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[Greg Game Man]

As game designers its really hard to think of refreshing, truly interesting games which break the mould, because theres a few limited designs which we can study.

Games pretty much started out collecting coins, killing badguys, exploring, shooting spaceships or batting a ball back and forth and theres pretty limited models for us to base our games on right?

I mean if you take a quick look over TIGsource most games are similar to the retro ones.

So if someone lived under a rock and never played videogames, might they emerge with more interesting concepts?? Like what if the word "played" and "videogames" were removed and replaced with experienced and an interactive experience.

Maybe they would want to create an experience about something very different to the norm, but as designers we just think of past games we've played.. its hard to think of something actually interesting and new i guess. what do you think?

[Jolli]

they can still base it off what they know as games ..sports, board games

[Kingel]

If they didn't know anything about games of the past, how would they know if their idea had been done before? Personally, I think they'd risk reinventing the wheel more often than they'd come up with something truly original.

Original doesn't necessarily mean good, so would it be a waste of good ideas to let them develop something without knowing what designers presumably know more about today, like what to avoid and so on?

[Adamski]

Some people are in comas for years. I think quite recently there was one person who fell into one during the 80's. Would be interesting to see what their style was like.

Then of course, more recently there was the guy in a "coma" who turned out to be totally paralysed all along and could infact hear what people around him were saying  Would make an interesting nightmarish game 

[LemonScented]

It's an interesting thing to think about but I'm not convinced you'd get much useful out of it if it happened. There is very little that's completely new, in any creative endeavour, throughout human history. Everything comes from people combining bits of what exists already in new ways, pushing existing ideas to their logical conclusions, etc. If a game designer woke from a coma they fell into in (say) the '80s and immediately started designing new games without first studying the history they've missed, they'll more than likely end up going over the same ground that's already been covered. Even if they come up with something completely new, it'll be marred by hackneyed tropes that have fallen out of fashion - their amazing new game would be filled with outdated ideas about lives and continues, or be punishingly difficult, or feature clunky interface problems which have been refined and solved by other game designers in the meantime.

That said, there's an argument to be made for designers who haven't been in comas trying to recombine modern aspects of gaming with older, discontinued tropes and genres. I'm very much in favour of the idea in another thread of reimagining survival horror games in 2D, for instance. And I've been finding out about Dwarf Fortress recently (I know, I'm late to that particular party), which seems to have been developed in some parallel universe in which computing power kept increasing since the 80s but the graphics stayed the same.

[baconman]

It depends on when the coma was induced. If it was sometime around later NES, Genesis, or SNES era, then absolutely. Mid-nineties was when professional gaming creativity, character, and polish was at it's finest in history, IMHO.

Now if this person were around the Atari or really-really-early NES era (talking pre-PowerGlove, even; when games had identical/uniform boxart and labels), then the person could likely create something fun OR something original; but the odds of doing both are kinda slim, as gaming itself was far from a "polished" state. SMB, Zelda, and some of the Namco/Atari arcade games (Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Gauntlet) were among the first bunch that I would consider "well-polished," and an up-and-comer would still have to have reasonable exposure to that kind of gaming first.

I do imagine how some rethinking could have, or still might reshape gaming on the whole - like what if "THE SMB game" of it's alternative time were on a Pole Position kind of setup, where you ran forward instead of to the right, there was no backtracking at all, and the action/choice variable was oriented horizontally more, and vertically lesser. Would this have led to a present time, with 3D Sonic games that are actually GOOD? And fun? Or would the entire original Sonic lineage never have kicked off at all? How much different would Metroid be; or Street Fighter-style games?

Or would anything be different at all? Who's to say a game like that DOESN'T exist, amidst total obscurity - and possibly with good reason?


But different things are fun to different people. This is why you have punishingly-hard games, games with limited lives and continues (and with and without timers scoring systems for that matter!), and not only completely different genres of gaming, but different methods of execution thereof, -and- different sets of physics standards, to boot!

The closest thing I believe you'll ever see to capturing "the entire audience" short of successfully capturing the entire gaming environment, would be something like DDR or Rock Band; which simply puts in gaming terms something else that's already a treasured commodity in our everyday lives. "It's too real," "It's too phony," "It's too hard," and "It's too easy" is entirely possible for any single title to pull off.


  Wow. That's twenty productive minutes I'm never getting back.

[agj]

As far as I'm concerned, this has been proven to be true. There are a good number of authors in the arts that have made creative innovations, who come from an entirely different background. For instance, in the world of graphic design, a personal favorite of mine is Tibor Kalman, who never studied any design at all, and started by improvising the graphic work for the then-small Barnes & Noble, out of necessity.

I don't think that making games (or interactive stuff, or whatever) is yet a very natural and accessible endeavor, as you need a rather high level of technical knowledge. If it were (like writing, painting, music writing, and increasingly filmmaking are), we'd see a lot more divergence.

That is not to say that there is no divergence; you just have to look further from TIGSource. This is quite a closed bubble of game creators; there's a certain mindset that permeates most of what is discussed and appreciated here. If you go further from the word 'game', you'll find even more interesting things. CreativeApplications.net is one such place; take a look at the kind of amazing and original work that's put there.

[SirNiko]

Why do they need to emerge from a coma? Just get somebody who doesn't play games to do it.

I would suggest Ebert as a great place to start. Somebody twitter that at him. I'm sure some studio would give him a big budget to create any game he wants.

-SirNiko

[Tifu]

The likelihood of brain damage increases with the length of the coma, so if this poor soul has been asleep since Pong, I doubt he'll manage to learn programming.

