I always thought it was cool, though frustrating, how two people can separately come up with the same new idea. When I first started songwriting, I had a song that I was pretty proud of… and then Seven Mary Three came out with “The Water’s Edge”, which was annoyingly similar. It meant my song wasn’t so original anymore, but it was also validating when their song became popular.

And yes, that was a long time ago. Thankfully, that wasn’t the limit of my compositional skills.

After more than 500 years of musical composition with only 12 notes, whole musical styles continue to emerge. The notion that MMO design has been completely explored after less than 30 years is plainly ridiculous.

“Odds are…” Correct. Hence my statement that originality just isn’t easy or everyday. But it’s possible, and only a cynic ceases to strive toward that possibility.

The game-less game

- EvE (Environment vs. Environment)

I made a working NWN mod around this concept

- Dynamic Content and player actions having a visible impact on the world

Dark Age of Camelot lets you build up keeps and knock them down. The restrictions for doing it more fully are largely technical.

- Crafting “invention” system, where you can make blueprints to create completely new items

Something everyone hits first in coming up with a crafting system. Implementation is insanely hard and payoff is relatively low, so it doesn’t get done. (Low payoff doesn’t mean bad it just means that the number of people who will care is really small)

No seriously, anything you happen to come up with, odds are someone has considered it while actually putting together an MMO.

Obviously it can’t be true that there are *no* original ideas, but anything you can come up with fast someone has thought of before.

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New ideas will be developed incrementally or outside the industry.

“There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.”

This reminds me of another thread I read somewhere about the Character formula of successful TV series. The premise being that you have a few core characters, with others that are in a supporting role. Over the years you might get temporary focus on a support character, but they most likely never become core characters. Look at the failed shows that deviate from the simple formula.

Or the Seven Basic Plots in writing.

Just remember you are entertaining and you want to keep the user engaged. If the eye candy, features, stories etc do not help you maintain the entertainment and user engagement, then it most likely is not necessary.