OK. I've seen the stories all over the game sites on Nolan Bushnell's comments on video games, and I can only come to one conclusion. He is a very bitter, bitter old man. I know he's kind of retracted some of his statements from earlier, but it still comes off the same to me. The industry has passed him by. One of his quotes, "Video games today are a race to the bottom", describing them generally as "pure, unadulterated trash" that made him "sad", makes him sound like a more sane Jack Thompson. The one quote that had me chuckling to myself was, "What I have consistently been concerned about is sort of the repetition and the lack of innovation," he explained. "Innovation is one of those things that I value very highly, and I just find that as much as I applaud the beautiful, fantastic production guys of Halo 3, it's really Doom 1 in different clothing."
OK. Let's see here. Wasn't Doom 1 just Castle Wolfenstien 2.0? Really now. It is innovation when you come up with a new way of doing an old idea. At least that's what I always thought. When you saw Tetris, you knew that it was fundamentally different than anything you’d seen before(duh!!!).
The Sims was innovative (2nd duh, but arent' there about 427 different expansion packs and versions of the same innovative? I digress).
When you climb up to Dance Dance Revolution and use your whole body, that’s innovation. (anyone remember the various power pads for all the systems?)
When you play air guitar with Guitar Hero, that’s an innovation. (Uhmm. every pattern match game that has ever been out there, except you play with an overpriced 5 button controller?)
/rant off
Read the interview on Gametap
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