This topic comes up frequently in interviews with developers from back in the 90s. As the game industry grew, it became much more creatively restrictive. Publishers would only fund safe, middle-road games that had mass appeal, so experimentation in big-budget games kind of died out.

There are still quite a lot of experimental indie games being released, but the tradeoff there is that they are often quite low-budget and therefore limited in what can be achieved.

i think indie games of high quality increased over time, all those one steam/gog and other platforms that find their niche audiences, tackling unusual game topics that larger commercial studios wouldn't normally touch (cannot imagine 'papers please', 'this war of mine' and so on as a commercial releases by big name studios)

however the future of games seems to be less about searching the early magic than applying the "ai magic" now. games with ai content (eg NPCs, open ended gameplay with ai generation / interaction) and ai generated games, seems increasingly possible according to some that full 3d unity type games can be prompted into existence without a line of code - because the game engine already exists. this way a game mingling various elements of other games could be bought about quickly and some of them might even be good, even be novel and creative.

gerry wrote on 2026-09-23, 07:39:

however the future of games seems to be less about searching the early magic than applying the "ai magic" now. games with ai content (eg NPCs, open ended gameplay with ai generation / interaction) and ai generated games, seems increasingly possible according to some that full 3d unity type games can be prompted into existence without a line of code - because the game engine already exists. this way a game mingling various elements of other games could be bought about quickly and some of them might even be good, even be novel and creative.

+1. That has been the trajectory for a few decades at least (before everything was labelled AI ... I remember a demo of ConceptNet from 20-odd years back that generated a room with objects suitable for an RPG-type game (the system understood the likely relationships between different kinds of objects etc).

As a long-time MMO player, I don't really have an issue with auto-generated NPCs and so forth (decades back it seemed like a good idea...). It could be fun depending on any guide rails built-in regarding difficulty and especially to prevent too much cross-fertilisation of ideas and IP turning everything into the same slop - though even without the larger studios for film or games do that, it's not AI's "fault", that tendency to merge everything into one all-encompassing experience...

Regarding the creativity of the early days -it's true of all human endeavour, large and small. We tend to build on what exists, or what other people have done, and the forces in the economy and society (including ourselves) tend to force that outcome. I see it where I work all the time - you come up with a new idea and immediately it's becomes a matter of finding experts, consulting other organisations, etc etc - beyond the early days the level of risk-taking plummets and organisations tend to become increasingly conservative. Slightly off-topic there was an interview with Frank Zappa who talked about the same tendency in the music business - back in the 1950s and maybe 60s, producers would take a punt on new bands. But subsequently it turned into needing to churn out the same dross year after year.

Necessity (and lack of forbears perhaps) is the mother of invention. And being the first gives you a clean slate.

ratfink wrote on 2026-09-23, 08:30:

+1. That has been the trajectory for a few decades at least (before everything was labelled AI ... I remember a demo of ConceptNet from 20-odd years back that generated a room with objects suitable for an RPG-type game (the system understood the likely relationships between different kinds of objects etc).

that sounds good, i was always drawn to procedural type generation - though often the results were very 'same', like mild variations rather than feeling like a new exploration.

As a long-time MMO player, I don't really have an issue with auto-generated NPCs and so forth (decades back it seemed like a good idea...). It could be fun depending on any guide rails built-in regarding difficulty and especially to prevent too much cross-fertilisation of ideas and IP turning everything into the same slop - though even without the larger studios for film or games do that, it's not AI's "fault", that tendency to merge everything into one all-encompassing experience...

I am imagining a MMO fantasy type game and players going to AI NPC and saying "you are a knowledgeable sage. Where is the magic sword? make no mistakes!" 😀

Regarding the creativity of the early days -it's true of all human endeavour, large and small. We tend to build on what exists, or what other people have done, and the forces in the economy and society (including ourselves) tend to force that outcome. I see it where I work all the time - you come up with a new idea and immediately it's becomes a matter of finding experts, consulting other organisations, etc etc - beyond the early days the level of risk-taking plummets and organisations tend to become increasingly conservative. Slightly off-topic there was an interview with Frank Zappa who talked about the same tendency in the music business - back in the 1950s and maybe 60s, producers would take a punt on new bands. But subsequently it turned into needing to churn out the same dross year after year.

Necessity (and lack of forbears perhaps) is the mother of invention. And being the first gives you a clean slate.

i wonder if there is a risk then of there being no necessity, if one can just prompt games into existence without need or struggle it might not unleash creativity or inventiveness. or it might, the "dev tools" just becoming a kinda of ultra-high level language where the game engine, algorithms, input/output code etc is all done in background.

Like music, if one can just create songs from prompts and not need to go through learning music, notation, instruments, voice, lyrics then does the lack of necessity dampen creativity or originality.

also, producers and publishers - what will they be doing in this

Just look at what the Internet became and how it started, games are no different . .actually I think most things start and end in a similar fashion. They start out as a Wild West of ideas and gambles and as time goes on and the corporations get involved and it slowly changes and becomes safe and sterile all the risk and creativity is left on the floor to maximise profits and the artists are forced into producing only what the money holders believe the consumer wants.

I .. hate it but realise its just how western society runs.

I would happily return to the wild west days of Computing and the Internet where creativity and risk created a depth and richness you cannot find anymore.

It's like everything good has already been made and now it's just rehashes and micro-transaction galore.

But, it's not just computer games.

Films these days are the same. A whole bunch of remakes, rubbish reboots, and superhero crap is all we seem to get.

Creativity is dead, because it's risky and risk doesn't make money. The sad reality of our endtimes.

It was the lack of imagination in modern games that brought me to this retro PC hobby. I just wasn't finding modern games fun. Sure they look nice, and have huge worlds. But I think modern games just don't have the replayability and addictive qualities that the older games had.

Not only that, but modern games are released buggy and unfinished. You are expected to pay extra for add-ons that really should have been in the full game. Or you are expected to pay to be able to win.

I think creativity is live and kicking - it's just that there is so much dross being both produced and consumed (for the reasons given) that it's harder to find it unless you actively look.

And to be fair even the tools that allow such vast amounts of crap to be produced... are quite a feat of creativity (or at least human ingenuity) in themselves.