Noticed anything.... off..... about recent games? And I'm not just talking about the many that are being released in some half-finished state in order to cash in on holiday sales.
There is a far more greivous crime of which so many games (and studios) are guilty of. The crime of a complete lack of imagination.
One of the consequences of having a YouTube channel about a game that has spent 10 years in development is that you spend an awful long time thinking about... well... game development. And that leaves you with a lot of pretty logical observations anyone would come to, if only they thought about it too.
Like this one: Except for a select few, most titles build on games that came before; using a proven formula and adding or changing a major feature, and pretty shallow changes elsewhere in order to fit the theme.
Compare these titles: Left for Dead, World War Z, Vermintide and Alien Isolation. Each has multiple storylines broken up into episodes. Each has a team of 3 or four players working together. Each sends waves of 'basic' bad guys at you, followed by various special enemies with their own abilities.
Sure, some have loot (hardly an original concept in gaming), some have levels and classes, etc, but these are concepts a room full of people with a vague knowledge about games could have come up with.
That's not to say developers can't hit upon a winning combination of already well-established features. But it's hardly daring to break the mold, is it?
The reason is simple: whilst gamers would like to think new games are driven by passion, they are a product. Like all products, they need to generate profit.
Those holding the purse strings believe the best way to do so is to emulate successful games. Innovation is risk to these people - risk that the magic formula will be broken. And the seem to cling to the belief that without this magic formula, they will not see a return on their investment.
There seems to be little consideration for the growing mountain of titles that have failed despite following a "successful" formula closely, or eve exactly.
One of the clearest examples of this is World of Warcraft. How many MMO's have been influenced by it? How many have failed in part due to the fact they were shoehorned into WoW's formula? WoW's influence is significant and lengthy. It has just entered its 19th year.
In other words, the success of World of Warcraft have led developers to cling to a successful formula with only minor changes. The resulting lack of imagination in game design is a whole generation of games that fail to fully embrace their IP, let alone approach their potential.
Take "Ghostbusters Spirits Unleashed" as a recent example. It fails to grasp the core concepts that made the movies so enjoyable - the idea of ghost hunting as a fledgling business, strapped for cash; the wry humour; the faux expertise, dealing with unsympathetic city authorities, upgrading the station and containment field, advertising the service, monitoring city-wide paranormal activity.
Spirits Unleashed fails dismally at most if not all of these, either by poor implementation, or in most cases, not attempting them at all. Instead we are fobbed off with a game favouring PVP arena style gameplay that has been done to death with Tarkov, Warzone, Hunt Showdown, Dead By Daylight et al.
As I write this, I'm not sure precisely what the solution is, or even if there is one. Maybe we need investors and publishers who understand the industry well enough to know that carbon copies of previous games will cause the game to flop, and stain the reputation of all those involved. Maybe the solution is the community being more critical of copy games, and less judgmental of those who try to break the mould. Maybe this is an unavoidable part of the game development process.
But how many games will be sacrificed to mediocrity because developers, publishers and investors lack the courage to take a chance?
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