Are we out of game ideas?

[BearShark]

Well, if we do end up seeing a great new, idea, it will most likely be an indie game, as the major game corporations will just keep milking profit out of old ideas once a year until they find a new money well to pounce on.

 

[Something Amyss]

Play Bioshock Infinite, you'll be slightly better inclined to AAA companies then.

And then after the honeymoon period you will realize that the game is only above average at best and people are so personally invested in the marketing they don't realize that the core function of the game is very much bland and boring.

Which should increase your cynicism greatly, when you realise you've been duped by the exact same marketing ploy.

 

[Bocaj2000]

We've only scratched the surface of interactivity. The video game industry will only revolutionize once it integrates itself with interactive art:

 

[Easton Dark]

Play Bioshock Infinite, you'll be slightly better inclined to AAA companies then.

A good story is not a new game idea. Everything but the rails I'm pretty sure are just Bioshock redone, which is System Shock redone.

Not totally sure if that's what you were saying, just pointing it out.

OT:

Yeah we are for a bit. It's really not fun to see creativity be unsuccessful.

 

[Zeh Don]

I find it hilarious that you mention being close to the point that hardware isn't a limit and Minecraft in the same breath...

Actually, I was referring to the computational and programming finesse necessary to create games on weaker machines, such as the SNES, Genesis and even the original Playstation. Now-a-days, knowing how to manage memory, processing cycles and efficiently handle draw and update calls simply isn't necessary to make a simple platformer or SNES JRPG - the types of games most indie studios can afford to make.

Minecraft, in terms of raw performance, is a frankly horrendous example if you're trying to argue against this point because it suffers from a lot of problems in comparison to the state of the art practices of the industry.
Hell, with some PC mods able to double FPS performance while providing substantially better visuals at the same time, and not to mention the under-the-hood .exe alterations that others have created that address virtually every major issue, Minecraft serves a wonderful example of exactly what I mean: computational power is sufficiently advanced that you can get away with a lot of problems thanks to the sheer brute force power of today's machines, allowing people with less expertise to create wonderfully inventive games.

 

[Requia]

I find it hilarious that you mention being close to the point that hardware isn't a limit and Minecraft in the same breath...

Actually, I was referring to the computational and programming finesse necessary to create games on weaker machines, such as the SNES, Genesis and even the original Playstation. Now-a-days, knowing how to manage memory, processing cycles and efficiently handle draw and update calls simply isn't necessary to make a simple platformer or SNES JRPG - the types of games most indie studios can afford to make.

Minecraft, in terms of raw performance, is a frankly horrendous example if you're trying to argue against this point because it suffers from a lot of problems in comparison to the state of the art practices of the industry.
Hell, with some PC mods able to double FPS performance while providing substantially better visuals at the same time, and not to mention the under-the-hood .exe alterations that others have created that address virtually every major issue, Minecraft serves a wonderful example of exactly what I mean: computational power is sufficiently advanced that you can get away with a lot of problems thanks to the sheer brute force power of today's machines, allowing people with less expertise to create wonderfully inventive games.

Those mods don't improve any of the things that actually cause Minecraft lag, in fact Optifine makes the problems substantially worse. It'll provide an FPS boost under normal circumstances by changing rendering code, but a lighting engine (CPU bound) or item entity (RAM bound) based lag problem will actually be much slower in Optifine, because it makes FPS boosts at the expense of CPU and RAM time. And those FPS boosts are useless unless you're also running HD texture packs or shaders (which won't run on integrated graphics, even with Optifine boosts), because the performance doesn't improve past 20 FPS.

Some of the Minecraft problems can be fixed (the lighting engine for example, a fix for which is in progress), but there are no mods that actually *do* that.

And .exe alterations? You realize this is a Java program? The only thing in there is a command that launches the actual program.

 

[VanQ]

Play Bioshock Infinite, you'll be slightly better inclined to AAA companies then.

And then after the honeymoon period you will realize that the game is only above average at best and people are so personally invested in the marketing they don't realize that the core function of the game is very much bland and boring.

So sad that so many people don't realize this. I did enjoy my initial romp through the game but when it ended it was a big "that's really it?" kinda moment. I honestly can't believe the amount of perfect scores reviewers are giving this title. It really highlights just how bad the current state of the industry is if BS:I is considered so revolutionary.

Excuse me while I go wait in a corner, crying until I either die or the NervGear finally gets invented. And I'm talking real VR, not this "strap an LED monitor to your face" VR they're working on at the moment.

 

[Oroboros]

I'm going to have to agree. The Industry is definately out of ideas, as far as AAA titles go, it seems somewhat different with Indies. The idnustry has eliminated soem genres almost entirely,such as space flight sims such as freespace and Colony Wars, 4x games, both science fiction and scifi (master of orion/magic, lords of magic, etc etc)hack and slash games like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Champions of Norrath. Not only has the the industry shrunken in its ideas, but also in its variety. Personally, I blame rising production costs and sales expectations-games have to aim for the widest possible audience possible and spruce them up with the best possible graphics etc in order to make money, which means risky ventures and niche genres etc get left by the wayside.