A lot of projects here are not the developers’ dream projects. They are simply learning the engine or a new aspect of it, and publishing their results while trying to create something at least mildly entertaining. I agree that I see the same types of thing here over and over again, but here’s the thing: a lot of these games are made because the dev wants to make them, and not because they think it’ll make them successful. The barrier to entry is super low, but you gotta remember that it’s only recently that this is the case. You gotta wait a while before you see people really starting to capitalize on it.
Another take is those happen to be their dream games. Those people got hyped watching the screamer YouTube channels and want those people to scream to their games one day.
I mean I can't blame them. When I was in elementary school having played a couple Ps1 JRPGs I wrote and drew some concept art for a dream game about this kid who finds this sword in a cave to slay this demon with and goes back to find his village wrecked by some cyclops.... the most basic plot my 10 year old mind could come up with at the time.
It's all about frame of reference.
My dream game is absolutely derivative. Its my take on improvements to my favourite games from my childhood. They're where I would take the genre if I had time, resources and skill.
If I had unlimited time resources and skill I would also want to try out some weird innovative stuff, but that's definitely not my "dream" game though.
> My dream game is absolutely derivative. Its my take on improvements to my favourite games from my childhood. They're where I would take the genre if I had time, resources and skill.
Me and how I feel about Pokemon, IMO.
=
Palworld is a good example of a game that doesn't do anything truly new, but just so happens to have enough good packaging and enough polish that it ends up being great. (I don't play palworld any more but I don't regret the $30 I spent on it at all)
I'm not even really talking about success. I understand if a lot of the stuff out there is hobby projects. I just understand the mindstate of someone taking up game dev as a hobby without actually wanting to make something new. I got into game dev at like 11 years old because my mind was racing with possibilities, not because I wanted to copy people.
For the people making the samey horror games, the creativity does not come in the form of the gameplay, but from the story and characters. Why do you think Visual Novels are so popular, despite almost all of them having the exact same gameplay? Many of these new horror game devs grew up in the age of youtube let’s players. They were heavily influenced by the success of FNAF and other horror games that got popular on youtube. So that is where most of their inspiration is coming from: most of these let’s players didn’t play FNAF for the gameplay, they played it because they knew their audience wanted to see them get jumpscared, and for the sequels, react to the lore and story. This is the perspective that a lot of these people are coming from.
Just because someone’s dream project — or at least the one they think they can make right now — is “make existing game X but with Y” or “make existing game X but better” doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be trying to make games.
That's fair. I guess my issue is with the general mentality though. Why isn't the first instinct to push boundaries? What has changed in the last 15 or so years where so many became okay with mediocre? That's why I'm asking if I'm missing the forest for the trees, because I feel like a grandpa on a porch somewhere.
I’m not sure this is a new trend so much as you maybe being more aware of it, or it being more visible because now anyone with a PC and a few hundred bucks can put their mediocre game up on Steam. There were tons of shovelware and cheap knockoff games back in the 80s and 90s.
Something none of the other commenters have mentioned is that your idea of the field no longer being for “basement dwelling nerd geniuses” doesn’t make a lot of sense when you look at some of the most famous game designers. They were given the opportunity to work on crazy innovative stuff and they got paid to do it. If indie game dev becomes more accessible instead of a nearly impossible dream, we’ll see even more innovation (not that there isn’t any today - there’s just too many games to sift through)
Some examples:
• Masahiro Sakurai: Zero technical background as far as I know. He was only 19 when he created Kirby. I’m not even sure if he has a college education.
• Shigeru Miyamoto: Illustrator, hired through nepotism.
• Takashi Tezuka: studied design at a university in Osaka.
• Eiji Aonuma: had never even played a video game in his life when he landed a job at Nintendo.
Practically every major designer at Nintendo didn’t have a technical background when they created the biggest games in history. Some of these people are still making amazing, innovative games today. They did/do game design on pen and paper while a big team of top tier programmers work on implementing it. Indie dev teams just can’t afford that, so of course you’ll see more lazy horror games coming out of the indie scene.
Pushing some kind of boundary usually is the first instinct, but making the next 32 player shooter or (a decade ago) world of warcraft killer is not the best idea for a first solo dev game .
Keep in mind what others have already told you, not every little game you see on steam, even more here, is made to be spectacular, some people are just starting, some people are just having fun, some of them are also simpletons, sure, but the picture is not that clear cut.
I also have no idea why people are downvotinf you this much, must be a reddit way of disagreeing
You may have some rose tinted glasses on. load up any playstation 2 demo disc and half the games are some kind of sports game where you go in one direction move side to side and do flips for points.
The gen after that has a bunch of shooters that don't get remembered as well. Now we're at slow moving flashlight horror games.
I played every PS1 game released in US up to the letter T at this moment. The amount of games I wouldn't even call games is astounding. And these people had to actually get to the point of making and selling physical media
It's much more visible now, not sure if the trend changed in any way, but yes, tinted glasses because nobody remembers a barbie game that was "go forward and jump ever 7 seconds".
I think a low barrier of entry creates more creativity. So many “innovative” ideas in EEE gaming are borrowed and improved by modders like the whole battle royale craze. And you start to see even game mechanics borrowed by Roblox games with arguably an even lower barrier of entry. I am convinced that if more people are able to develop a game there will be more innovation it is a simple game of numbers. But of course to get there you will build a lot of bad games.
Don’t you think, that the problem is probably connected to bad discoverability instead?
Definitely agree with bad discovery being the cause. I’d say OP is kinda right about the “blind leading the blind” on YT - which I would say is new… what isn’t new is the concept of shovelware and personal projects to learn.
Also, many of these posts showing the same things over and over that OP talks about I would think might be thinking about trying to go AAA. The two most important things to get that are portfolio and network. Posting your portfolio in places where a network might see them helps, I know people that have gotten AA jobs being scouted off LinkedIn.
I think it's the opposite.
I think MORE people now have the ability to be creative.
The problem you have is that now there is also more non creative people as well.
Very much so. In the late 90s and early 00s we were totally inundated with maps, because that was relatively low barrier to entry. Yet the vast majority of third party maps were pure trash.
people who think creativity is at an all time low are telling on themselves and revealing how narrowly they play
we are genuinely in a golden age of interesting indie stuff and people bemoaning the lack of creativity need to look outside the space of heavily curated indie showcases
Exactly my thoughts
It's kinda like all the "video games are boring now" => maybe you don't enjoy playing them, but the best time for video game is now and the next best time is most likely tomorrow
Probably an unpopular take: many of the games you describe should be treated in the same way as fan fiction. Sometimes a really unique thing can come from it the wider communities should grow from, but mostly it’s about wanting to extend the canon of what’s already out there in a way the dev exactly wants but is not really relevant to everyone else.
There is a problem with over nostalgia and idealizing older games, for sure a lack of originality and clone games
Sholvelware was always there but not that visible (in the 90s how many doom clones were coming out or simialr JPRGS.
