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[machemachete]

Seeing how they stayed long time with CS 1.6 , how they can't handle new controllers(like WiiU pad and how to aim with the NDS FPS), even if most of them have their console online all the time but protest against it(¿?) and how the Wiimote(the best controller ever made) failed hard between "gamers" I would say yes.

Those guys just can't move forward.

 

[oni-link]

AAA mass-marketed games still have the biggest OTs on GAF. We can complain about bullshots, downgrades, design-by-committee, annual rehashes in 20 different threads. Most of us still buy these games though, and still complain...

Lack of innovation doesn't mean lack of quality

The Call of Duty games don't do that much new each year, and the same goes for stuff like Assassin's Creed, but in general they're not bad games

They just don't innovate that often, which in those particular cases means the quality does seem to go down because it all feels so familiar

But even Zelda (The 3D ones anyway) all follow a very basic formula for the most part, they do try something different in most games, but if you played all the 3D Zelda games back to one, they would feel samey as well

 

[orthodoxy1095]

But we're not talking about individuals. We're talking about overall sales. We're talking about how gamers taken as a group actually support innovative games with their money relative to more iterative games. The expression of mutual exclusivity is not unnecessary, because (with a big studio at least) sales govern decisions on which studios survive, which projects get greenlighted, which titles get sequels.

But talking about "gamers" as a group is just nonsense. It's truly a stupid and useless label. Who are we even talking about? Are we talking about gaming enthusiasts? Because that could make for an interesting conversation. Or are we just lumping in every casual consumer who happens to play video games? Because there's a huge difference. One of my buddies at college is a casual gamer, of course he spends money on iterative titles. He likes Battlefield and FIFA, and that's all he really cares about playing. I've never heard him complain about the lack of innovation. He just buys what he likes, because he only devotes a very limited amount of time in gaming. He has neither the time nor the money to be throwing at games that are supposedly "innovative" (another stupid and useless label). He doesn't "hate" innovation, he is merely apathetic to it. That's really how most people are.

 

[Gxgear]

The entire video uses sales as the basis for its argument, when the reality is the gaming enthusiasts only account for a tiny fraction of the entire gaming audience.

 

[Chaos17]

AAA mass-marketed games still have the biggest OTs on GAF. We can complain about bullshots, downgrades, design-by-committee, annual rehashes in 20 different threads. Most of us still buy these games though, and still complain...

Burn me if I buy Dragon age 4, please.

 

[nel e nel]

I think this article is relevant:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/the-shazam-effect/382237/

While it's about music, I think some of the underlying psychology is the same:

Now that the Billboard rankings are a more accurate reflection of what people buy and play, songs stay on the charts much longer. The 10 songs that have spent the most time on the Hot 100 were all released after 1991, when Billboard started using point-of-sale data—and seven were released after the Hot 100 began including digital sales, in 2005. “It turns out that we just want to listen to the same songs over and over again,” Pietroluongo told me.

“Things that are familiar are comforting, particularly when you are feeling anxious,” Norbert Schwarz, a psychology professor at the University of Southern California, who studies fluency, told me. “When you’re in a bad mood, you want to see your old friends. You want to eat comfort food. I think this maps onto a lot of media consumption. When you’re stressed out, you don’t want to put on a new movie or a challenging piece of music. You want the old and familiar.”

Generally speaking, yes, we pretty much do want the same thing over and over again.

 

[Fbh]

umm I bought Okami, Ico and Valkyria Chronicles.

Anyway, I think the video tries to show the hypocrisy of gamers but honestly, people on online forums and boards and the ones that visit something like Kotaku, Eurogamer or IGN daily are far from representing the majority of videogame consumers. Hell, 3 out of every 5 people that I know that play videogames either play some Moba or have a console to exclusively play Battlefield, Cod and FIFA

It's the equivlent of going to a music enthusiast forum and saying "Well guys I keep hearing you say that modern music isn't good but it's our fault because Tailor Swift had the best selling album of 2014 in a list that also includes Beyoncé and One Direction so stop complaining because we clearly don't want better music"

 

[AESplusF]

Speak for yourself OP, I thrive on weird.
I get what you're saying though, more people have to vote with their wallets and actually stick up for their principles.

