The Call for Innovation: An Open Letter to the Internet

DevilsMMO.com writer M. Growcott had it with the lack of innovation on the internet. So, he decided to write an open letter to the internet whomever it concerns. As general it may sound to be, he is referring to the MMO world which has been questioned for innovation by players. Do we really need innovation, would a game developer go for innovation when they already have a successful product? Continue reading to see what he has got to say.

in•no•va•tion/ˌinəˈvāSHən/
Noun:

1. The action or process of innovating.
2. A new method, idea, product, etc: "technological innovations"

Dear the Internet,

I’ve put up with a lot from you over the last couple of decades. Your use of the word random was misinformed and makes me want to bang my head against things, especially now that it has gone mainstream and you can’t visit Facebook or, on the days when I’m forced kicking and screaming out of my cocoon, go outside without hearing some fourteen year old calling their friends random for wearing shoes with a strange pattern on or quoting Pokemon episodes out of context.

That’s fine, we were all young once, but your use of the word “innovation” has gone one step too far. It’s not that you’re technically using it incorrectly, but that you’re using it so frequently and I’m not sure you’re thinking it through.

Perhaps I should explain myself. It is impossible to visit a forum or comment section on a website without at least one person calling for innovation – weeping at the bygone days of news IPs. In the MMO world and beyond, people everywhere seem to be sick of what they’re playing and want an entirely new sort of game, like nothing we’ve ever seen before. But what do they mean when they cry for innovation?
They don’t want innovation, that’s for sure. They want what they’ve always had but with better graphics and new guns. Let me give some examples of innovation; Heavy Rain was innovative, it was panned by people who considered it “not a game;” the Wii was innovative for its use of motion control and core gamers labelled it a gimmick. The truth about innovation is that most people don’t recognise it until after the fact, when other games start copying – and it’s not always necessarily a good thing.

Take for instance World of Warcraft: as a game it wasn’t innovative in the traditional sense but it perfected a formula. They built upon established ideas but Blizzard pushed the boundaries of what was expected and put enough advertising behind it that people who had never considered the MMO as a viable use of their time lapped it up. It may not have been innovation in terms of gameplay, but in many ways it revitalized the genre, they managed to do things no other company had ever done before and the figures for their game proves that.

But if you mention WoW to one of the Innovation Brigade, you’d be met with sneering laughs and pseudo-intellectual retorts. What they see as innovative perhaps isn’t so much innovative as something we haven’t seen for a while. Nowadays it seems anything that isn’t WoW is hailed as innovative despite the fact that it’s only glowing quality is that it isn’t World of Warcraft.

The same could be said for almost any other major series. Call of Duty is old hat because it’s released every year, Battlefield is innovative despite DICE releasing a multiplayer component every year. It seems that those calling for innovation can’t get their story straight and would be better just getting the games they want rather than trying to force their tastes onto others. That misunderstanding between innovation and “stuff I’d rather see” goes one step further than personal opinion. Some claim that gaming, as it is, is stagnating. Let’s take a look at some facts shall we?

Not only did Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 just have the largest entertainment launch of all time – it beat the Harry Potter books, Lord of the Rings movies and Twilight – but its predecessor for that title was Black Ops; two consecutive record holding games only one year apart. Star Wars: The Old Republic has broken records before release, bragging a huge amount of users on their servers over the Thanksgiving weekend. The number of subscribers is going to remain strong after release and well into the New Year.

Let’s take a look at the bigger picture. Now more than ever, people from a wide range of backgrounds are playing a wider range of games. There are Facebook games which are deeper and more involved than full priced games in shops, there are iPhone games that constantly beat the sales figures for big AAA titles. We’re living in a society where gaming is readily accepted as a decent form of entertainment, where old people in retirement homes are comparing scores with 13 year old teeny boppers and they’re all having fun.

Does that sound like gaming is stagnating? If anything it is becoming more and more of a success and, like anything that is successful, the most popular things perhaps aren’t the best quality, but the brilliant things are worth searching for. Innovation may not be a big part of that, when something is successful it seems useless going back to something that is less successful, but it works. Why would the Nintendo go back to the Gamecube when they could continue with the success they had from the Wii? Why would Blizzard do anything but World of Warcraft when they can continue taking in cash by the helmet-full?

“They should shake things up because of innovation, for the people that have supported them since the beginning!” This coming from the same people who felt Nintendo had regained its dignity after e3 2010, when they did nothing but announce revivals of old series, the same people who waited patiently for the best part of a decade for Starcraft II. And this is where the hypocrisy starts to show – people are happy with sequels and revivals so long as they’re sequels to games they’re interested in, revivals of franchises they remember from their childhood. If it’s something they dislike – NOT ENOUGH INNOVATION.

The sequel thing specifically gets on my nerves. I read an article the other day that said 60 of the 80 or so confirmed releases for next year are sequels. 75% of the games coming out next year are continuations of games we’ve already had. What does that tell you? If you’ve just said “the industry is running out of ideas,” you’re part of the problem. The industry has more ideas than ever, but with more people getting into gaming and less money with which to make games, taking risks is a bad idea. Whether the game in question is a sequel, a reinvention, a remake or a digital expansion, I don’t see how anybody can be disappointed so long, and this is important, as the game is good.

And that’s why it bothers me to read about the lack of innovation in the industry, because it means that people are ignoring games based on their own misconceptions. There’s nothing wrong with picking up Mass Effect 3 (or an MMO based on the series) or Grand Theft Auto V just because they’re part of a series, but if you want true innovation why not start looking into indie games on PC? Why not help out with small communities and development teams? Because these people don’t want to put their money where their mouth is; they want to complain that nothing is ever new.

And that, internet, is why the word innovation worries me. It is becoming a scapegoat, that the lack of innovation is ruining the industry. In fact, if developers started trying to innovate at every turn, it’d probably mean the death of the industry.

Yours,
Mat Growcott