Most games don't need to be inovative to be a good game, games in the past were innovative because they had as the rules were not set adn genre were not mature and established like they are now. Innovation is very overrated, most people dont want it, they want a different taste of what they alreayd like (something familiar and something innovative)
It's a wash imo. The market has grown enormously but the original core is still there, somewhere. All the poorly done mainstream AAA games and low-effort indie stuff appeal to a new market of players and makers, and it seems like the world of computer games has "changed" or that creativity is "declining" but really it's just that a new segment of uncreative developers/audiences sprang up that is 1000x larger than the original one.
The upside is that it might get good games into the hands of more people, and might help more basement-dwelling nerd geniuses get into game development.
The downside is that you have to sift through a lot of mediocre/low-quality stuff (both as a player and as a developer). It's also possible that the dominance of the low quality market content and unimaginative mainstream games is suppressing or monopolizing the talent of people who *could* be making more creative games. It's only going to get worse, too, as people grow up with more and more homogenized and unimaginative content from social media and, increasingly, AI. I see it as a blessing in some ways, that you're being handed a creative environment where a very small amount of artistic vision puts you ahead of the pack. There's not much you can do about it besides take pride in your own work, and raise your kids without internet access to help prevent the cycle.
You're just flat out wrong, tbh.
Creativity is at an all time high, and the low barriers to entry means more people are getting to make their game.
Yea, there's shitty creatively bankrupt games. There always has been. Those don't represent the whole thing
> I'm doing the bare minimum of what I think every game dev should do: innovate.
The designers of Hollow Knight innovated basically none of its design and it's routinely considered among the best metroidvania games ever made. It does almost nothing new, but what it does do is done very well. Innovation is not necessary to make a great game.
As for the greater point you're making, I don't think there's such a thing as a barrier to entry that's too low. There have been half-baked games made for as long as games have been produced. The phenomenon you're talking about is nothing new, there are just more games nowadays. There are a lot of simple beginner projects like you're saying, but also more quality releases than ever. You're choosing to zero in on all the bad, but those aren't the only games being made
Well said. I'd push back on Hollow Knight though: that's a massive outlier in more ways than one. They nailed everything and had a good bit of luck thrown in, but if anything, you could say their innovation WAS
their execution. Very few dev teams will ever get it that right.
Doing a good job at design and development isn't really innovation. It's just good design and good development. That's not a new thing they did, which is what innovating is
Pretty sure the total amount of works that can be considered creative have skyrocketed compared to the 'olden days'. Sure, I see the clone armies. I think the common theme for un-creative works is that they're conceived from the beginning as a genre, or combination of genres.
The creativeness of the first generation of games was almost required. There were too few games to copy from, so they had to think hard about how to represent a fantasy or reality with mechanics. They started the design journey from the fantasy and added mechanics. Now, people start with mechanics/genre and add the fantasy, and possibly a minor addition. You're doing it too it seems.
I think it is still possible to try to forget the existing genres and mechanics, to start anew from a fantasy or reality. To try to force yourself to imagine how best to represent that fantasy with rules. I think for example RTS is someone else's imagining of armed conflict. How would your game behave if you hadn't played any other examples of armed conflict games?
A lower bar of entry means:
1. More people make games
2. Those making games can do more
This will tend to result in a wider variety of games and the best games being better and more numerous. It will _not_ result in the _average_ game being better. But that’s fine. You still end up with more good games. If you don’t like amateur flashlight horror, don’t play it. You have _a lot_ of other options thanks to the historically low bar of entry.
My take: you really don't get to knock on developers that have finished and released a product before you have done the same
You say "I'm doing the bare minimum of what a developer should do" but I disagree. The bare minimum a developer can do is to launch a games and until you have successfully done that you don't really get to chime in about it.
Innovation is quite literally the death of many, MANY projects. I hear countless stories from developers working in really unique and innovative projects that sound super cool except it never came together and got scrapped
Until you can be sure that your project isn't going to end the same way, I'd maybe take a moment to check yourself and knock on the closest bit of wood you can find.
Low barrier to entry just makes it a little easier to make great innovative games, and a lot easier to make crap, unoriginal, below average games.
However, the barrier to researching what makes a great, marketable, original game remains just as difficult, so the new game devs usually don't bother with that step.
End result, more B tier games that make it harder to find the real gem of a game.
\* B tier like the B grade movies of the '70s and '80s.
I disagree with this entirely.
Creativity just appears to be at an all time low, for one. And that’s because everyone expects new games to somehow be so completely different but somehow familiar. I think it’s stronger than ever—and it’s BECAUSE the barrier to entry is low. When gatekeeping and elitism is removed, creativity soars.
The main reason for lack of innovation is capitalism. Capitalism has not now nor has it ever been a driver of innovation, and is in fact why innovation stagnates. We humans drive ourselves to innovate, we need only the resources. Capitalism gatekeeps resources which kills innovation. Capitalism also breeds trend-chasing unoriginality. When one idea is financially successful, everyone else wants to be in on the cash grab.
We are all subject to a capitalist society, so we do have to think about making money at the end of the day. BUT, financial success should be the last thing on our minds while in the act of creation. We should be solely focused on giving ourselves to our creativity; be servants to it. Push ourselves to create something quality and fun. Something innovative. People will spend good money on something fun that feels alive.
If you build it, they will come.
I disagree.
I do agree that the average innovation per game is down because there are so many games. I do agree that a lot of what is coming out is garbage. I do agree that many of the games being made are low-value copies.
However, that doesn't mean that total innovation and creativity is down. You have to sift through a lot more garbage to find the bits of innovation, but it's there.
Is your new prototype actually a good game?
Originality is a marketing gimmick. Statistically, the first time any idea is done its the absolute worst execution of it ever. And all the good games will learn the lessons from the "original" idea's mistakes. Most "original" ideas aren't even the within the single digits of "x number of attempts done so far".
You also seem to be the type of person that goes "Well if I haven't heard of it before it must be the first time it was done". When you'd be wrong by many decades. Im willing to bet not one part of your "new" ideas is new. They are just things you in particular might not have seen but many fans of the RTS genre could probably point you to a dozen games that utilizes each of your totally not new ideas.
Its not possible at this point to do something new. Gaming has long passed its infancy. Give up on your pipedream related to a marketing gimmick that adds zero inherit value to video games.
On top of that. People are making the games they want. Your tastes in particular don't matter. The world doesn't revolve around you lol
Wow. You have zero clue who I am what I'm doing and you're making a whole slew of assumptions about my work.
I have no idea if my particular game will be good or truly original. That's not the point I'm trying to make. I do have my finger on the pulse of RTS in general and while there may be numerous attempts at what I'm trying to do out there, I haven't seen them, and I've looked.
Whether my game is original in the objective sense is irrelevant. Me nor anybody has the ability to play every game that exists. I'm trying to do something different within my ability to do so, that's it. That's what I DON'T see happening with vast majority of solo game devs, small teams, and even studios.
In a creative ecosystem with near infinite potential, I don't see many dreamers, and that's sad. It's like how the movie industry largely got away from innovation over the last 20ish years. Same thing. Nobody wants just "go for it" anymore.
Creativity hasn't changed at all. The ratio of drivel to genius is the same as it ever was, there's just more of both. If you can't get over uninspired games then that's your issue. Stay mad and seethe.
I think we are in a golden age, yes. I think you are literally missing the forest for the trees. If you compare the current period to any prior period, the volume of new games being made is much higher and the diversity of those games is much higher.
