Quote Originally Posted by Laddy View Post
Is the game industry too easy on games?
No. Tieing into this:

Does it lack an intellectual level of criticism?
Very much so.

The industry at large (outside of publications such as Edge Magazine) is generally in shambles when it comes to critique. Most "professional" reviews these days are pages of dross - especially things that grace the more popular sites such as Gamespot, IGN and Kotaku who will often get hung up on one little flaw as being the be all end all of a game and are afraid to actually heap praise upon deserving titles. (see EuroGamer and it's tendancy to give everything half-decent an 8/8.5 but hardly ever scores anything above that)

Does it encourage artistic elements enough?
Yes but you'll very rarely see it from big publishers but it's pretty much the way that some many Indie developers are making big names for themselves and things like Steam Greenlight will only serve to aid this. Likewise you very rarely see this from big publishers in Hollywood either - when you're corporate it's all about minimising risk and bucking the trend is a massive risk - when you're low budget and starting out you don't really have anything to lose but have everything to gain.

It works both ways too - consumers have clearly shown that they are more willing to throw money at something familiar - such as sequels and franchises, where they already know what to expect so they consider it to be a "safe" purchase rather than risking spending hard earned money on something unknown that they might not like.

Is it too willing to ignore a lack of innovation?
Considering the explosive growth in a relatively short period of time. No - not by a long shot.

Is there a potential issue of market saturation with sequels/franchising right now? Yes, definately. However people wrongly bang on iteration as not being innovative enough - but at the same time if you have a formula that works - why break it? I certainly think in terms of sequels and franchising the games industry takes more risk per instalment than straight to dvd sequels in the film industry.

Ironically I think it's the consumerbase that is more to blame at large for this supposed "lack of innovation" than the industry itself - which is comical considering the consumerbase is also the one that bangs on about this lack of innovation more than anyone else. People don't seem to realise that iteration is just an important step of innovative as building something from the ground up again -both approaches have pros and cons.