Gamers DON'T Want Innovation.

[Bad Jim]

The main problm with the WiiU is that it is underpowered. While the Wii was different enough that it could sell despite being underpowered, the WiiU just adds a touchscreen, which is kinda neat but not enough to excuse it's lack of power.

And before anyone brings up "graphics don't matter", I reply "why not stick with your PS3/XB360 that has tons of games?"

Anyone with a DS knows how the second screen generally works. It usually does things like inventory screens. It helps a little, but it just isn't that important.

 

[marioandsonic]

people like to stick with what they know and like

however

I also think people don't really know what they want untill you sell it to them

I agree with this.

Going with me as an example, I didn't really hear about the Saints Row franchise until I saw the Zero Punctuation reviews. I then picked up Saints Row 4 when it came out on a whim, and it may be one of my top 10 games of the last console generation.

 

[Meximagician]

Hi everybody! Long time lurker, first time poster.

One problem I see is that the video uses ABSOLUTE values, when any good statistician will tell you to use RELATIVE values. Using an example from the video:

Mario Party 8 sold: 8 million
Wii sold: 100.9 million
market penetration: 7.93 %

Zelda Windwaker sold: 3 million
GameCube sold: 22 million
market penetration: 13.64 %

I'm just saying you have to compare apples to apples. Also, don't forget that gaming has risen in popularity exponentially. Pong built an empire for Atari, but even including coin-ops, didn't come close to breaking a million units sold.

 

[uknownada]

i was very disappointed with this episode, it was ful of flawed arguments and cherry picking

It's Game Theory. What do you expect?

 

[Some_weirdGuy]

Gamers don't want 'innovation', they want iteration.
They want topical cross-breeding of the latest pop culture element into something they are familiar with. The luck comes from either being the game that already fills that intersection, or quickly making it when you see it coming.

 

[Riverwolf]

As for me, I wish this love affair with indies would die sooner rather than later. Their brand of innovation seems mostly to be about reviving mechanics and looks of old games. I don't see that I need to play a Mario clone when I can play the real thing on a number of devices.

I think that's only a problem when the indie or the media advertises the game as "innovative" when it's just a Mario clone. I certainly wouldn't call Braid a Mario clone at all. Sure, Braid is a platformer, but a slow-paced puzzle-platformer, whereas Mario is a fast-paced action-platformer. But I'm not sure I'd call Braid "innovative" in the same way that Minecraft and Papers, Please are, since none of its mechanics are new themselves, but are used to craft interesting puzzles (as well as attempt, with debatable success, to make an artistic statement: something I don't often see from AAA devs).

Personally, as a person aspiring to be an indie dev, I'm not interested in being "innovative"; rather, I'm interested in making games I want to play, and/or that I think might be fun/interesting to play. None of my current ideas are new genres at all, but use existing genres/mechanics to present an experience or an idea I don't see much, if at all. It's easy to copy Mario (as the glut of platformers in the 80s and 90s shows), but it's quite another to take the run/jump mechanic and use it to create a different experience.

Sonic (and I'm referring to classic Sonic, here) is the exact same genre as Mario, but they're not at all the same experience. However, each new main 2D entry in the classic Mario series (that is, 1, American 2, 3, World, and Yoshi's Island) added new features and mechanics that made each one feel completely unique (with the exception of Super Mario Brothers 2, aka The Lost Levels). The five original main entries in the Sonic franchise, on the other hand (that is, 1, 2, CD, 3, and Knuckles) each add very little to the overall formula beyond a few tweaks and maybe one or two new mechanics, making the games feel VERY similar to each other.

EDIT: By the way, pretty much all the "arguments" in Game Theory are at least half-jokes, if not full-on jokes. There are few exceptions, and I don't think this episode was one of them.

 

[uknownada]

Holy shit that was annoying to listen to. I've never heard of this guy and I wish I could have that back.

Did anyone else notice the screenshot in the beginning called "Valve cries out for innovation in hardware"? Not really an honest screenshot, which makes you wonder how the rest of his material stacks up.

I think there's a lot more factors to this than what he says, for example the core gamer group that grew up and started prioritizing other kind of games.
One of his charts also listed Super Mario Bros, the original NES game, as the highest selling, but neglects to mention that the game came bundled with the console itself and I suspect a lot of the other high selling games did as well.
I'm not a mario kart fan, but I got it bundled with my wii. That's not proof of me wanting to buy it, it's just a complete coincidence because I wanted a black wii an the only one I could get was bundled with it, because the outlet was getting rid of copies.

