Games are boring. Bring on the independents!

At least, that’s the headline of a Times Online piece, quoting Electronic Arts’ chief executive.

Obviously, I don’t agree. Dozens of genuinely fun video games exist. But the article touches on something that’s been bothering me since I first subscribed to PC Gamer about five years ago (a subscription I have since dropped).

That is, that almost all video games are created to fit within industry categories—FPS, RPG, RTS, and so on. Some spectacular innovation takes place within these categories. For instance, Thief: The Dark Project and its sequels used the FPS genre to present a game with a very different feel.

And there are hybrids. I’ve seen a lot of games touted as “Action RPG” or “FPS-RTS hybrid.”

But we don’t see new categories. I remember the delight with which I played Ultima Underworld, which basically kicked off the FPS genre. And back in the 80s, people would put out just about anything as a commercial game, hoping it would stick. Such innovations are very few and far between, now.

Understandable, of course. Top-of-the-line games are much, much more complicated and expensive to produce than they were in the 80s. Companies want to make bestsellers, and it’s much safer to invest those millions of dollars in a tried-and-true game with a slightly different skin and some tweaks or refinements to gameplay than it is to come up with something truly fresh.

I think, therefore, that the truly great, new, genre-changing games will tend to emerge from independent innovators. Some absolutely terrific (though simplistic) Flash games, for instance, show up that experiment with just what makes a fun game. More will come.

These innovative games may not be the best, but when someone hits on a great formula, the big companies will probably co-opt it and make an A-list game out of it.

1 comment July 9th, 2007

Fair dice

I love me some Catan, so this little application strikes a chord with me. Especially since I’m convinced the dice that came with my copy of the game are far from fair and roll fives far more often than any pair of dice should.

Of course, the frustration of true but unfair randomness in games like Settlers of Catan is also part of the fun. And, in fact, essential. Because if you find yourself in a slight losing position, you have a reasonable expectation that quirky dice rolls may turn the game around for you. If the dice were purely fair and all probabilities exactly as expected, players in a losing position after turn four or five might find that the game becomes, basically, a hopeless chore.

Still, a very fun thought. If anyone ever does play Catan with “fair dice,” I’d love to hear how it goes.

4 comments July 9th, 2007