Keita Takahashi: Gaming is getting “dull”

and he is right….no fat blockbusters…the only thing there were was: tech….not anymore. where are the blockbusters? the entertainment of the solo games with awesome story and fun?

Hoping the best for the next years.

He has a point. look at the countless shooters that are coming out its getting really boring.

I mean think about it, the Halos & CODs is two of the best selling shooters around and to be a game dev able to build any world from scratch, its pretty boring

You’re a game developer, if you do not want to make games in 3D or with motion controls, then you do not make those games. Looking at the excentric games he has made it’s clear he has a publisher willing to back his crazy ideas.

Pointing to what other people are doing and giving that as a reason to stop seems utterly bizar.

Your not getting it, its clearly not selling in a business stand point so the only kind of genres that do is the dull ones which is why hes probably thought about taking a break. I honestly dont blame him, its becoming overall dull for the gamers whos come up from the 80s 90s like myself. More and more developers are too scared in taking risks with high budget IPs. Alot of qoutes from other game devs proves that.

That’s even less true. With digital download platforms on all consoles, handhelds and phones more quircky games are finding a way to market then ever before.
Just because E3 putts Call of duty center stage does not mean that is all there is to gaming.

Now you can actually make highly excentric/original/risky games with small teams and be financialy succesfull, something nearly impossible in the PS2 era where you only had a full price disc release as an option.

If anything, now is the time for the “weird japanese game designers” to stand up and bring thier most strange projects to market.

Looks at Noby Noby Boy, looks at Vanquish… points, laughs.

Sorry but gaming has never had such a broad and diverse selecton of games. From the simple iPhone games to the AAA exclusives, there’s tweaks to established genres and all out innovation all over the gaming space.

As Freek said, with the rise of small downloadable titles, his pining for the PS2 days seems more like a smoke screen for him being all out of ideas.
I’ve never rated his games anyway. Neither Katamari or Noby Noby Boy held my interest.

Fair enough to those who rate him, but given how hollow his complaints are, it seems like a very disingenius way in which to leave the industry.

that´s exactly how i feel. i actualy sold all my consoles about 2 months ago and haven´t played any game since then. and i play videogames since the 80´s when i was a very little kid. never was a super ultra hardcore player but played some decent hours every week…so bored with gaming and didn´t miss a thing yet. if i go to a shop and look at the games it always feels like i´ve played these games about a hundred times – they just look slightly better every 3 or 4 years. but still the same concepts. motion gaming was the final nail in the coffin for me. 3d is nice but still not groundbreaking- doesn´t change the core gameplay/ design / experience of a game at all…i´m sure i´ll be playing a good game once in a while someday again but for now i´m outta here for a while i guess.

Who knows what he’s talking about. But if he means videogames are now big business and the big money is all around low risk or trying to hype up stuff hugely then I can understand that.

Sure, there are lots of funky little games, but that side of the business seems increasingly to be seen as a sideshow.

Online MP which has barely changed since Doom apart from resolution and some simple leveling systems dominates in the Western markets, particularly US/UK, and the titles lavished with attention are the third, fourth or fifth version of something.

I guess if my focus was the quirky side of things I might feel like a break, too.

Screw this guy I’m with number 6 above, anybody who says that the gaming landscape is “boring” is an idiot, or just doesn’t play games. Especially in comparison to the ps2 era. Seriously, who plays katamari other than your 10 year old sister?

For me the real problem is the lack of diversity. You can always argue darwinism in that a truly great game/genre will rarely be overlooked (Except for Startopia, Psychonauts etc.) but what happened to the tactical games, the turnbased games and the adventure games?

I don’t see any truly satisfying reasons as to why those had to die, except for the publishers diverting their gaze elsewhere.

I realize they’re still living in the shadows (and turnbased games in Japan) but having played most of them, it’s clear that they’ve fallen into the hands of small developers who rarely have the resources to realize them.

Fundamentally I think you need a far, far, far better pitch to sell an original IP today, than you may have needed a decade ago. I’m talking a major investment in a pitch – Expensive proof of concept demos, videos etc.

Boring, though? Nah, it’s just a lot narrower.