...In the end I think he's full of shit and that he convinces himself like a conspicary theorist does, whenever he sees indications or signs, he takes them as affirmation and proof of what he's saying.
However, as I've gotten older (hitting 30 in a week), there's a limit on what I can be bothered to put with to have some fun and so now I play a lot of Binding of Isaac and FTL and much less MMO's, shooters and everything else. If I have to play a match of SC2 I groan and have to start thinking about a hundred different things and I just.. can't be arsed.

He called Mario a communist based on his facial features, the Metroid morph ball as unimpressive by comparing the 8 and 16-bit counterparts, "scientifically proved" Pyro was a homosexual male based on what physical traits they "typically" have, and said Mario has a mental condition because the player is able to ditch Yoshi in a pit.

You wonder how his material stacks up? There's a sneak preview.

 

[Riverwolf]

He called Mario a communist based on his facial features, ...

The Mario = Communist joke controversy predates youtube, let alone Game Theory.

Your other examples, however, are great samples of his material. I, personally, enjoy Game Theory, but I would definitely say to Smilomaniac that if those examples don't sound funny, then you're not going to like it. I would, however, recommend their partner show, Game Exchange, by Gaijin Goomba. His analysis of games is meant to actually be informative (though I'm not familiar enough with most of the subjects he brings up to really say whether it's incredibly accurate.)

 

[V8 Ninja]

It's a good thing to note that Mathew Patrick (the creator of the video) has never taken his Game Theory show too seriously, so it's best to take whatever he says with a grain of salt.

However, with that said I think I can point to one specific moment where the video shows its immense flaws. At the 7 minute mark, Mathew Patrick says the following;

The fact of the matter is, innovative games just don't sell.

...While showing a picture of the original Yoshi's Island, a game that, according to the data he showed in the video, sold over 4 million copies. In an industry where only about 1% of all products sell over five million copies [http://imgur.com/a/uhFNd?gallery#RaEsXVW], downplaying a multi-million selling title is a failure in arguing.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

i was very disappointed with this episode, it was ful of flawed arguments and cherry picking

It's Game Theory. What do you expect?

not really previous episodes had significantly more research put into them


even if the theories were silly, they atleast did their homework

 

[Ninmecu]

The main problm with the WiiU is that it is underpowered. While the Wii was different enough that it could sell despite being underpowered, the WiiU just adds a touchscreen, which is kinda neat but not enough to excuse it's lack of power.

And before anyone brings up "graphics don't matter", I reply "why not stick with your PS3/XB360 that has tons of games?"

Anyone with a DS knows how the second screen generally works. It usually does things like inventory screens. It helps a little, but it just isn't that important.

No, no, no no no no no no no no no. No. No. That is NOT the main problem with the Wii U, the main problem with the Wii U is the fact that the wireless pad has a required portion of the machines memory/cpu. That's the issue. It's REQUIRED to make it run, meaning it needs to be programmed around...Because Nintendo says so.

OT: everything I could've said has been said, no point repeating myself. Let's be honest, if the price point of new ip's was lower, we'd likely give them more of a try at launch, rather than doing like I do and buying them up 6, 12 or hell(In my case) 5 years after launch. I was HYPED for Saints Row The Third(and quickly regretted it.) because I got Saints Row 2 for 20 bucks and I've played the SHIT out of it. Hundreds of hours lost because I had a blast. My barrier stopping me from buying games that might be awesome but strike me as a bit iffy, is cost. Simple as. I'd've missed out on Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, Kingdom Hearts, all games I love that I only played because of random happenstance and the price that I found on the cheap. But, I'd argue that's neither here nor there.

 

[JayRPG]

Personally speaking, I kind of want innovation BUT there is a time and place.

What I don't want is innovation in a long established, successful series (E.G Final Fantasy), I would be 100% happier to hear that FFXV was going back to good old turn-based combat than I would be to hear they've come up with a whole new battle system again; I just don't see the point in changing things that don't need to be changed, maybe when sales start waning but that is usually to do with other factors (like story).

I want to see innovation in brand new IPs, that's where it makes sense, if you are releasing a brand new IP you want to bring something to the table that current ones aren't.