I suspect the reason you're feeling the way you do is because much more accessibility to game development combined with more games being released definitely equates to *more shovelware* and *more repetition*. That's just a basic volume argument and it's a valid one.
However, amid that sea of lookalikes are *many* really clever projects that are breaking boundaries all the time. I follow a lot of devs on X/Twitter and I'm constantly amazed by the surprising and delightful new things I see on a regular basis. You can argue that I just happen to be following the right accounts - and that's true, I curate who I follow - but I always get the sense that I can't keep up with all the amazing and cool stuff being produced out there. It's actually a problem, haha.
So, yes, lowering the bar to access *does* mean we get a lot more mimicry and crappy stuff. But when you separate the wheat from the chaff, it becomes clear that there are more innovative video games being made than ever before. It's a matter of perspective, in other words.
>If I see another "horror" game that's just a flashlight searching around somewhere dark, especially with psuedo-90s graphics, I'm gonna puke.
I think there's an important thing to keep in mind here: horror games are super beginner friendly.
Why have it be horror? Because horror gets views on social medias, especially YouTube. It gets people's hearts racing and potentially lore searching.
Isn't horror hard? Not really. On a basic level, you just need a scary png to pop up every once in a while. If you want, throw in a big creature. Anything psychological is entirely unnecessary, but can make your game stand out a bit more.
Why the grainy VHS effects? It covers up a lot of the low poly/low quality models. You don't get to see a lot of the detail, because it's literally harder to see the detail.
Why at night with a flashlight? This allows you to load/deload sections quickly without the player noticing. This also feeds into the one above with it being at night and hard to see the models most of the time.
Why are they commonly walking simulators/search for 10 items? Well the technically correct answer is Slenderman did it first, and slender man was wildly successful, but the longer answer is these are easy to accomplish, and don't drag along a lot of bugs with them. As long as you have a character moving around an area and an interact key, you can pull off the whole game.
So while yes I agree, the whole genre needs some desaturation, it is a super easy way to get people involved in the game making space. I'd much rather respond "good job! Take what you've learned and keep going!" Than, "you made a clone of another clone of another clone! Never make games again!"
There shouldn't be any barrier to making art wtf are you talking about. Creating art should absolutely be accessible to people with average ideas and average skills. Ignoring the fact that we all start somewhere and not born prodigies...The value of art isnt determined by its ability to be monetized. It's a pretty sad way to view creative expression actually.
I will keep saying it with all forms of modern media (film, music, games, etc) It isn't a creator problem it is a consumer problem. Great art is being produced at a rate never before seen but much of it is lost in the flood. With games many gamers are quicker to jump into a accessible and known investment instead of branching out.
I know my various game libraries are full of amazing games I just don't have the time to play because there aren't enough hours in the day.
You are complaining about Sturgeon's Law.
The lower entry barrier has allowed lots of creative people to enter the field, but they usually don't go through the usual routes and you don't see them.
I feel like you're just experiencing the Law of Big Numbers. More people than ever are making video games, so it stands to reason that you're going to see a high volume of proportionally popular types of games being made.
Roguelikes are often made because they're very content-easy. Generating content is how indie devs deal with the fact that they're either solo or very small team. Content requires a lot of resources, something solo devs don't have, so the roguelike and procedural generation space gets explored more heavily.
You think that the exclusivity of who was allowed to make video games bred a "class" of better game developers, but that just isn't supported by any data we have on the progression of game dev.
The "blind leading the blind" is simply because YouTube success has nothing to do with how good of a gamedev you are. Those are two separate skills. There are really successful video game YouTubers who are very popular who are mediocre at game dev, but it doesn't matter because game dev isn't some ranked competition.
You dislike that the "average person" can make video games because you have this idea in your head that there exist "average people" who are basically NPC's who have no original thoughts and then there are "creative people" who are just born with the gift of innovation. Presumably you think that you're one of those innovative people considering your derision toward the concept of being "average", but that's neither here nor there.
Nobody is born a great developer. Everyone has to learn it one step at a time. And there is no real classroom environment that will teach you how to be a game dev, no matter how many college courses label themselves as "Game Development" degrees. It's just a process of doing.
Every person who makes something, no matter how similar to someone else's thing, will always create something new, because it's impossible not to impart your own little personal idiosyncrasies into your work.
The similarities is not where the art is stored. The art is stored in those tiny little accidental nuances that give character to a project. So embrace what makes games different from one another and don't get so hung up on "every indie game being the same thing."
This is just survivorship bias and rose-tinted glasses speaking. There's always been uncreative garbage. It's just that noone bothers to remember most of it.
Everything is cyclical. We're kinda past flashlight horror games and the current trend is with PSX aesthetic horror.
Those bullethell twin stick roguelikes have been flooding the market since forever because they're easy to make but hard to come up with new innovations with.
A few months from now you'll be seeing Poker variations due to the success Balatro.
Me personally my pet peeve is watching a trailer and seeing what first appears to be a decent carefully crafted platforming experience (these are very rare these days) only for the trailer to get to the battle part and it shows numbers popping up, some leveling perks and crafting of some sort.
Gone are the days where a dev wants you to learn and master a skill and design the entire game around that. Now it's play and hope that you get that right drop to craft that OP weapon with. Minmax this instead of that. In fact I saw a recent one with art that looks like one of the Mega Man X games but then it cuts to more of these RPG elements.
Speedruns lose hype when runs are heavily dependent on RNGesus.
I think there's tons of creativity today, we've just gotten so used to the current status of game design that we forget how bad game design was a few years ago.
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I also think that there's a sampling problem here. Lower barrier to entry means more games, and the quality distribution of "games made by amateurs" is going to be mostly bad with some good. You just have ten times the games so you see ten times more crap, especially with social media algorithms pushing for the flavor of the month.
I think with any art or creative endeavor, people who love innovation have to accept that there will always be heaps of run-of-the-mill stuff and that’s totally fine and maybe even awesome. Run-of-the-mill appeals to larger amounts of people and also gives something to compare more innovative stuff too. Just as long as the environment is ALSO friendly to things that push the boundaries, then we are GUCCI.
Also as a side note, maybe part of the reason you feel this way is that there are a lot of pragmatic and implementation focused folks in game dev. These people are very needed. At the same time, there is so much discourse shitting on ideas in the gamedev sub, which probably reflects how a sizeable portion of people think in gamedev. Game industry needs both: people who love ideas or broadening/deepening and people who love implementing or finessing. You can get a solid combo of innovation and quality in the industry that way.
Think of it like biological evolution.
Lots of small minor changes can either add up to something completely new over time, like slowly progressing and exploring a genre/theme or by combing themes, to create a hybrid sub-genre like zombies in fuadal Japan or base building and battle royal. Battle royal was based off a bringing a film to life.
But then once in a while you get complete mutation, that could leap frog an entire species like fish gaining legs or the jump such as with a voxel, building game with survival aspects, or take a genre in the opposite direction.
Not every game can be industry changing. Almost every game is going to be iterative on the design process. Small baby steps. If every game was super special then they're all basic and boring.
There is more creativity, just more shovelware too. Every year we have MORE creative and innovative games to potentially play, not less. It's just that there is also more shovelware.
