Avoiding Cliches, and Why You Shouldn't

[Osmose]

I'd like to say that I'm of the same mind as the author of this fine article, but he puts the point in much better language than I ever could.

Xavier is very, very, smart. Click here to read why he thinks we should embrace cliches.

He makes a very good point. Nearly every thread in the games forum has at least someone saying, "That is so cliche." I'm hoping that we'll see less of that as more people read this great article.

[HackersTotalMassLaser]

Kinda like "If it isn't broken, don't fix it." Relativley of course.

[Bluhman]

There's a Good Cliche, and a Bad Cliche. Good ones is when a Cliche is twisted into... Something... Well, Original and Brilliant in itself. A Bad Cliche is when somebody just clearly has taken an idea from one thing he saw and then just copies it, or something else that lacks such inginuity.

And now I look back on what I have written and spread, and now I have to say this: A cliche is a cliche. It doesn't need to be eluded. If used correctly, your games idea will be much better off than if the cliche was not even included in the game at first.

[DragonBlaze]

I think the article is gay. Heres why:



 

“A cliché is a phrase, expression, or idea that has been overused to the point of losing its intended force or novelty...”

'overused to the point of LOSING its intended force or novelty'

Think of it this way. A cliche is kinda like something cool. While a few people use it, its great, but then when everyone uses it, it gets gay and people find something new. You see it all the time in the teen world with fads.

 

Surely the avoidance of overused ideas is a fair demand to make? In theory maybe, but getting caught up in theory is often what’s holding this community back.

And that statement right there contradicts itself. After all, using old ideas are whats holding someone back. Cuz if all there ideas have been used before, there not going anywhere.


Not all cliches are bad. But theres only so many ways to tell a story before that story will get old. And eventually, if you're game has basically the same story as all these other games just a little differant version of it, theres no point in playing it cuz you've already heard the story a ton of times. Its the same for graphics, if you see the same graphics in every game, eventually those graphics will get old and you'll get sick of seeing them.

Making a game or creating a story is about expressing yourself and YOUR ideas, not the ideas someone else came up with. Now sometimes you'll come up with a simular idea as someone else, and thats ok, but lets say you just play final fantasy, and you're like, hey, i'm gonna make a game about a bad guy trying to steal the power of 4 crystals and you need to try and stop him! Thats not ok cuz you basically just ripped the story from another game and thus its not really you're idea at all.

[Razor]

Gee Dragonium, I'm surprised you didn't focus on the

According to our good friend Wikipedia;

[Dragonium]

Originally posted by Razor
Gee Dragonium, I'm surprised you didn't focus on the

According to our good friend Wikipedia;

ERROR ERROR

I also agree with DB in most respects. About the "overused to the point of losing its intended force or novelty" thing, the keyword is "intended". When a story point or something is used for the first time, its intended force is to drive the story forward. If someone rips off that story point, the context is different, and the audience has seen the same thing before, so its effect is different to its intended one.

[Razor]

Oh we all know you're the same person anyway

[Dragonium]

Shh, don't post it in All Of All!

[DragonBlaze]

Originally posted by Razor
Oh we all know you're the same person anyway

 

[Phayre]

My firm stance is that a "cliche", especially in characters, is a firm base that hasn't been expanded. You can strip anything down to its cliche roots. It's a matter of how much else there is besides that base.
For example:
Alucard is a vampire. He likes to drink blood and kill stuff. Killing stuff is fun.
That's the base. You've got your dorky typical vampire name and, er, hobbies. But what about this.....
Alucard is a vampire. His best friend is his pet duckie, Miriam. Miriam and Alucard live in Phlebotomy Town, where people like to have their blood consumed by vampires. This is good, because Alucard is a vampire who likes to drink blood. Of course, Alucard wasn't always a vampire. He became one to protect his duckie from......
and more silliness. I love cliches. And so do you. Admit it. If we didn't, they wouldn't be cliche, now, would they?

[Roland_Deschain]

Well, honestly, I think quite a few cliches should be avoided. I mean, how many times have we seen:
*a mysterious girl with magic pendant key to saving the world.
*X many objects that, when combined, release/seal away the great evil. You must collect these.
*Dungeons collapsing for NO GOOD REASON when a boss is destroyed.
*Hero is a 15-18 year old kid whose parents were killed because of a prophecy/their high station/the villain is a bad guy/the hero's city and everyone in it were killed.

There are quite a few more that I'm personally sick of, but these are the worst. Ways you can get around them:

*Just don't do it. Simple as that.
*Have them instead be something like the Sigil Stones from TES4: Oblivion in that they close/open the gate, but can be used for enchanting, making spells or potions, learning spells, or improving stats and the like.
*This one's also easy: if you want an escape scene that badly, have the boss send all his life force into collapsing the dungeon. Or just leave it out.
*Don't make the hero ridiculously young. It may make some sense, since fifteen was the age considered to be "adult" in the middle ages, but it's overused. Make the hero closer to about 20-25 if you want a younger hero. As for the family and village burning stuff, have the villain's army seize the town instead. I mean, why burn what you can convert into a garrison, right? And possibly have the parents be either not-so-mysterious or not-so-dead. Okay, there's my two cents.
~Deschain

[aboutasoandthis]

I remember reading this article once before school got out. I started looking at that site when Osmose first mentioned it.

