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"Art games aren't innovative and innovation isn't good"

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Gah. This fucking website. Destructoid posted an editorial today called "Art games aren't innovative and innovation isn't good", and it is a wonderous pile of shit.

I agree with a few of his points; that Indie games aren't necessarily innovative by the virtue of being Indie games, and that innovation does not equal quality.

He brings up Edmund, a game I've never heard of, but sounds interesting. He argues that because other art forms have shown rape, that a video game doing it isn't innovative. I think that by virtue of it being in a video game, it's completely different because it's interactive, in the same sense that the Airport level in Call of Duty could have been.

He later brings up Bioshock, completely forgetting that it was a breakthrough hit and not an established or sure-fire blockbuster, and Halo which he cites as being more clever simply because it has backstory. This doesn't make any sense, giving your game backstory doesn't make it clever, and nor does your game not having a backstory and existing solely within itself make it lack 'backbone'.

Next he discusses innovation not being equative to quality, which is true, but innovation does equal artistic worth. If a game is incredibly innovative, but is unbelievably unpolished, it may not be a good, but it inherently has more artistic worth because it pushes the boundaries of the medium than a game that isn't innovative but does what it does well.

I find the Mirror's Edge part particularly funny as he sites it as an innovative game that people still didn't like. When, as far as everyone I've talked to and everything I've read about the game, the game floundered it was not because of the innovative mechanics, but because of the arbitrary imposition of traditional big budget gun gameplay.

Not sure what I expect from a site that features this though.

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Not really diplomatic I say but is what I wrote and I don't think such bullshit deserves one-lined comments.

«No. Art games aren't innovative and innovation isn't good.»

And you're an imbecil. Yes, that is, as your sentence is, an exaggeration based solely on a few words out of an article several hundreds words long.

You base your affirmations on a few examples and dare employ the term fallacy ? One of the main fallacious arguments is taking a general truth out of an example. And it's exactly what you are doing. Saying that:

«I wouldn't even call Halo creatively bankrupt, and that game is a landmark in the "FPS space marine" genre, henceforth regarded as the most over-saturated genre of them all. I don't personally like Halo, but it told an original tale and featured a rich universe full of history that a lot of fans really got into. I think that's more clever than a game with no backbone to its premise whatsoever.»

Is just absurd… Would you dare compare using a poor scenario, constructed out of pieces pre-existing the game by decades (« original tale and featured a rich universe full of history») made of cliches and awaited u-turns in the story, you dare compare this says I with a game like Braid ? With a game like Gravitation ? It is literally absurd ! (contrary to you, I like Halo very much but nonetheless can clearly see how it is a creative failure as it just makes old into new with better graphics).

Over that, you use arguments that are demagogical to an astounding point: the quality of a product is not, ever, in any form of reflexion, to be judged by it's success. Rather, success can qualify the interest of people towards that object but in no way be a argument. For instance, tobacco is a very successful product, World of Warcraft is a very successful product, does that make those "good" ? No. Junk food is also very successful, would you, as you apply that reflexion to games, call those great products ? Not ever! They are bad products, swimming in our primal instincts and needs to hook us up into consumption, they do not open our mind, participate in our intelligent development (nor do some (or most if you'd prefer) art games, that's a given, but one's got to have some credit for trying).

Now on the innovation is not good, well my good sir, you have, again, not a single shred of arguments, as:

«You can't say innovation is good because plenty of innovative games have failed, either tied up and lost in their own ambition or placed in the hands of developers not skilled enough to do the unique idea justice.»

Innovation, no matter what, is always good. That does not involve the product that inducts it, it's just good. Yes, you can be perfectly right, sometimes, innovation will not be put to good use, but it is good. Would you say inventing the knife was not good nor bad because it allowed us to make evil things ? That would be denying the entire human history. Knives are good for they allowed us to evolve through time, they killed, they lacerated and hurt people but in the end, knives made us move forward.

Games can be crap, utterly and irrevocably bad but who cares ? Someone else will come and make those innovations into something else, into another game. Innovation, in and out of itself is awesome. Purely and simply essential to us and the only way of denying that is shutting down internet right now and going out in the street naked shouting "forget all you learned".

Thanks for reading.

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I kind of agree with that article. I do think innovation is highly overrated, and poorly attributed. Innovative games are rarely ever good, it's usually the next game that is good where the innovative part has been improved to be more playable.

