What Computer Games Designers Can Learn From Non-Electronic Games
~ Greg Costikyan ~
We start by looking at the games industry and how as of recently we have seen an enormous amount of dull and derivative titles. Best seller lists are filled with games based on old mass-market boardgames which is killing of the paucity of innovation in a field that was once known for originality and creativity.
This is a puzzling development as you can do almost anything with software, if you can define it, you can develop it. The creativity limitations within the industry are only limited to our imagination due to this, which is why it is surprising to see so many re made concepts filling the shelves.
Some claim that the consolidation of computer gaming into a handful of recognized sub-genres is merely indication of a maturation of the industry, implying that we have now established the types of games people want to play. As the field has only existed for 20 years (30 now) and the capabilitys of the machines we work improve all the time Costikyan finds it hard to believe this to be true.
fresh creativity and innovative ideas within the industry have always pushed the boundaries of what we believe to be these sub-genres and usually spurring on enormous movement down the retail pipe line. i.e Sim City, M.U.L.E, Tetris, Doom...all of which were the first of their game type and expanded the industry.
This may also be down to publishers being reluctant to fund new and novel idea's, but it could also be said that they may not be pitched many really creative concepts either. There is always a risk of a new idea being a failure as there is nothing to judge it against and would be considered a gamble, this is why we see so many re engineered concepts time and time again, because they are a safe be.
The term "Vidiot" aka "Video Idiot" is a term used by Costikyan which describes a games designer that has only focused on what has been developed over recent years within the video games industry, there for constraining their imagination to what exists in the here and now. Your palette of techniques, your grasp of the possible, will be limited.
If you read widely and explore all types of games in all there manifestations, you will see that the universe is large, that the range of techniques is enormous, that this truly is a medium of great plasticity.
The non electronic games have been around far longer than electronic ones, and far more gaming styles have been explored in non electronic media. This is because it is much cheaper to create a game with paper and pen rather than huge sum's of time coding or modelling on a computer, not to mention we have been playing games like this since the dawn of man...pretty much.
history didn't begin with PONG.
Side notes -
That's a point worth thinking about, again particularly for online games; is there a way to give players an offline activity that supports the game and is enjoyable in its own right but doesn't require them to consume bandwidth and server time?
Children learn through play; so we may assume that games, which are merely formalized play, have existed since the evolution of language made it possible for people to negotiate and agree upon rules.
The wargaming industry began with TACTICS, published privately by Charles Roberts in 1953. In 1958, he founded the Avalon-Hill Game Company, and began publishing both wargames and mass-market games for adults. Avalon Hill published just one or two titles a year, but quickly attracted a substantial cult audience for their games. They launched a magazine, The General; classified oppponents-wanted ads in the back pages helped to create a community of wargamers, as the letter columns of the science fiction pulps did in days of yore