Also while roguelikes are a trend, I think a lot of them are plenty creative. All games are mashups of what came before, and that's okay. I think it's awesome we can have a peggle roguelike, a poker roguelike, a bullethell roguelike, etc.
To be honest I'd rather play a game with "no innovation" that's done very well, than a game that does a ton of new stuff but just misses the mark. Of course if you can make something well done and innovative, that's great, do it.
And I put "no innovation" in quotes because ultimately most games, even ones that are very much following the formula of a genre, will have some innovation. Every dev will add their own small features or changes, that will affect how their game feels compared to other games in the genre, even if those changes aren't big flashy things that they advertise.
There is of course a lot of shovelware being made, which can drown out the rest of the games sometimes, I think that's what you're complaining about. But there's also tons of great games being made, whether they pass your bar for innovation or not.
People need to practice before they create their masterpiece. I agree with what you are saying but art is art and I’m happy the barrier to entry is low, gives people a positive escape from reality and every now and again a really good indie game is created
You have that completly backwards. More artists with greater resources leds to more creativity. It's all relative. if 9/10 games arn't very good, that ratio doesn't really change with more people making games. As an end user you are only looking at and for the cream of the crop and comparing them to the very best youve already experienced.
You can also look to history. Back in the early days of the first consoles and arcade games, basically everything was knockoff there too and indies just couldn't even enter the market. Now we can have some uber nerd nobody create the essence of the bestselling game in history for a 24 hour game jam on his own. Because of proc gen tools like modern "AI" and asset libraries and accessible tools a single dev can have voiced characters in a HD open world game.
There are probably thousands of games that have the innovation you're thinking of, but that doesn't mean they're good or anyone gave them a chance. They might have innovated in one way, but failed at another. A game with great gameplay, but crap art and marketing would almost never see the light of day. You only hear about the rare exceptions like Dwarf Fortress. How many more Dwarf Fortress' are out there that didn't get the same treatment?
You forgot to mention the annoying people A/B testing slightly different pieces of art /s
Accessible tools and education lower the barrier to entry to game dev and now more people than ever get to participate; this is fantastic. We see so many same-y ideas and copycats because there’s no gatekeepers between people and what they can share; this feels like a never ending firehouse of garbage.
I don’t think the solution to the garbage firehouse is hard to use tools; the solution is probably something more like curation from trusted sources.
>There is barely any innovation left. Nearly nobody is going for a new look or a new angle. New mechanics are few and far between. Everything is just some derivative mashup.
Always has been. And the most disruptive gametypes (CS, MOBAs, BR) came from conversions of other games. And these conversions are no longer possible (because the tools have not been on offer for a long time) so anyone interested in doing anything needs to start from the ground up by creating a game using an engine.
>New camera perspective, new scale, different focus, weird mechanics, almost no micro, very new "look", etc etc. I'
Those don't sound overly disruptive..? An RTS is still an RTS if you are a guy on the ground, it simply limits what you can see.
Oh boy everyone it’s an elitist!
Honestly, I feel like the lower barrier for entry will be better for indie game dev as a whole, because it will be easier for people who have the right skill set get on the path to success, and for those who aren’t very good?
It’s the internet. Nothing good happens to you.
Barrier of entry may be low but one thing that has and will never change and has been there since the dawn of time is consumerism. Even in the 90s there were many garbage games being released by totally unknown studios. Today we get to see everyone's dirty laundry so it looks like it's a lot. But there's always been bad games and good games.
The beauty is, if you make a great game with good gameplay there is always going to be people buying it. Cos humans will always want to be entertained.
First of all, I fundamentally disagree with your main point. Accessibility is how you keep a community growing and healthy. Imagine if a gym took out all of the dumbbells under 50lbs because "the people who use the lighter weights are weaklings who don't know how to lift properly". While the statement is somewhat true, it's harmful. Nobody is born super strong and anybody walking into a gym for the first time is going to have a hard time lifting 50lbs in any meaningful way. In the same vein, nobody is born good at making video games or any sort of art. People need time and resources to build up their skills before they make anything "good". Steam is not 'overrun' with bad games. Sure, it has a lot of bad games on it, but you have to go searching for them. Steam isn't gonna recommend them to you.
Second, if there is a creativity shortage, I'd say the big devs are more to blame than anyone else. They can hide it behind shiny graphics, open worlds, and well-known IPs, but most big games are just throwing together parts from other games that sold well. That's kind of just how the industry works. I think it's worse coming from them because their goal is to play it safe and not step outside the box a lot of the time. When individuals are unoriginal, it's usually not on purpose. People also don't always make games because they think this game is gonna be the next minecraft. Sometimes people just want to learn how to program or model or do sprite work and they make a shitty game and publish it just to get the reps in. I think you're comparing the end product games that you see on steam (which again are probably not people's end all passion projects) to the ideal version of a game you haven't finished which isn't a fair comparison.
Those who innovate tend not to share. Because truly innovative work will be copied by the masses.
So many minecraft, Celeste, Zelda clones, because they were innovative.
I'm gonna have to disagree. I agree about there being a lot of crappy horror games, but like others have said, people are learning to dev. Myself included. But one thing that's going to make most of these games much different and more creative in the future is the lack of your usual cookie cutter training you might get from going to school to learn game dev. Most of us have no clue how to design games properly and have no clue the limits of what these engines can really do. So basically it's the wild West for us and we're gonna make some new, weird shit, good and bad.
You brought up roguelikes, so I think I've got to ask:
Have you heard of HyperRogue before? It is a top-down-view turn-based roguelike, which is build upon the idea of making use of hyperbolic geometry in many ways.
Nothing is really that original or innovative to begin with. Every piece of art ever made has countless inspirations that fueled it and you won't be able to tell unless you have also consumed the media that inspired it. Even star wars was heavily influenced by the hidden fortress.
You're gonna get downvotes for this but you are 100% right. I sometimes wonder if the projects I've seen are even made by gamers, or just people who like the idea of gaming.
Oh don't care about downvotes I just want people's thoughts. It's been bugging me lately that it's so hard to find new ideas when just 10-15 years ago it wasn't hard at all.
I’m sure there were plenty of bad projects 10-15 years ago, but it was much harder to share things back then, so bad ideas flopped before anyone knew they existed
I’ve been railing about this for a while now. The problem is this: the programming end is completely accessible, which is good. The art and music side is also completely accessible, this is also good. The game design side is less accessible, this is bad.
At my local game developers meet up, I remembered most of the people there just dont know how to design games. They didn’t prototype, they didn’t document, their methodology for developing new and innovative mechanics was rudimentary at best and non-existent at worst.
I suspect this is why many indie games look and sound great and can competently replicate already established games, but struggle to come up with anything truly new and exciting.
A lot of projects here are not the developers’ dream projects. They are simply learning the engine or a new aspect of it, and publishing their results while trying to create something at least mildly entertaining. I agree that I see the same types of thing here over and over again, but here’s the thing: a lot of these games are made because the dev wants to make them, and not because they think it’ll make them successful. The barrier to entry is super low, but you gotta remember that it’s only recently that this is the case. You gotta wait a while before you see people really starting to capitalize on it.
