Innovation

Ars Technica recently ran an article about innovation that posed the question, "Must every single good game innovate in some way lest it be 'just another'?"

Obviously the question is biased and asking for a no response, which the users supplied. But the language of the question was vague enough that I wanted to spend a little time discussing what constitutes innovation. (I'm getting to the point that every time I want to write more than a paragraph in response to an article I see, I want to write a blog post.)

The article talks about Robotron's descendants. My first question is, what makes a game a descendant (or clone, if you want to be pejorative). Most people would say that a game where you fly around in a space ship isn't the same as one where you run around on the ground. Aerial combat and first person shooters are separate genres, after all. But if that's true, why is Super Stardust HD considered a Robotron clone?

I believe it comes down to what you, as the player, do. In an aerial combat game you drop chaff. You bomb targets. You dogfight. In an FPS you take cover. You throw grenades. You try to control the high ground, best weapons; health packs. While you can see the similarities, these are very different activities. They feel different.

But the distinction is finer than that. One commenter said that Blizzard doesn't innovate. I don't think anyone who's played StarCraft would say that controlling the Zerg doesn't feel quite like anything else in an RTS. But it's still an RTS because you gather resources, build units, and fight with those units at a tactical level. You drag and click and select your unit building structure. The activities are the same, whereas piloting (pulling back to bank up, matching speed with a target; using rudders for fine adjustments) isn't very similar to the simplified running around of most FPSes. (We'll postpone the discussion of super simplified helicopter games indefinately because the ones I've played I didn't enjoy.)

Hence Robotron is "the same" as Super Stardust HD. You use one stick to move around and one stick to shoot. And your avatar, be it robot or space ship, is really just a little gun that you can drive.

Back to the original question, must a game give you something different to do to be innovative? I don't know. But, as a gamer, I'm not sure that innovation is really the point. I don't want new mechanics so much as I want new experiences. There's a difference. A new experience may come from a simple layer of chrome.

Dark Forces and Duke Nukem 3D are largely the same game. You shoot bad guys (pig cops, stormtroopers, big difference). But most people who talk about them do so fondly, and for different reasons. Duke usually gets called out for its lewdness, violence, and humor, while Dark Forces is noted for letting you feel like a part of Star Wars and for it's climactic end sequence. They're the same game, in terms of what you do, though.

So, question answered (to my satisfaction) and a toe dipped into the rhetorical pirana pool of what defines genres and pulled out intact. A good day's blog. :)