Why no innovation on this forum??
Author
Don't interprete this as a flame!
It seems to me that the vast MAJORITY of the game design threads on this forum are based on one the following game types:
(1) RPG (the majority)
(2) RTS
(3) Physics-based Simulations
(4) Fighting games (least popular)
However, major game developers worldwide are releasing innovation after innovation onto the marketplace. Games like Katamari Damacy, Magical Drop, Puyo Puyo, Roller Coaster Tycoon, the SIMS, Chu-Chu Rocket, Bonga-Konga etc. Even minor shareware developers are into the innovation game: Dweep, Insaniquarium, etc.
Why aren't there more innovative design discussions on this design forum? Or is innovative game design the domain of only a few experts? Or are we forum members just not as innovative as the major studios?
Let's hear your INNOVATIVE ideas! I'm getting tired of all the "yet another RPG combat/levelling system" threads :-)
It's a good idea. I wish I had more creative, original ideas to share with fellow GameDev'ers. However, there may be justifiable reasons why people don't post such things here:
1. Good, creative, original ideas are simply hard to find. Do *you* have any really good ideas? OTOH, mediocre ideas are a dime a dozen. One can't be bothered to actually read all of them...
2. Many people who have good ideas are too afraid to post them, get ridiculed, be told it's already been done, or otherwise get shot down. Others are afraid someone's going to steal their idea and go make big bucks on it. (Is this last a valid concern? I don't know.)
3. Sometimes original ideas do get posted. I myself posted some experimental ideas, such as this one:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=126687 *
* Note how RPGeezus cuts in and totally tries to rip me a new one because he can't handle the possibility of someone trying something that's been tried before and succeeding where others failed. This logic is completely and patently stupid - you could say, if the genius Leonardo Da Vinci couldn't build a flying machine, what presumption for a couple of bicycle mechanics to even try! Examples like this are one reason why I no longer post every good idea. However, if the idea is already in a copyrighted, demoable form, I wouldn't hesitate to post here.
Anyway, good luck. I'm sure if you look further back in the archives you'll see some interesting ideas posted here.
Tom
1. Good, creative, original ideas are simply hard to find. Do *you* have any really good ideas? OTOH, mediocre ideas are a dime a dozen. One can't be bothered to actually read all of them...
2. Many people who have good ideas are too afraid to post them, get ridiculed, be told it's already been done, or otherwise get shot down. Others are afraid someone's going to steal their idea and go make big bucks on it. (Is this last a valid concern? I don't know.)
3. Sometimes original ideas do get posted. I myself posted some experimental ideas, such as this one:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=126687 *
* Note how RPGeezus cuts in and totally tries to rip me a new one because he can't handle the possibility of someone trying something that's been tried before and succeeding where others failed. This logic is completely and patently stupid - you could say, if the genius Leonardo Da Vinci couldn't build a flying machine, what presumption for a couple of bicycle mechanics to even try! Examples like this are one reason why I no longer post every good idea. However, if the idea is already in a copyrighted, demoable form, I wouldn't hesitate to post here.
Anyway, good luck. I'm sure if you look further back in the archives you'll see some interesting ideas posted here.
Tom
According to my understanding of the functionality of the human brain: Creativity is the process of taking something that you already know, mangling it into some unrecognizable fashion, and spitting it back out for humanity to either cherish or despise according to their tastes and whims.
Indeed I concur that the boundaries set aside by PC Gamer magazine, and others who wish to stringently taxonomize our way of thinking, tend to inhibit the freedom of aberration -- especially in this forum.
But it is of capital importance that we all recognize the truth: Too much creativity is not appreciated in the population of the world. The cliches develop from a string of success. And very few people make it a habit of completely chewing their food before swallowing it.
Indeed I concur that the boundaries set aside by PC Gamer magazine, and others who wish to stringently taxonomize our way of thinking, tend to inhibit the freedom of aberration -- especially in this forum.
But it is of capital importance that we all recognize the truth: Too much creativity is not appreciated in the population of the world. The cliches develop from a string of success. And very few people make it a habit of completely chewing their food before swallowing it.
Edit: Haven't you started this thread before? /Edit
I'm going to go ahead and interpret this as a flame, and an underinformed one at that. The simple fact that a small percentage of the threads on this forum are based on brilliant new ideas is not an indicator that we are suffering from a dearth of innovation.
Generally, threads that have off-the-wall concepts fall into one of two categories:
1) Reckless amateurs with no actual design experience coming up with a--usually derivative--idea that they think would make for "teh best gaem evar". These threads are met with fairly standard responses, like, "Hey, good to see you're thinking. When you produce anything from this idea and have more specific ideas and problems to discuss, come back and we'll see what we can do to help. Good luck, and keep up that optimism!" Then, they begin the steady drop down the topic list and disappear into the archives.
