The Perils of Pointless Innovation In Games

Negative Gamer is running a story discussing the need felt by the major game developers to create the next huge blockbuster, which often leads to innovation and change for their own sake rather than simply focusing on what makes a game fun. Quoting: "There seems to be this invisible pressure to create something that is highly 'intuitive' and incorporates the highest level of innovation that we have ever seen. The problem is that the newest ideas put into games are either gimmicky, terrible in execution, or blatantly ripping off another title. On the other hand there are series that feel the need to completely revamp a game that played perfectly fine before into something completely new that falls flat on its face. ... There's a critical problem with popular, mainstream video games that isn't as large with other mediums; they are expensive to make and require a lot of time and effort put in to create something masterful. With that, games must take cautious paths. I fully understand the risks, but adding unneeded material to certain games is not justifiable."

Comments

Get your definitions straight.

[Anonymous Coward]

M-W.com defines:

Intuition:

1: quick and ready insight
2 a: immediate apprehension or cognition b: knowledge or conviction gained by intuition c: the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference

Innovation:
1 : the introduction of something new
2 : a new idea, method, or device : novelty

These two things, although they often overlap, are not the same thing. Intuitive means something is easy to use without having to work hard at it (Boy, this point and shoot interface in this first person shooter game is intuitive!). Innovation means that the idea is new (Wow, I never knew it would be fun to roll a ball of trash around and make it as large as possible until I played this game, katamari damacy!). You can innovate without having an intuitive interface. You can make a new game with an intuitive interface without bringing anything new to the table.

Re:Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

[MBCook]

The implicit assumption you've made is that there is a need to make X-II. Very often, that's not the case at all, and that's where the problem often comes in.

The article makes a great point: games these days are often planned to be series, not just good games. That leads to the assumption you made.

Let's take Full Spectrum Warrior. That was an amazing game. It had a sequel, but I never got around to playing. I didn't feel any need, the first game was all that it needed to be. The sequel would either be more of the same (fun, but not enough for me to go buy/rent instead of another game) or have some kind of "innovation" that may have ruined it.

Even the games that get this all somewhat right (like Advanced Wars, which in the end added too many units ruining the simplicity) wear out their welcome by cramming so many sequels out (I know it's a long series in Japan, but they had time between releases some times didn't they?).

Re:Dead on.... wish I had mod-points...

[kubrick]

Hey!