Forget Innovation From The Indies 98
spidweb writes "RPGVault has an article from a long-time indie game author about how people who want innovation in games shouldn't look to the small developers. It is his view that innovation in games will come from big companies, if at all. From the article: 'Indie developers have a real purpose in this world. They make little niche products for markets too small for Activision. They make many new puzzle games for the casual audience. Or, at least, the same old puzzle game again and again. They rewrite Asteroids... because someone has to.'"
Re:"The Indies" ? (Score:5, Funny)
I think we need to make the terms "Indie Developers" and "Indie Studios" the standard to prevent confusion with terms like "The East Indies." Then again, with the current state of common geographical knowledge in the US today, perhaps it doesn't matter.
Re:nethack innovative??? (Score:2, Funny)
If you're saying what I think you're saying... well, you have rather high expectations, don't you?
You say Nethack cannot be groundbreaking at all, unless you have total and complete freedom of action, and arbitrary combinations of objects interact realistically? Do you realize that what you are asking for is a perfect, interactive simulation of physical reality, a task which is downright impossible? (To fulfill your criterion of total and arbitrary simulation of reality, the simulation would have to be able to simulate itself in perfect detail, including the ability to simulate itself, so that you would have an infinite number of possible sub-simulations.)
Here are some other things you can't do in nethack. I guess the developers had better start working on them if they want to break any ground before our sun dies out and the surface of the Earth freezes over:
* Play tennis with the NPC shopkeeps on the weekends.
* Form a monopoly over the growing industry of narcotics trafficking.
* Construct a robotic army to do your bidding.
* Divert a river into the cavern, drowning the monsters.
* Invent an antimatter propulsion system, use it to build an interstellar vehicle, and then pilot it to Alpha Centauri.
* Post absurd comments on an online news page.
* Paint a mural detailing your own epic adventures in mural-painting.
* Persuade the enemies to attack you with pillows instead of real weapons.
* Own and run a lingerie store.
* Create an artificial protein structure with possible medical uses.
* Practice tai chi.
* Create and play a text-based dungeon crawler equally as complex as the game you are creating it in.