Disintegrate the Derivative

"When it's all the same you can ask for it by name"
Marilyn Manson - This Is the New Shit


Awww, yeah baby. High school calculus puns. That's the sort of universal appeal that's built my blog into a global empire.

A couple of years ago while visiting relatives I had the privilege of conversing with a fifteen year old gamer. (For those of you not currently possessed of an adolescent, I highly recommend renting instead of buying.) Now, though I play a great many great many computer games, I can never be entirely sure of what's popular among the younger crowd at any given moment. Though I found it existentially reassuring to recognize most if not all references he was making, I did have to remark something about the trend: Starcraft 2, Counterstrike:Source, Team Fortress 2, DOTA2, Lineage 2, etc. Granted this is anecdotal evidence of the tastes of just one group of 60-odd high school sophomores, but I was surprised at every example being either two decades old or an unimaginative rehash of something two decades old. By now they're probably all playing Fortnite... but then again there's nothing new about Fortnite.

If one can't fault teenagers on their lack of perspective, let's remember the average age of gamers has skipped 30 and it's a lot harder to excuse those who have not sought out a new experience in over two decades. For a while, one could make the case that nothing decent was being put out to compete with golden oldies, especially where strategy or role-playing was concerned. But even for the more discerning old-school crowd, look at what exactly has us all a-twitter over the past few years' revival. A new Torment game? A Baldur's Gate sequel? Another Baldur's Gate sequel? A System Shock sequel? A Bloodlines sequel? Two Wasteland sequels? A remake of Master of Orion? Civilization 666?

Granted, we're also waiting for Cyberpunk 2077, Stellaris made quite a splash and for all its unplayability No Man's Sky was its own thing. Still, what could better emphasize Hollywood envy than copying Hollywood's lack of creativity: an industry which churns out nothing but sequels and remakes and remakes of sequels and sequels of remakes and sequential re-mocks of sequelae.

It's kind of weird from one point of view, as the game industry is now more profitable than the movie industry, so if anything, Hollywood should have game envy. And it does. Yet, still, there's a pop culture dilution to Hollywood glitz which every other entertainment industry struggles to emulate: awards shows, trailers, star power... induced audience passivity and sheepishness. To what extent are modern games per totum derivative of movie-watching, and can they ever outgrow it?