Innovation is Overrated

A few days ago I found an article on PC Gamer about how the lead writer of Kingdom Come: Deliverance talked about how he rated The Outer Worlds 2 at a 7 because it doesn’t “innovate” in the RPG space. But what does innovation really mean? Is it really a problem that it doesn’t truly innovate and introduce new mechanics that have never before been seen in an RPG of it’s ilk (or whatever genre the game is)? Or, is it just that innovation in the games industry has not just slowed down in the non-indie space, but is often overrated as a need entirely?

Today I intend to cover these topics. I intend to examine how I genuinely think innovation often just isn’t needed to make a good game. That what really matters is refinement, not introduction or creation of something entirely new to the space or the industry as a whole.

What counts as innovation?

This is a question that I’ve been thinking about a ton recently because of my own game that I am making as you read this. It’s similar to Balatro and I keep thinking “Am I making something new enough? Is this different enough? Or are people simply going to say it’s just Balatro with slight alterations and a different main mechanic?”. The article I referenced above only drove this thought deeper into my skull. It’s a frustrating thing as a game developer to think of innovative game mechanics. I’d actually say that it’s incredibly rare to actually think of one, especially since the industry has started to stagnate.

I’ve been having this conversation with my partner a lot as they are the person I bounce ideas off of for my game. I keep asking them the questions I had and if I need to innovate more. Then I asked them what they think innovation is. They personally think that innovation can be as simple as taking a game mechanic from a different genre and introducing it to a new one. At the same time, they have talked about how the industry as a whole expects innovation to be something more akin to Katamari Damacy, creating something wholely and entirely new. I agree with them completely. Yet, I find myself frustrated with the latter idea. That’s my focus here and when I reference innovating that’s what I’m talking about.

The best games often don’t make things that are new, they just refine.

Okay, this one is gonna be a bit of a doozy for people who like Tears of the Kingdom but, honestly, it doesn’t really do anything new. New to a Zelda game, sure. But not really...new. It basically takes the world from Breath of the wild, cranks the damage of the enemies up, introduces a couple new powers, and jams in a ton of Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts. The building is the mechanic people think of most as this new amazing thing but it’s not new, it’s just refined. This is what I mean. Zelda didn’t create the building mechanic, they didn’t innovate at all with the game really. But it did refine the experience of building. It made building feel more satisfying and made it easier to understand. It took a mechanic from a not super different of a game and made it better.

Now, I have my own, probably controversial, opinions about Tears of the Kingdom (I only really liked the dungeons, the rest was boring or tedious), but that doesn’t change that I understand it’s a good game and that it refined a lot of things. That’s what made it so well regarded.

Refinement matters far more than introducing brand new mechanics. Let’s look at what will likely be referred to as the game of the decade, Baldur’s Gate 3. It also didn’t really do anything new, but it took what was a successful formula and idea that Larian had developed in Divinity Original Sin 2, added a DnD skin to it, and turned it up to 11. It refined what worked, got rid of what didn’t, and made such a great game because of it. But it wasn’t...new.

But those games are ones that I never ended up finishing, let’s look at ones I managed to complete. Let’s look at a game that I played this year, really really enjoyed, but that also had issues with and ended up writing 3 articles about it or that stemmed off of my experience with it (one dissecting the lack of communication from the developers, a review, and one about difficulty accessibility as a whole). I’m of course talking about Hollow Knight: Silksong. While many consider it to be an amazing game, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it after modding it, it does next to nothing new from the original game and especially for the Metroidvania genre. All Silksong does that’s more unique is taking the Metroidvania aspects and make them more difficult to engage with by introducing more Souls-like aspects. But plenty of games have done that since the original Hollow Knight. They did nothing new. But they did refine what people liked from the first game. They made the world bigger and more interactable, they made it more colorful and filled with even more interesting characters. Refinement is what made it great, not innovation.

Then there’s the game that I adore and have replayed far too many times considering how long this singular games journey is, Persona 5. I adore this game, I think it does so damn much so damn well. But it didn’t really innovate in the space. It took the prior games and refined them. Persona 5 feels so good because the devs were able to not worry about having to innovate much and just be able to perfect what they wanted to. This then lead into Metaphor: ReFantazio (review here, it’s early in my time reviewing so the structure is a bit different as a warning), a game I also adore, that has refined it even more. Refinement makes the best games, not innovation.

Innovation can often be a bad thing...before the refinement stage

Okay, creating something new is cool, don’t get me wrong. playing something that has never really been made before is often a really interesting experience. But it’s not always a fun one. Often it will turn a lot of people off. They will play something that others are praising, experience this seemingly brand new thing, and be absolutely floored...with how underwhelming it is.

For instance, let’s talk about Death Stranding. A game that many will not appreciate me including in this section. I played several hours of the game and I just...fucking hated it. I didn’t have a problem with the world or story, that was interesting. But the gameplay was just god awful in my opinion. Having to run around delivering stuff and building things? Absolutely fine. Having to also balance all those things you are delivering by periodically pressing one of the trigger buttons to make sure you stay balanced? No that’s just a great way to hurt my fingers. So this lead me to dropping the game because it just was so damn infuriating to play. I didn’t even go back and use cheats to make it easier, I just said fuck it and dropped it.

But this year Death Stranding 2 came out! And it significantly refines the experience of the original game. It turns up the building things to an 11, it allows accessibility options in the menu to be able to turn off the mechanics that I hated from the first one, it reigned in Kojima’s tendency to have 20 minute cutscenes with a ton of expository dialogue and split them up with moments of gameplay. It allowed you to do a lot more interesting things with the traveling mechanics as well, particularly I have heard you’re able to actually bend the ziplines around things so that you don’t have to find the spot that is just right to get one set up like in the first game.

It just all in all refined the first game so much that it seems to have made the second game far more interesting, fun, and open to newcomers and people who hated the first game. This is what can happen when you innovate. The first iteration is kinda trash, but some people really really enjoy it. Then, when you get the second iteration, take all of the feedback you get from the first game, and fix a ton of things, you can make a game that feels refined and far more fun and open than the first game ever did. Innovating is great and all but, again, refinement is what makes the best games.

Innovation is overrated, Refinement is where it’s at

I guess my point with all of this is just that innovation, creating some entirely new is not as interesting to me as a refinement of a game genres core mechanics. When I think of The Outer Worlds 2, I don’t think of a game that is shoving in a new mechanic that is pointless and is only there to “innovate” the genre. I think of a game from Obsidian that is damn good and refined everything from the first game to just be all around better. That took the genre and made it more fun, instead of trying to make it into something it’s not.

In many ways this is what I talked about in my Avowed review (found here) where I talked about how much I loved that it dropped so much of the needless BS that feels the need to exist in these types of games. Dropping the “full simulated world” thing I think is the best thing you could do for some of these games. Not every game needs that. I’d actually argue I think only a select few of the games of the RPG genre should have that and those are mostly just actual Bethesda games because they’ve made it their shtick at this point.

I think a lot of this focus on innovation stems from people like...well...myself. By which I mean reviewers. Some of us are people who play a ton of games a year and they all blend together so much that the only games that really jump out and are fun are the ones that innovate and make something new. I am not one of those. My scoring system focuses on enjoyment and fun, not on “is this the best game ever”. I think more of the bigger reviewers who harp on about innovation need to take a break from reviewing or rethink their scoring. What matters is enjoyment and fun, is if they made the sequel to this game more enjoyable to play than the first. It’s not about making things completely new.

Refinement is king and fun is key. They matter more than any sort of innovation ever could.

Meow,

Cat