The Tales of series hasn't fundamentally changed or innovated in any big way since Tales of Phantasia (the first one) but it's selling more than ever, Xillia was more popular than FFXIII, the first time a Tales game has ever outsold a Final Fantasy, I would be angry if they turned around tomorrow to tell us that Tales of Zestria (the new one being worked on) was switching to an Action RPG with no separate battle fields like Zelda.

The FF10/10-2 remake sold more than lightning returns which does go at least a little of the way to showing that gamers don't want innovation in tried and true, long-standing successful IPs.

TL;DR I want innovation in new IPs but stick to what you know in long running series'

 

[The Random Critic]

On the other hand, it should be pretty well known that just because it is innovative doesn't mean it's good

Me personally, I judge a game by how much I enjoy it

 

[Ratty]

This episode feel phoned in. As others have said he made a few glaring mistakes in his argument, particularly the deceptive use of statistics without accounting for all important factors i. e. the mainstreaming of gaming in the last 5 to 10 years.

 

[The_Echo]

I already commented on the video, so I guess I'll just quote myself here.

I think you've completely ignored the fact that, with each console generation, more people are getting into gaming.

There weren't as many SNES owners as there were PS3/X360 owners, so naturally FFXIII has the potential to sell more than FFVI. (In fact just the PS3 or 360 alone trumps the SNES's sales.)

The games on Gamecube didn't do too hot mainly because it was sharing the same potential consumerbase as the PS2, which CRUSHED it in sales. There weren't as many people on the Gamecube to buy all those games! Coupled with Nintendo being fairly poor at promoting third-party titles, a lot of people just plain didn't KNOW that Eternal Darkness or Beyond Good & Evil were there.

Animal Crossing sits very comfortably in the "niche" department of games. No matter how new and fresh and innovative it was, the kind of game Animal Crossing is isn't going to appeal to a wide swathe of people. Wind Waker's performance is a great example of going "too new," in that the Zelda fanbase at the time bemoaned the drastic change in art direction after the Zelda Gamecube tech demo had shown an aesthetic that was both impressive and true to the style present in previous titles. It's petty, but that's what happened.

This isn't just about sales. Because sales are the result, not the cause. We have to look at the environment around these games. Sales don't just HAPPEN, they're the result of a myriad of factors which need to be taken into account on a case-by-case basis.

 

[wulf3n]

Any argument that uses "gamer" as a single demographic is fundamentally flawed. When you begin a sentence with "Gamers want" you've lost all credibility.

 

[Zontar]

I really hope this "Wii U" trilogy he's doing (how the hell it went from being a two-parter to a trilogy is a question in and of itself) isn't a sign of a general drop in quality. Game Theory used to be about fun jokes that displayed glorified fan-theories that where typically on par with the Pokémon Wars in terms of how credible they where. Now, though, he seems to be taking it more seriously and it seems to be drifting away from "Theory" and more into "theory" (by which I mean from the casual parlance to empirical meaning).

OT: I really think there is a time and a place for innovation. Innovation for innovation's sake is an empty pursuit. Innovation for the sake of finding new ways to make games fun, engaging, tell a good story or just being a way to kill a few hours enjoyably.

Like in Telltale's Walking Dead or Dark Souls, innovation doesn't need to be the most noticeable thing about a game, it just needs to reinforce what is there and be a functioning part of the machine.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yeah, yeah, I know...a lot of people hate his voice/delivery, but what about the points that he brings up?

I enjoy GT's delivery. I think it's fun. However, I also think he's talking out his ass on this one.

Is he just playing with numbers to support his notion?

Yes. Well, maybe. It could simply be his sin is not deception but laziness. The point I would counter with is that we do see games which have seen declines, such as Gears of War or Halo, and those aren't minor series, either. Oh, and Ghosts is still running a deficit even compared to last year, though it's available to more users (and it's been on sale so many times). Could be a fluke or it could be the beginning of a downturn. The problem is, you can pull a few small examples to support any point you want to make, but nobody's actually studied the overall data to derive a real pattern.

Or is he onto something here that we're all just a fickle bunch of players (as a collective community) who claim we want new and innovative ideas but when it comes to sales we all really just want to stick with what's been done before and tweaked just a bit?

There are multiple problems with his argument.

-Failure to support any given new idea doesn't mean we don't truly want innovation.

