing it, I like seeing what comes next.