It's funny that this was written in 1989, right after the Japanese pulled the industry out of the 80s Atari crash, where shovelware destroyed consumer confidence in Atari products (I know that is a simplification, but the Nintendo Seal of Approval carried weight).
The fact is the 90s was riddled with derivatives, where every cartoon character had a derivative side-scroller of varying quality. The scale of a cartridge game grew enough that just changing animation quality, physics, attack methods, and level design was enough to make the Aladin side-scroller a different enough experience from the Lion King side-scroller that a customer would be satisfied by both purchases.
I'd say we have lived in the world MTJ predicted since this was written, but innovation and quality were hardly ever buried by rip-o-bot churn. Even today, I'd consider the "slop" genres ($5 co-op games, stream-worthy horror projects) to be healthy ecosystems where the cream typically rises to the top.
The crash you speak of was USA-only—for example Europe where I am wasn't affected—just to point out to anybody unfamiliar with that story.
That said, I think your point is a good one, it's just a different type of churn. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same) as they say in France.
I mean, isn't that the exercise? I love MTJ's Bubble Bobble, but it is a simple game. If a "Rip O Matic" took Bubble Bobble and replaced the bubble blowing dinosaur with a sword-wielding samurai (but kept the levels, speed, etc), it would be a different experience. If a Rip O Matic created 500 new levels, or cloned the game and replaced the dinosaur with a bubble-shooting Astro Boy, it would be undeniably derivative.
But there is some boundary line on the level of effort where a game becomes its own thing. Fortunately for the industry, the number of parameters that can be "tweaked" grew exponentially with each console generation.
Very prescient! That said, should AI tools allow us to create more original games? When you can now prototype something very quickly and decide whether to keep going or tear it down in minutes...
No, because that was never the problem. We already had lightspeed prototyping. The industry's best practices are basically entirely geared towards rapid prototyping and we're scary good at it.
Fact of the matter is, games are already extremely accessible and have incredible, free productivity tools. It's been that way for a while. You know what mass democratization of gamedev has resulted in? Mostly just a flood of low rent survival games, roguelite deck builders, puppetcombo-esque horror games, etc.
Saturation and duplication is one of the biggest problems now. Our discovery systems aren't terrible, but it's hard to stand above the rest unless your game has a really good execution and gimmick to attract attention.
I dunno, gamedev prototyping has always been fast, but I think AI tools make it way way faster; at least based on my experience writing visualizations in Godot (and to a lesser extent, my experience scaffolding datascience viz work in python).
It's funny that this was written in 1989, right after the Japanese pulled the industry out of the 80s Atari crash, where shovelware destroyed consumer confidence in Atari products (I know that is a simplification, but the Nintendo Seal of Approval carried weight).
The fact is the 90s was riddled with derivatives, where every cartoon character had a derivative side-scroller of varying quality. The scale of a cartridge game grew enough that just changing animation quality, physics, attack methods, and level design was enough to make the Aladin side-scroller a different enough experience from the Lion King side-scroller that a customer would be satisfied by both purchases.
I'd say we have lived in the world MTJ predicted since this was written, but innovation and quality were hardly ever buried by rip-o-bot churn. Even today, I'd consider the "slop" genres ($5 co-op games, stream-worthy horror projects) to be healthy ecosystems where the cream typically rises to the top.
The crash you speak of was USA-only—for example Europe where I am wasn't affected—just to point out to anybody unfamiliar with that story.
That said, I think your point is a good one, it's just a different type of churn. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same) as they say in France.
>just changing animation quality, physics, attack methods, and level design
So...basically everything about the game but the genre?
I mean, isn't that the exercise? I love MTJ's Bubble Bobble, but it is a simple game. If a "Rip O Matic" took Bubble Bobble and replaced the bubble blowing dinosaur with a sword-wielding samurai (but kept the levels, speed, etc), it would be a different experience. If a Rip O Matic created 500 new levels, or cloned the game and replaced the dinosaur with a bubble-shooting Astro Boy, it would be undeniably derivative.
But there is some boundary line on the level of effort where a game becomes its own thing. Fortunately for the industry, the number of parameters that can be "tweaked" grew exponentially with each console generation.
Very prescient! That said, should AI tools allow us to create more original games? When you can now prototype something very quickly and decide whether to keep going or tear it down in minutes...
No, because that was never the problem. We already had lightspeed prototyping. The industry's best practices are basically entirely geared towards rapid prototyping and we're scary good at it.
Fact of the matter is, games are already extremely accessible and have incredible, free productivity tools. It's been that way for a while. You know what mass democratization of gamedev has resulted in? Mostly just a flood of low rent survival games, roguelite deck builders, puppetcombo-esque horror games, etc.
Saturation and duplication is one of the biggest problems now. Our discovery systems aren't terrible, but it's hard to stand above the rest unless your game has a really good execution and gimmick to attract attention.
I dunno, gamedev prototyping has always been fast, but I think AI tools make it way way faster; at least based on my experience writing visualizations in Godot (and to a lesser extent, my experience scaffolding datascience viz work in python).
Maybe, but IMHO the idea will always come first.