 

[Hibiki Kurosawa]

I know, I was agreeing with you/backing up your point

Sorry if that wasn't clear

Ah, gotchya.

 

[Avari]

As others have pointed out you can never claim gamers want anything as a monolithic group. Not all gamers want innovative games - many just want the comforts of the franchises they enjoy. Those who want and request innovative games will likely support hose who make quality innovative games. I think the industry may have to adjust it's expectations - very very few games are going to sell games in GTA or CoD numbers.

 

[visiblemode]

Sorry but, I disagree, strongly.

The general game buying public buys what's familiar.

Sequels rule the world.

Game publishers are afraid of taking chances on games that aren't sure bets. Games that sell millions of units are sometimes being called failures at this point

So, the question is, do gamers hate innovation or do publishers never iterate on games that don't blow the roof off the the sales charts?

Without iteration, franchises can't get footholds and massive sales are unattainable.

This isn't a fear/distaste of the innovation contained in these new ips, it's a lack of awareness they exist. It's tiny marketing budgets and the realities of franchise momentum.

Plus, there is the question of who a gamer is. Parents know the big franchises and grab them up at xmas. Those purchases aren't being made by the end user.

Some would also argue that the massive sellers also appeal to "casuals" so therefore might claim, that sales at the extreme are not a valid metric for a discussion about gamer's tastes. This is a bit, of a gray area, personally.

 

[Corronchilejano]

But even Zelda (The 3D ones anyway) all follow a very basic formula for the most part, they do try something different in most games, but if you played all the 3D Zelda games back to one, they would feel samey as well

The most "samey" ones (Skyward Sword, Twilight Princess) are the best selling ones.

 

[staticneuron]

I watched most of it. (it was terrible) The biggest problem I still have is that he says "you" and "we" as if this applies to everyone.

Yes, the games with the biggest (marketing!) budget sell the most and take the least risks, but I don't see how that is surprising or worrying. They're supposed to sell to "everyone" and you can't do that by doing something completely new and crazy. That's why it's called "mainstream". There are games with (ideally) smaller budgets that are innovative and sell well enough to be successful for the creators. I see no problem here.

That the media and the hardcore forums are asking for innovation and new experiences but the general public isn't, isn't new or exclusive to videogames.

umm I bought Okami, Ico and Valkyria Chronicles.

Anyway, I think the video tries to show the hypocrisy of gamers but honestly, people on online forums and boards and the ones that visit something like Kotaku, Eurogamer or IGN daily are far from representing the majority of videogame consumers. Hell, 3 out of every 5 people that I know that play videogames either play some Moba or have a console to exclusively play Battlefield, Cod and FIFA

It's the equivlent of going to a music enthusiast forum and saying "Well guys I keep hering you say that modern music isn't good but it's our fault because Tailor Swift had the best selling album of 2014 in a list that also includes Beyoncé and One Direction so stop complaining because we clearly don't want better music"

These posts sum up my opinions on this up very nicely.

 

[Sownic]

Fast Food Games

Doctor told me only once a week

 

[Knox]

Video games are expensive. People are more likely to buy something where they pretty much know what they're getting, or if the marketing has convinced them that it's a quality product. And for publishers to spend big money on marketing the game has to be pretty safe to begin with, something like Watch Dogs.

 

[Htown]

Nah, gamers love innovation.

Unless it involves playing games with something other than analog sticks and face buttons.

 

[AgeEighty]

But talking about "gamers" as a group is just nonsense. It's truly a stupid and useless label. Who are we even talking about? Are we talking about gaming enthusiasts? Because that could make for an interesting conversation. Or are we just lumping in every casual consumer who happens to play video games? Because there's a huge difference.

