Innovation in Games

There is something in games that is odd

It often creates gimmicks for CoD

It is often lackluster

And a cheap gimmick is all it can muster

If you hadn't guessed from the title

Innovation is the subject of this little recital

There are exceptions like in Saints Row and that gang clad in purple

Who frolic about and get up to high jinks as they... Um... I'm done with rhyming.

 

The point of that rubbish poem thing is to show that changing the formula doesn't instantly make it better. The rhyming didn't add anything to the article; it is just a distraction, and sometimes innovation isn't even as good as a distraction. Innovation shouldn't be what a game aims for, innovators don’t always even keep their fame. I mean sure the inventor of stealth mechanics had his fifteen minutes but where is he now? So innovation isn't the most important aspect of a game.

I know the first paragraph makes it sound like I hate innovation but I don't, I merely want people to use it as a means not a goal. For example Pokémon is a very popular and highly critically acclaimed game series, yet it hasn't changed since the first one. It hasn't tried to remake Pokémon in a new way, instead it refined the old formula to make it more fun and streamlined. The combat hasn't changed, they have added things (such as more Pokémon) and polished the game and that is why it has such big commercial success.

Whereas games such as Dear Esther are unique (that is undeniable), they aren’t fun. Dear Esther has been nicknamed a walking simulator as there is little to no gameplay to speak of. Dear Esther is so boring that it made me realise how much I enjoy rearranging the stationary on my desk. Games that innovate for innovation’s sakes are probably going to be at best boring and at worst pretentious, see Heavy Rain for example.

This isn't to say all innovation is bad- games like Day Z and Portal are innovative to fulfill their goals. The goal for Portal was to create an engaging puzzle game so they needed a mechanic for the puzzles, and the portal gun was the answer. Day Z is similar; it wanted to create a zombie game themed around survival instead of action, so they put in survival aspects. But as you will notice both only innovate in one area alone: Day Z uses the Arma engine but adds zombies and survival, and Portal uses Source (Valve’s game engine) but adds a new tool.

And while I could continue to list games that show both the good and bad kinds of innovation (Lair, Never Dead and Mad World to name a few) it is more important to find where the problem originates. In my opinion the problems originate from the console wars, those annoying fan boy forum threads. As people will defend their respective consoles to the point of insanity, any innovation irrelevant of need will be praised, so companies think all innovation is good. There are some exceptions, like the Xbox One’s “innovative” TV integration where the general view was to tell Microsoft to fix it. Since an innovative idea on a console will affect every game released onto the console the slightest change will affect every game; such as a change in controller or if the system gets more powerful. An obvious new innovation that changed each game is the Kinect for Xbox One, because of the Kinect every game was forced to incorporate it. Such as Ryse: Son of Rome which uses the Kinect as a voice command for controlling your legion. The aspect was pointless as you can only tell them to do one thing in scripted sections, so a button would have worked just as well.

That’s the problem: a lot of the innovation adds nothing to the game, just random things to put on the back of the box. Innovation for innovation’s sake is as stupid as claiming you donated to starving children by buying jeans from Primark (other shops that use slave children are available). While some gimmicks are fun they aren’t why you enjoy a game they are merely a nice or interesting addition.

Innovation is a means to an end: it is not the goal of a game. Games exist to entertain and sometimes more formulaic things are more fun, such as the Half Life series which polishes the experience without trying to recreate the game in a new way. While innovation can make some of the best games it can also make some of the worst games such as Neverdead: these games usually have one cool idea but have a terrible everything else as they didn’t have time to create an engaging experience. I can’t decide why they can’t create both but I have a few ideas.

I think sometimes they plan these big innovative projects but then financial issues means they have to cut corners and it becomes a gimmick instead. There is also a chance (while I am talking about possible reasons for this random innovation arms race) that it is done to increase their review scores. People are more likely to give bad games a higher score if it is in some way unique, such as Mirror’s Edge which got scores much above what it deserved, because the free running was new and fresh.

To try to wrap this up in some coherent way: I am going to say that I have no problem with innovation, innovation exist so what the developer want to make can exist, it shouldn’t be what they are aiming for. So while it can make good games, it only makes good games when the creator’s vision needs innovation. The problem is also that innovation can lead to false advertisement claiming a game has an amazing new system which is just a gimmick. It is similar to TESCO selling something labelled as cucumber which is actually a horse cock painted green.

Thanks for reading.