Do we really care about originality?

[JKDarkside]

Whenever I see EA or Capcom mentioned anywhere on the internet, there will always be an army of people shouting that both companies don't care about originality or innovation, just making the same games over and over. I dare argue that's what we value most as well. We couldn't possibly be bigger hypocrites as a community, myself included.

Awhile back, EA decided to try their hand at doing something new and different, green-lighting two major experiments to try and expand their market base. Mirror's Edge and Brutal Legend each got a lot of publicity and advertising behind them, healthy budgets and each did something fresh, one using the first person view to create thrills instead of just being another shooter while Brutal Legend went with an all metal vibe and had a visionary developer behind it, trying to make a console RTS and make it work.

Brutal Legend barely sold over a million with both console versions combined and Mirror's Edge got to about two million but was also met with average reviews. For two games with such massive backing, this was way under expectations for EA. Mirror's Edge 2 has been in development for years now and odds are will be forgotten, while Brutal Legend simply isn't getting another game in it's series. The backlash of this is that EA stopped going this route and instead focused more on their already existing series, going with what pays the bills.

Now Capcom may have the worst luck imaginable when it comes to experimenting. They tinkered with the Breath of Fire series too much and ended up killing it. Megaman Legends never caught on, made worse by the sequel being released at the very beginning of the PS2 lifecycle on the PS1. They tried bringing Megaman X and Street Fighter into 3D, only to meet lots of disappointment. They had Clover around to make tons of experimental games, all which ended up being huge flops. Whenever they dare add something or change something in a fighter, they instantly meet massive backlash while the game is still in development. They make a throw back to the NES Megaman games and instant money. They release a game that's pretty much Street Fighter II with 3D graphics with an added mechanic, massive seller for them.

Let's be honest, we like innovation and experimentation, but we're not always willing to support it. If I had a choice between something new and the newest Sonic game, most times I would go with the Sonic game. Constantly attacking companies for a lack of innovation isn't exactly fair because odds are good that we're part of the problem why they don't try more often. Why bother trying something new if you can just sell the same old thing and people eat it up?

[Nemkoon]

In a nutshell- most of the times, no. But sometimes, yes.

[TheRealSpiders]

As far as innovation or originality go, it does have some importance to me, but if I had to choose between "original" or "good" 9 times out of 10 I'm going to want to choose "good". I'm not going to support a game simply because it's original, but at the same time I'm not going to instantly hate a game for trying something new.

As far as firms maintaining pretty much a strict linearity in the older or more popular franchises, why fix what isn't broken?

[Aeolus Aeneas]

From what I've seen, Mirror's Edge suffered from not being able to tell what you could climb on half the time, and being very picky as to when it would grab onto things you could grab.

Also, what disappointment did X face when they "brought it back"? X7 was garbage, but they did very well with X8, Command Mission was great and the remake of the first game was FANTASTIC. About the only thing I can think of was the fact that Inafune decided to do Maverick Hunter X instead of X9... but it's Capcom who basically benched anything Mega Man after the man left.

[JKDarkside]

Command Mission doesn't count, it's just a generic JRPG with Megaman X used. I've also heard that X8 was better but still kind of awful.

[Gare]

Brutal Legend wasn't complete innovation, though. Look up Sacrifice on the PC, you'll see where they got the idea from. But I see what you're trying to say. I loved Mirror's Edge, although not necessarily because of the "first-person parkour" idea. The great atmosphere/soundtrack and overall visuals were the most memorable to me, honestly. I guess it just wasn't grey-brown enough for certain people.

Trying completely new things is nice once in a while, but I'm pretty sure I don't care about innovation as much as others. I'm not saying a franchise should be milked for all its worth, though. Just take the core game and improve on it, add new things or change certain mechanics here and there. Random example: the jump from Assassin's Creed 1 to 2 is a fairly decent example. Or Persona 3 -> Persona 4. Or even the evolution of the Sands of Time trilogy's battle system over the three games. Stuff like that.

[Sprung]

I absolutely hate recycled games. Sports games and soldier-shooters annoy the hell out of me, and I will always believe they are a total waste of money. If you've played one Call of Duty, you've played them all. Same for football. Seriously, $60 for a new roster? No.

