LOTFL Commentary: Stagnation

For those moments when I catch myself with the loaming deadline and no time to sit and review a game I bring you some commentary on the scene.  For which I will bring up stagnation today.

You see, as I'm sure some of you have noticed, it sometimes feels like you are playing the same game over and over game... just with a slightly differing aesthetic... if your lucky.  I know we see this in AAA gaming, where as game cost five time more to make and sell than movies no one wants to take risks.  So that should mean that in the world of the flash game, as they are cheaper to make, there should be no stagnation.  Yet there is.

Why?  While I cannot dispute that the lowered bar of entry has made it easier for creative people who are broke to make masterpieces it has also made it easier for talentless hacks to create more shit to add to the internet as the same lowering of the entry costs makes it easier for every dick-obsessed twelve-year-old with a bootlegged version of Flash to make something.

Here's the deal.  Innovation breeds imitation breeds stagnation.  Its just, again, with the reduced costs and time to build a game, has sped up the process that turns the unique into a cliche.  This is why there are so many Hedgehog Launcher knockoffs and why most TD games are the same game with a different skin.

It doesn't help that there are people out there who want to make games, but have only played, like, five games in their lives ie the twelve year old.  This is why we see a lot of Mario-remakes in Flash, and why most Flash Games, especially on NewGrounds where content is user-generated, tend to be remakes of the same game.

There is a final horror that, alongside the cost of entry, developer/s do not have to answer to a publisher.  Oh, high end indy developers might have to sing for their supper for a site like Armor Games or Kongregate, but there are a friegtonne of sites that are not as scrupulous, and then there is the infamous NewGrounds, as, like mentioned earlier, is purely user generated content.  Now, I should ask you: do you think a publisher would have allowed games like Death Trap or Horror to be developer?  I seriously doubt they would have rubber stamped the Godlimitations trilogy simply for its religious context (not because someone told them that their game made no sense).

Course, I'm not advocating for quality control on the internet.  I mean, it would be nice not to find shit everywhere I go, but the issue boils down to when it stops being quality control and when it starts being censorship.  Topic for another time.

Course, at least in this sea of TD clones, stupid point and click adventure games, and pretension, at least there is enough being ejected through the sewerpipe that someone shat out a gem or two on occasion.  However, after doing this for a month everything is looking the god-dam same.