In an effort to give you guys some insight into who we are as journalists, gamers and people we're going to be doing a series of email conversations about what people on the internet are talking about. This week, the folks at NeoGAF wonder if game-makers were more creative in the 80s than they are now.To see last week's, click here.
From: Michael Epstein (M.epstein@gamenguide.com)
To: Kamau High (K.high@gamenguide.com)
Kamau,
So I've been thinking about this for a little while now. My first inclination was to rebuff the whole idea: There are more developers pulling the idea of the video game in more directions than there have ever been. I don't think the designers of the 80s could have come up with games like "Journey," or "Braid" or "Fez."
Then I started thinking about what it must've taken to make the games of the 80s, when the medium was truly in its infancy. At that point, everything was an experiment: It would've almost as hard to be completely derivative then as it is to make something truly groundbreaking now. That's not to say every idea was actually original or that every original idea was a good one, but there's something to be for the fact that, even though there are more games and gamers now, only a few of them are experiencing boundaries of gaming could do.
And then there are the reboots. I'm not just talking about the trend of putting a new twist on a recognizable character, though. Many of this console generation's trends were "revivals," and many of its great games retread old territory. Fighting games made a comeback after "Street Fighter IV." "L.A. Noire" and "The Walking Dead" revolutionized gaming with mechanics created in the '70s. They're all great games, but when they lose a little bit of their magic when the evolutionary track is so clear.
But then we're living in a different time. Gamemakers can't ignore history, so we have to judge their creativity relative to how they build on it.
From: Kamau High (K.high@gamenguide.com)
To: Michael Epstein (M.epstein@gamenguide.com)
Michael, I was there in the early days and there is no way the games of yesteryear compare to the games of today in terms of creativity. While playing "Combat" on the Atari 2600 was fun even back then I couldn't wait for technology to advance to a point where tanks would look like actual tanks and not squares with rectangles attached to them.
Those games were technical accomplishments and amazing, for their era. But even a simple endless runner like the new "Sonic Dash" on iOS does more in terms of variety of gameplay, changing goals and different environments than something like "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" or "Double Dragon" which were super popular at the time. In the late 80s and through the 90s arcades were still a thing and the games in them looked vastly superior to what was available on the home consoles. But were they more creative than today's games? No.
Part of the reason is because back in those days there was no saving of a game's progress. You played through for as many continues as the game gave you or quarters you had in your pocket and that was it. The games didn't have to offer a lot because they didn't have to be all that long. And while a long game does not equal a creative game, letting players build up a history and pick up where they left off changed what video games could be. As for remakes and reboots, I'm glad a new generation can play those games but I already played that. There's way too much new stuff to be excited by than things I played 20 years ago.
From: Michael Epstein (M.epstein@gamenguide.com)
To: Kamau High (K.high@gamenguide.com)
I'm not sure I buy it. While even the simplest of modern games have more components to develop-art, narrative, mechanics, etc-having a larger number of things to do leaves room for game designers to copy and steal from their ancestors. Yes the art of "Sonic Dash" is prettier, but it's nothing we haven't seen before. Drab-looking buildings from an NES game may not impress but the act of creating them, at that time, required more imagination.
Now I don't think there's anything wrong with having a game with derivative elements. Not everything can be brand new. Gaming's mainstream is more inclined to "play it safe" and make the games they know how to make. It's a development that's only become a serious problem in the last ten-fifteen years, because before that there were only a few genres that had been fully "defined," and could be copied without wasting any time imagining how it was supposed to work.
As I alluded to in my last message, building on those "standards" gives developers more time to experiment with storytelling and aesthetics because there are basics they can draw from. The resurgence of pseudo-8bit art, for example has led to creations that are both derivative and original. A game like Fez, which oozes creativity out of its pixelated pores, builds on a profound knowledge of gaming's past, because of this, its innovation is relative. You know what they say: "Good artists borrow. Great artists steal."
When it comes down to it, I'd say its impossible to compare the two. Gaming in the time before "Super Mario World" was setting the groundwork for everything gaming is now and are therefore inherently creative. Modern games don't get a free pass, but when they do innovative, they have the capacity to amaze as never before.
From: Kamau High (K.high@gamenguide.com)
To: Michael Epstein (M.epstein@gamenguide.com)
I'll agree with you that it's impossible to compare the eras. Although I will add that not everything was innovative and compelling back then. For a while there were as many derivative platformers as there are derivative shooters today. Not to mention the glut of crazily complex flight sims and point and click adventures. There will always be something to complain about every generation. I'm just glad we're in this one.