INNOVATION IN GAMING
It’s difficult to pinpoint the places in the stream of creativity where true innovation take place, but in the realm of video games we can look to particular titles that reinvent or create new genres. For the purpose of this discussion I will talk about modern innovations, that is games that have come out recently that I consider to be breaking boundaries. This is by no means a comprehensive discussion, and one could argue that by excluding earlier titles I am severely limiting the topic, and they would be right. But there are some very exciting things happening in gaming today, and I’d like to touch on a few of them:
Katamari Damacy,
Namco: When Katamari Damacy rolled (pun entirely
intended) onto the scene in 2004 many game analysts, myself
included, worried that this title was simply too Japanese
to make the jump successfully across the Pacific. When it
landed here in the US, however, American gamers soon
realized that despite its whacky premise, or perhaps
because of it, Katamari was an entirely fun game to play.
The game, (the name roughly translates to “clump of souls”)
is entirely innovative in its design. The idea of a tiny
prince rolling a collecting ball over items to create
larger and larger collections of items is completely
addictive, despite the story being simplistic and very
silly in places. The King of all Cosmos has sent you as the
prince to clean up his messes, and he has made many of
them. The difficulty progresses as you move through the
stages, but the brilliance about this game in addition to
its completely new game mechanics is the fact that anyone
can play. Should a player with basic skill pick up the
game, they can enjoy picking up tacks and erasers and still
enjoy it as much as the higher stages where you are picking
up buildings and eventually planets. Katamari is fun for
all.
Dead Rising,
Capcom: When zombies invade Willamette, Colorado,
Frank West is there to capture the chaos with his camera
and create a bit of his own. This is the sort of game I
slip into the category of the “pseudo-god game.” I say this
because you are not only in an environment where you can
use just about everything around you as a weapon, you have
the moral freedom to humiliate zombies without limit. The
brilliance of the innovation is the freedom allowed the
player. This is the kind of game that you can play for
hours simply for the fun of dressing up random zombies in
bear heads and road cones, and then running them over with
the lawn mower or shopping cart. I have rarely enjoyed free
for all carnage this much. Most zombie games (Resident
Evil, for example) rely on the suspense and fear as their
focal point. Dead Rising, on the other hand, is a
humor-focused game. It is the sort of game that is great to
play at parties because those watching it will enjoy it as
much as those playing it. Feel free to be liberal with the
violence, you get points for creativity in this one.
