Even though the financial crisis is at its highest one industry keeps on growing and expanding, the Gaming Industry. Now far larger than music and movie industry combined this has become a multi-billion dollar business in less than 20 years from practially nothing.

Today’s entertainment in the living room is dominated by consoles, while the personal computers spend more time in first person shooters than they do in Word and Excel combined. Each year several thousands of new titles is made available for the many platforms of the gaming industry. Never before has so many people worked in the gaming industry either, from development, to sales and distribution. It is big business and it keeps on growing…

The question then becomes: What happened to the innovation?

In the beginning the industry wasn’t professional developers with a master degree in computer science and a bachelor degree in marketing and sales, but simply hobbyist having fun with extremely limited systems in their parents basement. There the basis for the current market was made – in the late hours of the night .. on development platforms most developers today wouldn’t be able to cope with. The demands for keeping the game within the small memory limits and the restricted processing power, combined with the long loading times meant that focus had to be present in order to make a good game. They couldn’t really focus as much on graphics as we do today. A nice title screen made up by large pixels and that was it for most titles. The sound side would hurt most ears today so the tunes had to be catchy. The focus then had be GAMEPLAY… The game often had to be simple, but fun and addictive to play!

These days it is difficult to imagine that one could be absolutely lost in the “virtual world” of Maniac Mansion, Pirates! or  Defender of the Crown on the Commodore 64.. or Civilization, Flashback, Monkey Island or Dune 2 on the Amiga.. but people really were! When Wolfenstein came out it was “like being there yourself”. Load the game today and you will feel a bit concerned by that because it looks crap and has an awful feel. However, back then it was a polished feel and a good gameplay. When Doom came out the world of FPS and with it the gaming scene was born, in my opinion. Playing Doom 2 multiplayer over null-modem with your friends was great fun and something else. To be able to compete on this virtual battlefield was intense and easy to pick up, even though skills would differ between individuals and therefore suddenly training mattered.

Now, if we take a look at what the gaming scene is producing today… with its top-professional studios, filled with highly competent and well-educated staff, led by professional story writers, coded by skillfull and professional developers, acting by professional actors and screen artist, sound and music made by professional musicians in top-class recording studios with complete orchestra, graphics done by visualization experts, 3D artists an professional sketch-artists… well, one question quickly pops up: What happened to innovation?

Now you got the means and the staff inside your studio, which is no longer your fathers creepy basement, and you come with this?! Take any title on the market and see how many titles you can find on the same recipe! It is troubling that such a large industry cannot innovate beyond what has already been done. They are simply waiting for new hardware, like the Wii-mote, and then adding a bit of titles for it, not at all concerned with doing the innovation themselves any longer – only the safe bets … which translates to: 90% FPS (like any other in essense with a 1% difference if we really look at it), a few strategy games within already known series, such as Command & Conquer, the same sportsgames in new wrappings without any real changes to gameplay and then the car/racing games… That’s pretty much it!

Now, try to think back to the last time you looked at a game and said: “Wauv, that’s something that has never been done before -this changes everything!”… Well, there were a few times in history worth noting, like with Civilization, Dune 2, UFO: Enemy Unknown, Doom, Quake, Half-Life, Guitar Hero, Counter-Strike, EverQuest… but not recently! It is not like I am living in the past… I simply can’t find the titles!

Well, if the industry can’t make up new genres or new types of gameplay how about combining already known genres in new ways like Savage and Natural Selection did with FPS and Strategy?

Some studios keep pressing the button still and they deserves respect, like BioWare with their ever-increasing innovation in roleplaying games from Baldur’s Gate to Knights of the Old Republic on to the latest edition of Mass Effect. Other studios deserves respect for focusing on excellent gameplay and extraordinary polish in their games, such as Blizzard from the days of WarCraft 2 to Diablo to StarCraft and onto the World of WarCraft. The rest that just fills a place in the gaming industry but doesn’t add innovation or excellent gameplay and just keep on pushing lousy half-finished sequels I can safely say: Perhaps it is time you took a small vacation back to your father’s basement for a few years and re-learned the secret about gameplay!