Creativity in games is stagnating, says Dishonored designer
By Jess Colwill on July 19, 2012 at 4:50 pm
Zenimax’s visual design director Victor Antonov is hailed as the artistic maestro behind Half-Life 2, and now he’s making Dishonored. Having a chat over at Eurogamer.net, he’s told them that the games industry is stagnating, that fiction in games has had a very bad five years. “There have been too many sequels, and too many established IPs that have been ruling the market. And a lot of them are war games. And they’re great projects and great entertainment, but there’s a lack of variety today.”
Dishonored is being compared to Bioshock, which released back in 2007 and which, as Antonov points out, has almost nothing in common with Dishonored. “We’re doing a historical piece, a retro-futuristic piece, which has pretty much nothing to do with BioShock except for the fact that it doesn’t take place in the far future, but has references to the past. And, unfortunately, BioShock and Dishonored are the only two games that go into that fiction for the past – how many years?”
Source: Eurogamer.net
Dishonored pre-order bonuses releasing as DLC
Exclusive content no longer exclusive, shock grips the nation.
Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall reviewed: A dark, violent, somewhat messy flashback
At only $10, this return to the world of Dunwall is great value.
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Agreed, Although you do get the odd game breaking the mould.
The reason (i believe) is simply risk management. A game thats been a proven success means its successor is likely to be a success also.
A brand new game thats different to every other game? well thats a risk that nobody wants to take. Usually.
That being said, The Secret World did innovate a lot, and I think that game will be very successful.
Creativity isn’t stagnating, developers are just (like always) compromising their design ideals for the sake of games being easier to develop. I find it humorous coming from a man whose hyped up game features are not as advertised come release.
There was a 20+ minute talk from one of the Dishonored devs a year or more ago which had me on the edge of my seat waiting for their game, queue the gameplay trailer released this year and me saying “WTF is this shit?”.
Pesky no edit button >_<
I would also argue that he's an idiot simply because of the influx of indie games in the last 2-3 years. Following the success of Minecraft and a few other titles, indie development in the last couple of years has gone INSANE… there are more good quality, indie games for sale on Steam today than were published in the entirety of the 2000-2005 period.
He's just trying to plug his own game (and failing).
I don’t think this is as much the fault of the people *making* the games as it is the fault of the people paying to have the games made.
To put it another way, because I realise that was probably not very clear, I think it might also be due to the games *industry* being run like an *industry*. The whole point of industry is to make money, and there’s a whole pile of cost analyses and risk/reward scenarios being played around with before a project can even begin to be made.
These companies do not want to innovate because there is an inherent risk in trying something different, and as a business they are aiming for maximum profits. It’s not being done for the love of the game.
He’s completely right on all points. Fiction in games IS stagnating and that is taking into account all the indie games out there. They are mostly takes on retro gaming; some with admittedly brilliant twists, but rarely with significant advances in storytelling.
I think he is also mostly focussing on the ‘mainstream’ releases. There really hasn’t been much in the last five years.
blame the publishers, especially some of the the AAA publishers, you know which ones I’m talking about
I am sick of devs commenting negatively about the industry as if they are:
A) Experts
B) Some how different and apart of the only company that is doing the opposite of what they are criticism
:|…