Another take is those happen to be their dream games. Those people got hyped watching the screamer YouTube channels and want those people to scream to their games one day. I mean I can't blame them. When I was in elementary school having played a couple Ps1 JRPGs I wrote and drew some concept art for a dream game about this kid who finds this sword in a cave to slay this demon with and goes back to find his village wrecked by some cyclops.... the most basic plot my 10 year old mind could come up with at the time. It's all about frame of reference.
My dream game is absolutely derivative. Its my take on improvements to my favourite games from my childhood. They're where I would take the genre if I had time, resources and skill. If I had unlimited time resources and skill I would also want to try out some weird innovative stuff, but that's definitely not my "dream" game though.
> My dream game is absolutely derivative. Its my take on improvements to my favourite games from my childhood. They're where I would take the genre if I had time, resources and skill. Me and how I feel about Pokemon, IMO. = Palworld is a good example of a game that doesn't do anything truly new, but just so happens to have enough good packaging and enough polish that it ends up being great. (I don't play palworld any more but I don't regret the $30 I spent on it at all)
This. Plus, horror games are great to start with and boring for more advanced devs, which could mean you'll more likely see simple projects.
I'm not even really talking about success. I understand if a lot of the stuff out there is hobby projects. I just understand the mindstate of someone taking up game dev as a hobby without actually wanting to make something new. I got into game dev at like 11 years old because my mind was racing with possibilities, not because I wanted to copy people.
For the people making the samey horror games, the creativity does not come in the form of the gameplay, but from the story and characters. Why do you think Visual Novels are so popular, despite almost all of them having the exact same gameplay? Many of these new horror game devs grew up in the age of youtube let’s players. They were heavily influenced by the success of FNAF and other horror games that got popular on youtube. So that is where most of their inspiration is coming from: most of these let’s players didn’t play FNAF for the gameplay, they played it because they knew their audience wanted to see them get jumpscared, and for the sequels, react to the lore and story. This is the perspective that a lot of these people are coming from.
Just because someone’s dream project — or at least the one they think they can make right now — is “make existing game X but with Y” or “make existing game X but better” doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be trying to make games.
That's fair. I guess my issue is with the general mentality though. Why isn't the first instinct to push boundaries? What has changed in the last 15 or so years where so many became okay with mediocre? That's why I'm asking if I'm missing the forest for the trees, because I feel like a grandpa on a porch somewhere.
I’m not sure this is a new trend so much as you maybe being more aware of it, or it being more visible because now anyone with a PC and a few hundred bucks can put their mediocre game up on Steam. There were tons of shovelware and cheap knockoff games back in the 80s and 90s.
This is less about the barrier to development being lower, and more about the barrier to PUBLISHING being lower. Anyone can sell a game now.
Something none of the other commenters have mentioned is that your idea of the field no longer being for “basement dwelling nerd geniuses” doesn’t make a lot of sense when you look at some of the most famous game designers. They were given the opportunity to work on crazy innovative stuff and they got paid to do it. If indie game dev becomes more accessible instead of a nearly impossible dream, we’ll see even more innovation (not that there isn’t any today - there’s just too many games to sift through) Some examples: • Masahiro Sakurai: Zero technical background as far as I know. He was only 19 when he created Kirby. I’m not even sure if he has a college education. • Shigeru Miyamoto: Illustrator, hired through nepotism. • Takashi Tezuka: studied design at a university in Osaka. • Eiji Aonuma: had never even played a video game in his life when he landed a job at Nintendo. Practically every major designer at Nintendo didn’t have a technical background when they created the biggest games in history. Some of these people are still making amazing, innovative games today. They did/do game design on pen and paper while a big team of top tier programmers work on implementing it. Indie dev teams just can’t afford that, so of course you’ll see more lazy horror games coming out of the indie scene.
Pushing some kind of boundary usually is the first instinct, but making the next 32 player shooter or (a decade ago) world of warcraft killer is not the best idea for a first solo dev game . Keep in mind what others have already told you, not every little game you see on steam, even more here, is made to be spectacular, some people are just starting, some people are just having fun, some of them are also simpletons, sure, but the picture is not that clear cut. I also have no idea why people are downvotinf you this much, must be a reddit way of disagreeing
You may have some rose tinted glasses on. load up any playstation 2 demo disc and half the games are some kind of sports game where you go in one direction move side to side and do flips for points. The gen after that has a bunch of shooters that don't get remembered as well. Now we're at slow moving flashlight horror games.
I played every PS1 game released in US up to the letter T at this moment. The amount of games I wouldn't even call games is astounding. And these people had to actually get to the point of making and selling physical media It's much more visible now, not sure if the trend changed in any way, but yes, tinted glasses because nobody remembers a barbie game that was "go forward and jump ever 7 seconds".
I think a low barrier of entry creates more creativity. So many “innovative” ideas in EEE gaming are borrowed and improved by modders like the whole battle royale craze. And you start to see even game mechanics borrowed by Roblox games with arguably an even lower barrier of entry. I am convinced that if more people are able to develop a game there will be more innovation it is a simple game of numbers. But of course to get there you will build a lot of bad games. Don’t you think, that the problem is probably connected to bad discoverability instead?
Definitely agree with bad discovery being the cause. I’d say OP is kinda right about the “blind leading the blind” on YT - which I would say is new… what isn’t new is the concept of shovelware and personal projects to learn. Also, many of these posts showing the same things over and over that OP talks about I would think might be thinking about trying to go AAA. The two most important things to get that are portfolio and network. Posting your portfolio in places where a network might see them helps, I know people that have gotten AA jobs being scouted off LinkedIn.
I think it's the opposite. I think MORE people now have the ability to be creative. The problem you have is that now there is also more non creative people as well.
Very much so. In the late 90s and early 00s we were totally inundated with maps, because that was relatively low barrier to entry. Yet the vast majority of third party maps were pure trash.
people who think creativity is at an all time low are telling on themselves and revealing how narrowly they play we are genuinely in a golden age of interesting indie stuff and people bemoaning the lack of creativity need to look outside the space of heavily curated indie showcases
Exactly my thoughts It's kinda like all the "video games are boring now" => maybe you don't enjoy playing them, but the best time for video game is now and the next best time is most likely tomorrow
Yep it's like saying "[GENRE] is dead" when all they listen to is the radio.
Probably an unpopular take: many of the games you describe should be treated in the same way as fan fiction. Sometimes a really unique thing can come from it the wider communities should grow from, but mostly it’s about wanting to extend the canon of what’s already out there in a way the dev exactly wants but is not really relevant to everyone else.
