Step 3, Find some puzzle elements, platform jumping, levers or buttons to find.
Step 4, Jazz it up with high quality visuals, sound and music…
Other then that you have Adventure, Racing, Sport, Golf, Dog fighting in aircraft or space, Trading in space or on the high seas, Point and Click and RTS, oh and Side Scrollers.
All based on ideas from the 80s and 90s
The only ones putting original ideas into play are the indie games.
First off I just want to say that I’m not a gamer and never have been.
That being said, Triple A games are currently expensive to develop. They can’t be niche games and be profitable. It would be a huge risk to invest a large amount on a game that’s truly original without knowing that it stands a good chance of being profitable. Further the reality of the situation is that most people aren’t original themselves and are conformist. I’m guessing that a significant part of the need to game is driven by social interaction during play and outside of play. If your friends game, you’re more likely to take it up. Niche games aren’t conducive to that.
The absence of original triple A games is not likely to change until AI does most of the development and does it cheaply.
I think everything Harold said goes for movies too. Budgets are too high and the investors want a dependable return on investment so they don’t take what they perceive to be risks.
Like I recently watched a Starfield play-through of the beginning. While the graphics were stunning the characters were so hollow and unoffensive it was creepy at times. Like there’s a pilot who’s a main character that you meet in the beginning who slaughters a bunch of pirates, then talks to you in a mellow Bob Ross style voice while he’s surrounded by bodies looking at you gently with a soft smile like he just finished a spa day. But even if the situation matched… he came off like someone bereft of any ambition or life experience despite being an explorer who fights pirates on a regular basis.
If this was a pixel art game with text, at least I could have read the text to myself in a way that wasn’t completely creepy on 3 different levels.