2) Simple innovations developed by practical, experienced designers/programmers. These are usually manageable, but the original poster has pretty much figured out what it's good for and has a very specific set of questions to have answered. Once they're satisfied with the response, the thread stagnates and drops off into the archives.
The reason that the "major threads" that float at the top of the queue are all about fairly rudimentary issues is that they are accessible to everyone, and most everybody has an opinion on how they ought to be improved. These are the sort of discussions that you should expect on these forums. After all, this is essentially an academic environment. People with varying levels of knowledge and skill gather here. It's only natural that the common ground is the fundamental substance of the medium we're discussing.
Here at GD.net we cultivate refinement, skill and competence. If you're looking for genius, you're in the wrong place. Brilliant innovations tend to occur away from major communities. Maybe one of the newbs who get flamed out of here for their "jest liek teh MATRICX!!1" idea will actually produce it, but they won't be doing it step-by-step on these boards.
I think GD.net is an invaluable resource, but it's fairly conservative. Take a briliant idea, run it through the community a few times, and it might be toned down enough to actually become a real game. This is the other side of the coin. I think you'll find plenty of bizarre, inspired innovations here, but they're usually in the first half-dozen or so posts a member makes. After that, the idea becomes all talk, and the other members are bored by it.
Take bishop_pass and his horse simulation system. He's got all the research, all the knowledge, and all the competence to make it work. For a while, you couldn't even mention horses on these boards without a dissertation from him on why your four-legged motorcycle was an abomination and how ungodly it was to reduce the horse to a simple means to an end. He's the reclusive genius. He may very well be 98% of the way through the most nuanced animal behavior simulation ever developed, but he knows that GD.net isn't the place to develop it.
Posters come here with questions and results, and we occasionally have a theoretical discussion. Look at the volumes that Wavinator has produced here, and then look at his website. For every thread he posts, he's doing twenty pages of work on his own. Most of his incredible ideas don't even appear here. He knows that this community is a tool to help him, and he has no obligation to entertain us (although we might get a mention in his credits when all is said and done).
So no, I don't think we lack innovation. We might not post enough to entertain you with our brilliance, but there are plenty of gears turning around here.
I'm going to go ahead and interpret this as a flame, and an underinformed one at that. The simple fact that a small percentage of the threads on this forum are based on brilliant new ideas is not an indicator that we are suffering from a dearth of innovation.
Generally, threads that have off-the-wall concepts fall into one of two categories:
1) Reckless amateurs with no actual design experience coming up with a--usually derivative--idea that they think would make for "teh best gaem evar". These threads are met with fairly standard responses, like, "Hey, good to see you're thinking. When you produce anything from this idea and have more specific ideas and problems to discuss, come back and we'll see what we can do to help. Good luck, and keep up that optimism!" Then, they begin the steady drop down the topic list and disappear into the archives.
2) Simple innovations developed by practical, experienced designers/programmers. These are usually manageable, but the original poster has pretty much figured out what it's good for and has a very specific set of questions to have answered. Once they're satisfied with the response, the thread stagnates and drops off into the archives.
The reason that the "major threads" that float at the top of the queue are all about fairly rudimentary issues is that they are accessible to everyone, and most everybody has an opinion on how they ought to be improved. These are the sort of discussions that you should expect on these forums. After all, this is essentially an academic environment. People with varying levels of knowledge and skill gather here. It's only natural that the common ground is the fundamental substance of the medium we're discussing.
Here at GD.net we cultivate refinement, skill and competence. If you're looking for genius, you're in the wrong place. Brilliant innovations tend to occur away from major communities. Maybe one of the newbs who get flamed out of here for their "jest liek teh MATRICX!!1" idea will actually produce it, but they won't be doing it step-by-step on these boards.
I think GD.net is an invaluable resource, but it's fairly conservative. Take a briliant idea, run it through the community a few times, and it might be toned down enough to actually become a real game. This is the other side of the coin. I think you'll find plenty of bizarre, inspired innovations here, but they're usually in the first half-dozen or so posts a member makes. After that, the idea becomes all talk, and the other members are bored by it.
Take bishop_pass and his horse simulation system. He's got all the research, all the knowledge, and all the competence to make it work. For a while, you couldn't even mention horses on these boards without a dissertation from him on why your four-legged motorcycle was an abomination and how ungodly it was to reduce the horse to a simple means to an end. He's the reclusive genius. He may very well be 98% of the way through the most nuanced animal behavior simulation ever developed, but he knows that GD.net isn't the place to develop it.
