• 28Dec 08

  On innovation and risk-taking in games this holiday season...

  I have not ONCE seen a mention of Breakdown in ANY article or discussion about Mirror's Edge. And I'm really amazed by that.
  
  Breakdown (do a search) was released by Namco on the original Xbox some years ago.
  It attempted a LOT of what Mirror's Edge tried to do, and even MORE. Jumping, fighting, driving, platforming, all in First Person. I personally loved the game, but it was met with practically the same critical and commercial reception as ME, and I could swear that whenever I see an article or a post about Mirror's Edge, it's like "deja vu all over again" from the Breakdown days.
  
  The problem is, NO ONE so far has mentioned Breakdown in anything i've read about Mirror's Edge (and i read a lot). No one has made any link whatsoever between the two games, despite some very obvious similarities.
  
  Now, it wouldn't be much of a deal if we were just talking about how good or bad Mirror's Edge is. But we've mostly been talking about the innovation and risk-taking that was done by DICE, and how it was (mostly poorly) received.
  
  What I find a bit worrying, is that we're not putting this on a timeline, and we're not drawing any real comparisons with anything else (other than the current crop of holiday mega-hits). How can we expect to truly identify, quantify, qualify, and most importantly, appreciate, innovation and risk-taking in game development if we don't even bother to define a proper set of references to check against ?
  
  I would expect Mirror's Edge to be compared and analysed against a much broader set of games than just Gears of War 2 and Dead Space. I would expect to at least see references to other games that have tried similar feats in the past. At the very least.
  
  A lot of people have been calling for more innovation and less sequel-churning for a few years now, and the calls have been answered more than ever in the last few months: Mirror's Edge, Prince of Persia, Little Big Planet, EndWar, to name but a few. But all those games have had "disappointing" sales, as opposed to blockbuster sequels like Guitar Hero 4, Gears of War 2, and Fallout 3. Perhaps those more innovative titles just ended up not being good enough. But perhaps there's more.
  
  A few developers recently came out in the media virtually asking gamers if they really wanted innovation or not after all, seeing as the figures clearly don't match the clamor.
  
  And I wonder the same. But maybe, we just need to define what we mean by "innovation" first. And I think that in order to do that, ironically sometimes you need to look back.
  
  Nintendo did.
  
  
  • Posted Dec 28, 2008 11:29 pm PT
  • Category: Games
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