Re: Is Innovative Gameplay a Dead End?

"PizaZ" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Well I don't understand... how can you counter my argument of what I think
> Innovative Gameplay is (the enhancement of the user experience through new
> and or improved constructs, interfaces, etc) if you have no clear sense of
> what it is?  You're saying, you don't know what it is, but yet its not
those
> things i listed?

No Pizaz, I'm saying that the design/development community has no idea what
"innovative gameplay" is really supposed to mean, it's just bullshitting to
sound important. As the blog post said, I question whether innovative
gameplay is really possible at all, as there are no videogames that I know
of that provide a root different type of experience that is not already
available in some shape or form in analog gaming before it.

> Gauntlet and Halo are indeed leagues apart as are their respective
> gameplays...

They're not. They're very similar. In both games, there are laid out levels,
where you (or you and a mate) basically bail about a map, killing enemies
and collecting items, until you get to the end of the level. What has
changed are the depictive elements. The perspective. The setting. The AI.
The varied mechanics (Halo's shield, use of vehicles etc). Etc. These are
all variants, developments and innovations in the use of elements. But there
is no new gameplay here. In the end of the day, you're doing the same thing
in Gauntlet as you are in Halo.

The same sort of thinking applies to the rest of your examples. Gameplay is
a series of verbs (build, sneak, kill, collect, etc) as old as the hills
themselves, long before the videogame ever got here.

> Because the gameplay between all of them is quite different.  You cannot
> play the same way in Tribes as you do in America's Army and hope to do
well.
> There are no health packs in AA and no jet packs either.  Frankly,
> differences are so obvious to me i can't believe the need to describe the
> difference.  Now if you want to talk about lack of innovation, id say
there
> was no real innovation in Tribes 2 over Tribes 1.

Again, all perfectly fine elemental contribution. But correct me if I'm
wrong here, in Tribes and Doom and Halo and Wolfenstein and so on and so
forth, you spend a lot of time killing things. The fact that there may be
health packs or there many not is an interesting dimension, but the root of
the gameplay is still KILL.

My point is not that it's bad that some games have evolved these
contributions over the years. My point is rather that there is, completely
aside from these examples, a lot of time and effort wasted on so-called
innovative gameplay, which is fool's gold.

> And innovation in gameplay isn't limited to inter-genre innovations, but
> also the creation of completely new types of games like The Sims.

The Sims was new for videogaming because of its subject matter, not its
gameplay. The gameplay is the same sort of play as has been seen in
children's doll houses for thousands of years. It is essentially a 'care
for' verb game, like Creatures and Lemmings and thousands of other games
before them. Will Wright's genius is that he has synthesised that doll house
experience into a digital form and depicted a convincing faux real world
that draws many a player and gives them a great experience. Innovative
gameplay it is not. Innovative depiction it is. And great fun too.

 > I think the main point I'd like to get across is this.  Most people do
have
> a general idea of what it means to have innovative gameplay.  Most people
> can see the innovations that a game like Counter Strike brought to the
> Tactical First Person Shooter genre.  As best as I can tell, you're being
a
> word lawyer and are only arguing semantics... that you don't think
> "innovative gameplay" is an accurate phrase to describe what people really
> mean when they use it.  If gameplay is synonymous with genre, and
innovation
> is something never seen before, then naturally you'll never have
"innovative
> gameplay" without a brand new genre cropping up.  I don't believe thats
what
> most designers believe however.  They accept the phrase as an industry
> phrase that conveys a desire to create more than just a copy cat with a
> different skin.

Yes and no. Yes, as in every decent designer I've known does not just want
to create a copy with a different skin. No in that many of them actually
don't know what they mean by 'innovative gameplay', and it is one of the
most blatantly mis-used phrases from here to publishers in Katmandu along
with a whole host of other horseshit language.

Maybe I am focussing on the letter of the words, but I believe that it is
important to be clear in these things, as without clarity, everybody ends up
hearing what they want to hear whenever Tag Phrase X is invoked. By being
clear and focussing on what the real problems are instead of hiding in the
sand and spouting academo-babble, there is a chance that maybe designers
might actually claim or reclaim some sense of creative consistency in their
work and take responsibility for actually making a great game. By focussing
on the elements that they use to depict rather than hokey ideas of
innovative gameplay, they might actually do some decent work for a change.

Thanks for the feedback,
particle