To use a political analogy: Just because I'm open to a black President doesn't mean I think just any black person should be President.

In fact, the fanbase for the Wii should indicate otherwise, though this could be considered another rule by exception if you tried to go the other way with it.

-Failure to reject the norm doesn't mean we don't truly want innovation.

Often times, in an industry with limited choice, people still choose until provided a better choice. This is a flaw with consumers. Hell, it's a flaw with people. How many people vote Democrat or Republican just because they don't wish to "throw their vote away?"

-Failure to support bad ideas doesn't mean we don't truly want innovation.

GT went and ripped the Wii U an new one, so why are we in the wrong for not adopting it as consumers?

-Misuse of innovation in the industry and by GT.

Nintendo's big innovation was LET'S IMITATE TABLETS!!!!!! which is not really innovation. But in this industry, we often praise people for copying ideas. That's stagnant in itself.

-One can want old and new.

I like my beat 'em ups and twin stick shooters and have every iteration of MTG DOTP. I also want an influx of new brands, new ideas, new games, new stories, new mechanics. But if those new things are bad, it goes back to the prior thing. Case in point: bringing an open world to a game series could be a good idea or a horrible one. Just because you call out a horrible one doesn't mean you're against change.

Batman: Arkham X and Amazing Spider-Man both use similar stealth mechanics. In one case, it's done well. It's fun. It deserves praise. In the other, it kinda sucks. Now, let me ask: is the problem with the idea, or the exceution? Because I'd say it's the execution. Also, Batman got huge praise when Asylum hit, and huger praise when City hit. When Origins hit, and it was more of the same we'd come to expect? Not so much. And the series dropped from almost 10 million sales to under 4 million. Fluke? Pattern? Only the Watcher knows.

-It's not our job to know what we want. It's not our job to know how to make a good game.

Seriously, there's a reason game makers are professionals. They're supposed to be able to market their ideas to us. When companies lash out at us for this reason, it's stupid because it means they're bad at their jobs and pissed that we're not doing them.

I mean, I've entertained fantasies about game design, and I bet a lot of people have. But even that's a pipe dream.

Nintendo is supposed to know how to get us to buy stuff. It's worse with Nintendo, because they have a rep for being savvy, though before the Wii their console sales had been declining for generations. Nintendo's approach almost seems like a slot machine, just cranking things out hoping for a jackpot. If Nintendo can't make its products viable, it's not our fault. It's theirs.

-Reliance on correlation fallacies.

"These games just happen to be the ones that sold, and they are the safe ones, so nobody likes innovation! Let's ignore any other possible context!"

An argument so terrible it should be made while writing crazily on a chalkboard and wearing a tinfoil hat.

Additionally, people tend to praise indie titles for various reasons, but when you look a bit further into it you find that many of the indie titles which gain a lot of traction are the ones that use long-established mechanics and maybe throw in an extra gameplay technique or two, or maybe have a unique method of presentation. Things like Braid, Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Isaac, Bastion, FTL, FEZ, Guacamelee, Legend of Grimrock, Mark of the Ninja, Torchlight II, Trine 2, they're all good games, but when you really examine them they're not doing anything "new" and in some cases they mostly become recognized simply because they're reusing things which used to be found in many games and haven't for the past few years.

And when people describe them, they are routinely referred to as "retro." Yup. They're basically defined by their unoriginal nature.

I love Matt Patt and everything, and I agree that the numbers don't lie and that if you want to show you want innovation you need to speak with your wallet.

He just demonstrated how numbers don't lie, but you can use numbers to lie.

It's a good thing to note that Mathew Patrick (the creator of the video) has never taken his Game Theory show too seriously, so it's best to take whatever he says with a grain of salt.

Yes, but for someone who has such a love of math and statistics, I'd expect him to give a crap that he butchered them.

I always take him with a grain of salt, but he's been mostly solid on factual concepts before. In this one, he was flat-out dishonest or too lazy to give a crap. Maybe there's an inverse correlation between information and sponsorship?

 

[Pr0]

The critical flaw in this entire argument is ignoring market growth as a factor for increased sales as compared to simply establishing that "increased sales means gamers must not like innovation".

Simple facts are the market demographic of games has changed substantially over the last 20 years. The titles selling out 8 - 12m copies per franchise aren't doing it because its "what gamers want" but its because its whats available.