Fuck. (Doublepost)

Dull? Why not make something that aint dull then Keita Takahashi ?

Be creative!! Make something special!!

Something like this!!!—> http://www.minecraft.net/

can he just shut up… he did the worst game ever, noby noby boy.
he should be banned from the industry just because of this.

@13 AGREED

DSB: The tactical games and the turnbased games still exist, and there are new ones coming out all the time. Better than the old ones. They are, however, titles for a small audience. The size of that audience might be similiar to how it was before, but the gaming audience is much bigger now, and that audience is now small in comparison. Before no games got any wide marketting. Now the big seller like CoD get wide marketting and exposure. That was unheard of before. So not much has changed with your old games. They might have declined some in sales, but they are still out there. Selling like hotcakes in germany, as I understand.

And many aspects of adventuregames and other genres has found it’s way into newer games and genres. Just look at shooters. Almost all shooters nowdays have RPG-elements of some kind. And more will come.

@15 They do still exist, but the only ones I’ve been able to find are the Battlefront.com type of games, that are made with quantity in mind, and don’t have half the level of detail a game like that really needs.

The last proper tactical turnbased game I played was Silent Storm.

Any suggestions?

Noby Noby Boy was a huge disappointment. It was charming at first, but a novelty that wore out its welcome quickly. Keita has some unusual ideas, so if he sees the industry in a decline of creativity, he should do his part in changing direction.

I won’t say there hasn’t been some innovation this gen: games like LittleBigPlanet give us the tools to make our ideas come to life; Heavy Rain bringing adventure titles into a new generation, with adult themes, giving us moral and ethical decisions which decide the fates of our characters. Upcoming Child of Eden looks promising, so does Journey and The Last Guardian, though hardly anything is known about it.

There have been changes this generation I don’t like: such as the over-abundance of first-person shooters; Japan losing its unity and identity as game developers unlike anything else, only to take a more Western approach and fail at it. This has caused the decline of the once-loved and much-missed JRPG, the decrease in quality of former franchise greats such as Devil May Cry, Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

Keita sees no future in the game industry, and considering how things have changed, I can’t blame him. There is still a little innovation out there, though its few and far between compared to the majority of me-too gameplay clones and first-person shooters flooding the market.

I hate E3. The show is tacky as fuck. Takahashi is right in saying the show is dull (it always is), this year wasn’t any different.

The amount of sequels and lack of fresh IP was depressing.

The gaming industry needs a serious boot up the arse regarding original content.

@17 – basically this

@18 – this too.

I always looked forward to e3 tho but at the end of this years e3 i came away just depressed and annoyed at the content on show. I feel the biggest culprit i can point the finger at for the industrys current direction is call of duty.

I also this year signed up to a game rental service with the intention of playing games and saving money but with games i truly thought were in someway great i would buy to own. I now find myself buying alot less games, go figure =(

too many fps that are just too similar. Dont get me wrong i like fps i find the inherent design of just shooting people fun but they do now just blur together and its sad to see it

He was at the Japanese embasy in London a few weeks ago and I had the pleasure of seeing a presentation about his new game themed play ground he is making. To be honest, someone above mentioned that the indie scene is a bit of a side show, and I think that holds a certain amount of truth. But, it’s only just started…give it a few years and I reckon AAA devs are going to have to inovate to survive the swamp of fun, charming and infuriating games people have a choice of buying. And they WILL chose the new fun stuff! eventually…

@20

I agree.

Factor into the mix smaller dev costs, less dev time, and less retail risk, I can easily see the time when the idea scene stands head and shoulders with the “big boys” at retail.

I can already see that in xbla/psn/wiiware. That market seems to me to be an inbetween the actual inde crowd and what we think of as normal game devs/pubs. But the idea is there. Something like Trails HD takes less money, time, people yada yada to make. And because of that it can really open up the flood gates for being creative. Something that established big name/big budgets folks shy away from.

Hell even something like Shadowcomplex from EPIC(again for xbla) shows us a big industry name developing a game with those things in mind.

I don’t think the full all out big budget all star AAA games are going anywhere. But there is a deff place for more creative, smaller projects.