Gamer Fatigue and the Creative Renaissance

Sometimes, boring games sell well. That is why they are made. Corporations that produce tedious, repetitious drivel are merely fulfilling their function, which is to enrich shareholders. They measure success in sales numbers and margins. They like predictability.

But even the most undemanding, conservative consumers eventually grow tired of formulas, and so games publishers seek to innovate, to try new things in order to build blueprints for the future.

This is the constant friction-point in the business of games, the drive to churn out games that will hit quarterly targets now, and the fear that failure to try new things will severely impact the quarterly results of the future.

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'Gamer fatigue' is a phrase used this week by Dishonored co-director Harvey Smith, to describe what happens when the marketing guys gain too much power over the creative process. This is what happens when the corporations' need for quick returns outweigh both concerns about the future and the artistic vision of the game-maker.

But his message is a positive one. He points out that, even at the tail-end of a console generation, we are seeing artistic, interesting creations. Games like Dishonored, Beyond: Two Souls and The Last of Us are leading the charge against the AAA standards that fill the shelves of GameStop, while digital experimentation through XBL, PSN and Steam is a source of much that is challenging and new.

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In an interview with GI Biz, Smith said, “You could attribute it to gamer fatigue. How many games have been released now where you're a soldier, or a space marine, or you're surrounded by elves and wizards, or you're robbing a bank in L.A.? I'm still an optimist, and I still have a great time playing games, but...most stuff is just variations on things we've seen before. If you've been around for a while you've seen it over and over and over."

There have been times in the past when it seemed that the marketers were taking too much creative power. The argument went that the ‘market’ should dictate what was produced, and there are still people who believe that consumer buying patterns are the ultimate measure of artistic endeavor.

But markets are not open and free systems, and in gaming’s past this was especially the case. It wasn’t that long ago when the only realistic way to get a game into the hands of the public-at-large was through one of a limited number of powerful publishing companies. Even now, we do not live in a utopia of creative freedom, but things have definitely changed, giving more power back to the people who actually know how to make games, and want to try to expand the form.

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Looking back at the bad old days, Smith says, "I remember working at companies where people would tell me that role-playing games don't sell. I once had an executive tell me that first-person games don't sell. It can fly in the face of reality.”

He adds, “There are many ways to be successful. You could go out and aim for a very mainstream story...and you can capture an audience that way and be very successful. On the other hand, you can be completely rock 'n' roll about it and say, 'F*ck it, we're gonna do everything different from everyone else’. We're driven by this one impulse creatively. At a certain point, I came to mistrust formulas, because I've seen so many examples of people failing or succeeding by following a certain blueprint.”

Most of us are guilty of perpetuating formulas. We buy games that we know will be enjoyable, but that fail to surprise or even particularly delight us.

But what we really want is to be taken to new and unusual worlds, to be shocked and amazed at new experiences.Dishonored is a whole new game-world, one that we have not experienced before. In his preview for IGN, Charles Onyett wrote that it comes from a great tradition of “games that can't be satisfyingly labeled with any single genre tag, that encompass multiple gameplay styles and encourages player choice instead of adherence to a rigidly defined path”.

Even when games follow fairly predictable mechanical patterns, they can charm us with magical touches of creativity previously unfelt. The entire world of Rapture in Bioshock is an example of a place imagined by its creator and unsullied by the stupidity of market-research or focus groups.

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Assassin’s Creed allows us to explore different times and places. Talking to Edge, the game’s creator Patrice Désilets recalls that Ubisoft expected him to make another Prince of Persia title, but he wanted to tell a story about a medieval killer.

In the end, the prince was nudged out of the picture. Désilets says, “I never suggested a new IP per se. All the time I was saying to them, ‘It’s a Prince Of Persia game and you’re an assassin’. I’m a bad employee, if you think about it. I was asked to do a Prince Of Persia game and I didn’t. Ubisoft were like, ‘That’s not what we want. We still need our prince!’.”

The conflict between creative and marketing priorities came into sharp focus this week following some comments made by Spec-Ops: The Line’s lead designer Cory Davis. He told The Verge:

"The multiplayer mode of Spec Ops: The Line was never a focus of the development but the publisher was determined to have it anyway. It was literally a checkbox that the financial predictions said we needed, and 2K was relentless in making sure that it happened — even at the detriment of the overall project and the perception of the game.

“It sheds a negative light on all of the meaningful things we did in the single-player experience. The multiplayer game's tone is entirely different, the game mechanics were raped to make it happen, and it was a waste of money. No one is playing it, and I don't even feel like it's part of the overall package — it's another game rammed onto the disk like a cancerous growth, threatening to destroy the best things about the experience that the team at Yager put their heart and souls into creating."

Spec Ops: The Line has been widely praised for its unique take on the modern shooter, a genre often derided for its uniformity. Even if 2K messed up with the multiplayer decision, the company should be given some credit for allowing the team at Yager to tell an interesting and challenging story in their own way.

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As publishers find their hegemony challenged by major indie successes like Minecraft, by the rise of digital distribution, free-to-play and mobile, they have to respond by placing more trust in their top creative people. Obviously, it’s a sputtering process.

David Cage is not the sort of fellow to kowtow to the marketing department and, as you’d expect, he has views on this issue. The maker of Heavy Rain, currently working on Beyond: Two Souls, told Gamasutra that the creator’s responsibility is to surprise people:

“If you just give people what they expect, I think you're not doing your job as a creative person. You're just a marketing guy. Your job as a creative person is to give people what they don't expect -- or what they expect, without knowing that this is what they want. But your goal as a creative person is to surprise people all the time, and give them something different.

"So, when you look at the market at the moment, you can see more of the same, fair enough, and a few people trying different things...I think we should have more courage in our industry, and take more risks, because I think this is what the industry needs now. I mean, how many first person shooters can you make? How many monsters slash aliens slash zombies can you kill in games? There's a moment where we need to grow up. We need to grow up.”

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The success of games like Minecraft and the fact that new IP is being introduced so late in this console generation are signs that guys like Cage, Davis, Désilets and Harvey Smith are being given more freedom to create what they want than in years gone by. This is a process that is a long way from being completed and perhaps never will be. While we continue to play games that don't really take any risks, we perpetuate those games. But innovations like Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight have ramifications beyond themselves. They help to arm the artists against the corporations' worst instincts against creative exploration.