I support this view 100%. It is by no means that many games have fallen into that cateogory. For example, God of War, in its most simple form, is nothing more than a tried and true hack n slash game along the lines of Dynasty Warrior. However, the creators were able to innovate and create a streaming flow of gameplay that alothough folllowed a linear story, kept the hacking and slashing pleasing enough to want to go all the way to the end.

In regards to the music industry, it won't be until people find another way to be interactive will you see some form of change. Move and Project Natal might offer some chance of that actually happening. Although the technology is available for the Wii but they just have done it yet.

Making a game is such a colossal, expensive, time-consuming, personnel-destroying activity that I don't understand why you wouldn't want to try to reach and do something slightly original as an enduring legacy of that.? Innovation is key to the novel experience of videogames since their inception and I'd argue that the current trend of titles like Modern Warfare, Halo and Pokemon [ for example ] dominating specific genres is the real anamoly with the idea of blockbusters being detrimental to the breadth of experiences on offer as well as skewing the market so that we have AAA or bust.

Being able to iterate on these games is only possible due to the upgrades in graphics fidelity - otherwise nothing has changed and the really hard game design problems of player agency or freedom, breadth of content and emergence don't have to be dealt with. We might be world champions at building a 20-hour crack pipe but what kind of interactions are you really creating or making possible? Do we even care?

We're using the same game design tropes from 20+ years ago and worse still these game designs are being copied over and over again without regard for the audience that has grown up and become literate to how gating and incentives work. I think the real interesting work is going to come from where people have run up [ or over ] the confines of simple game mechanics vs. narrative as discussed by J-Blow and others. In my opinion we make too many assumptions about players, and don't give them enough credit for being human and approaching game design with more interesting angles regards psychology, socialisation and motivation.


-- Chuan

No, I think he says:

"Innovation is good, and Total Innovation is good. But not all Innovation must be total, and not all good must be Innovation."

Thats, what good post are for, we all know it, but sometimes we forget and ignore, and they're here to remind us and make us think further on them.

I believe real innovation comes, like the author said, on existing titles. Braid's mechanics, even as Blow said in an interview, was simply based on Mario and The Prince Of Persia: Sands of Time. But the game was unique because of it's art, story, and deeper meaning.

I think a game such as Halo is successful because they continue to innovate from title to title, such as from Halo 3 to Halo: Reach.

Tim Carter,

For his editorial to be anti-innovation it would have to assert that innovation is a negative thing for the industry, which it never claims. What he very clearly writes is that game developers shouldn't be so keen on abandoning older paradigms for the sake of embracing a new fad or innovation in the hopes of riding on the coattails of other successful endeavors, which, when you really consider it, wouldn't actually qualify as innovation at all.

What he's specifically referring to is how certain genres and mechanics are often left for dead when other genres become popular, which is why the current market is flooded with FPS while a genre like the beat em' up is virtually non-existent. There is a bandwagon mentality in this industry, which is why in the 90's, after the success of Street Fighter 2, you literally had hundreds of fighting game clones pop up.

The crux of his argument is that just because a paradigm is old doesn't mean it is archaic and meritless and what he's trying to remind developers of is that not every game need employ a "me too" philosophy of design. Evolving established conventions can also facilitate innovation while simultaneously battling the stagnancy of an industry where everybody is trying to do the same thing.

Personally, I think it’s a damn fine point.

Everything is everything, what was meant to be will be.

Wasn't D&D based on strategy board games and simulations?

@Josh Green
The board game aspect is a pretty recent addition to D&D, Gygax was clearly inspired by the work of Tolkien.

I'm so glad the 2D/3D point was brought up. When I first heard Castlevania was moving the 3D I was crushed, because I thought Symphony of the Night was an absolute masterpiece of 2D gaming. I found myself paraphrasing Jurassic Park saying "they were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." Similarly I much more enjoyed the revamped 2D bionic commando than the 3D version that shortly followed.

On the other hand I loved the Ninja Gaiden games in both their 2D and 3D forms, so it's certainly possible to make the leap from 2D to 3D and do it well.

If I may paraphrase Kris's argument: evolutionary change in core gameplay features should be preferred over trying to achieve revolutionary new kinds of gameplay features.

I'm not sure I entirely agree. It appears less risky to iterate on existing conventions, but is that really healthy over the long term? Does that -- embraced by the industry as a whole -- really generate enough novelty to retain existing gamers and attract new players? Aren't bursts of creative possibilities, like a Cambrian explosion of gameplay diversity, healthy for gaming?

Diversity is healthy for the industry...but not so healthy for the developer or studio that goes in a less than profitable direction.

One has to remember that Darwinism has no sympathy for unsuccessful branches, and owing towards the rapid change in commercial climate, some branches may just fail and this is true for both evolving a continued design or creating a new one from scratch.

In essence, what keeps the gaming industry creative is that no one dies if we get something wrong. Design a faulty breaking device, a system that can de-conflict incoming aircraft, etc.

So creating a game that isn't fun or creative? That's a matter of opinion which is why so many gravitate towards revenue generated and units sold. It's tangible and direct, the only creative part of that is generating the report and making the assessment.

AD&D came from D&D which came out of the Chainmail wargame which was basically medieval battles. The fantasy setting came later but the roots of the game lie in wargaming.

I agree with the thesis, but it is very badly proven.

Braid is conventional? Tony Hawk is too sandbox? And how are copies of innovative games examples of innovation? Even VVVVVV can be considered innovative, though not in any revolutionary sense.

If anything, you should be criticizing the overvaluing of cutting edge technology in an industry still dependent on sales of games that were published 20 years ago. Or how the industry views the purpose of indie games to be innovation so if an indie game produces something artistically compelling, but not particularly innovative, it's success is dismissed as niche.

And you ought to be citing the Final Fantasy, Street Fighter or even the GTA franchises for producing excellent games that are all nearly identical to each other, especially back in the 2D days. Each one of these changed a lot moving from 2D to 3D, but the concepts remained the same, and even so there was little change after each franchise went 3D. These are franchises that pump out more or less the same thing again and again, but they hold on to a fan-base by doing so.

Overvaluing innovation is an unfortunate side-effect of games being such a technological industry.

"Darwinism has no sympathy for unsuccessful branches ... this is true for both evolving a continued design or creating a new one from scratch"

Quite right, Ken... which sounds to me like an argument in favor of some revolutionary development, since there's significant risk either way.

I would agree that sequels to popular games should probably only iterate in a careful way on the features that worked in the original game. Original games should not be constrained to copy the conventions of the most popular games in this or that genre, however -- for every WoW that grabs the second-mover advantage, there are a dozen or more games that fail because they're perceived as lazy, "me-too" designs.

That's why I'd like to see more money people understand that playing it safe is no guarantor of success. Absolutely there's a place for risk reduction and cost containment -- but that place is in the *process* of game development, not the core design concepts, where trying out new forms insures that the industry always has ways to adapt to changes in the environment of the marketplace.

Isn't it simply economics? One company does well with an open-world game, and the rest follow suit. As with 2D/3D, sandbox, etc. The same happens in the music and film industry. It's all just 'fads' in gaming: You never know when the next one (or an old one again) pops up.

I'm not going to argue about the points of this article, but I don't understand the jab at Burnout Paradise going open world. In my opinion Paradise was the best of the series, especially since Criterion supported it with DLC for so long.