“Inbred” Games

I know this seems like a strange title, so bear with me on this, hopefully it should make sense quite soon. I suppose I could have used the word pedigree instead of inbred for the title, but inbred is honestly just more fun, and I feel the term highlights the potential for stagnation a lot better.

Video games are an incredible medium, and while the current development landscape may not allow every bright mind out there to see their dream project become a reality, the industry continues to push forward and keep creating. Over the many years that games have been developed, genres and conventions of categorization were born, as is natural for any creative medium. Now, going back to my title and the term “inbred”, I’d like to take a quick moment to talk about the pedigree breeding of animals. For those of you who don’t know, many of the recognizable dog breeds you see are the result of many generations of selective breeding. Over time, pedigree breeds that are recognized by different institutions of animal fanciers have become strictly bound by physical traits that are meant to define them. Without getting too much into the ethics of the issue, the practice of inbreeding pedigree dogs with prized characteristics is commonplace, a direct consequence of having a strict definition of a breed, and what it should look like. Traditionally, dogs were bred for function, and while functions such as ferreting would create a vastly different size and disposition to a herding dog, the attitude behind defining these dogs was clearly different to that taken by dog fanciers of today.

With games, we have genres, subgenres, categories and so on. Genres and categories work very well for us, they help us pick a new game a lot easier as we become more experienced with the medium. When someone is wondering what type of game they want to buy next, it’s only natural to draw on our past experiences with similarly categorized games. A side effect of this, is that successful games within a genre can very heavily influence the gaming population’s perception of what elements fundamentally define games of that genre. As time passes, games within a genre can potentially express more and more extreme interpretations of these traits, with the fans of the genre expecting them as standard. This probably reaches its peak when it comes to a specific IP, where rules start to become so rigid, that daring to do anything much outside of putting fresh paint on the same game is tantamount to heresy. This isn’t an accusation, nor is it an indictment, I think it’s quite normal for us as players or creators to create and uphold a series of conventions that we agree upon, but at the same time, are we stifling the industry because of it?

I’m not going to pretend that stifling creativity in games is on the same level of concern as dogs with skulls too small for their brains, but as a player who’s seen a fair amount of games spring to life and set conventions rather than follow and cement them, I’m often sat waiting for someone to come along, shatter the mold, and give me feeling of novelty I often experienced in the more experimental years of the industry. Of course, as much as I might be romanticizing a lot of my past gaming experiences here, I definitely feel there’s a kernel of truth to the notion that we as a gaming population have become a restrictive force in the creativity of games. I suppose there’s one key difference between the gaming world and pedigree dog fanciers: as gamers, we want to cross breed a mother and son, while also hoping for something wonderfully novel. This game must have a large round head, a flattened snout, large dark eyes, but at the same time, I don’t just want a pug, can’t you do something new?

On one hand, we could say gamers’ expectations are the driving force behind rigid conventions, but gamers aren’t usually the ones doing detailed market research, focus testing, and making notes on the building blocks of the games that garnered widespread praise. It’s no surprise that as certain games burst onto the scene to critical acclaim and millions of sales, developers will take note of parts of the formula that can continue to be incorporated into their games, whether they be from their own IP or others’. In the case of it being due to gamer expectations, or developers’ notions of what makes up the fundamental design framework causing games to start adhering to strict conventions, it really is a chicken and egg question, and maybe not one we need to be focusing on too hard. Hopefully, some pedant doesn’t make a comment on how the egg obviously preceded the chicken, because the chicken would have been the result of mutations in ancestor birds.

The truth is, it definitely is all of us, and in different pockets of the gaming world one side might be a bigger influence than the other. An interesting aspect to consider, one that has maybe exacerbated this phenomenon (this is just conjecture), is the fact that the gaming industry is becoming comprised more and more of gamers. There was, after all, a time when game development as a formal career didn’t exist, and so conventions and notions of what makes games, genres of games, or even a specific IP’s core identity, were markedly different to what they are now. Growing up as a gamer already puts preconceptions and notions in your head before you even step into the industry, so as the industry becomes more and more comprised of gamers, are they already going in with completely blinkered vision? Personally, I think it’s unavoidable, but at the same time, how do we escape the trap of being different for the sake of it? At the same time, is the idea of “games by gamers, for gamers” really as great as it sounds, or is there a negative aspect to having your mind already steered in a specific direction as a creator that we’re ignoring?

It would interesting to hear people’s thoughts, but maybe instead of actively trying to look for ways to make things new, a step in the right direction would be not considering certain aspects of creating games as “solved”. Let’s throw out a scenario where you hear of an RPG which doesn’t have a leveling system, or progressively more powerful gear. If your answer is “how the fuck could that even be an RPG?” then I’d just like to ask you, why not? Now the idea that it creates an enjoyable gameplay loop seeing numbers go up in some way or another isn’t something I’m going to argue against, but considering how many aspects of modern RPGs have strayed so far from their pen and paper RPG ancestors, are we shutting down the chance for an idea to come to a fruition because it doesn’t fit the conventions of what we consider an RPG? We could sidestep the issue and try and come up with a new category, but ironically if many elements of RPGs are present, gaming audiences might just slap it with the RPG tag, then make a point of it being a particularly shitty one to boot. What if the game’s progression was not tied so much to inflating numbers, but rather your own mastery of the combat mechanics? In that sense, the ever present notion of character progression being a fundamental part of RPGs is actually fulfilled in a more honest sense. Since the players is role playing as the character, and the only progression so to speak comes from the player’s growth in skill, then haven’t we created a scenario where gameplay and narrative actually mesh much more coherently? I know this is a simplistic example, but hopefully it highlights a bit better what I’m talking about, and hopefully it’s made you think a little.

In my mind, some genres and IPs suffer more from the inbreeding effect than others, but there’s definitely an element of it wherever you go, even beyond games themselves. Our peripherals aren’t even immune from this to an extent, after all, controllers are pretty much “solved”, and any significantly divergent additions or ideas are often considered gimmicks. The moment we create categories and start to stratify, we start to define, but with these definitions come expectations and conventions; conventions that paradoxically restrict a medium we demand constant novelty from. Of course, there’s a reason conventions come about, some things just work well. Still, if you find yourself growing to feel games are becoming uninspired, take a moment to think. After all, you could be demanding a pedigree pug, but at the end of it being surprised that the end product just looks so pug-like. I mean, that’s what it’s supposed to look like, but then again, how are we going to create something new when it has to follow the pedigree checklist?

As will be the case going forward, I’m more interested in the feedback of anyone who somehow stumbles across and reads this.