It's not nonsense at all. You're looking at this question from the user's perspective. At that level, yes, gamers are all special unique snowflakes with eclectic and varied tastes. I'm looking at it from the creator's perspective. And to a creator, who just wants their game to sell as well as possible because they are a business, they do look at gamers as a collective.

You don't ever see game companies reporting their financial results separated by what "enthusiast gamers" bought vs. what everyone else bought; Wall Street doesn't care. Their money is the same. A game sells well or it doesn't, and the total sales represent gamers as a whole. So, from a business viewpoint, it's perfectly valid to lump gamers together.

 

[orthodoxy1095]

It's not nonsense at all. You're looking at this question from the user's perspective. At that level, yes, gamers are all special unique snowflakes with eclectic and varied tastes. I'm looking at it from the creator's perspective. And to a creator, who just wants their game to sell as well as possible because they are a business, they do look at gamers as a collective.

You don't ever see game companies reporting their financial results separated by what "enthusiast gamers" bought vs. what everyone else bought; Wall Street doesn't care. Their money is the same. A game sells well or it doesn't, and the total sales represent gamers as a whole. So, from a business viewpoint, it's perfectly valid to lump gamers together.

But this is ignoring the fact that many games and development teams are trying to appeal to specific niches. They're happy if it gets mainstream, sure.

When we're talking about innovation, it becomes borderline moronic to say "gamers hate innovation." No, they're apathetic to innovation. What people want is familiarity, because most of them are just looking for something casual. Iteration in gaming isn't so much about the avoidance of innovation.

 

[Sownic]

You don't ever see game companies reporting their financial results separated by what "enthusiast gamers" bought vs. what everyone else bought;

they should! "everyone else" have no patience. 2 bad games in the series and they're gone... playing iphone games or facebook games or no games at all. Enthusiasts are loyal customers ans spend the most money possible. Industry should look at the enthusiast. If they're gone, there is nothing left except, scorched earth. We are the soil, they are the seeds.

 

[AgeEighty]

But this is ignoring the fact that many games and development teams are trying to appeal to specific niches. They're happy if it gets mainstream, sure.

You're talking about something else: games within existing genres that appeal to certain subsets of gamers. But the actual topic is games that do new things, that have no predefined niche.

When we're talking about innovation, it becomes borderline moronic to say "gamers hate innovation." No, they're apathetic to innovation.

Not in discussion they aren't. That's the point. People sneer at games that make only minor changes vs. previous iterations, they praise games that "do something new" and decry a lack of originality in games. But when it comes to actually paying for games, this rhetoric does not line up with their spending habits... again, as a group.

 

[orthodoxy1095]

People sneer at games that make only minor changes vs. previous iterations, they praise games that "do something new" and decry a lack of originality in games. But when it comes to actually paying for games, this rhetoric does not line up with their spending habits... again, as a group.

But this is where mixing up terms and generalizations gets confusing. "People" who? Yes, gaming enthusiasts sneer at iterative games. You think the general population sneers at iterative games? I don't think they do. I don't see any meaningful conclusion to be drawn from taking our rhetoric (as enthusiasts) as a small group of enthusiasts and then extrapolating it to the bigger group of "gamers" and their spending habits.

 

[Dremark]

changing minor features in a sequel isn't innovation.

Adding new features can be innovative, depending on what they are.

New IP doesn't necessarily mean it's innovative and the reverse is just as true.

 

[DidntKnowJack]

We crave innovation. But the people who only buy 2 or 3 blockbuster games a year do not. There are more of them than there are of us.

Pointed out already, but its true.

 

[Dremark]

I beg of you: watch that video and you'll understand. Gamers like sequels but not so much innovation. Of course there's innovation here and there that works!

Being at home now glancing at the video I've seen it before. He doesn't actually show any real evidence that gamers hate innovation, he just trots out sales figures and tries to correlate them.

People generally like new innovative features and games that do them well often go down as classics. On the other hand there are a lot of factors that ultimately lead to sales and viewing sales in a vacuum, ignoring everything else and drawing conclusions from it can show you a lot of what you want to see if you spin it the right way.

