QJ asks: does creativity matter to you?

In this day and age of “next generation” gaming, it has become the driving factor of the giants in the game industry to push out as many gorgeous games as their money would allow. Only the really innovative games come from the those who grew up in the meager beginnings of the computer video game or from the independent game developer, who has nothing but creativity to slap into their new games.

Is it a matter of opinion or should games actually sport some sort of creativity, no matter what the excuse? In this blogger’s book, game concepts and design should always entail something out of the ordinary – something new, something fresh and not just a visual upgrade that requires more muscle to achieve.

Let’s take this into another perspective: if games continue on improving in the path of realism, once they have achieved absolute realism, what else is there to improve on? It doesn’t take a double-digit IQ to tell that the path to realism already has one big dead end. Why pursue a race that’s bound to end when creativity, thanks to the human mind, is boundless and never really meets a creativity road block?

Although it may be arguable that the game industry already hit rock bottom in their barrel of creativity apples and just can’t think of anything new anymore, one could also attribute the direction of the game development aimed at a new type of gamer.

If you haven’t noticed already, you might be able to identify a growing core of hardcore gamers who no longer cares about what games were like before and just want the best visuals to blow them away. And it might just be that you have become one of them, yourself!

Take for instance, Epic Games‘ Gears of War. It has defied any and all odds against creativity, and serves as a testament to all that there are a core of gamers out there that could care less about a story if the gameplay sets the game right. It was often the target of scrutiny with most game developers, one iconic moment entailed it being slapped with a “zero-innovation” concept label.

Many other games fit in this same category and there’s hardly an innovative game that has rocked the industry like those in the old days. How many game designers do you know? How many of them have managed to develop a style and place it out there for people to relate with? For many gamers who have evolved to retro-gamers, we think you know what we’re trying to point out here.

So we’d just like to ask, “Does creativity matter to you?” No, we mean, really…does it?

In this day and age of “next generation” gaming, it has become the driving factor of the giants in the game industry to push out as many gorgeous games as their money would allow. Only the really innovative games come from the those who grew up in the meager beginnings of the computer video game or from the independent game developer, who has nothing but creativity to slap into their new games.

Is it a matter of opinion or should games actually sport some sort of creativity, no matter what the excuse? In this blogger’s book, game concepts and design should always entail something out of the ordinary – something new, something fresh and not just a visual upgrade that requires more muscle to achieve.

Let’s take this into another perspective: if games continue on improving in the path of realism, once they have achieved absolute realism, what else is there to improve on? It doesn’t take a double-digit IQ to tell that the path to realism already has one big dead end. Why pursue a race that’s bound to end when creativity, thanks to the human mind, is boundless and never really meets a creativity road block?

Although it may be arguable that the game industry already hit rock bottom in their barrel of creativity apples and just can’t think of anything new anymore, one could also attribute the direction of the game development aimed at a new type of gamer.

If you haven’t noticed already, you might be able to identify a growing core of hardcore gamers who no longer cares about what games were like before and just want the best visuals to blow them away. And it might just be that you have become one of them, yourself!

Take for instance, Epic Games‘ Gears of War. It has defied any and all odds against creativity, and serves as a testament to all that there are a core of gamers out there that could care less about a story if the gameplay sets the game right. It was often the target of scrutiny with most game developers, one iconic moment entailed it being slapped with a “zero-innovation” concept label.

Many other games fit in this same category and there’s hardly an innovative game that has rocked the industry like those in the old days. How many game designers do you know? How many of them have managed to develop a style and place it out there for people to relate with? For many gamers who have evolved to retro-gamers, we think you know what we’re trying to point out here.

So we’d just like to ask, “Does creativity matter to you?” No, we mean, really…does it?