RJ 17 said:
Or at least that's the notion put forth in the most recent episode of Game Theory:
Yeah, yeah, I know...a lot of people hate his voice/delivery, but what about the points that he brings up? Is he just playing with numbers to support his notion? 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?
Two things need to be understood before we can actually discuss why this man is wrong. First, what innovation actually is. Second, the difference between a core gamer and a casual gamer (in the only useful way it has ever been expressed to me.) The ideas are closely connected.
"Innovation" in a vacuum rarely works out. When what you are trying to do is completely reinvent something you will almost always end up with a steaming pile of shit. Virtually every good game takes an established idea and does something with that idea. They might modify, add, take away from or outright reject parts of that idea, but you have to start with something. If you don't you end up either doing something that someone else has done before or doing something that is just bad. Good musicians don't throw out all of music theory because they want to sound different.
Quick aside: Every once in a while a developer, usually an indie, will stumble onto a truly new and unique concept that does work. But these things are always very basic execution on a very basic idea. That can work. But refined complex ideas do not spring from nothing. SMB3 could not have been made without the experience of SMB.
Anyway, games that are both good and innovative are usually new twists on an old idea. FTL, for example, takes the basic theory of a Procedural Death Labyrinth* and completely transforms the mechanics through which those ideas are applied. Something new, unique, and excellent is formed. That is innovation. This is what core gamers actually want. We don't want sparkly shallow novelty, we want solid and deep experiences that bring new ideas to the table. We don't want random leaps into the unknown and untested, we want measured and consistent progress. We are connoisseurs of the art. Core gamers want innovation. We want something interesting we can truly sink our teeth into.
Casual gamers are different. Casual gamers tend to the extremes: More of the same and novelty. They are not connoisseurs and there is nothing wrong with that. These people are why COD, Madden, and the Wii sell so much. They want their reliable consistent experience with minor quality of life improvements and they want new shiny toys to play with. They want their one deep reliable to fall back on and novelty to wow and surprise them. It doesn't matter of the novelty is shallow, they wont stick with it that long anyway.
Quick aside 2: There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a casual gamer. They are a good thing. Just because they do not share our same enthusiasm does not mean they are not a positive force in the industry. I am a strong proponent of the idea that the game industry would be significantly worse off without the large casual market. But I am not going to go into that here. Just know we are all casuals to some degree. My personal dip into casual is my undying love of Mario.
This man is throwing out statistics without actually understanding what they mean. His assumption that 2D Mario of all things is a core gamer franchise is laughable. If ever there was a casual franchise it is 2D Mario. And I say that as a huge lover of Mario. It is the epitome of old reliable. On the other side, Mario Party is practically novelty given form and compressed into a plastic disc. These things appeal to the casual gamer. And the thing about the casual gamer is that there are a hell of a lot more of them than us, and their numbers are rising.
Basically, this man has completely ignored the effect of the casual gamer. The casual market has a lot more buying power than the core market, but the core market makes far more noise. It is exactly like calling the "high art" music connoisseurs hypocrites because people keep on buying lady gaga's new hit single. We are all gamers, but there is a big difference between the casual and the core gamer in our motivations.
And now we bring this all back to the Wii U's poor sales.
The Wii was not innovative. We thought it was going to be and it was sold to us on that idea but it turned out to be novelty pretending to be innovation. I truly believe that Nintendo thought motion controls were innovative, but they were wrong. The Wii sold like crazy because it was novelty in a box and it happened to catch the public eye at just the right time. The core all got it because Nintendo were the masters of the art. They had gamer cred. We trusted them.
8 years later the Wii U is selling crappy because the novelty has worn off and the casual has left. Without that massive causal market all that is left is the core gamer. But Nintendo's reputation has been destroyed. They are now known as the game company that sells only novelty and the old reliable. And we don't want that. We want innovation. So very few people purchased the Wii U. Nintendo is doing their best to repair that reputation, but I really don't know if it will be enough.
Basically, this guy is exactly wrong. He could not have gotten it more wrong if he had done it on purpose.
*Procedural Death Labyrinth - The term rougelike is not descriptive of the genre so many are trying to change the name in the mind of the general gamer public. The new purposed name is "Procedural Death Labyrinth" for being descriptive and awesome.