 

[Steel]

The entire video uses sales as the basis for its argument, when the reality is the gaming enthusiasts only account for a tiny fraction of the entire gaming audience.

Not to mention innovative games with a budget behind them to push sales rarely happen. You could easily cite minecraft as a counter example to the case that innovation doesn't sell, as well. Budget, sales, and innovation have a correlation in any industry, unfortunately. Bigger the budget, the greater the advertising, the greater the sales. The bigger the budget, the less risk-taking there is, so less innovation. You occasionally have exceptions that do a new thing and set the market on fire at a low budget like minecraft, but people generally follow what's advertised. It has little to do with the audience.

 

[Ty4on]

In europe we don´t mind innovation.

Right. That's why three of the last four generations were dominated by the PS1, PS2, and PS4 while the PS3 dominated the 360 despite the much lower price and bigger game library at the start. Not to mention Nintendo at one point did so well they overpriced in many markets.

I feel Europe by far is the most ingrained in habits.

 

[Phediuk]

I'm the opposite, sequels bore me tbqh. Once I've played one entry in a franchise I'm typically not interested in further games unless there's drastic changes.

 

[Hahs]

AAA mass-marketed games still have the biggest OTs on GAF. We can complain about bullshots, downgrades, design-by-committee, annual rehashes in 20 different threads. Most of us still buy these games though, and still complain...

We work with what we're given - so to speak. And what we're given are games/products; each made up of the initial constituents of our consensus/perception of said products. It's a paradox actually, because the consumer sets the public, qualifying tone of a product, and like a text-book the publisher capitalizes on that tone. It's like a balancing act - the slightest touch in the wrong area and whole thing could come toppling down; what company wants to risk that?

To reiterate a point in a previous post in this thread - The industry needs a maverick - a risk taker to break up the monotony, and the shoes are empty.

 

[batrush]

Refinement > innovation.

 

[AgeEighty]

But this is where mixing up terms and generalizations gets confusing. "People" who? Yes, gaming enthusiasts sneer at iterative games. You think the general population sneers at iterative games? I don't think they do. I don't see any meaningful conclusion to be drawn from taking our rhetoric (as enthusiasts) as a small group of enthusiasts and then extrapolating it to the bigger group of "gamers" and their spending habits.

Well first of all, classifying gamers as "enthusiasts" and "non-enthusiasts" in such a binary fashion is misguided. It's a spectrum. Would you call everyone who visits GAF an enthusiast? Ah, but as you've no doubt witnessed, even visitors to GAF run the gamut in terms of their dedication to games. So, just like you have people whom you would call enthusiasts who aren't as concerned with iterative games, you have people you wouldn't call enthusiasts who are. In fact, some of those people may not be enthusiast gamers for the very reason that mass marketed games have become so iterative.

Second, as I already said in my last post, even if you restrict the discussion to only enthusiast gamers, you still have people saying one thing and doing another. Not even enthusiast gamers as a group shape their buying habits commensurate with the sum of their rhetoric regarding originality vs. repetitiveness.

 

[4Tran]

Well first of all, classifying gamers as "enthusiasts" and "non-enthusiasts" in such a binary fashion is misguided. It's a spectrum. Would you call everyone who visits GAF an enthusiast? Ah, but as you've no doubt witnessed, even visitors to GAF run the gamut in terms of their dedication to games. So, just like you have people whom you would call enthusiasts who aren't as concerned with iterative games, you have people you wouldn't call enthusiasts who are. In fact, some of those people may not be enthusiast gamers for the very reason that mass marketed games have become so iterative.

Precisely. There's such a wide spectrum of people who like different things in games that's it's basically impossible to generalize about the entire population's tastes. What's going to appeal to a AAA gamer is going to be different from a nostalgic PC gamer, from a Nintendo fan, from a competitive MOBA gamer, from a mobile game player and so on. Even if a particular gamer doesn't like a new feature or genre or control method doesn't mean that he dislikes innovation - because liking innovation doesn't mean automatically liking all new things. About the only correct statement of the sort would be "most of the popular game mechanics have already been discovered", but even that may not be true as new concepts like VR come to the forefront.

