We All Yearn Fresh and Innovative Games – Except We Don't
I can't believe some people out there, in the depths of Internet. They start a game with ranting about lack of innovation in games, and end it with a game of the most formulaic multiplayers. But when they actually get innovation, they frown.
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We like the songs we know best
We demand revolution. Novelty. Inventiveness. But when they're offered to us, we seem to cringe in revulsion. Even recently, when Baldur's Gate 3 was announced, I was astonished at all the scolding from people, who expected a 1:1 clone of the timeless classic! Never mind that the franchise was entrusted to the best imaginable studio, for whom story is certainly the holy grail of RPG. No. The toolbar has different icons and the colors are kind of different too, so it's a blasphemy.
Ah, yes, the rapture that occurred in the community of Resident Evil, when 7 changed the perspective to first-person. Who cares that it was a tremendous horror experience, and a savior of the franchise sinking after the dead end of ResEv6? Until this day, many people regret not getting the same thing. They did receive the more conservative RE2 Remake, but as I said: nobody cares. Mr. X was there, so...
Subsequent publishers can't return to the Heroes of Might and Magic because the third part of that series cemented it to such extent that absolutely any attempt at reviving it would be doomed to fail from beginning to end – for not being what we remember. Even with regard to the last God of War, which after six, almost identical games asked for "something slightly different, preferably introduced in a thoughtful way," you can find disappointed with it not being the same game for the seventh time.
WHAT ABOUT THE SALES?
In January 2020, NPD reported the results of game sales in the US market over the past decade. Want to guess how many parts of the never-changing Call of Duty series were listed in top 10? Exactly seven; with places 11, 12, and 15 with some more of the shooter purgatory.
Funny thing is: it's not much better on the indie scene. We grew to expect it to be a place where developers can unleash their creativity, but the truth is that success here includes titles that are either parasitic on nostalgia, or collaborating with proven techniques, only being revolutionary at the level of nuance.
I recently played Aaru's Awakening, a fantastic platformer offering an absolutely unique idea for controls that requires abandoning preconceptions and taking a completely new approach to the game. Ok, so the average user score for the game on Metacritic is a 1.9 out of 10, It doesn't matter that after understanding the rules of the game, it becomes clear that the traditional placement of keys would render the game almost unplayable.
Give me something new. But not very new. Maybe even the same.
We don't want a revolution at all. We don't want new experiences. All we want is more of what we know well, maybe with a different sauce. But not too different, I don't want to test my habits. Follow-ups have to imitate originals, otherwise they're no good. But if they're too the same, they're no good either.
In fact, we want unification only. For every game to feel the same, with changes only made in details that we can readily comprehend. And the devs know it. Ubisoft didn't decide to change the direction of Assassin's Creed at a whim – the decision was made when the series reached the absolute verge of exploitation. Yet more and more people miss these classic games now, and I wouldn't be surprised if, after a while, along with productions like Odyssey and Origins, we start getting Brotherhood and Syndicate-style titles again.
Revolutions are costly, and fans don't really want them. Promoting new IPs also requires more effort than announcing sequels, and in addition, we look forward to that which we know more than we do for undefined new titles. It was the remakes of the classic Crash Bandicoots, rather than entirely new takes on them, that brought the series back into the limelight. Ghost of Tsushima may be highly anticipated, but it's The Last of Us Part II that is causing much greater hype. We are more excited by the prospect of reliving something we liked than we are by experiencing something entirely new.
So, before we embark on a populist crusade again, it's worth running an examination of conscience. Not even to stop coming across as hypocrites starting with the day a rant about lack of innovation in games, and ending it with a game of CoD, FIFA and Assassin's Creed. Or – in the romantic version – playing innovative indie game that's actually the nth, almost identical "love letter to 8-bit platformers." No. Do it so you can actually allow yourself to try something new without complaining that it uses different solutions.
