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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 4944550" data-attributes="member: 22779">The "trend to remake something before coming up with something new" is as old as time.  "There is nothing new under the sun" was written thousands of years ago, and it's still true today.  Good grief, look at the bazillion Tolkien rip-offs that populate fantasy.  I'd much rather seen a remake done well than watch the same story get rehashed for the umpteenth time simply because the author feels the need to do something "different".Ballocks.  I'm sorry, but that's utter ballocks.  There is no inherently superior form of creativity just because you feel the need to not use existing materials.  Just because someone tries to do something from scratch in no way guarantees that it will be creative at all.  Again, a bazillion Tolkienesque fantasy books, all creating their own world, all trying to do their own spin, all pretty much the same.Why?  Why is there more creativity involved in a tabletop RPG?  I've played with DM's, heck, I've been a DM, using a prefab module.  And I'm sure most of the people reading this have been as well.  How is that any more creative than playing an MMO, or creating content for something like Half-Life or whatnot?Again, ballocks.Video games are active.  Reading a book is passive.  Writing a book may be active, but, for the vast majority of people out there, they will never write that book.  Yet lots of people, at the very least, decorate their house in Second Life, interact with various other players in character, create stories and whatnot about their characters.Yup, you might imagine the pictures when you read a book.  But, again, it's entirely passive.  You consume the book, your eyes scanning from side to side, never once actually contributing in the slightest to the text.In a video game, you are contributing to the storyline of the game from the second you start.How is this not just a rehash of "TV is killing our children's brains"?  For decades, we heard how life would just get better if kids would turn off the TV and start reading.  It's too simplistic.  It's not the answer.  "Video games are making people dumb" has been studied time and time again and proven false time and time again.  There's a very good reason why the video game industry is low larger than the movie industry.  It actively engages the user.  Unlike movies or novels, the user can actively participate in the story, shape the story by his or her own actions.</blockquote>

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