Top 10 game design innovations in 2007

Dec 12, 2007

Everybody loves top ten lists, so this year Next Generationdecided to put one together for design decisions. In order to make it on this list a game not only had to be innovative in its own right, but also had to contain an innovation that could have a major impact on game design in the future...

10. Am I Having Fun? - flOw PS3
Raph Koster once posed the following question to me: "Can we make a game about the taste of a peach?" Maybe not, but we can certainly make a game about entering a Zen state (as anyone who's played flOw can attest to).

flOw starts off our countdown because I have no idea where to put it. I love the "game" but I'm not even sure if it's fun.

Since I can't decide if flOw is a genius revolution in gaming, the first of a totally new form of "interactive experience", or just a near miss that fails to incorporate the experience it's presenting into a game, I'll let it round out the list at number ten. On a different day it would have been number one.

9. F'k That - Warhawk
It takes some serious balls of steel to stand in a room full of suits and say "you know that multi-million dollar console game you paid us to make...well we just cut single player," but somebody did it for Warhawk.

Warhawk is not only one of the best (and not only because it is one of the only) exclusive PS3 titles, it's also a harbinger of what's to come. Warhawk represents console developers and the console audience becoming truly comfortable with the idea of connectivity. The fact that Warhawk was sold as a digital download as well as a retail product may well mark the blurring of the line between what most players consider "downloadable games" and "real games".

For understanding that single player is no longer an essential part of the console experience, Warhawk clocks in solidly at number nine.

This is an excerpt from a Next Generation feature. Read the resthere.

Source: Next Generation