So, how can the industry avoid this kind of creative stagnation? I believe part of the answer lies in focusing on creative diversity in its own right. We need the equivalent of open-skies tech research funding to help foster new creative cultures. Studios should try to attract waves of people from backgrounds other than videogame development, the weirder the better. Romance novelists would only be the start: I'm talking educators, aerospace engineers, urban designers, public policy experts, you name it. Throw in some Broadway producers. Take a gamble on a forestry ranger. Go right off the grid to the still-untapped creative hotbeds in places like central Africa or the Pacific Islands, places even the film industry hasn't fully marked out.
It'd be a disaster - initially. But with enough patience and tolerance for failure, these new teams would eventually get beyond the rough patches. Technical implementation skills and new creative possibilities would start to reinforce each other rather than clash. Then and only then would the real money start flowing.
This is essentially the same process that fueled the DS's expansion and keeps Bioware's RPGs so interesting, just on a grander scale. The problem, of course, is that patience and tolerance for failure are two of the toughest things for the industry to stomach right now. It's hard to imagine a publisher releasing three boundary-pushing AAA games to an unenthusiastic public and allowing the developer to make a fourth. Smaller developers don't have the resources for a long-term push towards creative diversity, and the major outfits famous for their factory approach likely wouldn't dare to embrace a project that would take years to pay dividends. Why go weird when there's plenty of money still to be made inside the box?
Because real evolution is all about taking weird steps into the unknown. Especially in tough times, staying narrowly focused on what already works is a soft form of suicide. "Safe" industries from newspapers to scientific publishing to major-label music are feeling the effects of this as we speak - why would videogame publishers want to join them? There are thousands of creative mother lodes out there waiting to be mined. Those 100 million DS units with their strange-ass game library are the result of a relatively short leap of faith on Nintendo's part; think of the rewards that lie further afield if only someone will take on the risk of finding them.
I've got my kilt and Scottish accent all ready - I await the first romance novelist delivery with glee. A deeper, more diverse creative gene pool for videogames would be a fantastic thing to see. I, for one, am ready to Try Weird Shit™.
Colin Rowsell is a Wellington, New Zealand-based writer. Talk to him on twitter.com/maantren or giantmonkeyvirus@gmail.com.
