Game Theory: Creativity Under Threat (k3nshi)

There is something very wrong in an industry where a designer who has produced exactly one game is seen as some sort of revolutionary hero figure. I am talking about Keita Takahashi who produced Katamari Damacy. His disproportionate share of acclaim is covered far better elsewhere. I don't want to talk about that, I want to talk about how to save creativity in gaming.

From the continual bitching of games developers (I've been reading the same shit for about 3 years now), the problem is they don't get the luxury of taking creative risks and this is due to the huge budgets required to make a game, and the subsequent high volume of sales a game must make just to recoup costs.

Nintendo is not the solution

Nintendo are doing some very smart and disruptive things at the moment (although arguably no more so than Sony's EyeToy, Singstar and Buzz products). But platform politics and general business practice mean that Nintendo, or any other platform vendor should not be seen as a long-term solution for the problem of the death of creativity in gaming. Once a business becomes dominant (as Nintendo have been in the past), they have no interest in disrupting the status quo. I'm sure Nintendo's board of Directors would love to take us back to the 1980 where they ruled the gaming world with an Iron Fist and every title published had to be vetted by them and manufactured by them and licensed by them. This is not a Win scenario for gamers or game designers, no matter how much of love you have for the company and/or some of its great products.

So what are some potential long term solutions, to ensure that creativity in games design does not whither and die at the whims and corporate strategies of platform companies. I'll talk about some ideas in the next article.