Innovation is Overrated
I just read two articles on Kotaku that encapsulate the obsession gamers have with innovation. The first was entitled ‘Where are all the Next Gen games?’ It argues that this generation of game has disappointed because so few of them have done something new. Where is the Mario 64 jump from 2D to 3D? Where is the Parallax scrolling from F-Zero? Or the living, breathing city from GTA III?
The second is ‘Hunting for Innovation in Dante’s Inferno,’ and suggests that Dante’s Inferno must find something new to gain an individual identity and be a high quality game.
I want to argue that we have become too obsessed with innovation when really it’s one of the least important components of a great game.
New is usually bad
Why do we believe that innovation is always something to be applauded? It’s only good innovation that we want. Lots of games have innovated in terrible ways and you don’t hear about those. Trespasser gave it a good effort but the interactive hand where you had to use physics to type on keypads didn’t catch on because it was terrible.
Hely loodk I'fm innoa3vating! Sorry, I was trying to type using the Trespasser hand
The reason we have standard genres in games is because people experimented with hundreds of game types during the early years of videogame development and we narrowed those to a mere handful – the engaging designs. FPS, RTS, Platform and puzzle games are so numerous because they’re fun. FMV games were an experiment that didn’t catch on and I’m sure Night Trap wasn’t hailed as a staggering step forward in games, valued for its innovative qualities alone.
Innovation can only happen once
Dante’s Inferno is criticized on Kotaku for being ‘just a God of War clone.’ Isn’t God of War 3 a God of War clone? Does it get a free pass because it’s part of a franchise that once was innovative? It’s not even the same developer as God of War. David Jaffe has moved on, so what really makes God of War 3 impressive while Dante’s Inferno has to differentiate itself?
Refinement is worth more than innovation
It’s no coincidence that Blizzard and Valve have some of the best games of all time. Blizzard is known not for pushing the design curve forward but for polishing existing game design concepts until they’re perfect. Valve is known for constant testing of their games and iterating an experience until it is flawless.
These processes create great games and even the most innovative games quoted in the above articles (GTA III, Oblivion etc.) aren’t going to be played extensively in a decade the way Starcraft or Warcraft III DOTA are today.
Even the logo is refined! What font is that ... South Korea?
Is innovation harder than polish?
It’s not easy to innovate, but you just need one idea one time. Scribblenauts is innovative, but the game isn’t much fun because the developers couldn’t execute properly on the idea. It was a great game design proof of concept but could really use some Valve refinement.
Game testing until something is perfect requires endless work and constant post-release updates. People take fine-tuning for granted and value innovation too highly because it’s intuitively harder to come up with something new than it is to put in a ton of hard work and accurately analyze your community. In my mind they’re of equal value.
Tech demos and casual games can innovate; hardcore games need to be successful
Another point to consider is that as gamers we demand an impossible combination from developers: innovative games that are also big budget AAA titles. We demand impressive graphical fidelity. We demand extensive online functionality and multiple DLC and open ended gameplay. We also demand significant innovation. No publisher is going to risk putting a huge budget behind a game that could be a complete disaster.
Even the current juggernauts that came about as a result of innovation were born either from humbler origins or out of desperation. Remember that Guitar Hero 5 started as a much smaller franchise, and the Wii was developed because Nintendo acknowledged they could no longer compete on hardware alone. It’s unlikely that Activision is now going to throw away their successful Guitar Hero blueprint and break away towards something new.
Innovations don’t require impressive graphics. They don’t even really require a game. Portal is one of the most innovative games of the past 5 years, and its concepts were developed in Narbacular Drop, a student tech demo project with a thin game pasted on top of it. We shouldn’t expect innovation to come from the largest games. Instead, we should trawl casual and low budget games looking for innovative elements that can then be incorporated into AAA titles.
Necessity is the mother of invention
Graphics are frequently cited as the only area of current innovation. What did the Xbox360 and the PS3 really add? Slightly more polygons and high definition output. It is unfair to criticize developers for this, however, because gamers are continually demanding improved graphics, both with their voices and with their wallets. Games are praised for being ‘the best looking game ever’ and graphically impressive games are rarely commercial failures.
Games that innovate, even successful ones, are frequently greater critical successes than commercial. This is not just unfortunate; it signals to publishers that real innovation isn’t what we really want. Mirror’s Edge sold terribly. What we want is World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2. We want games that are simply the best example of an existing genre.
Yo DOOM, I'm really happy for you and I'm a let you finish, but Modern Warfare 2 is the best shooter of all time. OF ALL TIME!
Innovation is certainly something we should value as without it games will eventually stagnate and become boring, but we should also prize refined game design. When Modern Warfare 2 comes out and mostly builds off its predecessor with minor tweaks here and there, we should celebrate its success as the most refined FPS ever and not criticize it for not departing from a style we are positive is fun.
I’m interested in your thoughts on the matter. Hit up the comments!
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Tom Stanley
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Nice article. I’m trying to find things to disagree with, and about all I can come up with is the following: Iteration and polish are *expensive* and in unwieldy hands, absolutely kill morale on the dev team, which introduces a host of inefficiencies, especially if you want to make a sequel and your battle hardened devs leave for a better job.
Yeah – I completely understand that some companies can’t afford to have a game ‘complete’ and continue development for a year -that’s the luxury of having a huge cash hoard if you’re Blizzard. That being said, there is a tradeoff, and there are definitely some games, such as Fat Princess for example, that had so many problems at launch that they permanently hurt their game and would probably have more than recouped the extra cash it took to spend a month or two balancing and fixing netcode.