SOS (Same Old Stuff) Syndrome
Quotes from famous game designers and others

If you take away the fancy graphics of today's games, most of the time you're left with a shell of a game that has been done to death a million times.

Leonard Herman from a Digital Press quote page

To me, if you have nothing new and cool to bring to the table, then there is no sense in designing a game. Regrettably, about 80% of the video game business involves clone products and cheesy licensed titles. These are the too-numerous to mention titles that no one remembers once the ad budget runs out. Life is too short to waste on me-too efforts. If you are just doing it for the money, and you can't get even get yourself psyched about your project, then it's time to move on to something fresh. Why waste irreplaceable time in life just making money, when the alternative is having some fun exploring the unknown? Money can be made later, but time is lost forever.

Eugene Jarvis from a Halcyon Days interview

If I see another game that involves a kidnapped princess, queen, king or other royal family member, I'll scream. In the same vein, I think the karate genre has been done to death.

Andy Eddy (adapted)

For me the retrogaming movement is more than just nostalgia of misty eyed Gen X'ers. It's a reaction to the current graphical overkill, the simulation obsessed gaming environment of the late 90s. In our quest for absolute graphical realism, we have forgotten the basics of gaming. Look at "Virtua Fighter 3" vs. "Virtua Fighter 2." Unless you are a proctologist, you can't find a dimes' worth of difference in the gameplay. It is clear that the design team focused on the beautiful water effects, facial expressions, awesome backdrops, and 400 polygon, fully rendered loin-cloth animations. Have we as game designers become mere interior decorators, spending months on the reflection mapping of candlelight, or loin-cloth motion capture? Have we forgotten the essence of gaming which is to present the player with novel and original challenges? Once you've seen the interior decoration, there's no need to come back. You need a game in there.

Eugene Jarvis from a Halcyon Days interview

I'm turning into one of those old geezers who is always ranting on incessantly about how much better everything was when he was a kid. People have these awesome toys now! Real computers! Amazing graphics, speed, memory, everything. And what are they doing with them? Mostly sideways-scrolling run-and-jump platform games, shooters, and the latest "Karate Champ" clone.

Marc Goodman from a Halcyon Days interview

If you have SOS Syndrome, remember to have the 'bad guys,' bonus items, bonus areas, and other things in different places each time the game is played. No matter how unoriginal your game is, at least it will be tolerable.

Duane Alan Hahn

Make a technical contribution; innovate, don't emulate.

David Packer

People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things.

R. Buckminster Fuller

Games haven't gotten better, they've just gotten more pixels.

David Lubar from his web site

 

The Cure for SOS Syndrome?

One way to invent your own game is to take an old game that doesn't quite work for your purposes and change it around. You might make some minor revisions in the game or you might totally overhaul the whole thing so that it's completely unrecognizable, depending on how much of the original game is attractive to you.

1. Identify your goals.

2. Brainstorm a list of all the games you can think of that relate to your goals.

3. Put a plus sign next to the games you feel positively about, and a minus sign next to the ones that have negative connotations for you.

4. Choose one of the games that has a plus sign next to it, a game that you like  but one that's not perfect for reaching your goal or goals.

5. What is it that you like about the game?

6. What is the part of the game you'd like to change? Describe that element here.

7. Brainstorm a number of ways to replace that element with something else.

8. Choose one of your new elements and describe what you like about it and the way that it might fit into the old game.

9. Does the game still work? Is it still fun to play your new way? Are there any more changes that will be necessary because of the element that you've just changed?

10. Is there anything else from your brainstorm in part 7 that you can incorporate in your new version?

Have you completely recycled this old game so that it meets your standards? Are you excited about your new version? If you are, then why are you still reading this? Get going.

Adapted from the book Playfair by Matt Weinstein and Joel Goodman

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