Now, I will always gravitate to the 'new original' stuff. I loved Brutal Legend. I still own a copy, because it's unlike anything else out there. I like the games that other people consider obscure and odd. I dislike anything recycled and re-released every year with a tiny change.

[ponury_indor]

As far as innovation or originality go, it does have some importance to me, but if I had to choose between "original" or "good" 9 times out of 10 I'm going to want to choose "good". I'm not going to support a game simply because it's original, but at the same time I'm not going to instantly hate a game for trying something new.

Same here.

[Raype]

Originality is good and all, but the thing is a lot of people forget that originality isn't enough to carry a game.

I'll attempt to explain why while examining the case with the listed games.

First up, the EA situation. I figure the good starting point would be Mirror's Edge, since it pops up first. Alright, so it's a fairly original idea. Okay, so not really. It's first person prince of persia with guns. So freerunning/parkour are all over games and dystopian futures are everywhere (and this game's plot is pretty much just a melting pot plot of several of them) meaning about the only really original thing here is the art style going for BLINDING WHITE SHINY instead of GRITTY RUST BROWN. But that aside, the thing is the game was easily beatable in one sitting, didn't have any longstanding challenges, and the only real replay value is in pulling off time trials on previously seen maps or grabbing collectibles to unlock concept art. No alternate plot lines, no decision points, no huge difficulty boosts, no challenges, no sidequests, no multiplayer, no freeroaming, nothing. Essentially there's not much game there. So yeah, the sales here might be a good indicator that you could borrow the game from someone for an evening or perhaps pull a rental and see pretty much everything worth the effort of seeing in the game. Original or not, the game lacks substance. So if it's a choice between this game or a game that offers a couple days worth of content I'd be more inclined to pick (and suggest) the latter. Now before it comes up: I'm aware that Call of Duty 17: Purple Soldiers has a campaign of roughly equal length. Difference is, there's more of a challenge to go with the upper difficulties and the single player was never the focus. Those games pack shit into the multiplayer. The single player stuff is mostly just an excuse to release a huge disc-based content pack and patch for their online. If Battlefield Spinoff 6: Beneath the Planet of the Molemen had no online, I sincerely doubt it'd be flying off the shelf. Nevermind that Mirror's Edge was targeting a completely different audience in the first place. But enough about that, let's move on.

Brutal Legend can get kind of wonky here. Just to discuss the elephant in the room for a moment: Bait and Switch. A lot of people figured that what the game was going to be was a lot different than what it ultimately was. I happen to like genre shifts personally, but not many people do. Fewer still like it when it outstays its welcome. If you're playing an RPG and it suddenly turns into a fighting game, some people would be okay with it. But if it remained a fighting game indefinitely? Now you've got a displeased fanbase. Many gamers are of a specific variety. Now everyone here can suddenly chime in that they love platformers and roguelikes and japanese dating sims about pigeons, but the thing is not everyone is like that, and even within that group there'll be some black zones. I, for one, am not huge on racing sims and management intensive sports games. I'll play (and like) damn near everything else. But right here we have a seemingly cool action/adventure that suddenly turns into Command and Conquer. RTS isn't that popular a genre. It's getting less popular. It's pretty much unheard of in the console market (the current backbone of the entire game industry). Obviously that's not going to go over too well. Moreover, the star power of Schafer is extremely overstated. He has a moderate to small fanbase that just makes itself pretty vocal within the "hardcore" gaming community. Probably because many are required to treat at least one game on his resume like the goddamn holy grail if they want any credibility as a gamer. But let's look at things this way: his two most cited games are an adequate platformer that gets by purely because it's quirky as fuck and a goddamned point and click adventure game. No one is playing either of these for the "game" involved. Unless you're sold on the plot/writing/premise, you might not be rushing out to grab it unless you're neck deep in Tim's ass. Throw in the possible heightened expectations and you've got a recipe for disaster. Which happens anytime a noted developer winds up attached to a project, so you can just add this to the list of games that suffered this fate. Then you also have to factor in that the target audience is aging metal heads. Not necessarily a small market, but then we have to examine it this way: the typical purchaser of Brutal Legend who would like it would be: someone that enjoys RTS and adventure games, someone that has heard of Schafer/LucasArts, someone that spent a decent amount of time listening to classic metal and is still somewhat in touch with music today (or is at least fairly knowledgeable on metal history), someone that is not immediately repulsed by Jack Black, and someone that doesn't pirate fucking everything. That's a pretty small number of people the way I see it. Its audience is niche as fuck, and it takes a lot for a game to be good enough to break out of something like that. So basically BL failed due to not really having a widespread appeal. It's really not a game for everyone. When you make a game like that, and your projected audience isn't massive, there's a risk. It just didn't pay off. It happens. Not everyone is going to thing it's a fun game.