For example, take Portal. It's not innovative. It's basically Narbacular Drop 2 with pinch of Half Life. Narbacular Drop itself wasn't a great game, it was barely playable because the innovative concepts where not worked out well. It lacked the required polish to the concepts. And it didn't have the proper window dressing.

Innovation doesn't provide a great experience, and in the end, that's what you want when you play a game. Some innovations work out great (eventually), like the whole FPS portal concept (which actually started with Prey iirc). Other innovations sucked, and have more or less disappeared (VR helmets?). And other innovations suck but try to come back time and time again (3D displays for games (it sucks for the same reason heavy DoF sucks during gameplay)).

Also, innovation is about doing something new. Not doing something different. As Sterling pointed out in that article, a lot of those "innovative" games didn't do anything new, just different.

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Well…*Then, are you the same person that I have seen at times complaining about sequels ? Because if innovation is useless, why would anyone bother ?

Also, innovation is still good, and that has nothing to do with the games it's in.

Also also, doing something differently, in a "different" not-done-before way, is also innovation. Vocabularily speaking, wether we like it or not. By definition, if it's not been done before the way it's done there, then it's innovative.

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Narbacular Drop was great for what I paid for it. And the mechanics worked fine, it just wasn't very pretty and they hadn't found everything they could do with the mechanics yet.

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When I downloaded Narbacular Drop it was free from the developer. Is this what you mean? Good for a freebie? Or is there somewhere I can get it for a reasonable price now that the hard drive that free download was on has ceased to be and I'd like to try it again.

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Then, are you the same person that I have seen at times complaining about sequels ?

There is nothing wrong with sequels. There is something wrong with cookie cutter sequels.

But you don't have to make direct sequels, spiritual sequels are at least just as good. Swampshock can be just as interesting as Bioshock 2.

I wasn't implying innovation is useless. That wasn't the point I was trying to make. Innovation can be great, but it shouldn't be the focus. Just like graphics shouldn't be the focus of a game. Innovation can break a game, but it rarely makes the game. A lot of people deduct points if a game isn't innovative. And that's just plain stupid. I doubt Uncharted 2 would have been that good if Naughty Dog really tried to be innovative for the sequel (disclaimer: still need to play it).

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Is innovation one of the most overused terms in gaming? I think it is. It made me despise the term a little. That being beside the point, however.

So we come to the title of our editorial, "Art games aren't innovative and innovation isn't good." Am I saying that all art games are unoriginal and that all originality is bad? No, I am not. What I am saying is that an art game, by itself, is neither inherently original nor unoriginal. Likewise, innovation, by itself, is neither good nor bad.

I think that at this time, Jim Sterling came all over his keyboard.

If that is all he is saying, then why did I bother with reading that wall of text that came before it? Why!? Gee whiz, some games are good, unless they're not. Then they're not good and can also possibly maybe be bad, depending on whether they're bad or not. A bad game is a bad game? NO REALLY?

Sarcasm aside, like in any discipline 95% of the product that comes out is shit or mediocre. Not a surprise there. But hey, sometimes bad games have interesting ideas; both indie and non-indie alike.

In any case, the editorial above and the surrounding discussion are completely uninteresting to me. Obvious points are obvious, yaaaawn.

I think Sterling did make a good point in his previous editorial. That some art games completely obfuscate what it is about, somehow thinking that that is deep. I generally don't give a shit about what the creator is trying to say to me, because I'm not interested in what some 20 year old douche bag's thoughts on the world are. Well, that and the fact that they're all "THIS IS WHAT I THINK" if you strip away the silly layers of obfuscation and metaphor. Though, this connects to the aforementioned point that most stuff is likely shit.

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The way I see it, the article seems to have more of a problem with people who proclaim genius or support a game they think is great by playing the "innovation" card rather than looking at how often innovation itself is deployed in games. I think the writer got those mixed up and didn't take the time to separate a fanboy's idea of innovation compared to actual new mechanics being made.

As many others have said already, when a new mechanic is introduced, it often won't be that great or make a very cohesive game. The innovative game usually leads to something better making use of the same mechanics introduced later. Two major games coming to mind are Karateka leading to Prince of Persia and Alone in the Dark leading to Little Big Adventure. I would say the former of each of those are both very troublesome games in terms of design and execution, but the games springing from lessons learned are great.

