Article on lack of originality in games...

[Zeus]

Looks like it'll only get worse, but hopefully we'll see a movie-like shift in the next generation when making a game look like the Xbox or GC shouldn't be overly difficult, and they look great, just not insanely good

http://ps2.ign.com/articles/624/624825p1.html

[Julius Seeker]

I just read the beginning 6 or 7 paragraphs of the article before the picture, and skimmed the rest for details. My opinion:

The general population of gamers are lazy, they aren't going to look at every game, a game sharing a title of a series they are familiar with is more appealing for them to look at than something they have never heard of.

Electronic Arts: Yeah, they release the same game every year with updated rosters and slightly updated gameplay. Well, I don't really have a problem with it because I am not one of the idiots who buys sports games where you can't manually update players (when I actually care about the rosters); and buys the same game each year.

Other companies with games like Final Fantasy? You could call a HUGE number of games Final Fantasy and have them not at all resemble the original Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy 7 and 9 are very similar, but 8 and 10 are vastly different from those two aside from some monster names, and 8 still having the gimmicky action bar thing that all FF games on SNES and PSX had (which thankfully they finally got rid of in 10). Even the most similar games are still very different from each other. Lunar I and II are similar in a lot of aspects, but they are also quite different in many others; in my opinion, Eternal Blue is a greatly superior game to Silver Star Story.

Anyways, unoriginality doesn't always mean bad, look at music and most successful movies and books. You wheel of Time fans are reading a GIGANTIC ripoff of Guy Gavriel Kay (who in turn ripped off Lord fo the RIngs and Arthurian legend).

[Flip]

Have you even read Robert Jordan (my guess if you read one or two books of the series, or none)? Again, you speak of things you know nothing about. A fantasy novel is a fantasy novel and they are all ripoffs of Tokien, Kay, and the Arthurian Legend? Holy Christ, you are the stupidest smart person i've ever met.

[Julius Seeker]

Have you even read Robert Jordan (my guess if you read one or two books of the series, or none)? Again, you speak of things you know nothing about. A fantasy novel is a fantasy novel and they are all ripoffs of Tokien, Kay, and the Arthurian Legend? Holy Christ, you are the stupidest smart person i've ever met.

I have read the entire series up to Winter's Heart; Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry; all of Tolkien's work from Lord of the Rings to the 12 volumes of the Lost Tales, The Silmarillion, the Hobbit; and for Arthurian Legends I have read through Mallory, multiple translations of Cullwch and Olwen (my favourite of the early pre-Renaissance legends), Chretien de Troyes, Wace, Layamon, not to mention a large number of Victorian interpretations (most notably Tennyson, Morris, and Carr).

And it appears that you completely missed the point: "unoriginality doesn't always mean bad, look at music and most successful movies and books." I have put it in bold, because obviously placing the topic sentence at the beginning of the paragraph is not clear enough for you.

The only person who does not know what they are talking about is you. Nothing in your post makes sense since it neither addresses the topic in a direct or indirect way.

[Flip]

Wow, you totally edited that in there.

unoriginality doesn't always mean bad, look at music and most successful movies and books

was NOT in your original post.

[Flip]

Plus, i would love to read an essay on why your think Jordan is a ripoff of Kay who is a rip off of Tolkien. You think these guys read each others material and blatantly say to themselves, "I think i'll do the exact same thing!" You are retarded on too many levels if you think each of these great writers simply copy anothers work.

[Flip]

And yet another post...

And it appears that you completely missed the point

Your point is irrelevant to the fact that you are accusing some great writers of our time of plagiarism. Hence my previous comment, you are talking about nothing you know of.

[SineSwiper]

Well, Flip, when it comes to fantasy writers, they ARE plagurizing, or at least borrowing ideas (whichever synonym you want to use for tameness). All of the fantasy plots are basically re-hashed versions of "A boy becomes a man to seek his destiny" with dragons and elves and stuff. There are only so many different directions that fantasy can go. That's why I prefer sci-fi myself.

[Nev]

Nope. Wrong. There's as much diversity possible in fantasy as sci-fi...Look at Dragonlance (which does have dragons and elves, yes, but no "boy becomes a man" story, unless you count the fourth Chronicles book, which I thought sucked balls), or even better the early Pern novels (before Renegades of Pern and All the Weyrs of Pern, when Anne McCaffrey took the series in a sci-fi direction.) Look at the Neverending Story, which was a great book before it was a movie, or look at the Dark Sun novels in D&D (which I never read any of but which are hardly fantasy cliches - it's a world where metal is almost nonexistant and steel is valued over gold). Look at the Darksword Trilogy...or the Death Gate cycle...I can't think of any more offhand, but I'm sure the list goes on and on...

[Flip]

Well, Flip, when it comes to fantasy writers, they ARE plagurizing, or at least borrowing ideas (whichever synonym you want to use for tameness). All of the fantasy plots are basically re-hashed versions of "A boy becomes a man to seek his destiny" with dragons and elves and stuff. There are only so many different directions that fantasy can go. That's why I prefer sci-fi myself.

I think we've mentioned before how almost every story in movie, game or book essentially has this plot, regardless of genre. Peasant becomes hero, thing. Shouldnt it take more than that to call writing plagiarism?

[Tortolia]

Pretty much every story's already been told. This isn't news.

[Julius Seeker]

Wow, you totally edited that in there.

unoriginality doesn't always mean bad, look at music and most successful movies and books

was NOT in your original post.

What the hell are you talking about? Flip, just admit it, you're an idiot.

[SineSwiper]

What the hell are you talking about? Flip, just admit it, you're an idiot.

So you didn't edit the post at the same time as your reply:

Last edited by The Seeker on 14 Jun 2005 09:12 pm; edited 3 times in total
Posted: 14 Jun 2005 09:12 pm

[Julius Seeker]

What the hell are you talking about? Flip, just admit it, you're an idiot.

So you didn't edit the post at the same time as your reply:

Last edited by The Seeker on 14 Jun 2005 09:12 pm; edited 3 times in total
Posted: 14 Jun 2005 09:12 pm

Bolded the sentence in question and fixed a few spelling/grammar errors; Check around at a number of my posts, I do that often enough. Either way, Flip KNOWS that he read it, he is just trying to not look like an idiot for his idiotic reply.

[Flip]

Conspiracy! Seriously though, i dont remember seeing it at all. Oh well. I still have a problem with you calling those writers plagiarists. I guess we can table that, though.