Comment Re:One word: (Score 2, Interesting) 180
It depends what kinda new thing you're looking for. If you're going to make comparisons just on theme then you can always find similarities. "Hey look, there's nothing new - they're all just shapes and stuff moving on the screen!"
If Spore really works as advertised then the reason it will be somewhat different is because everything is procedural. You get to design your own creature and the system makes it walk or swim or whatever based on the mechanics of the body parts. It's not limited to a preset number of creatures that the game designers thought of in advance.
I think this represents the true path to innovation in the game industry - making things open-ended. This is hard and it will come slowly. I remember a PS2 game a while back called "Red Faction" that was supposed to be different because the environment was supposed to be modifiable. In other words you could do things like shoot the walls and pieces would fall off. But in reality, I found it to be just like every other FPS. Modifying the environment only really helped when the designers had already thought of it in advance.
Just think of all the ways you could make a game open ended. Modifying characters is one. Modifying the world could also be cool in different ways. Then you could do all kinds of things with open ended story line as technology improves. That will be really hard but I think it will happen to some degree eventually.
Once we've got this kind of AI, I also think there is the potential to use games to improve education and society in general. Read The Diamond Age, for example. Anyway, I don't think game creativity will plateau for a long time.
If Spore really works as advertised then the reason it will be somewhat different is because everything is procedural. You get to design your own creature and the system makes it walk or swim or whatever based on the mechanics of the body parts. It's not limited to a preset number of creatures that the game designers thought of in advance.
I think this represents the true path to innovation in the game industry - making things open-ended. This is hard and it will come slowly. I remember a PS2 game a while back called "Red Faction" that was supposed to be different because the environment was supposed to be modifiable. In other words you could do things like shoot the walls and pieces would fall off. But in reality, I found it to be just like every other FPS. Modifying the environment only really helped when the designers had already thought of it in advance.
Just think of all the ways you could make a game open ended. Modifying characters is one. Modifying the world could also be cool in different ways. Then you could do all kinds of things with open ended story line as technology improves. That will be really hard but I think it will happen to some degree eventually.
Once we've got this kind of AI, I also think there is the potential to use games to improve education and society in general. Read The Diamond Age, for example. Anyway, I don't think game creativity will plateau for a long time.