I honestly don't mind clichés at all. Whenever I read and review a storyline, I do not consider them at all. If you want your hero to go on a quest to save a damsel in distress, do it. What matters to me is if you steal the  exact same idea as another game.

Look at the subject of my Avatar and Signature. I honestly think Shadow of the Colossus has one of the most beautiful and well written storylines I've ever experienced. Many can disagree, saying it is a rip-off of the original Legend of Zelda. While it is true that the game borrows many ideas, such as a wandering hero saving a maiden, it twisted this idea into something very unique and deep, despite having little to no real dialogue.

Most of you know that I am making a Final Fantasy fangame, and that it features four elemental crystals. However, I can acknowledge that they are banal. I've already taken the four crystal concept that was a staple in many of the Final Fantasy games, and turned it into something deep.

You shouldn't focus on eliminating every cliché, nor should you focus on character development. While changing a characters personality or creating clever loophole are nice, a storyline only has one job and that's to present a theme. What aspect on life do you get from the storyline after it is told?

[Osmose]

Getting caught up in old ideas is not a big thing holding people back. (The community he refers to isn't Charas, though.)

So you have a story with four heros and some crystals. OMG CLICHE. Well, what if those crystals are fueled by evil energy? What if, as the game goes on, more and more people appear to be doing evil, and the heroes stop them, going on and on until they realize that what they see as reality is only an illusion put forth by the crystals, and all that time they've been terrorizing normal townsfolk?

The fact of the matter is, most people enjoy cliches when they're executed well. Morrowind and Oblivion can both be cut down into the cliche of a nameless soldier fulfilling a prophecy. And yet, because of the depth of the gameplay and lore, they still succeed. FF12 is cliche - a princess fights to win back her kingdom. FF10 - a tradition of summoners is broken in order to end a timeless cycle. Tales of Symphonia did that same cliche(Only instead of summoners it was the Chosen) better. Every single Castlevania game is about taking down Dracula (Except for, like, one or two). But they all expand upon that or execute it so well. Pokemon rarely ever gives a good reason as to why the main character feels like being the Pokemon Master, so why do we ask RPG Maker games for great detail before we've even played the game?

And, while we're on the subject, none of these games gave a huge amount of info beyond screenshots and cinematics before release, and yet you guys require screens, demos, detailed intros, etc. for fan made stuff. That's way too high of a standard. And it's not even a common standard! Outpost's story was given: "There was a war and these guys are outcasts starting a new colony. Fun!" AND NO ONE SAID A GOD DAMNED THING.

We as a community need to realize that until we lower the bar a bit, we're not going to see a good amount of games. We're not OCRemix - we don't need perfection.

[GaryCXJk]

Well, here's my vision.

A cliché is always needed. It's needed to make sure the "reader" actually can identify with the situation. Without this situation, people can't get out.

When you see a lot of boxes which are movable, you'd expect you need to use the boxes to solve a puzzle. In that same way when a guy meets a girl and needs to save this girl, you'd expect the guy to eventually hook up with this girl.

However, sometimes clichés need to be avoided. Sometimes you are even forced to not include this cliché plot, even if it were just because it would just make the rest of the story too forced.

For example, I'm currently writing this fan-fic. Instead of making these two characters fall in love with each other at the end of the story, I made them fall in love now. You'll find out later, but basically if I did it at the end, the falling in love thing would come over as "something that had to be done" or "something that kind of looks like forced love", something I've seen in High School Musical, at the end where the baking dude hooks up with Sharpay, just because he's such a good baker.

So, in the end, when you are forced to avoid clichés, avoid them, but only just then. Just try to fit some clichés in, to give the plot some logic and sense.

[aboutasoandthis]

 Originally Posted by Osmose
 

Getting caught up in old ideas is not a big thing holding people back. (The community he refers to isn't Charas, though.)

So you have a story with four heros and some crystals. OMG CLICHE. Well, what if those crystals are fueled by evil energy? What if, as the game goes on, more and more people appear to be doing evil, and the heroes stop them, going on and on until they realize that what they see as reality is only an illusion put forth by the crystals, and all that time they've been terrorizing normal townsfolk?

The fact of the matter is, most people enjoy cliches when they're executed well. Morrowind and Oblivion can both be cut down into the cliche of a nameless soldier fulfilling a prophecy. And yet, because of the depth of the gameplay and lore, they still succeed. FF12 is cliche - a princess fights to win back her kingdom. FF10 - a tradition of summoners is broken in order to end a timeless cycle. Tales of Symphonia did that same cliche(Only instead of summoners it was the Chosen) better. Every single Castlevania game is about taking down Dracula (Except for, like, one or two). But they all expand upon that or execute it so well. Pokemon rarely ever gives a good reason as to why the main character feels like being the Pokemon Master, so why do we ask RPG Maker games for great detail before we've even played the game?

For the most part, I completely agree with you.

You talk like Charas is still dying though. I'm pretty sure eight new games have sprung up in the Game Section. There's now Bluhman's brilliant game waiting to be downloaded. Linkforce is still working on his game, Saikar's game luckily wasn't deleted, and I can name a few others who are working on projects now. Why the sad tone?