Onward to Capcom:

Breath of Fire can be a funny case, really. I think a serious problem was really just that it was poorly timed and they didn't do enough to distance it from the prior BoF. It's just really different than 1-4 and a hell of a lot of the JRPGs on the market. The series was having really lousy sales leading up to DQ, which is what prompted the change in the first place. But I figure they really just shot themselves in the foot. The fans that stuck around after 3/4 didn't pick it up because it was too different, the JRPG fandom in general, meanwhile, ignored it because they had already long since written off the BoF series. Had they done it sooner or leaned into it, they might've gotten a bit more interest from RPG fans (Final Fantasy's numerous transitions from Fantasy to Steampunk to Sci-Fi with the initial one taking a damn long time to get there). If they didn't do it at all, they could eventually pump out portable BoF games with low development costs to a loyal customerbase that's fine with playing the same game over and over and over and over (handhelds have been releasing games in this format for ages, and several devs have successfully made the jump from console game to samey console game series to handheld series of extremely similar games). Alternatively, they could have established an entirely new IP. Remove the BoF content (not hard) or make them more minor. No more stigma. The problem is that developers are often afraid to go this route because they have a deeply rooted belief that "established name = sales". Without noting that "established name" might also equal "backlash", "indifference to yet another game in X series" and "fanrage". Which was pretty much the case here. Using a known series name to move product is a safe and easy decision (and frequently the right one), but not always. Also, might be worth noting that the difficulty and core gameplay concept are pretty damn intimidating. Not to mention the explanation for how it works seems completely backwards to anyone that played BoF previously, or anyone that spend much time with games in general. The idea that you're walking around with an ability that makes you nigh invulnerable and can take out every enemy (and boss!) in the game in 1 hit yet you're not supposed to use it constantly baffles people. The statement that it's instead all about utilizing classes, unique abilities, combo attacks, and battlefield positioning just baffles them more. BoF comes from the "mash attack to win, if that fails use your strongest attack" school of design, like many RPGs. DQ is just totally backwards. Additionally, games with time limits terrify people. Moreso when it's an RPG, the one genre where it's hardcoded into the gamer's mind to stop and smell the roses. In retrospect, this game probably could've been better marketed to the hardcore survival horror crowd. In this case, poor marketing/development decisions coupled with a fracturing fanbase and a market flooded with high level competition.

Megaman Legends: Pretty much everything I said about Brutal Legend applies here, as does a lot of what was said about BoF. Megaman is a 2d sidescroller with episodic levels concluding in a gimmick boss who gives you his weapon. It's not Zelda.

Megaman X & 3 This one's pretty simple: fun and oversaturation. Megaman has been everywhere by this point. We've all seen his shit. There wasn't really much new that could be brought to the table. Numerous new series were popping up involving Megamen of some kind. People were pretty unimpressed by yet another Megaman. Matters were not helped any by the 3D games simply not being fun to play. Where exactly the blame lies there is a matter of opinion. But in any case, you can combine some of MML's problems with whatever your personal reason for why the later X games aren't that good as why 3D X didn't fly.

3D Street Fighter: that's an easy one. It didn't fail. At all. At least no more than the 2D Street Fighters were at the time. They just changed back to the older graphical style once 2D made a comeback and things like Tekken and Virtua Fighter were no longer front and center of the fighting game fandom. Their attempts at 3D street fighters were pretty halfhearted anyway.

As for Street Fighter in general, fighting game fans hate change. Worse still is that SF fans tend to largely be people who didn't move on or branch out to other stuff. They'd be shocked to learn it's not 1991 anymore. These people obsessively learned how to glitchcombo in SF2 original. They aren't about to learn some complex new mechanic unless they can exploit it in some way that they're okay with. And even then they'll hate it until they learn how to do that and will immediately resume bitching and moaning the second it puts them at a disadvantage. And they're certainly not going to learn how to play a completely different fighting game. They just want their classic Ken back and maybe a slightly better version of an old move. So yeah, going back to the classics would work well with them. Change, not so much.

