Column: Is the Industry becoming stagnant?

By Aaron N

There is a big trend recently within the video game industry.  The trend I'm talking about is the revival of classic franchises.  This has really come to a head recently with the creation of NBA Jam, Donkey Kong Country Returns, and Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1.  While it is amazing to see newer versions of classic games, it concerns me to see this trend.  I don't want to see the video game industry turn into the movie industry.  It seems that everywhere you look at movies there is a remake or a sequel being made.  There is very little originality in the movie industry anymore and I don't want to see the originality leave the industry that I love so much.
The video game industry is the most lucrative industry in the world right now.  It has exploded so fast that it's incredible to believe that it's still in it's adolescent stages.  If you think about it, video games first came on the map in the 1980's, that's just about three decades ago.  It worries me to see that it has so quickly become dependant on it's past.  What we enjoy today was built upon originality.  Think about all the original ideas that have been made since the first game was made.  From the first time we pressed the jump button in the original Super Mario Bros to when we turned on the wii and used motion controls for the first time, the name of the game has been originality and innovation.  The unoriginality has been apparant especially whenever I play a game on the wii that forces me to turn the wiimote on its side to play like an old NES controller.  It makes me wonder where all the innovation went to.  Not that using a wiimote like that is going backwards but if it is used too much then I feel like it could hurt the future and make it become stagnant.
In the same breath as revivals are the many sequels that are coming out in record numbers it seems.  Now sequels are not bad either but it is when the sequels are being made for the sole purpose of making money and nothing new is brought to the table.  The best example I can give for this is the recent Force Unleashed 2 game that come out in 2010.  This game was basically a clone of the original gameplay wise and was clearly made to just make money.  Granted there are plenty of sequels that progress the industry and are innovative and original in their own right.  But these are drowned out by the bunch of bad sequels.  I know the money is in sequels and those have helped the industry explode.  Super Mario Bros 3 was insanely hyped up and at the time and was the highest grossing game ever, then came the Halo sequels which almost everybody played, and now it seems like every Call of Duty game that is released makes more money than they last.  So I can see why making sequels are so appealing to designers, but for the sake of the progress of the industry originality needs to keep being injected into the system and new concepts need to be made.