The recent announcement of yet another tower defense clone made me state that soon we will have a game that is tower defense defense where you have to build fortifications to defend against rampaging hordes of tower defense games. Hey, it could happen.

In speaking with the Director of EAA Radio, Thomas Balistreri (yes the same one that is US Publisher here at GDN) about flight games I was reminded of the World War II game epidemic that we're only now starting to get over (see below).

We were talking about upcoming flight games and the resurgence of them. I stated that there's HawX and nothing else but then remembered Heroes over Europe. Of course it's  a dogfighting title set in World War II....big shocker hey?

Then I started bemoaning the fact that there are (as I've said in the past) more World War II games than actual battles in World War II.

What has happened to innovation in games? There seems to be a severe lack of it these past few years. Sequel after sequel have been pumped out which have been nothing but rehashings of the same content perhaps with one new control feature or with one new plot twist, much to the chagrin of developers and gamers alike.

Then a game like Tower Defense comes along and is so ingenious and simple, that everyone from the one-person developers to Square Enix make a knock off. Most of which add absolutely nothing to the genre. I still go play Tower Defense simply because it started it all and the others just don't stack up usually. Sure there are some exceptions like GeoDefense on the iPhone which combined Geometry Wars-esque graphics and some really cool things like laser towers.

It's almost as if the games companies just want money money money and...oh wait, we already know that. No need to belabor the point. A few entries back I stated that the bad economy will be good for games as giant studios crumble under the weight of their overhead and splinter into tons of new developers.

But then in the very next entry I touched on the piss poor mile-high stack of crap games that have hit the iPhone. So I guess my ideas on the topic are mixed. Small studios need to take bigger risks or they will just be seen as attempting to imitate the big boys and making a quick buck. Places like Dejobaan, Introversion and Wolfire games give me faith that there are still people out there doing good work for their own fun (see AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!, Darwinia and Overgrowth) and not solely focusing on the bottom line.

But still some companies (big and small) churn out clone after sub-par clone flooding the market with crap games making gamers wade through the cesspool to find the gems that are being made. When will it stop? Hmmm...is there any plan to destroy all money on the planet? If not then I fear that we will forever be tortured by the sub-standard, the mediocre and the pure crap. There's a principle in Genetics (my university degreee) that states that when you make a copy, then copy that, then copy it again a thousand times...there's a loss of data and eventually there's evolution...or death. I hope that we're getting to the evolution phase of the cloning process because right now, they all just look the same to me and death (in regards to sales) could be on the horizon for many.