Think of it like this, if you want bread, but all the store has is white bread, you're going to buy white bread...even if you'd prefer a nice slice of potato bread instead. Its just how things go. And the larger the market is and the larger the demand is, if you ONLY supply that demand with white bread, the market customers will buy it because its all thats available and eventually the numbers simply establish that white bread must be more popular than any other kind of bread because...obviously, everyone buys it.

The few cases of "true innovation" in the gaming industry have generally been rewarded but many of these cases were rewarded outside of the general industry standards. Mojang is a direct an immediate example of a nice loaf of 7 grain wheat in the middle of a shelf of white bread. It was innovative, independent and did so well that companies with budgets larger than the GDP of some mid sized industrial nations have been trying to capture its lightning in a bottle a second time.

Simple facts are is gamers buy things because gamers want a game to play. Its not because we don't like innovation, nor do we want it, or a case of not being able to appreciate it when we do see it. But there is innovating to be innovative and different and there is trying hard to be innovative but not really being innovative at all...which a lot of this video is based on attempting to establish that "innovative" titles didn't sell well....except that most of the titles listed as examples weren't innovative in the first place, except perhaps as a descriptive adjective used in their marketing.

Gamers do want innovation, but we want innovation IN our games, not in how we interact with our games (WiiU Motion Controls...the goddamn Kinect...that kind of crap). We want games to break new ground and engage our brains and creativity in new and different ways...which largely doesn't happen because with the size of the market that continues to be willing to buy any bread they can get its simply easier for the game industry to keep shitting out the loaves of the cheapest bread they can make and guarantee a return on, rather than to truly diversify to meet the tastes and demands of a very diverse market base....which from a business stand point makes complete sense.

But to turn that around and say its the gamers fault is more or less ludricrous click bait designed to boost a Youtube channel for CPM revenue and partnership deals...much like this very same Youtuber's video about Pewdiepie was for. Its click bait, linking it here for "intelligent discussion" amongst the Escapists is just feeding the click bait and...yeah, congrats, you just got trolled by a Youtube channel....except you made the guy about three fiddy in the process.

 

[Callate]

Wow. The creator of that video is a smug jerk.

A smug, oversimplifying, and significantly incorrect jerk, at that.

Yeah, it's the sequels that always do better. That's why Sonic the Hedgehog has... Aww...
That's why Red Faction... Aww...
Why Silent Hill...

...I can go on...

He ignores a large number of points: Super Mario Bros. was bundled with most NESs sold, and the spikes seen in Madden sales coincidentally seem to roughly overlap with the introduction of new consoles. Resident Evil had it's biggest spike when it pulled away from what it had done before with RE 4, and by RE 6 that spike has started to diminish as they do what they have before, only more so. Madden sales have actually been in decline for some time (coincidentally, the author's chart cuts off in 2006.)

And then there's a little game called Minecraft that has sold more than Madden has in its last seven years combined.

So, yeah, he's wrong, and he's a jerk about it; frustratingly, there's a point to be made here, but he end-runs around it in trying to force the audience to swallow his misleading hypothesis.

Innovation is crucial to the industry. It drives the industry forward. Without innovation, we don't get those games that everyone is imitating for the next decade. And yes, gamers want innovation; they're not lying about that.

But real innovation, meaningful innovation, successful innovation- it's not something that can be forced. You can't just turn a tap and say "Forces of creativity and imagination, GO!" You can't throw money at it; you can't even throw manpower at it. Six thousand people working for your company doesn't guarantee one Shigeru Miyamoto, one Sid Meier, one Peter Molyneux.

At best, you can create an atmosphere where people have the freedom and confidence to work on passion projects and hope for the best.

But to say "Gamers don't want innovation" suggests the witless kind of false insight that thinks gaming is encapsulated by only a decade or so (that the author has been gaming). Chances are there would be no Final Fantasy without Akalabeth and Ultima, no Tomb Raider without Pitfall, no Call of Duty without Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. All notably successful games in their own times. Nintendo passed on innovation when they gave up on partnering with Sony, so instead the Playstation helped make optical media mainstream and took over the video game market. The Wii put motion controls over sheer horsepower and ended up in millions of homes, even if the follow-through on software was ultimately lacking.

Not every innovation, critically acclaimed or not, is going to be greeted with public adoration and financial awards. But without innovation, every franchise will eventually fail. Even the all-mighty Call of Duty seems to reflect this.