We’re still in the thick of the holiday release schedule, and game critics around the Net are already calling out Fall 2011 as one of the best seasons in video game history. As someone who just stayed up until 5 a.m. pickpocketing townsfolk in Skyrim and took his Wii across the country just to play Skyward Sword over Thanksgiving break, I can’t say I entirely disagree–it’s an incredible time to be a gamer. But calling it the best season in history makes light of an often unnoticed trend that’s more true today than ever: developing a successful video game is an art of iteration, not innovation.
Take a look at Metacritic’s top games of 2011, and you’ll have to scroll through a few pages before you see any scores below 85. A strong year, indeed. But you’d also be hard-pressed to find many games without a “2,” “3” or “HD” stuck in the title, especially among major retail releases. That point is easy to prove: between Uncharted, Batman, Gears of War, Zelda, Halo, Metal Gear Solid and Rayman, we’re inundated with sequels, remakes and reboots. On its own, that isn’t a problem. What’s a little more disconcerting to me is that most of these games–and there certainly are exceptions–fail to bring new, creative ideas to the table. They’re iterative. They’re safe. And as their brand recognition continues to penetrate the mainstream market, they’re successful.
Video games didn’t always suffer from sequelitis. Thinking back to some of my favorite series from the NES days, it seemed almost customary that every entry in a franchise would try something fundamentally different. Zelda II introduced a larger overworld map, experience points and side-scrolling combat. Mario 2, at least in America, had four playable characters, a life meter and–remember this?–vegetable-picking. Castlevania II was almost an RPG, Donkey Kong 3 was a shooter, Dig Dug II and Contra Force had overhead perspectives and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 introduced unique character attributes and a large map to explore. Even the sequel to Tetris–Tetris!–gave players something different.
Back then, video games were in their infancy. There weren’t strict standards on what a “franchise” meant, and the limitations of simple sounds and graphics meant that most of the variation from title to title needed to be in gameplay. It was a wild time, when innovation mattered more than presentation or marketing, and financial risks weren’t as damning. Today, money is everything, and unsafe investments can put a lot of people out of work.
When I reflect on the slow transition to today’s publisher-controlled, sequel-driven market, my mind lingers on the downfall–perhaps too strong a word, but it’s hard to resist–of two of my favorite game developers from childhood: Rare and Square. In the ‘90s, both studios balanced a signature style of development between dozens of unique, one-off experiments and established franchises alike. Both, however, are now mired in creative stagnation. After it was sold to Microsoft in 2003, it became clear that Rare’s quirky, off-center style couldn’t survive in an era when traditional, mascot-driven adventures were dying away in favor of online death-matches and Hollywood wannabes. Nowadays, Rare churns out painfully boring Kinect games and updates for Microsoft’s online avatars. Square, meanwhile, can no longer gamble on collaborative, creative ventures like Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy Tactics. Instead, it spends years at a time pumping impressive visuals into otherwise sterile experiences like Final Fantasy XIII, or throws wholesale heaps of its older classics onto PSN, WiiWare and iOS. For these symbols of a bygone era, the golden age this is not.
Big-box creativity may be fading, but that’s not to say we live in an era devoid of fresh ideas. In some ways, the opposite might be true. Independent and small-budget games, while sometimes hard to find amid the flash-bangs and engine-revving of the holiday season, are easier than ever to develop and distribute. History is repeating itself on a smaller scale as mobile and downloadable games form their own ecosystem of trial, error and reckless experimentation–the same environment that gave rise to so many still-cherished franchises of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Unless larger developers start taking those same risks again, I can’t bring myself to say that gaming has never been better.