Comments on: Is Innovation Unwelcome?

By: Spiralyguy

Spiralyguy — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:49:29 +0000

[quote]Take books, for example. The fantasy novels that get the best reviews are quite innovative. They take place in other worlds with creatures all of the author’s own design. But the ones that most frequently do the best happen to be–you guessed it–the ones with elves, dwarves, and all those familiar Tolkien-esque critters. The same can be said for movies, music, and (of course) games: The familiar, when done well, sells well, often better than something innovate done well.[/quote]
I’m not sure this analogy quite applies to games. Dwarves and Elves and so on are familiar to people, and that is good, I agree. However, if you take World of Warcraft, take out the Dwarves and Elves and put it Woozles and Futzitz you really haven’t been innovative at all. The game will be the same but now you’re using images which are more difficult for the gamer to identify.

Gamers DO want innovation, we quickly tire of the same old games being rehashed. However the catch is that too much innovation is a killer. Same idea with a new spin will ensure users are familiar yet at the same time, in new territory. I think your analogy of the tire was good. Too much innovation results in the gamer feeling like they’ve been dropped in a country where they don’t speek the language. Full on immersion like that may be a good way to pick up a 2nd language, but it’s pretty far from fun.

By: Thermoses

Thermoses — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:10:12 +0000

A bit of both. Initially, it’s moderately difficult for basic spells. As you advance, you’d learn easier versions of old spells, and more complicated versions of more powerful spells. So new players could pick up the concept, quickly. As they get more skill, easy stuff gets easier (to reduce tedium), and cooler stuff becomes available. And they can focus on the new stuff because the old stuff isn’t as time consuming.

By: JuJutsu

JuJutsu — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:33:27 +0000

Wouldn’t you want it to work the other way around, simpler and more accessible for noobs and then more complicated [tedious] as they advance?

By: Thermoses

Thermoses — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:33:37 +0000

“It had an innovative spell casting system driven by gestures…”
“…drawing spells out all the time became tedious”
This was correctable, however. Instead of letting the newness wear off and the feature become a tedious bore, the designers* could couple the feature with character advancement. As you gain more experience, this should enable shorter and shorter ways to draw the same spells. At a certain level, you could just point and click simpler spells, and more powerful ones would be minimized to just a stroke or two.

*who always have infinite time, money, and tools.

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:57:02 +0000

The problem you run into with innovation is that sometimes your idea comes across less as “innovative” as it does “alien”.

I played Katamari Damacy for a while and even after hours of play (many hours, I kept going back because so many game devs kept talking about it), I still don’t get it. I roll a ball around and stuff sticks to it… sure, it was different, but to me it was completely alien, and by that I mean non-engaging, it failed to draw me in.

By: JuJutsu

JuJutsu — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:18:30 +0000

“It had an innovative spell casting system driven by gestures. Essentially, you would draw out the spell you wanted with your mouse to cast it. Neat idea, and it was even fun as hell for a few hours, but I don’t recall that game breaking any sales records (possibly attributed not to the innovation but instead to the fact that drawing spells out all the time became tedious).”

A great example. Why do you separate the innovation of drawing spells with the mouse from the tedium of drawing spells out all the time [with the mouse]? I was a beta tester for Ryzom; it was very innovative in a number of ways and I had no fun whatsover. After being a good tester long enough to feel I’d met my obligations I left and never considered actually playing it.

Better is what counts to me, not just new.

By: VPellen

VPellen — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 13:53:48 +0000

The simple way to do it would be to just turn comments off and stick a link at the end of your posts which say “discuss it here”. It’d require making a new thread on the forums for each blog post, of course, but it’d probably still work.

By: Ryan Shwayder

Ryan Shwayder — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 13:35:38 +0000

Side response: Yeah, I’ve considered it. It would be a significant amount of work to retroactively make that happen, and I’m not even quite sure how to do it if I wanted to anymore.

My old sites used forums as the back end for news, so posting a topic in a particular forum made it appear on the front page and any responses were counted as comments.

But I use WordPress now, and trying to smash WordPress together with forums seems like a giant pain.

By: VPellen

VPellen — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 07:06:29 +0000

Personally, I don't think players want innovation, but rather that they tire of repetition. I'm not sure they want new so much as they want different. Change is at worst frightening. Similarity is at worst boring. Excitement and intrigue lie somewhere between the two; The only real question is where. Completely unrelated side-note: Have you considered linking your posts directly to the forums as opposed to having a roll of comments? It might encourage more discussion, as well as give the forums a bit more publicity.