Even though all of these were great games, they were nowhere near a level of innovation and originality that games need to continue to be appealing. Basically, they’re great while you’re playing them but it’s highly doubtful they will have any value outside of sentiment once you’re done. Not only did they not prevent great leaps and bounds in design, but they took advantage of the release of the on-again, off-again popularity of the Star Wars movies, making these games devoid of creativity on two levels.
So why should gamers worry about this? Why should they worry about licensed games and copycat development? After all, as stated earlier, innovation is what makes a game classic. And even if the majority of games are not ground-breaking, no two games are truly ever alike and who cares long as the games are awesome?
Gamers should worry because the lack of both creative originality and game play innovation is a disturbing indicator of just how commercialized the video game industry has become.
Back when the Atari 2600 and even into the early part of Nintendo’s reign, gaming was almost underground. A small part of the population played video games, and they were willing to try anything. Later, as gaming entered the mainstream, games started to look like each other more often. Distributors needed the money to put out the games (and to make profit) so they would take a popular game (such as Doom), put fancy new window dressing on it, and sell it as an original title. This has multiplied exponentially until we find ourselves in the here and now; most games either having the name of something else famous on it or a number at the end of the title.
While it’s certainly a good thing that gaming has become a respectable facet of the arts and entertainment world, what’s distressing is what has become mainstream and the overwhelming number of casual gamers who are willing to keep playing one Halo after another. There very well may come a day when there’s about five different kinds of games out there, though you’ll find thousands of titles for sale.
So what is a gamer to do? The most obvious answer is to stop playing games that are licensed or parts of a franchise, unless of course those games raise the bar on innovation. For example, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater substantially raised the bar for the stealth genre of gaming, by forcing gamers to replicate real-life combat situations by relying less on gadgets and more on their own instincts, observations, and strategic thinking skills. Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy has the proud accomplishment of avoiding a tendency for developers to “create a problem for the solution”—giving the player-character phenomenal powers then designing a game around those powers (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a prime example of such a phenomenon). In this game, the player finds themselves in typical situations (surrounded by snipers while trapped in a narrow valley, for example) and uses atypical solutions (taking control of one sniper’s mind to have him take out the other snipers, then have him take care of himself by jumping to his death) to escape the video game rut. It changes the face of the action-adventure game and opens up the door for the gamer to think creatively. By playing these games, gamers can show distributors that they don’t want more Dead or Alive games; they want originality!
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