Even if that didn't happen, as said previously, they'd probably just re-invent the wheel. Or if you ask them to make a game, they'd interpret that with what they understand games to be - and just create a sports sim game or a computer version of a board game?

Then of course, more recently there was the guy in a "coma" who turned out to be totally paralysed all along and could infact hear what people around him were saying   Would make an interesting nightmarish game  

Though afterwards they found out that the "assistant" who was guiding his hands to the keyboard, was doing it all with the ideomotor effect (hopefully, otherwise it was outright fraud). "In 2010, the claim was rejected when communication could not be repeated with a different facilitator and by hiding the object to be identified from the view of the facilitator." ~ Wiki

[gimymblert]

I would suggest Ebert as a great place to start. Somebody twitter that at him. I'm sure some studio would give him a big budget to create any game he wants.

-SirNiko

EBERT TIME!  woooOOOOOuuuuuUUUUAAAAAOOOOuuuuuu!

er... joke aside, ebert would do shit because he has no interest in the medium and very narrow view about it (game = win condition = nothing about humanity). He already dismiss narrative games as experience retelling of other medium. We would end up with a worse heavy rain at the end!

[s0]

There's "outsider art". Most of it sucks.

[laserghost]

This is an interesting topic, one that I've thought about before. I like exploring and experimenting in my own work, and searching for some (perhaps mythical) higher level of originality. I always have a little trepidation when reading up on game design tutorials or advice, since I may never be able to tackle those ideas from a completely fresh perspective afterward.

From a purely practical sense, however, a game (or any product for that matter) doesn't do too well with the general public if it's totally out-there and severely different. Most of the time, we gauge quality of a work by it's ability to resonate with an audience, as though the creator was communicating through the work, not just talking to themselves. A completely original work often feels like the creator is talking in their own made-up language.

But, sometimes that can actually click, and people get it. The question is: Is taking that chance worth it? It often depends on the situation. For me, I just make freeware games as a hobby. No pressure, since I'm not trying to make a living off it. So why not? That for me is the beauty of indie games: anything goes. For others, it's a bigger risk. They need their games to reach people; to resonate. In that case, knowledge is crucial and can only help. Plus, that knowledge isn't exactly stopping anyone from being original either, it's only a guide we're inclined to follow.

[s0]

For me, true originality in any medium/art form/whatever is about ignoring the conventions of the medium you're working in, or to put it more generally, about refusing to buy into an existing value system.

As soon as you start consciously going against the grain and deliberately try to do things "differently from the rest", you stop being original because you're still defining your own work via the existing conventions.
 

[gimymblert]

This is an interesting topic, one that I've thought about before. I like exploring and experimenting in my own work, and searching for some (perhaps mythical) higher level of originality. I always have a little trepidation when reading up on game design tutorials or advice, since I may never be able to tackle those ideas from a completely fresh perspective afterward.

From a purely practical sense, however, a game (or any product for that matter) doesn't do too well with the general public if it's totally out-there and severely different. Most of the time, we gauge quality of a work by it's ability to resonate with an audience, as though the creator was communicating through the work, not just talking to themselves. A completely original work often feels like the creator is talking in their own made-up language.

But, sometimes that can actually click, and people get it. The question is: Is taking that chance worth it? It often depends on the situation. For me, I just make freeware games as a hobby. No pressure, since I'm not trying to make a living off it. So why not? That for me is the beauty of indie games: anything goes. For others, it's a bigger risk. They need their games to reach people; to resonate. In that case, knowledge is crucial and can only help. Plus, that knowledge isn't exactly stopping anyone from being original either, it's only a guide we're inclined to follow.

START INDIE








END MAINSTREAM or not 


Hard to resonnate with an audiance with something entirely new, you need a moment for acceptance. Guess where indie are? and motion control?

[jwaap]

I think most designers don't design from their mind, but from their memory: they takes pieces from other games and put them together. This is useful, because it saves time, but it also is dangerous if you do it without realising. Most games are uninspired like hell, and that is why I personally try not to get inspiration from games, but from other things.

Saying that: Some "noob" games can feel really fresh, and have some weird design decisions. Some of those game maker games made by 14 year olds are really crazy fun.
A pretty good example is Detoss Law: http://www.acid-play.com/download/detoss-law/ I love that game, but it is very flawed. somehow it feels super fresh still.
I don't know, I find it hard explaining this... Does anyone agree?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

remember that the team that made ico never worked on games before and didn't really play games before -- and that the designer of ico said he doesn't think it's a video game and shouldn't be called one? nonetheless a lot of gamers seem to like ico

[gimymblert]

Well he's also an avid gamer and do not want to break the mold. I remember he said that he was heavily influence by games he played. He is also pursuing the same thing like many mainstream developer: realism. His game is not even truly original. Ico is some kind of a bare bone zelda, Sotc is a boss rush. Even the thematic is generic: save girl, fantasy settings, huge enemy.


But what make his game stand out?


The massive shift in tone, he had dropped the power fantasy for a more human fragility and express it through gameplay ("touch" mechanics). He also goes against the feature creeps and refine the remaining things to new height.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

yeah, but nobody is saying not playing games will give you original game mechanics, perhaps not playing games is what gave that game an original tone and emphasis, and a simplicity where it had only a few features but those features were very carefully chosen

[gimymblert]

Or maybe original mecanics coule arise from trying to express things game didn't care enough so far. Originality often come from:

1) A different perspective, new goals, new value
2) Trying to solve a problem previously unsolve

(1) feed (2)

At least i try to actively pursuing originality by turning that fact into a value.