Reflection Wk 4 – Is that all there is?

Is commercial games industry stuck in a creative dead-end and only building rehashes of the same basic themes? I think it is getting better, at least that’s with the game consoles. May be for PC games, there are still stuck in shooting games for some reason, but for recent years, we can see that there are more variety of games published to the market, playing in Wii or PS or Xbox consoles. I agree with Anthony Burch that games need more variety than just one category, shooting, or not just fun. But I disagree with him that he puts most blame on the game industry, the designers and the programmers. I think the reason behind involves both the players and the industry. In some sense, David Jaffe is right in a way that not everything you can think of, can be turned into a great game. He mentioned that the designers may have some brilliant ideas, but then when they start thinking of what do you actually do in the game, they are stucked. Creative is an artistic thing. It is unavoidable that an idea can come to a dead end. Though I believe there are designers who try to come up with new ideas, I also expect that there are some designers/programmers out there are just what Anthony described, lazy to think of new ideas.

In a commercial company’s perspective, whether or not it will produce a game depends on its market. Even the designers think this is a great game, if there are not too many people like the game, then the company may not produce it as it may incur a lost. On the other hand, if it sees that a game, saying a shooting game, has generated a great revenue, it is reasonable for them to think why not generatea  new one and earn another great revenue? Therefore, I believe the game players should take up some of the responsibility too. The market is created with supply and demand. If there aren’t many people looking for and be immersed into a particular theme, then the companies will not keep producing the same theme. I think to have a revolution in game to make games be more creative, developers, producers and the market(or players) have to work together.