 

[AyaisMUsikWhore]

Nah, we're cool with it if it's well done.

But some are still buying the same stuff when they are not well done so......How does this invalidate what OP is saying?

 

[AgeEighty]

Precisely. There's such a wide spectrum of people who like different things in games that's it's basically impossible to generalize about the entire population's tastes. What's going to appeal to a AAA gamer is going to be different from a nostalgic PC gamer, from a Nintendo fan, from a competitive MOBA gamer, from a mobile game player and so on. Even if a particular gamer doesn't like a new feature or genre or control method doesn't mean that he dislikes innovation - because liking innovation doesn't mean automatically liking all new things. About the only correct statement of the sort would be "most of the popular game mechanics have already been discovered", but even that may not be true as new concepts like VR come to the forefront.

I agree that innovation comes in many forms. But in a bigger picture view of things it's still true that, taken as an average of all of this, many gamers say they want new experiences more than they actually prove willing to pay for. This occurs pretty uniformly within each of those categories you mentioned; after all, Nintendo's riskier games often sell the least, and while the PC is a hotbed of indie experimentation, it's rare that any of those titles really break out.

I think what's accurate is not that gamers taken as a whole "dislike" innovation, but that they aren't as willing to spend money to take risks on innovation as they pretend to be.

 

[4Tran]

I agree that innovation comes in many forms. But in a bigger picture view of things it's still true that, taken as an average of all of this, many gamers say they want new experiences more than they actually prove willing to pay for. This occurs pretty uniformly within each of those categories you mentioned; after all, Nintendo's riskier games often sell the least, and while the PC is a hotbed of indie experimentation, it's rare that any of those titles really break out.

I think what's accurate is not that gamers taken as a whole "dislike" innovation, but that they aren't as willing to spend money to take risks on innovation as they pretend to be.

I agree that people are generally less open to innovation than they claim. "Innovation" has a lot of positive connotations, and so people will want to think that they are associated with liking it. And as a nebulous term, it can be imagined as the ideal of anything one can imagine. However, when a new idea is made concrete, it may not match what people imagine and see a lot more negatives from it. It's the same phenomenon that makes a generic political candidate more appealing than a specific candidate.

This isn't really what this thread is about though, and it's certainly not what my post was about. Your point about wholly innovative games being less well received than their older brethren isn't much of an observation because new games obviously haven't had a chance to build a fanbase yet and they usually don't have the kind of marketing push that the really big titles rely on. And when a new title really is thought of as innovative, and gets some publicity, it can do quite well (Antichamber, Journey, and so on). It's also important to not conflate "innovative" with "new". New ideas aren't always innovative, and most of them should be expected to fail to perform.

 

[More_Badass]

And when a new title really is thought of as innovative, and gets some publicity, it can do quite well (Antichamber, Journey, and so on). It's also important to not conflate "innovative" with "new". New ideas aren't always innovative, and most of them should be expected to fail to perform.

Wasn't there some weird FPS where you shoot portals instead of bullets? Seemed like a pretty innovative mechanic, I think it got a sequel too.

 

[Zolo]

I always like seeing new games that do different things, but if I love certain types of games, I also generally enjoy games like it.

 

[Firelord Chargrilled]

I have always been a FPS player since CS
But I'm starting to play all kinds of different shit so I love innovation ?

 

[MikeBreezy92]

The same shit happens in Movies, Music, TV, etc. etc. Its not even really an issue either it just...is.

Welcome Mass Media...

 

[old manatee]

I like fun and/or interesting games. If they are innovative, awesome. If they are a refinement of what has come before, awesome.

 

[BeforeU]

Yup. Every small change and we gotta bitch about it.

The fact that same old shit like COD, Assasins, Sports games sells millions and millions every year is a fact.