Clover: Didn't fail. Their games were decently successful in terms of sales/critical praise. They weren't smash hits by any means, but they were far from the huge flops you claim they were. Need evidence? There's sequels to every one of their games either on the market or in development. The bulk of them have even been rereleased on new platforms. What money grubbing corporation would do something like that if they were expecting to lose money? The reason Clover dissolved was because the core development staff left Capcom. You can't run a business where there are no bosses. It just doesn't work that way.

So yeah, the deal here is that innovation needs to be backed up by other stuff. If you want sales, pick a decent target audience and don't try to launch from a sinking ship, because you might get sucked under too. Don't make a short game. Don't make a low quality game.

Innovation does not mean going all out to be different or artsy. Sometimes all it means is taking what's there and making it better. It's not always Megaman->Megaman Legends that we want. It's usually just Megaman->Megaman X. And in that regard, yes, it's clearly what we want.

[Andy_Jerk]

Well, I used to play the 16-bit rpg's and I enjoyed them, but as time went on it seemed like the character designs just got weirder and weirder; as if in an effort to be "original" and avoid copying a previous design. But they just got really tacky and hard to look at for me in a lot of the 32-bit rpg's and onward. I have ranted about it before but the designers and programmers are younger now because current technology allows a lot more to be accomplished with less experience, but some of the results look half-baked and insubstantial to me.

[Gypsy]

@sprung: Ditto, especially when you can pick up any old football title for under $5.

I'd like to say that I care, and I think somewhat I do. When I can see a company has made an effort to put out something new-looking I'm always willing to give it a look (even if only by pirating at first and then purchasing). It seems to happen even less these days. I love stuff like Jet Set Radio. That being said I will also buy every Disgaea, Atelier etc...game that comes out. As well as SRW and almost anything Gust puts out so...I'm a bit of a fan boy and I can admit those games are fairly recycled with maybe a few new mechanics and a completely new story of course which is a good amount of content. And to Gust's credit they change up Atelier fairly regularly. So basically also what TRS said (as what constitutes as good for my tastes).

So yeah, the deal here is that innovation needs to be backed up by other stuff. If you want sales, pick a decent target audience and don't try to launch from a sinking ship, because you might get sucked under too. Don't make a short game. Don't make a low quality game.

Innovation does not mean going all out to be different or artsy. Sometimes all it means is taking what's there and making it better.

Can't agree with this enough.

[Slacker Magician]

Nope. As long as the plot is different, I really don't care what gameplay mechanics they copy. I have to like the gameplay in the first place for that to apply though.

[Quiji]

There's a huge difference between originality and just re-hashes. I'm fine with a sequel, I'm looking forward to FFXIII-2, but seriously, who cares about SSFIV Arcade Edition? It just has a couple new characters, some new stages, minor UI tweaks, but they obviously did not try to make any new.

By this stage of the market, there's barely any 'original' games. Most ideas have been made and implemented, so not much can be done.

I remember one game, where you play as a Shadow in the shadows of landscapes. Basically a super cool idea for a platformer, but it was implemented badly. So honestly, I don't care about originality to a point, I care about gameplay and the companies making an effort to change some things.

I can see the argument against companies like Capcom, EA sports games, and Activision, but at the same time I can't completely agree with them. Gameplay for me is what matters, along with plot and characters. Originality to a point that they're literally not making the same exact game, but otherwise I'm cool with it.

[unnoticedninja]

I also believe that originality is hard to come by these days, as almost any idea you can think of has been made into a game thanks to newgrounds and game developers willing to try new ideas. Not every original idea would make a good game though. I also agree with Shardnax, as long as a game has good gameplay, and the plot is different, whats the matter with making more games in the same series. Recettear is a great example of originality mixed with classic dungeon crawling (I don't think a game where you run your own item shop has been done before). I've also heard that Brutal Legend was an awesome game from everyone I know who played it, so why did it not sell very well?

In the end, I believe story and gameplay come first, then originality, then graphics.

[Kgo]

WHen something is 'original' and stale out of the bag, it will not take hold. Both of those games did something that seemed original but wasn't ground breaking or fresh enough to make people clamor to it, from art design to execution.