THUMBNAIL: IT’S IN OUR GENES!
// BLAME YOUR GENES!
Why aren't there original games anymore?
Hello my name is ColdBeer and recently I was thinking and also discussing some worrying
matters about the future of computer games.
There is a tendency that almost every single game releasing these days is a copy of some
older successful game.
Or in some cases it’s a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a - if I may quote a famous
Nine Inch Nails song, proving that there is no originality left whatsoever.
Especially in the gaming world.
Games like Dark Souls, games like Diablo, games like Skyrim, games like Age of Empires
and so on - if I mention that the game is souls-like you will know what this game is
all about and instantly realize if it’s for you or you be better to avoid that title,
like you would avoid non-alcoholic vodka or a pop band of Justin Bieber clones.
Or your mother in law.
Yeah.
And almost nobody is creating nothing original anymore.
Last breakthrough and really original concept that made a huge impact in the gaming world
was PUBG.
Battle Royalle concept seems so simple, but nobody made anything like that before because...
simply because everyone is afraid of losing money over creating something really new.
And we are stuck in this circle just like a penis in the pants zipper.
Yeah, half of us is in the past, before the zipper, where we remember the new concepts
always evolving, creators trying to be as original as possible, trying to find that
vein of gold, because it was a new era and nothing actually existed, you had to invent
everything.
We can also remember people blaming Nox for being a lowly clone of Diablo.
I literally remember when it was a shame to say that you play Nox in my school, because
that meant that you play trash games.
But from today's perspective, after the zipper, Nox seems even more original game than many
clones of Diablo today.
Like Path of Exile, Grim Dawn, Wolcen and others.
Those are great games, but nowadays nobody is calling them clones, because it’s a tendency
to take a concept and create a new game on it.
We call it a genre now.
Take the backbone and grow some muscles.
Take the bottle and fill it with vodka.
So after initial release of PUBG many creators just started to create more of PUBG, some
were airy fairy gay unicorn colored, some were not, but the tendency was here way before
PUBG appeared - take something that works and make a copy of it.
Many of the blockbuster games today are just copies of other games - even upcoming Baldur’s
Gate 3 is a copy, surprisingly, not of Baldur’s Gate, but rather of Divinity Original Sin.
Because Divinity worked well and who are you to create something new in this field?
Who are you to risk millions of dollars?
Exactly, nobody wants to risk their monies anymore so we get the same stuff over and
over again.
Looking from one direction - it is good, because developers take the existing idea and try
to modify it to make it even better and by this they purify the concept to the maximum.
In this way after Diablo we got Path of Exile, after PUBG we got Fortnite - you can like
it or not, but the fact that those games make more money than original ones tells the story
of success.
Others are watching this success and they want their slice of the pie.
Sadly the pie is the players.
Us.
And we are kinda spoiled by the same looking, but slightly worse or slightly better games
over and over again - it is very hard to make something that we would approve of, that we
would play even for free, I’m not even talking about buying.
Hundreds of companies go bankrupt when they fail to entertain by creating some Battle
Royale that nobody plays.
Because you have to develop a game, pay the salaries to the designers and programmers
and then you have to have a smoothly running servers to support it and that costs a serious
amount of money.
If your game is not popular enough you are finished.
Basta.
Finito.
Koniec.
Slutt.
Viso gero bliat.
So, why creators are chasing money, why they dip their creative penises in the pool of
similar games instead of making something really original that could go viral, something
that could make a difference.
Well, to be fair, most of the game creators are sure that they will make even better Dark
Souls, even better Diablo or Baldur’s Gate.
Second - many of them think that gamers are kinda stupid robots that play everything that’s
related to their favourite genre.
That is kinda right, we actually like what we like and many of us just tend to stay that
way.
Also to make something that is more than a clone is quite hard.
Imagine that you have a task to make a better bicycle.
You make a frame from ecological bamboo, tell everybody that you will plant seven trees
from one unit sold, you use no child labour and you pay your employees way above the minimum,
because you want your bicycles to be very high quality.
Well, that sounds cool, you should sell a lot of them, right?
Well... wrong.
The price of a bicycle like that would be 30% higher than an average similar looking
thing, so you go bankrupt.
Then you start again - you plant no trees after you sell a unit, instead of employees
you put your own children to work in the basement and you make a frame from cheap plastic.
Of course you have to pay a bit of a coin to some other kids to stand there with a whip
and make sure children are working and not going on the smoking breaks too often, but
that, in your mind, is a minor money loss in comparison to real expensive employees
you used to hire.
Success?
No, quality will be terrible, nobody will buy it, or if someone will, they will probably
die by riding it and you will go to jail.
So what is the bicycle you have to make for it to be successful?
You can just make wheels instead and every single bicycle developer will buy those from
you.
That is, by the way, equivalent to the Unreal Engine.
Or put a motor and a battery to your bicycle and sell those like scooters.
Will it work?
I don’t know.
Nobody knows, there are zillions of possibilities how it could go wrong and only a few of them
would make you a ton of money.
So, keeping in mind this analogy, why do people make copies of successful games?
It’s hard and probably very unprofitable.
That’s because, with the analogy to bicycles, to create an absolutely new game concept is
the same as creating a totally new means of transportation.
You have to literally invent something besides ships, planes, helicopters, scooters, cars
et cetera.
And if you do - it’s not automatically going to work - it should be useful and work better
than all the alternatives.
You hear how it sounds?
Better than ALL alternatives.
So if your game is original, but the alternatives are better/cheaper/more fun to play or even
has lower requirements, that is a thing, believe me, nobody will play your game.
And that is not the only reason why we can’t get new original stuff.
People are just not innovative enough.
Of course there are a handful of games with amazing stories and visionary concepts like
famous Death Stranding in example.
Or one of the coolest adventure games I ever played - Beautiful Desolation.
They exist, but they are also exceptions to the rule.
But the main reason why creators are making the same games over and over and over again
is rooted deep inside our genes.
We, as people, evolved to like stuff that is familiar.
Familiar edible berries or mushrooms will not kill you, familliar man that you known
for years will be less likely to steal from you, you also know what animal is harmless
and which one is going to rip you apart and then rape your corpse before eating it.
When we see something that we have never experienced before, an automatic danger response is turned
on in our brains, so we tend to avoid new thing by the level of our instincts.
Feeling is not very strong, but it’s unpleasant enough to not like anything that’s unfamiliar.
Because talking metaphorically new thing has the possibility to tear you apart, to cause
you some harm even if it is only at a mental level.
That’s why we don’t like strangers, that is one of the many reasons racism exists,
and that is the reason why we don’t have new original games.
We just don’t play them.
The main reason is us - players and our DNA.
So, let’s go and play Death Stranding or Beautiful Desolation again, let’s prove
the world that we are ready for something new and not for another game like Dark Souls.
Thank you for listening, this was my first experimental video, different from my other
videos, so I don’t expect that many of you will watch it or even like it, but anyway,
I had to make it, please state your opinion in the comments below, I will gladly read
every single comment you leave here.
And now have a nice day and I’ll see you next time.