Game Originality

1
Game Originality

• Bryan Boyer
• 2/19/07

2
Seeking the Original

• Everyone cries out for original things and new
  creativity, but why arent we flooded with it?
• Clones and Sequels Money
• Cannot be expected to abandon the brands that
  have achieved proven market success

3
Chreodes

• Biologist C.H. Waddington in the 1950s
• Pathway of probability
• Descriptive language to describe the way
  organisms develop
• The idea can apply to any field of probability
  and evolution of something

4
Chreodes (cont.)

• The entirety of games can be looked at as a
  series of chreodes, with the channels
  corresponding to the genres of games
• By mentally rendering the sphere of organic life
  and the games market in terms of a landscape of
  chreodes, we create a metaphorical model allowing
  us to make comparisons between the evolution of
  life, and the evolution of computer games

5
Evolution to Originality

• Games have been a varied set of genres exploring
  a set of market niches. They grow where the
  money is.
• Huge amount of originality at beginning because
  nothing was done yet.
• Branching off towards different areas.
• If no major branch, then no major originality.

6
The Shooter Example

• Space Invaders (1978)

7
The Shooter Example (cont.)

• Battlezone (1980)

8
The Shooter Example (cont.)

• Wolfenstein 3D (1992)
• Doom (1993)

9
The Shooter Example (cont.)

• Goldeneye 007 (1997)
• Half-Life (1998)

10
The Shooter Example (cont.)

• Halo (2001)

11
The Shooter Example (cont.)

• The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion (2006)

12
Extinction of Originality

• Events can crush chreodes as well.
• The continue ends games that were made for one
  sitting.
• Also lets players see the end of some games.
• New platforms and graphics leave old things
  behind.
• Extinction brings about originality in a new wave
  a lack of constraints or need to be like
  another thing. It gives a freedom to develop.
• Must be a genre, not a specific game. Anything
  else would just alter the path of the genre.

13
Cost?

• A lot of originality comes at low cost, not high.
• the cost of creation is fractional compared to
  the mass market end of the spectrum
• Examples
• Wolfenstein 3D was shareware
• Movies like Blaire Witch Project
• High Cost also wins
• The Sims (2000) by Maxis was high budget

14
Sequels?

• Still very important.
• Refinement of design is as valuable a process as
  raw originality
• The original product is the new chreode, the
  sequels polish it to something even better.
• Cant let the desire for originality detract from
  important aspects of existing games.
• Problem When do you stop?

15
Originality Summary

• Want it to flourish in a financially safe way.
• Take advantage of breakthroughs in design and
  technology and extinctions
• Do not stray too far from the backbone of a
  genres chreode
• Exceptions Spare money or smaller companies

16
Originality Summary (cont.)

• Cant predict what genre or chreode to evolve,
  but the payback for a successful change towards
  originality is greater than sequels for the
  company and the industry.
• The best place for originality would be
  mainstream games, which are ironically the haven
  for sequels. A downward spiral until the next
  big gaming extinction

17
Originality Summary (cont.)

• Computer games have been driven by originality,
  but sustained by sequels.
• My personal opinion I want to increase that
  drive.

18
Design Suggestions

• Originality is closely related to being
  successful. If a lot of people like a particular
  product, you have a crowd to push originality
  onto.
• 5 general tips for making a successful game by
  François Dominic Laramée
• (Amazingly a lot of games dont do some of the
  more obvious things.)

19
Design Suggestions (cont.)

• Exploit Setting Consistencies
• Make a seamless environment to allow for gamers
  to get more entranced into a game
• Use resources to find mistakes and blooper-ish
  things and fix them. It is more towards quality
  control than testing for bugs.
• Maintain Focus
• Dont become an overzealous developer and make a
  million man cast for an epic story or make the
  gamer keep track of trivial, minor details.
• As we learned before, originality has its limits
  and needs sequels to polish out things, you dont
  want to overdo it all at once.

20
Design Suggestions (cont.)

• Make The Interface Your Friend
• Pick an interface style suitable to your game
  genre one that is simple and efficient.
• This isnt anything new, weve learned it all in
  previous classes.
• Design Modularly
• If you get a killer idea that would be amazingly
  original halfway through the production of a game
  you need to be able to implement without
  reworking everything.
• Design defensibly, in clearly and connected bits
  of a game. Similar to an OO approach for a
  system.
• Design with extensibility in mind that can shift
  and change with relative ease.

21
Design Suggestions (cont.)

• Ditch The Unworkable Clichés
• The essence of originality!
• Cliché examples
• Entire races of beings doing evil for evils sake
  where is their lifes purpose? yawn
• Good vs Evil Light vs Dark Where are the grey
  areas? Our lives are not so simple.
• Alien races all looking humanoid because of old
  tv shows needing actors in costumes. Reality
  says otherwise!
• Sports games being roster updates
• You can do these and have success, but there is
  room for so much more.

22
New Waterfall Model
23
New Spiral Model
24
References

• Bateman, Chris. The Evolution of Games
  Originality Chreodes. International
• Game Developers Association. 2003.
• Laramée, François Dominic. The Stealth
  Designers Handbook Part 1. Designers.
  February 2001.
• Wikipedia.com for process pictures before I
  modified them
• Reviews of games that I didnt explicitly use in
  this presentation, but read for general knowledge
  located at Gamespot.com
• Google.com image search for pictures of games.