Whoa. That was easy.

A week ago, I bought an old copy of Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 on a whim. I remember mastering the old C&C games with some fondness, as my introduction to RTS gaming. True, I've since switched my love to Starcraft and Warcraft 3, but I figured I might as well buy it just for the hell of it.

I beat the game yesterday. It took me maybe a total of 12 hours, stretched out over the week. I was astounded how quickly I beat the game. I know, the true utility of these games lies in multiplayer mode, but this seemed pathetic.

After some thought, I realized that it wasn't really that bad of a game - but it merely was predictable. The methods in which the computer foe was set up, the tech trees, the uses of various armor units/infantry, the special weapons... all of them were essentially based on the same prototype that all RTS games have been for years. Sure, the graphics got better, the names got cooler, and the storyline was a slightly less disjointed than the original C&C:RA.

But without any truly original game design, it took little effort to win the game. I've thought back over the various RTS games I've played in recent years, and the only one that truly sticks out in my head as superlative is Warcraft 3. There, they broke some of the mold with a pretty decent emulation of terrain, hero characters, and creeps. The multiplayer action was, of course, unparalleled. Yet even with those improvements, the game played much like all of the others.

I've seen the same trends going on in much of the computer game industry: FPSs are all copies of each other with better graphics and user interfaces, MMORPGs are only original because of the interaction with real people, simulation games all follow the same general formula to win.

Now, I could be wrong. I'm certainly not a huge gamer. Maybe there really is true innovation going on in the game industry, and I'm just not aware of it. Yet all of the evidence I've seen points to a general stagnation. The games are no longer a challenge, as all are based on similar premises; there is no requirement to construct an entirely new strategy/playing method to win.

It seems to me that the computer game market has hit a dead end. Ideas are endlessly recycled, with merely cosmetic changes. It won't be long before people start arguing that there's no point in buying yet another RTS game when you have a perfectly good one already. The improvements in graphics and UI have a point of diminishing returns; beyond that point, there will be no point in buying further games.

(Interestingly, I have seen parallel arguments given for the software industry. If an older version of a product works, why buy a new one? This is probably particularly troubling to companies like M$ who market Office 2003 as somehow "better" than Office XP or 97, when there is truly very little to distinguish them. This gives quite a bit of credence to people who support Open Source software - after an initial burst of work to develop a decent program, upgrades and refinements can be added fairly easily to keep the product up to spec, but people will not need to shell out another $150 for a basic office suite that has only two improvements.)

So where does the game industry go from here? Will they fade into the background of computer use, as more and more people find utility in computers besides entertainment? Will they start to truly innovate, coming up with a variety of interesting and unique games?

Of course, this is probably all a moot point. I'm assuming that people are in general intelligent consumers. In reality, game companies can probably turn out the same shit every year, and people will buy it anyways. *grumbles*