The Game Industry and Innovation at GameSpot

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GameSpot has published an article looking into the problem of innovation in the game industry and trying to answer the question what the industry has against innovation. Here's a snip:

"Inovation's dead," Pachter laments. "Dying. Every once in a while, somebody will slip something in that will shock us, but for the most part there's no money in innovation, even if it's great."

In most cases, the risks of attempting to do something new simply outweigh the benefits, according to Pachter. With next-generation development costs skyrocketing, publishers want proven sellers, safe choices that they can be assured will provide a reliable return on their investment.

"The best business for a publisher is to give people what you know they want," Pachter says. "And what you know they want is a sequel to what they wanted last time. So we don't see a whole lot of innovation."

And even when innovation gains traction, publishers have a way of institutionalizing it, sometimes to the extreme. "Every now and then a company will come up with something really innovative and they'll sequel it to death," adds Pachter.

Well, I have to say I like sequels and I don't always enjoy the new ideas, but I don't like beating the old ones to death. I could easily get over the lack of innovative flashy effects or interfaces if I got a fresh storyline and perhaps a couple of new solutions in that area... or even not. Just give me a fresh storyline and good dialogues on the day to day level. But this doesn't mean there should be no innovation. In fact, it's high time something actually started happening.

Read the whole thing at GameSpot.