There is certainly a point to be made about independent games. Hell, I've spent waaaay too much time the last few days myself playing the free
Rumble Box, which is pretty damn fun; all the good 3D beat-em-up bits but you're fighting enemies just made out of boxes, which pile up as the level goes on, eventually so that you can get out of the big box you're fighting in; pretty cool, imho. (I can just imagine what it could be like if they got some funding or such . . . my mouth salivates at the idea of multiplayer: co-op, or maybe 1-on-1 king of the hill kind of fights, or whatever!)
Meanwhile, the Unreal franchise has never been the most *obviously* original, but at each turn it has never been merely a cheap knockoff (well, let's leave debate about UT2003 out of this, dammit!). Oh but I miss U2XMP
That, I suppose, is a good example of how the game industry, for one reason or another, is bound to stifle innovation to one degree or another. Honestly, to me U2XMP felt like "the next one" ; Unreal had an interesting take on the single-player FPS, UT99 was the messiah of classic multiplayer FPS; U2XMP felt like the next level, much moreso than UT2003 and arguably more than UT2004.
But Epic has certainly never just sat down and let things pass them by. Sure, they aren't singlehandedly inventing genres, but their products are always more than just knockoffs of whatever is popular (even if there's often a thread of that, too; hey, one can't come up with all the good ideas in the world single handedly, right?). UT2007 sounds like they're really taking to heart the idea of just building the best game they can, with the amazing tech that they now have; Gears of War, well, that's another pretty damn good example. I have great hope for the next gen of Epic games, and even if they're sticking generally to what is successful, well, it's successful partially because it's fun! If they can truly pull of a game that is to the coming generation like UT99 was to its', then forget any arguements about exactly how innovative it is. I'll be too busy playing it to debate!
And this guy might have been better off e-mailing Ion Storm. Damn, Deus Ex the original was such an amazing, genre-bending game, and it showed so many signs of what they could have done if they had had the time, money, and tech. Then for the sequel they did, and I almost couldn't be bothered to play past the first twenty minutes. In nearly every way it was inferior to the original. But hell, even THAT was less linear than the MGS games, sorry, but the guy might have some abstractly respectable points but other than that his argument is complete ****.