Posters come here with questions and results, and we occasionally have a theoretical discussion. Look at the volumes that Wavinator has produced here, and then look at his website. For every thread he posts, he's doing twenty pages of work on his own. Most of his incredible ideas don't even appear here. He knows that this community is a tool to help him, and he has no obligation to entertain us (although we might get a mention in his credits when all is said and done).
So no, I don't think we lack innovation. We might not post enough to entertain you with our brilliance, but there are plenty of gears turning around here.
Quote:Original post by GemuhDesayinah
Why aren't there more innovative design discussions on this design forum?
I see neither point nor reason in trying to get more "innovative" design discussions. Design is in details - and while there are a lot of people with good, innovative ideas they don´t necessarily post them here. Why, I have about a ton of good ideas sitting in a folder somewhere. But why not post them? Because I might eventually do something with them - and when I do, when I have spent enough time with them and have come to a point where I feel that I need external input to progress, THEN I´ll post - but with specific directions and goals in mind.
What the world of game design needs most is realists who will crush a good idea to the point where it becomes doable.
The ongoing forum discussions are more of a design playground - we all have our pet genres we like to play around with, and there´s lots of fun in fiddling with the details.
Quote:Original post by GemuhDesayinah
Let's hear your INNOVATIVE ideas! I'm getting tired of all the "yet another RPG combat/levelling system" threads :-)
let´s hear yours first.
Quote:Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
So no, I don't think we lack innovation. We might not post enough to entertain you with our brilliance, but there are plenty of gears turning around here.
I think that this is largely a semmantic war. And whether or not the original poster is "informed," bears very little relevence to the quesiton: Are our genre boundaries inhibiting our ability to design interesting games?
Anybody who reads (and moreso for someone who posts on) this forum could easily fall under the "Do not question me, I am an ARTIST!" category. We are narcissistically in love with our ideas and refuse to consider that the semmantic details of them fall short of setting these ideas apart from everyone else's.
What the original poster fails to consider is that 70% of all content on all web-forums is unoriginal, uninteresting, uneducated crap. Even moreso than that, we fail to consider when we, ourselves, full under that oh-so-terrible 70%. We get opinions, ideas, and the emotional flare drives us to post our ill-formulated thoughts -- whether these thoughts are in the form of a boring game idea, a flame, or a counter-flame.
We are all too much caught up in the act of being ourselves to really take an analytical, objective view of ourselves. This is why we use forums: So that others can kindly put us under the microscope and help us derive lucid judgments where introspection fails.
That is why people post their unoriginal game ideas on this forum. That is why people ever post flames on any forum. That is the nature of a forum.
Design is the deliberate process of formulating an actious plan to affect, which usually results in a project focused on resolution of a specific issue or set of issues. In definitional compliance, "innovative game design" regards resolving novel (or unresolved) game issues. A discussion of "innovative game design ideas" requires identifying (or forecasting) the latest trends/information in interactive entertainment-related disciplines, such as cognitive psychology, sociology and technology.
1. Which novel game issues are currently unresolved?
2. Which novel game issues are forecasted?
Find a novel (or unresolved) issue. Start a new thread.
Discuss the issue and propose a solution.
1. Which novel game issues are currently unresolved?
2. Which novel game issues are forecasted?
Find a novel (or unresolved) issue. Start a new thread.
Discuss the issue and propose a solution.
I can't speak for all the others, but I'd like to create a game I'd like to play. I like to play RPG's, space sims and to a degree FPS's. That's why most of my game related posts are in these areas. If my game of choice was SIMS, tycoon games, or weird puzzle games, then I'd probably wan't to create a game like that.
I dunno if I'm creative or not, but I can't possibly try to be creative in areas I don't have interests in. It would be like Beethoven creating hip-hop music, or 50 cents composing classic music.
I dunno if I'm creative or not, but I can't possibly try to be creative in areas I don't have interests in. It would be like Beethoven creating hip-hop music, or 50 cents composing classic music.
Well, original ideas are few and far between. It would make sense that discussion of them is limited. Additionally, people have a comfort zone, innovative ideas are out of that comfort zone and are harshly ridiculed. People are scared of new ideas. This is true in general, not limited to gamedev.
Imagine if the designer of Katamari Damacy posted his idea here. The game is fun, but the idea is way, way out of the box. His idea would have been blasted and he would be laughed off this forum. Maybe even somewhat discouraged.
Imagine if the designer of Katamari Damacy posted his idea here. The game is fun, but the idea is way, way out of the box. His idea would have been blasted and he would be laughed off this forum. Maybe even somewhat discouraged.
This topic is closed to new replies.
Advertisement
Popular Topics
Advertisement