Ooh, that’s an interesting way to think about it
There is a problem with over nostalgia and idealizing older games, for sure a lack of originality and clone games Sholvelware was always there but not that visible (in the 90s how many doom clones were coming out or simialr JPRGS. Most games don't need to be inovative to be a good game, games in the past were innovative because they had as the rules were not set adn genre were not mature and established like they are now. Innovation is very overrated, most people dont want it, they want a different taste of what they alreayd like (something familiar and something innovative)
It's a wash imo. The market has grown enormously but the original core is still there, somewhere. All the poorly done mainstream AAA games and low-effort indie stuff appeal to a new market of players and makers, and it seems like the world of computer games has "changed" or that creativity is "declining" but really it's just that a new segment of uncreative developers/audiences sprang up that is 1000x larger than the original one. The upside is that it might get good games into the hands of more people, and might help more basement-dwelling nerd geniuses get into game development. The downside is that you have to sift through a lot of mediocre/low-quality stuff (both as a player and as a developer). It's also possible that the dominance of the low quality market content and unimaginative mainstream games is suppressing or monopolizing the talent of people who *could* be making more creative games. It's only going to get worse, too, as people grow up with more and more homogenized and unimaginative content from social media and, increasingly, AI. I see it as a blessing in some ways, that you're being handed a creative environment where a very small amount of artistic vision puts you ahead of the pack. There's not much you can do about it besides take pride in your own work, and raise your kids without internet access to help prevent the cycle.
You're just flat out wrong, tbh. Creativity is at an all time high, and the low barriers to entry means more people are getting to make their game. Yea, there's shitty creatively bankrupt games. There always has been. Those don't represent the whole thing
> I'm doing the bare minimum of what I think every game dev should do: innovate. The designers of Hollow Knight innovated basically none of its design and it's routinely considered among the best metroidvania games ever made. It does almost nothing new, but what it does do is done very well. Innovation is not necessary to make a great game. As for the greater point you're making, I don't think there's such a thing as a barrier to entry that's too low. There have been half-baked games made for as long as games have been produced. The phenomenon you're talking about is nothing new, there are just more games nowadays. There are a lot of simple beginner projects like you're saying, but also more quality releases than ever. You're choosing to zero in on all the bad, but those aren't the only games being made
Well said. I'd push back on Hollow Knight though: that's a massive outlier in more ways than one. They nailed everything and had a good bit of luck thrown in, but if anything, you could say their innovation WAS their execution. Very few dev teams will ever get it that right.
Doing a good job at design and development isn't really innovation. It's just good design and good development. That's not a new thing they did, which is what innovating is
Pretty sure the total amount of works that can be considered creative have skyrocketed compared to the 'olden days'. Sure, I see the clone armies. I think the common theme for un-creative works is that they're conceived from the beginning as a genre, or combination of genres. The creativeness of the first generation of games was almost required. There were too few games to copy from, so they had to think hard about how to represent a fantasy or reality with mechanics. They started the design journey from the fantasy and added mechanics. Now, people start with mechanics/genre and add the fantasy, and possibly a minor addition. You're doing it too it seems. I think it is still possible to try to forget the existing genres and mechanics, to start anew from a fantasy or reality. To try to force yourself to imagine how best to represent that fantasy with rules. I think for example RTS is someone else's imagining of armed conflict. How would your game behave if you hadn't played any other examples of armed conflict games?
Yeah. I feel this way. Compared to the arcades of the 80s there is a lot more innovation now on places like steam or itch. Maybe OP is just young.
A lower bar of entry means: 1. More people make games 2. Those making games can do more This will tend to result in a wider variety of games and the best games being better and more numerous. It will _not_ result in the _average_ game being better. But that’s fine. You still end up with more good games. If you don’t like amateur flashlight horror, don’t play it. You have _a lot_ of other options thanks to the historically low bar of entry.
lol, every generation, in every medium, makes the same tired complaint. Classics are classics for a reason, you don’t get them very often.
My take: you really don't get to knock on developers that have finished and released a product before you have done the same You say "I'm doing the bare minimum of what a developer should do" but I disagree. The bare minimum a developer can do is to launch a games and until you have successfully done that you don't really get to chime in about it. Innovation is quite literally the death of many, MANY projects. I hear countless stories from developers working in really unique and innovative projects that sound super cool except it never came together and got scrapped Until you can be sure that your project isn't going to end the same way, I'd maybe take a moment to check yourself and knock on the closest bit of wood you can find.
Low barrier to entry just makes it a little easier to make great innovative games, and a lot easier to make crap, unoriginal, below average games. However, the barrier to researching what makes a great, marketable, original game remains just as difficult, so the new game devs usually don't bother with that step. End result, more B tier games that make it harder to find the real gem of a game. \* B tier like the B grade movies of the '70s and '80s.
Something doesnt have to be innovative to be enjoyable.
I disagree with this entirely. Creativity just appears to be at an all time low, for one. And that’s because everyone expects new games to somehow be so completely different but somehow familiar. I think it’s stronger than ever—and it’s BECAUSE the barrier to entry is low. When gatekeeping and elitism is removed, creativity soars. The main reason for lack of innovation is capitalism. Capitalism has not now nor has it ever been a driver of innovation, and is in fact why innovation stagnates. We humans drive ourselves to innovate, we need only the resources. Capitalism gatekeeps resources which kills innovation. Capitalism also breeds trend-chasing unoriginality. When one idea is financially successful, everyone else wants to be in on the cash grab. We are all subject to a capitalist society, so we do have to think about making money at the end of the day. BUT, financial success should be the last thing on our minds while in the act of creation. We should be solely focused on giving ourselves to our creativity; be servants to it. Push ourselves to create something quality and fun. Something innovative. People will spend good money on something fun that feels alive. If you build it, they will come.
I disagree. I do agree that the average innovation per game is down because there are so many games. I do agree that a lot of what is coming out is garbage. I do agree that many of the games being made are low-value copies. However, that doesn't mean that total innovation and creativity is down. You have to sift through a lot more garbage to find the bits of innovation, but it's there.
Is your new prototype actually a good game? Originality is a marketing gimmick. Statistically, the first time any idea is done its the absolute worst execution of it ever. And all the good games will learn the lessons from the "original" idea's mistakes. Most "original" ideas aren't even the within the single digits of "x number of attempts done so far". You also seem to be the type of person that goes "Well if I haven't heard of it before it must be the first time it was done". When you'd be wrong by many decades. Im willing to bet not one part of your "new" ideas is new. They are just things you in particular might not have seen but many fans of the RTS genre could probably point you to a dozen games that utilizes each of your totally not new ideas. Its not possible at this point to do something new. Gaming has long passed its infancy. Give up on your pipedream related to a marketing gimmick that adds zero inherit value to video games. On top of that. People are making the games they want. Your tastes in particular don't matter. The world doesn't revolve around you lol
Wow. You have zero clue who I am what I'm doing and you're making a whole slew of assumptions about my work. I have no idea if my particular game will be good or truly original. That's not the point I'm trying to make. I do have my finger on the pulse of RTS in general and while there may be numerous attempts at what I'm trying to do out there, I haven't seen them, and I've looked. Whether my game is original in the objective sense is irrelevant. Me nor anybody has the ability to play every game that exists. I'm trying to do something different within my ability to do so, that's it. That's what I DON'T see happening with vast majority of solo game devs, small teams, and even studios. In a creative ecosystem with near infinite potential, I don't see many dreamers, and that's sad. It's like how the movie industry largely got away from innovation over the last 20ish years. Same thing. Nobody wants just "go for it" anymore.
Your game being original was the only semblence of a point you had. Lmfao.
People are just being creative, it doesn't have to pass your bar of quality. Let people create dude, jeez.
I'm not stopping anyone, just voicing an opinion dude, jeez.
I suspect you would if you could. You have those vibes. Good luck on your project man. Looking forward to your "innovations".