 

[Mael]

Did I just see chartz numbers in that vid?

 

[jimi_dini]

don't do that much new each year, and the same goes for stuff like Assassin's Creed, but in general they're not bad games

A pseudo platformer, that has no jump button, but instead only a terrible non-properly-working auto-jump, is literally a bad game. It's that simple.

CoD may be crap, but at least they are somewhat delivering 60 fps and I guess controls work properly. So at least from a technical perspective they aren't incompetently made. However AssCreed games can't even deliver on stable 30 fps. I mean have you played any of them on last generation consoles? Texture resolution was bad. Texture + Geometry pop-in was bad. Framerate was bad. V'Sync was horrible. From a technical perspective they are a mess already, I don't even have to start with the game-design itself.

AssCreed games are the definition of bad games. What's even worse is that Ubisoft never really improved them. They just added pointless crap on top instead of fixing the flaws and people ate it up. That never made sense to me.

I guess lots of people like to hold down 2 buttons and push forward, when "awesome" stuff happens (at a terrible framerate). /shrug

Did Ubisoft at least fix the jump button for that Unity game? I mean even if they did that, how many games did they release before that? 10? 20?

 

[justjustin]

I really don't think so. If we hated innovation we'd still be playing Pong, but instead we're playing cutting-edge, multi-million dollar masterpieces and it's never been easier for people to implement their ideas with the range of dev tools available today.

 

[Entryhazard]

I just don't mind more of the same per se

 

[More_Badass]

A pseudo platformer, that has no jump button, but instead only a terrible non-properly-working auto-jump, is literally a bad game. It's that simple.

Yeah, there's a reason most people wouldnt include Assassins Creed in a list of platformers. Just because the game has traversal mechanics doesn't make it a platformer. The climbing is a means to end.

If you were considering AC a platformer, compared to other platformers, it's poor. But it's not a platformer. It's an action adventure where one set of mechanics is focused on traversal. Would you call Dishonored a pseudo platformer because you jump across buildings and mantle onto rooftops?

 

[4Tran]

Yeah, there's a reason most people wouldnt include Assassins Creed in a list of platformers. Just because the game has traversal mechanics doesn't make it a platformer. The climbing is a means to end.

If you were considering AC a platformer, compared to other platformers, it's poor. But it's not a platformer. It's an action adventure where one set of mechanics is focused on traversal. Would you call Dishonored a pseudo platformer because you jump across buildings and mantle onto rooftops?

I don't even play the Assassin's Creed games, but it's obvious that it's no more a platformer than the Tribes or Borderlands games. A true third person platformer hybrid would look more like the Alice games.

 

[li bur]

Well, us gamers also didn't like quantum break, the order 1886, and any other derivatives cover based tps that came out since gears.

 

[Mandoric]

I'd argue the general populace (who, unfortunately, drive the industry these days) doesn't value innovation on the whole.

If you're talking to GAF, though, I'd disagree with you there.

I'd flip it the other way. The average GAF user is extremely devoted to the "unique" and "best value" console ecosystem long after it's become PC ports on PC hardware with a familiar logo on the front, joins in meltdown threads about how childrens' flash games are too hard because he can't beat them first try, may have once tried a MOBA for five minutes before being flamed and quitting or Minecraft for five minutes to see what his son was up to, but will never so much as start up one of those glorified slot machines on his phone (until it uses old Final Fantasy sprites, at least.)

This isn't necessarily a conservativism in the proper sense, though, as many of the things it rejects are commonplace traditional elements of gaming. It's more the behavior of someone old enough to have settled into an identity, and subconsciously cares more about ~belonging~ in a demographic than about any measurable factor.

This is a problem in my industry, too, and it won't really change until the universalized label of "gamer" - something brought to the forefront by Sony's eight-digit marketing budgets in the '90s and set in stone by Microsoft's ten-digit ones in the '00s - is replaced by smaller, more focused niches.

 

[Skyzard]

Sounds like a lazy dev to me

 

[curiouscharles]

but i love titanfall...