Being hooked on old school video games of late and finding that even with all the evolution that has gone on in that medium I still prefer the simple ingenuity of classic NES and SNES games, I’ve been thinking a lot about innovation and progress in gaming these days and how that kind of creative momentum is evident (or not) in board gaming.

Unlike video games, where we have seen tremendous shifts between console generations that render the previous ones obsolete in the eyes of many consumers, board games tend to develop and change very, very slowly. So slowly, in fact, that change beyond graphic design styles is almost imperceptible except to the veteran hobby enthusiast who keeps up with trends and attitude changes. The 25 year evolutionary gulf between a game like MYSTIC WOOD and RETURN OF THE HEROES isn’t nearly as evident as that between PONG and well, pretty much everything else after it. Certain kinds of games come and go in popularity and trends in degrees of abstraction and simulation have shifted over time, but most board games and board game concepts stay pretty much the same on an elementary level.

I’ve also been looking at the games I’ve played in 2008 and considering how they either do or do not indicate creative momentum and I have to say that I am beginning to wonder if the “Golden Years”, a period of relatively rapid growth that appear in my eyes to be bracketed by SETTLERS OF CATAN and STARCRAFT may very well be coming to an end. The last ten years has seen a lot of movement (both rising and falling) between the emergence of the Eurogame, dramatic changes in wargame design, the refinement and arguable perfection of the Ameritrash style, and across-the-board hybridization and cross-pollination of game genres and concepts. Yet, 2008 has seemed phenomenally dull even compared to some of the more lackluster years of the past thirteen years since SETTLERS.

Few 2008 releases have really been noteworthy and in all sectors of the hobby mediocrity and repetition seem to be settling in as tired themes and recycled mechanics return time and time again with little variation. Reviews are often full of comparisons to other games since there is very little new ground being explored and what’s worse is that designers like the guys who did GALACTIC EMPEROR are setting out specifically to remake, remodel or “fix” games to suit their particular idioms.

Nobody has ever picked up a guitar and said “I’m going to rewrite ‘The White Album’ but I’m going to make it shorter and I don’t like ‘Dear Prudence’ so I’m replacing that with ‘Hey Jude”- but that kind of thinking is a pretty common for board game designers. One of the hottest games at Essen this year was DUCK DEALER (seriously), a game widely billed as MERCHANT OF VENUS “lite”. MERCHANT OF VENUS is a great game. DUCK DEALER is a tired, lazy rip-off of both the theme and mechanics that made that 20 year old game a classic.

Of course, the board game boom means that there’s been more games released since SETTLERS than there may very well have ever been before- and as a result, everybody’s become a designer. Creativity has become diluted and almost all hobby game designs smack of homogeneity, of being developed within the hobby ecosystem. It’s very rare when a game appears on the scene from someone who has worked outside of the hobby and without the influence of hobby titles and discussion, but when it does happen the game either tends to be complete garbage or possessed of a quirky idiosyncrasy that is all too lacking in today’s “Me too” designs.

Peter Morrisson’s VIKTORY II is a great example- it’s almost like Eurogames never happened to that guy. But even VIKTORY II is a “fix it” game with the goal of making a more playable, slightly less abstract world conquest game in the vein of RISK.

But when RISK was new, it was something unlike anything else ever seen before. It was revolutionary. There hasn’t been a truly groundbreaking, completely revolutionary game since SETTLERS, and when there is another it won’t be described as something like “PUERTO RICO with dice!” or “TWILIGHT IMPERIUM meets CARCASSONNE!” It will be something completely unprecedented like DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, SETTLERS, and MAGIC: THE GATHERING. It won’t be a “lite” version of a classic game and it won’t be a game where the designer set out to “correct” flaws in an older design.

But whatever that game happens to be sure as hell didn’t come out in 2008, at least not yet. I’ve played some pretty great games this year- THE WORLD CUP GAME and MAGICAL ATHELETE are two examples and both are games that I truly love. But I find that my love for those games is very much inspired by the fact that both games are extremely straightforward, no-frills competitive exercises with light rules but without limited gameplay. Still, I don’t think either game is particularly innovative or daring in the way that STARCRAFT was. I loved TOUCH OF EVIL too, but in the same way I loved the movie BLADE- I know it’s not great or particularly fresh, but it serves up plenty of entertainment no matter how hackneyed or trite some of it is.

So far this year, and I haven’t played any of the Essen crop or BATTLESTAR GALACTICA yet, the only game I’ve played that I felt offered something really fresh and original in terms of gameplay was DOMINION, a terminally overhyped game that smacks a little too much of overdevelopment and fails to provide anything approaching a theme or story to give meaning to its brilliant CCG-inspired drafting and combination chaining mechanics and disarmingly addictive gameplay. Still, it’s a great game, but even with it there are reservations that keep me from deeming it the last bastion of board game design creativity. GALAXY TRUCKER is probably the only thing that I’ve played this year that felt like a wholly original concept, but beyond the novelty of the real time concept it ultimately becomes a Eurogame-styled development race and efficiency planning exercise. At least it has massive destruction as a differentiator, though.