Well, "innovation" can refer to anything moving forward. In this case I think what they "innovated" was an unprecedented level of cash grabbing, and people weren't just whipped into accepting passivity enough to accept and and fork over their hard earned money for increasingly trivial game advantages. I'd imagine EA is being kind of honest in their statement, you just need to view it the right way, which still makes it pretty absurd and insulting.
That said, the gaming industry seems to be intent on making it so every game is pretty much "pay for everything" so you either need to accept it, or stop gaming. The big question is whether we are addicted enough to support this, without a massive number of people turning on the industry and causing it to crash.
The part that most gets me about this whole thing is how the industry claims people obviously "like DLC" as opposed to endure it despite massive hatred. Ubisoft seems particularly vocal about this, but EA has had it's turn. Largely because gamers, which sadly includes me, have pretty much became trained to realize that if we buy a game we had better check for DLC to make sure we get the whole thing, and when it comes to day #1 DLC, we'll usually buy it as part of the purchase, meaning that the industry has basically found a back door way of raising prices without actually increasing the initial price tag. People don't do this because they like it, its simply because people who want to game have few other options if they want a complete product (and no, most DLC does not count as legitimate "extras" almost all of it is stuff that should be in a game by default) and/or not to be harassed while playing the game, since developers will go out of their way to show what's missing if you haven't bought the DLC (even to the point of famously having an NPC tell you to spend real money to do their quest in Dragon Age: Origins).
The thing with Dungeon Keeper is that it used a big name, and was released by a huge company, while fundamentally doing the same thing as a lot of other companies. For example, recently I decided to try a game called "Astro Lords: The Ooort Cloud" which I heard about through Alienware, it looked decent. It fundamentally turned out to be a prettier version of one of those "build queues" games released by a company like Kabam!, and also one that seemed to make no real bones about harassing you for premium currency right off the bat by showing how you could use it to lower timers (making it clear how obnoxious they will get), and of course telling you that you need 1000 units of currency to upgrade your General's space ship to a "premium version" to really increase their power. I expect this kind of thing from FTP internet games, but not from products carrying those kinds of brand names. It should also be noted that I have nothing against paying money to games I actually play (including a decent empire sim I check in on a few times a day), but there is such a thing as overmarketing and getting too greedy, and it's obnoxious to see this moving into the regular gaming sector as much as it has been.
At the same time though, with the number of casuals willing to spend small fortunes on games like "Candy Crush" I don't expect things to change. That pretty much seemed to be what EA was going for with "Dungeon Keeper Mobile". The big question is whether the casuals will learn and the gaming industry will crash, or if some of the people running these companies will figure "okay, we have enough money" and back off a bit. Games DO need to make money to support themselves and of course turn a profit for their developers, and I'm quite blunt about how you should pay a game, even a "free one" if you keep playing and are having fun. I've sunk a good chunk of money into Cryptic's games for example, and frequently tell people who put hundreds of hours into them and whine that they should probably pay to support something they play that much. However getting people to pay to remove blocks, or slow down timers/pay walls and such is ridiculous. The absolute worst game for this I've tolerated and supported is probably "City Of Steam" love the game (as it's fairly unique) and I have given them some money, but I find it offputting that it is a game that literally has a micro transaction possibility attached to everything in the game.... albeit very few of the things are needed, so it's not as bad as EA or "timer" games but it's annoying when every menu basically has the equivalent of some dude standing
there with a cash register.
