[Gigachad]

I think you actually can reduce a lot of it to a formula. Most major games that come out are basically a modern remake of something that already exists and was popular.

Just rehashing the same concepts and improving them is a pretty solid strategy.

This strategy won’t create the Minecrafts and Stardew vallies, but it covers the bulk of game development.

[HideousKojima]

Even Stardew Valley was basically just improving on the existing, popular concepts found in the Harvest Moon and Rune Factory series (among others).

[fwsgonzo]

Indeed, if you play Harvest Moon, it's quite interesting just how much Stardew Valley copies.

[jmyeet]

I don't really like this argument because it reduces down to "all art is derivative". While true, it's not really useful. It leads to things like there being only 37 possible stories [1] and people pointing out how Shakespeare is derivative, which is a true but essentially useless statement.

Even if a story is exactly the same, like going to see a Shakespeare play, we still do it because the performance matters, the interpretation matters and the direction matters. And that's before you get into reskins of the same story (eg Taming of the Shrew -> Ten Things I Hate About You).

So the structural similarity is wroth noting and examining but it really has nothing to do with the execution, with how the movie or story or video game looks, plays or how it makes the user feel..

[1]: https://www.openculture.com/2020/08/37-possible-stories.html

[Gigachad]

That's not quite what I'm saying. I'm suggesting that there is a formula and predictability to successful games. If you do something pretty much the same as the thing that succeeded several times previously, it's more likely to succeed again than a wildly novel idea.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

Far Cry is a perfect example.

They hit upon a working formula in 3 and every game after has basically been the same game in a different environment.

When the original FC came out, if you had told me it would end up being what it is, I wouldn't have believed you.

But FC1, 2, and 3 were all such vastly different games it's obvious in hindsight they were fishing in many ways.

For the record, while I do like the FC formula, I haven't played the latest one because not enough time has passed for me to enjoy it (since it's all basically the same).

imo 2 is the best in the series if you can forgive it's flaws (like soldiers constantly re-spawning). I don't think I've ever experienced a more immersive game.