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Peter Molyneux Writes for Edge
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“There’s no innovation going on in games right now.” You know the first time that I heard that sentence? 1987.
It has always been the same, and it will continue to be the same. People also say that there’s no innovation in films and books, and then there’s a flash of writing, a clear blue sky, and you get a Harry Potter.
Here we are in 2008, and I’ll admit that in interactive entertainment, it’s an awful lot harder to be innovative just for innovation’s sake. Today we’ve got budgets to worry about, costs to recoup and audiences to reach. I used to do games where innovation was the core of the game. Populous, the first game I ever did, was one of those games.
But nevertheless, there still is an enormous amount of innovation going on right now in videogames. Look at the quality of graphics, for instance. Look at a screenshot of a videogame today and compare it to one four years ago. We used to throw tons of different status bars and maps on screen. Today we have more condensed readouts that give gamers all the information they need. It’s just a small example of how innovation can seep into a game without innovation being the reason a game exists.
And innovation can’t afford to be alone. There is true innovation when it’s balanced with drama. I’ve made so many mistakes where I’ve just thought the innovation alone was enough. In Black and White, I didn’t think I had to worry about the story or drama, because we had this great big land with great big creatures—that should be enough, right? No, it wasn’t enough. I should have gone that extra mile to balance drama with innovation. But the world craves new things. It’s a hunger that we have as human beings for something new. It’s very rare when something truly original comes around.
Over the past five years, TV has gone through incredible revolutions; advancements that I hope videogames can emulate. I’ll use one of my personal favorites as an example: Battlestar Galactica. It’s a great series. The original series from the late 1970s was the cheesiest, most rubbish thing ever. When you were a kid, it was one of the last things you forced yourself to watch if there was nothing else on TV.
But in a stroke of genius, someone took this worthless show and said, “We’re going to make one of the most dramatic science fiction series the world has ever known.” That was a fantastic innovation. 24 was a fantastic innovation. Lost was a fantastic innovation. Amazing things are happening in the TV world. We could be coming up with our own golden theory for games in a few years with Live and online gaming.
We’ll have our gem that will be our 24 or our Lost, and it will change the world. I wouldn’t like to predict what that gem is. It’ll probably be unlike anything we’ve ever seen. We’re still exploring how powerful Xbox Live can be, finding out new, little things that we can do with that service. The small, ambient innovation going on is so simple, but before you know it, a little tiny thing has become a really big thing, and I think that’s a really fascinating progression.
You make a very good point bringing up Harry Potter.
Harry Potter isn't the first fantasy novel. It's not the first story combining supernatural magic with teenage drama. It's innovation comes from its marketing, which allowed it to reach a wide audience outside of existing fantasy fans. So for the great majority of Harry Potter readers, it was their first fantasy novel, their first exposure to something with that much imagination.
The same can be said of current games. Many current generation games are considered innovative for things that games have been doing all along: good stories, beautiful artwork, inventive narrative techniques etc.
For instance, Bioshock has been highly lauded for its presentation of tough moral choices. There have been other great games before it just as challenging. Games such as Fable or the Megami Tensei series encourage the player to draw on their own ethical values to take actions that have meaningful consequences within the game world. The difference with Bioshock was that it was successfully labeled and sold as a thoughtful, artful game from the start. This combined with good distribution has lead to great sales, which again, has lead to Bioshock being many players' first experience with a game of that sort of intellectual scope.
But games with meaningful narratives have existed in the past. If you keep your eyes open and really take a good look at what's out there, there's alot to appreciate in games. And not just the big budget multi-million selling titles.
Thanks for the great article Peter.
Molyneux's own words doom him.
What's the first, main rebuttal showing there is innovation? Citing graphics. Besides the obvious points already pointed out, I want more than a prettier version of Pong.
Second, he's content with the level of innovation - that's a really unfortunate thing for an artist to say or think.
Why is gaming so obsessed with graphics? Why are the budgets out of control? Why are there so many sequels? Where are the new experiences? Why is the player input still so limited or repetitive (how old is the mouse and keyboard now?) Why do so many games neglect their core strength - the player participation? Compared to all the other forms of media, why is gaming so restricted to so few genres, especially violent ones? Where are the new ideas? What about the artist or savy gamer; why is the industry so content to just re-release old games, just slightly updated graphically for the younger audience?
These are just a few of the many, many issues affecting the industry and Molyneux leads with...graphics. I'm sorry, but that is a major part of what is wrong with the industry right now.
And I don't want the industry to just run straight for some bizarre, artistic niche, but when I consider what gaming is capable of (you hear it, you see it, *and* you control it) and I look at how little it is doing, I do feel some regret. Further, living through the birth of commercial gaming, it's frustrating to see such limited growth. Even looking at things solely from the basis of evolution, there are many, many cases where, instead of building upon what we already know, we are releasing rehashes for the less experienced gamer (referring to general knowledge or experience, not challenge.)
I just think gaming can be significantly more robust - including more innovative - than it currently is.
One thing that I feel must happen is that MS should buy the Syndicate IP from EA and let Peter Molyneaux play around with it.
I can easily see stuff like 4 player online co-op, fully destructuble enviroments and perhaps even adding some innovation like "cross platform"-play between PC and 360 in the sense that, the PC guys see the Syndicate game in a "RTS".point of view meanwhile the console-guys see it in 3rd person.
Meaning that both PC and 360 guys play the same game, but they see it differently. The PC guys are basically the "guys sitting in the blimps", giving orders on where to go, and give directives to the guys "on the ground", which are the 360 guys. The orders from the PC-guys can maybe pop up in both text, on the screen on the 360 guys and also with voice ..
Or something like this.
Peter, you know you would like to "re-invent" Syndicate like this. :D
Hello Peter,
I'm afraid you're not going to convince the people who say there is no innovation in this industry with your example of graphics quality. My experience is that they obviously do not understand the term (innovation = the act of introducing something new), and would argue that it's only evolution what you're talking about. Harry Potter is not an innovation for the disgruntled - they demand something as groundbreaking, as the very first uchronia or the very first steampunk was in literature.
The example of the GUI evolution is even worse - I'm able to show you 25-year old games with minimalist, but perfect readouts, and "contemporary" productions with a terrible interface. Scary, but unfortunately a lot of game developers are still educated by the Technical Requirements Checklists on this subject.
However, beyond your arguments, I agree with you - innovation is and was always present in the industry, from Space Invaders through Populous, Katamari Damashii to Braid.
Another common complaint is, that innovation is less and less advertised - as the industry is more mature, the real innovation is forced into the back/underground, to the indie scene.
I do not think so. The discontented should buy some hardware from Nintendo.
Best regards,
- Theo
Reinventing a concept seems like something the computer industry is all about in the first place. In my opinion, one of the best examples recently is Resident Evil 4 - as its developers made a huge leap from the previous games to this new format. And although I do not share Mr.Molyneux's opinion with regards to the original Battlestar Galactica or think these previous Resi-games were comparable to his as I wouldn't call them cheesy - this new version of the game did make a huge leap. As with introducing a new concept, there's an enormous amount of risk involved and I can imagine developers are more interested in creating something with a similar impact of, say, X-Files versus a series like Carnivale as the latter, despite being very good, wasn't successful enough. I think the gem is to take something that people are familiar with to an extend and presenting it in such a way/format that gives them the impression it's completely new.