So while I can see where some people want to give games a certain a free pass because of their innovation, I think it ignores the actual quality of the game at hand. Some games aren't that innovative at all, but get perceived that way for being repackaged to an audience who has never encountered it.

I actually think unless major technology is being overhauled or made more efficient, I don't think innovation as concept of successful game design created with new methods can be measured until years later when we can witness what kind of impact the original innovative game has had.

I mean let's say I make an awful game with a lot of new elements (bear with me, because I would have no clue which ones) that don't mesh together and ultimately don't create a game anyone in their right mind would want to play. Should I get a free pass for trying new things? Chances are, no one is going to take my newly introduced gameplay elements and repurpose them for their game anytime soon.

So I think just because a game is doing something new, doesn't necessarily make it innovative. I believe a large factor of counting something as innovative comes with time and reflection.

Also I don't understand why the writer brings story into his article in terms of discussing innovation. It seems to miss the point since stories can exist without games, and just about all of the stories that have appeared in games are simply nothing new. I can't think of any game that's innovative because of it's story. Those unfamiliar with the adventure genre are probably the loudest ones about Heavy Rain offering a "mature" story that gamers have been desiring for years, but in reality a lot of ground its treading in terms of tone, story, setting, and atmosphere have all been done before in adventures. Even the mature elements.

Granted, I don't know of many adventure games with long extended shower scenes where the plot doesn't move and you have to use the controls to dry off, but psychological detective stories with killers and supernatural elements still seem to be in at least three or so adventures a year (Truthfully I haven't played any of these since Gabriel Knight or Tex Murphy, some of my favorites, since I'm disenchanted with the design and hackneyed writing of new adventures, so I don't know exactly which games to cite.)

Even Grim Fandango, which has maybe my all time favorite story in video games, is not something I would call innovative. I think it's original in it's combination of many different story elements and influence, but not innovative to the point where some new story structure or genre was introduced. It was simply a game made well by a design team that had learned a lot but weren't trying anything new, but were trying to be as polished as possible. Nothing wrong with that at all, because I think those lead to the best games. That's what I think Uncharted 2 did, as elmuerte said.

So I think the writer of the article is just kind of confused what he's upset about. He seems more upset with the snobby and arrogant attitude of game players and their tactics of being defensive and lashing out at people who don't like their favorite game rather than looking into what makes innovation and why people are wrong for thinking game x is innovative and game y is not. The discussion of what makes innovation in games is a long one and one I don't think that can be summed up in such a short article and should not take popularity into account but time and trends instead.

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There is nothing wrong with sequels. There is something wrong with cookie cutter sequels.

But you don't have to make direct sequels, spiritual sequels are at least just as good. Swampshock can be just as interesting as Bioshock 2.

I wasn't implying innovation is useless. That wasn't the point I was trying to make. Innovation can be great, but it shouldn't be the focus. Just like graphics shouldn't be the focus of a game. Innovation can break a game, but it rarely makes the game. A lot of people deduct points if a game isn't innovative. And that's just plain stupid. I doubt Uncharted 2 would have been that good if Naughty Dog really tried to be innovative for the sequel (disclaimer: still need to play it).

Well… Then on a purely logical basis, you could say "Games that focus only on innovation or that deprive themselves of the fun factor are often not that good / are sometimes bad". That has nothing to do with innovation breaking a game in my opinion.

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He's frustrating, that's what he is. I wrote a response article to his first post, but his second was probably both less offensive and more irritating. Sometimes I just don't understand where he's coming from, and yes, I'd say innovation is a virtue in and of itself. Innovative games are often flawed, but it's a small price to pay. He seems to argue that we should refrain from playing "innovative" (as he defines it) output, but what good will that do anyone? There are plenty of shit games that had a unique or forward-thinking aspect which came to fruition in later titles, either its own follow-ons or other developers' work inspired by it.

He's like one of those "fun funny fun fun" Gamasutra commenters that Remo pointed out in the podcast once. He just happens to be at least semi-literate and in possession of a platform.

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He's frustrating, that's what he is. I wrote a response article to his first post, but his second was probably both less offensive and more irritating. Sometimes I just don't understand where he's coming from, and yes, I'd say innovation is a virtue in and of itself. Innovative games are often flawed, but it's a small price to pay. He seems to argue that we should refrain from playing "innovative" (as he defines it) output, but what good will that do anyone? There are plenty of shit games that had a unique or forward-thinking aspect which came to fruition in later titles, either its own follow-ons or other developers' work inspired by it.

