I''m asking this question to purposely initiate a conversation amongst you game writers. I think that a fighting game, for instance, with a great plot could probably set new standards in the genre. -------- "Do you believe in Ghost?"

I think if you write a good scifi story(line), with plenty of untapped ideas and potential, you can revolutionize scifi. This would be hard to do anymore. It seems as though everything''s been done, but that''s not to say everything has.

Of course it can. The acts of innovation contained within the conceptualization of the storyworld directly extend to objects, behaviors and settings in the gameworld.

Revolutionizing is a tall order though. Look at the chances. Lord of the Rings was written well over a hundred years ago or something and it is still on top of the heap on many people's list in that genre. Dragonrider's of Pern is another example, written a couple of decades ago still hard to top.

Terminator is a great example in the hard sci near future genre. Made in what, the mid eighties. Neuromancer is another example, still hard to top after all the years, even with the very authors who concieved and articulated those concepts trying.

So, you've got your conceptual work cut out for you of you are going to revolutionize a genre, because of the innovation it takes for an objective audience to percieve and hail it as a revolutionary work.

As time progresses, people in general warm up to being creative and using creativity for more and more solutions on the planet in general and in the planet's entertainment specifically, and stop treating creativity like a mental disease, which they did for hundreds of years until very recently in our societie's history, you are going to see more and more revolutions in all kinds of genres as well as a reinterpretation/reimplementation of genre itself. You see people using it in the wrong context more than the right one anyway, so that is an indication of how far we have to go right there.

Also, with innovation and revolutionary creative thinking now in many respects in the forefront of many fields, it's getting harder and harder to impress people that something is truly revolutionary because the exposure to intensity, instantaneousness, convenience, subliminal manipulation through media/medium method and technique may contribute to people barely recognizing revolution when it appears.

Since so many people are now practicing creativity and innovation in their thinking, career and art, I suspect revolution is alive and well, and will probably appear where you least expect it from the unexpected place, pretty much like it always has.

IMO,
Adventuredesign

[edited by - adventuredesign on December 23, 2003 6:46:46 PM]