Super Nerd Sunday Presents: Where the Innovation At?

Indie games have exploded over the last few years. Quirky small companies which would’ve fallen by the wayside half a decade ago are now commercial and artistic success who can distribute their games to the masses without fear.

Thanks to digital distribution and increased attention of late indie games are thriving, and while an unfortunate few titles had to be sacrificed for us to see this success (imagine Sword of the Stars with Stardock as a distributor instead of the ham handed mishmash of commercial and digital distribution they landed on) the variety of services which offer and specialize in indie games is growing daily. Off the top of my head Stardock, Steam and Greenhouse all come to mind as ways to buy small games without leaving your home. With companies like Tale of Tales also hosting their own content as well, there are a good many ways to get your soon-to-be critically acclaimed title out into the world.

The end result of these changes is that the market now has a lot of games rethinking what it means to be a game. Some of these are new takes on old systems, such as Peggle. Peggle, from veteran airquotes “indie” developer Popcap, which constitutes a fascinating new take on Pinball. Others, like World of Goo from 2D BOY, are completely original concepts which change the way we consider and approach gameplay. World of Goo is a puzzle game wherein developers expect and at times demand that players use what might normally be considered exploits or bugs in order to solve their puzzles.

And there are other games which attempt to subvert concepts ingrained in our intellect as gamers, such as The Path by the afforementioned Tale of Tales. In The Path we are stripped of goals and forced to murder our central character in order to “succeed” in a game which is as much an experience as it is anything else. It destroys the established ideas that normally govern the way we play and replaces them with a set of goals intended to change the very way we think of games as a means of entertainment.

Which brings me to my next point. A lot of indie games are different. Really really different. Some, like the Penny-Arcade game and Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden are gloriously samey, rooted in and celebrating traditional concepts. But most of them want not only to make a successful game, but to change the way we think of games today.

So the question then becomes what does this mean for mainstream video games? Some have begun to change genric convetions in order to compete. Resident Evil added co-op, Fallout 3 took refuge in the classic conventions on size and open world play and took them to a new level, maintaining the spirit of their series all the while.

And some mainstream games do their best to get bigger, games like Grand Theft Auto IV. They give you larger playgrounds and more toys to play with and hope that you’ll be distracted from the fact that their concepts hasn’t changed much. Some, like Far Cry 2, pull a similar trick by removing linearity from traditionally linear genres and giving you a massive space to goof off and move back and forth in.

But, when you come down to it, the “hardcore” games haven’t changed too much. Think of recent major releases in the first person shooter genre. Call of Duty 5 is largely a retread of ground covered in Call of Duties 1-4. And Killzone is an amalgam of concepts taken from other games (first person cover systems a la R6 Vegas, iron sights aiming a la CoD and regenerating health a la Halo 2 and every subsequent shooter ever made). F.E.A.R. II is little better, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is largely established in relation to games such as System Shock II. It’s fair to say that the shooter genre is beginning to repeat itself, if for no better reason than that the model is so well developed already.

The ground of first person shooters is exceedingly well tread, and while conceptually it can certainly grow, mechanically there is very little that we can do to push it forward. The same could be said, certainly, for real-time strategy games as we watch Blizzard essentially do a cosmetic update of Starcraft in Starcraft 2. While some people, such as Relic and Ironclad, are introducing new ideas about how the genre needs to be played for the most part real-time strategy is much the same as it’s always been. You acquire resources, translate them into army strength and try to remove your opponent from the map. Everything else is just semantics.

The only genre in which the mainstream “biz” seems to be keeping up with the little guys in terms of innovation is the nebulous, notoriously ill-defined action-adventure genre. Here we see unique titles rise and fall to greatly varying commercial success and critical reception. Assassin’s Creed, No More Heroes, God of War; these games all fell under the same banner and played very, very differently, offering greatly varied messages in terms of gameplay, story and storytelling technique.

It seems as if action-adventure, perhaps because of its roots as a nebulous genre based on executing on broad, original concepts, is the only place where large scale developers feel confident applying the absurd resources required to make a triple-A title in today’s games market. But it is also where we see most of the innovation taking place. Consider Prince of Persia.

Before Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia reboot, how many games had time-control mechanics? A handful, perhaps (Max Payne is the only one that comes to mind off hand), and not executed in quite such a stylish and creative fashion. But after PoP’s phenomenal success you couldn’t go five feet in a given direction without tripping over the god damn idea of time control, executed in a startlingly similar fashion.

Ubisoft’s moderate risk gambit paid off in spades. And we still see this trend continue today. Parkour has come into fashion like nothing else following, again, PoP and more recently Assassin’s Creed. Open world games are all the rage, and linearity is the enemy. The concepts of successful games repeated again and again in mainstream releases.

And while original properties do sometimes emerge from the bloated corporate clockwork of EA or whatever Vivendi-Universal is calling itself now, they are limited and, at times, graceless in their execution and imitation. But take heart. With indie games growing strong and publishers like Ubisoft doing their best to make original game concepts and IP the games industry isn’t in any danger. In fact, it’s easy to see why it is the one sector of the economy relatively untouched by recent events.

And as tools to make and release games become more and more accessible, perhaps we’ll see a revolution in stagnating genres. Only time will tell. All I can say for now is that as the indie revolution continues and publishers rally to keep up, it’s a very very good time to be a gamer.