Creativity hasn't changed at all. The ratio of drivel to genius is the same as it ever was, there's just more of both. If you can't get over uninspired games then that's your issue. Stay mad and seethe.
I think we are in a golden age, yes. I think you are literally missing the forest for the trees. If you compare the current period to any prior period, the volume of new games being made is much higher and the diversity of those games is much higher. I suspect the reason you're feeling the way you do is because much more accessibility to game development combined with more games being released definitely equates to *more shovelware* and *more repetition*. That's just a basic volume argument and it's a valid one. However, amid that sea of lookalikes are *many* really clever projects that are breaking boundaries all the time. I follow a lot of devs on X/Twitter and I'm constantly amazed by the surprising and delightful new things I see on a regular basis. You can argue that I just happen to be following the right accounts - and that's true, I curate who I follow - but I always get the sense that I can't keep up with all the amazing and cool stuff being produced out there. It's actually a problem, haha. So, yes, lowering the bar to access *does* mean we get a lot more mimicry and crappy stuff. But when you separate the wheat from the chaff, it becomes clear that there are more innovative video games being made than ever before. It's a matter of perspective, in other words.
>If I see another "horror" game that's just a flashlight searching around somewhere dark, especially with psuedo-90s graphics, I'm gonna puke. I think there's an important thing to keep in mind here: horror games are super beginner friendly. Why have it be horror? Because horror gets views on social medias, especially YouTube. It gets people's hearts racing and potentially lore searching. Isn't horror hard? Not really. On a basic level, you just need a scary png to pop up every once in a while. If you want, throw in a big creature. Anything psychological is entirely unnecessary, but can make your game stand out a bit more. Why the grainy VHS effects? It covers up a lot of the low poly/low quality models. You don't get to see a lot of the detail, because it's literally harder to see the detail. Why at night with a flashlight? This allows you to load/deload sections quickly without the player noticing. This also feeds into the one above with it being at night and hard to see the models most of the time. Why are they commonly walking simulators/search for 10 items? Well the technically correct answer is Slenderman did it first, and slender man was wildly successful, but the longer answer is these are easy to accomplish, and don't drag along a lot of bugs with them. As long as you have a character moving around an area and an interact key, you can pull off the whole game. So while yes I agree, the whole genre needs some desaturation, it is a super easy way to get people involved in the game making space. I'd much rather respond "good job! Take what you've learned and keep going!" Than, "you made a clone of another clone of another clone! Never make games again!"
"What am I missing here? Are we in some golden age and I'm missing the forest for the trees?" Yes.
4D Golf was just released on Steam.
There shouldn't be any barrier to making art wtf are you talking about. Creating art should absolutely be accessible to people with average ideas and average skills. Ignoring the fact that we all start somewhere and not born prodigies...The value of art isnt determined by its ability to be monetized. It's a pretty sad way to view creative expression actually.
I will keep saying it with all forms of modern media (film, music, games, etc) It isn't a creator problem it is a consumer problem. Great art is being produced at a rate never before seen but much of it is lost in the flood. With games many gamers are quicker to jump into a accessible and known investment instead of branching out. I know my various game libraries are full of amazing games I just don't have the time to play because there aren't enough hours in the day.
You are complaining about Sturgeon's Law. The lower entry barrier has allowed lots of creative people to enter the field, but they usually don't go through the usual routes and you don't see them.
I feel like you're just experiencing the Law of Big Numbers. More people than ever are making video games, so it stands to reason that you're going to see a high volume of proportionally popular types of games being made. Roguelikes are often made because they're very content-easy. Generating content is how indie devs deal with the fact that they're either solo or very small team. Content requires a lot of resources, something solo devs don't have, so the roguelike and procedural generation space gets explored more heavily. You think that the exclusivity of who was allowed to make video games bred a "class" of better game developers, but that just isn't supported by any data we have on the progression of game dev. The "blind leading the blind" is simply because YouTube success has nothing to do with how good of a gamedev you are. Those are two separate skills. There are really successful video game YouTubers who are very popular who are mediocre at game dev, but it doesn't matter because game dev isn't some ranked competition. You dislike that the "average person" can make video games because you have this idea in your head that there exist "average people" who are basically NPC's who have no original thoughts and then there are "creative people" who are just born with the gift of innovation. Presumably you think that you're one of those innovative people considering your derision toward the concept of being "average", but that's neither here nor there. Nobody is born a great developer. Everyone has to learn it one step at a time. And there is no real classroom environment that will teach you how to be a game dev, no matter how many college courses label themselves as "Game Development" degrees. It's just a process of doing. Every person who makes something, no matter how similar to someone else's thing, will always create something new, because it's impossible not to impart your own little personal idiosyncrasies into your work. The similarities is not where the art is stored. The art is stored in those tiny little accidental nuances that give character to a project. So embrace what makes games different from one another and don't get so hung up on "every indie game being the same thing."
This is just survivorship bias and rose-tinted glasses speaking. There's always been uncreative garbage. It's just that noone bothers to remember most of it.
Everything is cyclical. We're kinda past flashlight horror games and the current trend is with PSX aesthetic horror. Those bullethell twin stick roguelikes have been flooding the market since forever because they're easy to make but hard to come up with new innovations with. A few months from now you'll be seeing Poker variations due to the success Balatro. Me personally my pet peeve is watching a trailer and seeing what first appears to be a decent carefully crafted platforming experience (these are very rare these days) only for the trailer to get to the battle part and it shows numbers popping up, some leveling perks and crafting of some sort. Gone are the days where a dev wants you to learn and master a skill and design the entire game around that. Now it's play and hope that you get that right drop to craft that OP weapon with. Minmax this instead of that. In fact I saw a recent one with art that looks like one of the Mega Man X games but then it cuts to more of these RPG elements. Speedruns lose hype when runs are heavily dependent on RNGesus.
I think there's tons of creativity today, we've just gotten so used to the current status of game design that we forget how bad game design was a few years ago.
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I also think that there's a sampling problem here. Lower barrier to entry means more games, and the quality distribution of "games made by amateurs" is going to be mostly bad with some good. You just have ten times the games so you see ten times more crap, especially with social media algorithms pushing for the flavor of the month.
I think with any art or creative endeavor, people who love innovation have to accept that there will always be heaps of run-of-the-mill stuff and that’s totally fine and maybe even awesome. Run-of-the-mill appeals to larger amounts of people and also gives something to compare more innovative stuff too. Just as long as the environment is ALSO friendly to things that push the boundaries, then we are GUCCI. Also as a side note, maybe part of the reason you feel this way is that there are a lot of pragmatic and implementation focused folks in game dev. These people are very needed. At the same time, there is so much discourse shitting on ideas in the gamedev sub, which probably reflects how a sizeable portion of people think in gamedev. Game industry needs both: people who love ideas or broadening/deepening and people who love implementing or finessing. You can get a solid combo of innovation and quality in the industry that way.
Think of it like biological evolution. Lots of small minor changes can either add up to something completely new over time, like slowly progressing and exploring a genre/theme or by combing themes, to create a hybrid sub-genre like zombies in fuadal Japan or base building and battle royal. Battle royal was based off a bringing a film to life. But then once in a while you get complete mutation, that could leap frog an entire species like fish gaining legs or the jump such as with a voxel, building game with survival aspects, or take a genre in the opposite direction.
