Games need focus and perfection before innovation

Oh wow – I don’t think it’s possible for me to disagree with you more here, Keen.

The last thing in the world that *I* want to play is a super-polished picture-perfect version of the same damned game that I’ve been playing for so many years. Aion, in a lot of respects, tries to be that mega-slick clone that offers no real innovations but is absolutely radiant in it’s presentation and implementation. I played it and was bored to tears. Not because Aion is a BAD game, but because it’s so cliche and over done and I’ve been there before a hundred times.

The RTS/action/rpg blend you mention having such trouble with is, in concept, exactly the sort of innovation and fresh thinking that *I* want in my games. I don’t want something safe and fluffy – I want something risky and new. Trine and Dawn of War 2 are two single player examples of this….. try to pin down exactly what genre either game is….. they walk the line between a few different ones.

Furthermore, any game that tries to beat WoW at it’s own game is going to fail at that goal. Sure, it may hold enough users to recoup development costs and go forward, but WoW is such an enigma and a social phenomenon that trying to beat it on sheer polish is absurd.

I want game designers to keep experimenting, dabbling, innovating, and exercising their creative licenses. I want to stumble from game to game and pick up gems from the rough. All of these things are fascinating to myself, and others….. and all of these things are needed to keep the MMO industry vibrant and moving forward.

Some day some game will topple WoW, and no one will see it coming. We’ll just look at subscriber numbers one day, and be completely floored. It isn’t something that can be planned for; it is something that will happen on its own.

I don’t think your problem is with innovation.

Your problem is clearly with bad games. Regardless of innovation, a bad game is bad. I guess you tend to notice games that fail while being innovative more because they fail more spectacularly. There are thousands of failed “perfecting what we already have” games that you have never played or paid any attention to because they were bad games but failed miserably instead of spectacularly. The ratio of terrible clones to terrible innovative games must be at least 100:1.

You are also making the base assumption that all people want to play the exact same game over and over again with only minor variations. This is certainly not true. Unless you are such a stark raving traditionalist that you can’t look past your comfortable surroundings towards what might be better, you enjoy games that offer you different experiences.

Aside from these two points, the logistics of developing MMOs make it impossible to do what you claim to want and have successful, profitable games.

Amen to that. I continue to think that the biggest thing setting WoW apart from all of the ensuing games that emulated its solo questing-centric model with mediocre success at best has been the polished, fluid combat and the fact that each of the major systems is reasonably well designed. (We could argue for a while about whether this detail or another is good or bad, but there’s no clunkers like the useless stats/gear in launch AoC or keep design in WAR.) Add in low system requirements and a decent brand name and you have a hit. At some point a new MMO will need to do more than that, but not right now.

The importance of polish and strong fundamental systems is why Aion has been my sleeper pick for quite a while, because the polish is there, the engine feels right, and there are working systems all the way through endgame. Of course, what Koreans love for endgame Americans may not love so much. And the first 20 levels are very very similar to what has come before while later levels are pretty different. And there’s no brand to for the game to build on. So the game could easily wind up at or below LOTRO/WAR levels… it’s a pretty good test of how far polish and well-designed systems can carry a game.

Honestly, I’m seeing a lot more hype for Champions and expect it to sell more boxes just because the setting is non-fantasy even though they’ve been rejiggering the combat system dramatically and are vague enough about endgame that I would bet it will be almost nonexistent or buggy.

@Keen:
Thanks for the clarifications. The first cut made it sound like innovation should be avoided like the plague, and polishing the tried & tested WoW-model was all that new games should focus on.

Innovation for the sake of innovation will fail just as much as polish for the sake of polish. A mix of both is ideal.

@Heartless:
“Liar. You DO want to play a polished version of most games you’ve played. Trust me, you do. Chances are you just haven’t experienced enough polished/good games to know that you do.”

No, actually I don’t want to play an uber polished version of the same bloody thing. Trust me, I know. But thanks for trying to speak for me…. always love it when people claim to know me more than I know myself.

I’m more entertained by novelty than I am polish.