My interpretation (given that he started the article with reference to the public response to the first one) was that he's not criticising the games so much as the way that people react to them. Thus, he's not saying that innovation itself is bad but that it doesn't necessarily make a game good. He's suggesting that games should be rated on how fun they are, rather than some pooncy, ill-defined measure of 'artiness'.

I think everyone needs to get over the guy's smarmy attitude and the deliberately provocative headline and just read the last two paragraphs where he finally makes his point.

So we come to the title of our editorial, "Art games aren't innovative and innovation isn't good." Am I saying that all art games are unoriginal and that all originality is bad? No, I am not. What I am saying is that an art game, by itself, is neither inherently original nor unoriginal. Likewise, innovation, by itself, is neither good nor bad. You can't simply say art games are original, because there are plenty that toe the line and copy each other. You can't say innovation is good because plenty of innovative games have failed, either tied up and lost in their own ambition or placed in the hands of developers not skilled enough to do the unique idea justice.

In the same way that a knife can be put to good or evil purposes depending on who is holding it, a game can be great or terrible depending on who makes it. It's not about the genre, or the budget, or the fact that it turns established gameplay ideas on its head. A bad game is a bad game, and I think it's intellectually dishonest to act like big budget games are incapable of being unique while art games are original and wonderful by no merit other than the type of game they are. Let's judge these things on their own merits. That's what I did during my last editorial on the subject, before everyone else pulled out their tar brushes.

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He still fails to see that even mediocre innovative games help the industry stave off stagnation. And I can enjoy a game that's innovative but not quite as polished as it could be more than something like Modern Warfare 2 that gets a hundred thousand fun points according to Metacritic.

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My interpretation (given that he started the article with reference to the public response to the first one) was that he's not criticising the games so much as the way that people react to them. Thus, he's not saying that innovation itself is bad but that it doesn't necessarily make a game good. He's suggesting that games should be rated on how fun they are, rather than some pooncy, ill-defined measure of 'artiness'.

Yeah, like I said earlier, I got that too. He seemed to get confused with what he was trying to say. His examples didn't really help the point that he seemed pretty much upset with people's reactions.

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Yeah, like I said earlier, I got that too. He seemed to get confused with what he was trying to say. His examples didn't really help the point that he seemed pretty much upset with people's reactions.
I don't know if he's confused with what he's trying to say or if he's deliberately being confusing so that people misunderstand him and get worked up enough to write angry blog posts, thus increasing his profile whilst allowing him to feel superior at how they weren't smart enough to understand him.

Despite the fact that I agree with (what I think is his) general point, the way the article begins does make me feel like he's more interested in causing arguments than converting people to his point of view.

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snip

Those paragraphs are alright. I don't agree entirely because, as I said, I think innovation is an end in itself, but his view isn't without merit.

Who, though, actually says any of that which he purports to object to? Who gives "indie" or "artsy" games a free pass, or says that all mainstream games are devoid of creativity? It comes off as thinly veiled contempt for any goal other than constant entertainment. He sprinkles these qualifiers and caveats around, but then he totally dumps on something whilst completely ignoring what he's written.

As a way of addressing the core "fun" argument which you alluded to, I think have a fairly solid response. This is about the third time I've said this, but nobody watches Stalker (the film) in its entirety then complains about the lack of action. I don't need bullet time in my Tarkovsky just like I don't need a particularly exciting mechanic in The Void. Most people are just in it for the entertainment, that's fine, there's no shortage of that out there. Those who are actively interested in art house cinema shouldn't have to hear their tastes called "pretentious" or "bullshit" or be told that a certain film shouldn't exist just because it involves a different kind of engagement or even engagement at all, and the same goes for gaming. There's a small group who like "artsy" games, and they should be allowed to do so without shit-slinging and insults. It's not like they didn't play the shit out of Call of Duty as well.

I dunno, his style and tone bait me so bad, maybe that's deliberate. The last two sentences annoy me more than even the insults. There are too many "s in this post, and sorry if I sound like I'm directing this at you rather than him, it's definitely aimed at him.

:tmeh:

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