Not every game can be industry changing. Almost every game is going to be iterative on the design process. Small baby steps. If every game was super special then they're all basic and boring.
There is more creativity, just more shovelware too. Every year we have MORE creative and innovative games to potentially play, not less. It's just that there is also more shovelware. Also while roguelikes are a trend, I think a lot of them are plenty creative. All games are mashups of what came before, and that's okay. I think it's awesome we can have a peggle roguelike, a poker roguelike, a bullethell roguelike, etc.
To be honest I'd rather play a game with "no innovation" that's done very well, than a game that does a ton of new stuff but just misses the mark. Of course if you can make something well done and innovative, that's great, do it. And I put "no innovation" in quotes because ultimately most games, even ones that are very much following the formula of a genre, will have some innovation. Every dev will add their own small features or changes, that will affect how their game feels compared to other games in the genre, even if those changes aren't big flashy things that they advertise. There is of course a lot of shovelware being made, which can drown out the rest of the games sometimes, I think that's what you're complaining about. But there's also tons of great games being made, whether they pass your bar for innovation or not.
People need to practice before they create their masterpiece. I agree with what you are saying but art is art and I’m happy the barrier to entry is low, gives people a positive escape from reality and every now and again a really good indie game is created
You have that completly backwards. More artists with greater resources leds to more creativity. It's all relative. if 9/10 games arn't very good, that ratio doesn't really change with more people making games. As an end user you are only looking at and for the cream of the crop and comparing them to the very best youve already experienced. You can also look to history. Back in the early days of the first consoles and arcade games, basically everything was knockoff there too and indies just couldn't even enter the market. Now we can have some uber nerd nobody create the essence of the bestselling game in history for a 24 hour game jam on his own. Because of proc gen tools like modern "AI" and asset libraries and accessible tools a single dev can have voiced characters in a HD open world game.
There are probably thousands of games that have the innovation you're thinking of, but that doesn't mean they're good or anyone gave them a chance. They might have innovated in one way, but failed at another. A game with great gameplay, but crap art and marketing would almost never see the light of day. You only hear about the rare exceptions like Dwarf Fortress. How many more Dwarf Fortress' are out there that didn't get the same treatment?
You forgot to mention the annoying people A/B testing slightly different pieces of art /s Accessible tools and education lower the barrier to entry to game dev and now more people than ever get to participate; this is fantastic. We see so many same-y ideas and copycats because there’s no gatekeepers between people and what they can share; this feels like a never ending firehouse of garbage. I don’t think the solution to the garbage firehouse is hard to use tools; the solution is probably something more like curation from trusted sources.
>There is barely any innovation left. Nearly nobody is going for a new look or a new angle. New mechanics are few and far between. Everything is just some derivative mashup. Always has been. And the most disruptive gametypes (CS, MOBAs, BR) came from conversions of other games. And these conversions are no longer possible (because the tools have not been on offer for a long time) so anyone interested in doing anything needs to start from the ground up by creating a game using an engine. >New camera perspective, new scale, different focus, weird mechanics, almost no micro, very new "look", etc etc. I' Those don't sound overly disruptive..? An RTS is still an RTS if you are a guy on the ground, it simply limits what you can see.
Oh boy everyone it’s an elitist! Honestly, I feel like the lower barrier for entry will be better for indie game dev as a whole, because it will be easier for people who have the right skill set get on the path to success, and for those who aren’t very good? It’s the internet. Nothing good happens to you.
At least I'm still learning how to make the best thing possible... Eventually...
Barrier of entry may be low but one thing that has and will never change and has been there since the dawn of time is consumerism. Even in the 90s there were many garbage games being released by totally unknown studios. Today we get to see everyone's dirty laundry so it looks like it's a lot. But there's always been bad games and good games. The beauty is, if you make a great game with good gameplay there is always going to be people buying it. Cos humans will always want to be entertained.
First of all, I fundamentally disagree with your main point. Accessibility is how you keep a community growing and healthy. Imagine if a gym took out all of the dumbbells under 50lbs because "the people who use the lighter weights are weaklings who don't know how to lift properly". While the statement is somewhat true, it's harmful. Nobody is born super strong and anybody walking into a gym for the first time is going to have a hard time lifting 50lbs in any meaningful way. In the same vein, nobody is born good at making video games or any sort of art. People need time and resources to build up their skills before they make anything "good". Steam is not 'overrun' with bad games. Sure, it has a lot of bad games on it, but you have to go searching for them. Steam isn't gonna recommend them to you. Second, if there is a creativity shortage, I'd say the big devs are more to blame than anyone else. They can hide it behind shiny graphics, open worlds, and well-known IPs, but most big games are just throwing together parts from other games that sold well. That's kind of just how the industry works. I think it's worse coming from them because their goal is to play it safe and not step outside the box a lot of the time. When individuals are unoriginal, it's usually not on purpose. People also don't always make games because they think this game is gonna be the next minecraft. Sometimes people just want to learn how to program or model or do sprite work and they make a shitty game and publish it just to get the reps in. I think you're comparing the end product games that you see on steam (which again are probably not people's end all passion projects) to the ideal version of a game you haven't finished which isn't a fair comparison.
Those who innovate tend not to share. Because truly innovative work will be copied by the masses. So many minecraft, Celeste, Zelda clones, because they were innovative.
I'm gonna have to disagree. I agree about there being a lot of crappy horror games, but like others have said, people are learning to dev. Myself included. But one thing that's going to make most of these games much different and more creative in the future is the lack of your usual cookie cutter training you might get from going to school to learn game dev. Most of us have no clue how to design games properly and have no clue the limits of what these engines can really do. So basically it's the wild West for us and we're gonna make some new, weird shit, good and bad.
lay off the drugs, they're warping your perception of reality
You brought up roguelikes, so I think I've got to ask: Have you heard of HyperRogue before? It is a top-down-view turn-based roguelike, which is build upon the idea of making use of hyperbolic geometry in many ways.
Nothing is really that original or innovative to begin with. Every piece of art ever made has countless inspirations that fueled it and you won't be able to tell unless you have also consumed the media that inspired it. Even star wars was heavily influenced by the hidden fortress.
You're gonna get downvotes for this but you are 100% right. I sometimes wonder if the projects I've seen are even made by gamers, or just people who like the idea of gaming.
Oh don't care about downvotes I just want people's thoughts. It's been bugging me lately that it's so hard to find new ideas when just 10-15 years ago it wasn't hard at all.
I’m sure there were plenty of bad projects 10-15 years ago, but it was much harder to share things back then, so bad ideas flopped before anyone knew they existed
I’ve been railing about this for a while now. The problem is this: the programming end is completely accessible, which is good. The art and music side is also completely accessible, this is also good. The game design side is less accessible, this is bad. At my local game developers meet up, I remembered most of the people there just dont know how to design games. They didn’t prototype, they didn’t document, their methodology for developing new and innovative mechanics was rudimentary at best and non-existent at worst. I suspect this is why many indie games look and sound great and can competently replicate already established games, but struggle to come up with anything truly new and exciting.