@heartless: I respect your opinion but I still stand by mine. TBC was really more of the same and so didn’t illustrate that they knew what made them a success, only that they knew they had it. Wrath, well maybe. The vehicle system and the Wrath Gate line did go a few steps further I think. (I freaked out my coworkers by quoting the script of the cut scene word for word to them.)

On the success and failure of upcoming MMOs, I’m going to make a few uneducated predictions about a few that interest me:

Global Agenda will be a niche hit and take on the glow that used to surround Unreal Tournament (GOTY). You won’t be able to tell the difference. Really.

Aion will basically follow the Age of Conan pattern. A big splash followed by disappointment and failure. I don’t think they’ll be able to get all of the grind out of it, they won’t have enough class specialization and there won’t be enough to do long term at cap. Everyone will hang around emoting each other.

SW:TOR will fail epically, forever making companies fear the cursed SW IP. People will blame the graphics, the endless cheezy voice overs or the irreversible character decisions but in the end, it just won’t be fun.

Ok, I’ll be playing all three and really wish they’d kick ass.

What are your predictions?

DAOC Origins gogo!

@Larry

Aion won’t sell as many boxes as WAR or AoC (or Champions) at launch because the graphics make it easy to dismiss as a Korean grindfest, the first 20 levels are very WoW-like, and it doesn’t have a recognizable IP.

However it will not crash like AoC either, due to actually having a working PVP endgame and reasonable class balance. We know these things to be the case because it’s been launched for almost a year in Korea and has retained subs there. There will be a good amount of grind in leveling and the AP grind at endgame may be intense and turn some people off, but it will be a lot closer to WoW than L2 or FFXI. By comparison AoC had multiple one-shotting classes and failed to even include a basic honor system at launch.

Champions I would expect to follow a similar pattern to CoH just with a larger launch. I mean as far as I can tell from the design docs it basically is CoH with better graphics and a little more depth to the missions. Good for casual PVE, a bit of tacked on PVP, and the character creator will again be the best part of the game.

SW:TOR will do great and be a very solid #2 in NA/EU for a while at least. The combat looks pretty solid from what has been shown so far. How long they stay on top depends on whether they actually develop a working endgame; I’ve got my doubts about that.

Regarding Champions Online, a beta tester just bashed it as a bad City of Heroes clone already… so do not have too high hopes for Champions to innovate or at least copy CoH well.

I want something risky and new. Trine and Dawn of War 2 are two single player examples of this…..
Er.. You want something “risky and new”.. and use a remake of The Lost Vikings (A Blizzard game, no less!) and a sequel as examples?-)

I have been looking at Mortal Online and they are labeling themselves as a game by gamers yet this is a quote from thier site.

“Mortal Online is a next generation PC MMORPG both in terms of graphics and gameplay.”

Next generation, it is so overused that it has lost it’s value.

I believe that MO is doing just as you are describing they are taking what they know works from Ultima Online without changing too much.

Henrik Nyström explains about his game in this vid.
http://www.mortalonline-szene.de/mortal-online-videos.html

Near the end he says they are an independent developer and that gives them freedom to make thier game as they see fit.

Although I have not played MO and I do not plan to, I think they are making a good game. They are not focusing on getting a piece of the wow-subscriber-cake, they are just focusing on making thier game good.

@Keen: You are quite sensitive… criticism and discussion are key to moving things forward. I did indeed read your post twice – it is tough to point out specific examples as your post was NOT specific, but I will indeed expand on my thoughts.

You deny that your entire post is about the “WoW model”? You can call it what you will, but your point is summed up in:

“I would rather play a game that, in terms of features and mechanics, does nothing new but perfects upon what we already know to deliver a polished, complete, and fun game than to play one that introduces a lot of new features but perfects nothing and as a result fails to live up to expectations.”

This statement is so loaded. In essence, you say that you would rather play a fun game than a crappy game (one that fails). But you add on the elements that you think result in a game being fun or not – and you add these as if they were fact. I really disagree with this reasoning based on the same general philosophy posted by Andrew. Additionally, you are essentially comparing two extremes. It is definitely possible for a game to successfully add a couple new mechanics/features while still making their own content and perfecting and combining mechanics/features from other games.

So you would say WoW was a complete and polished game? because it really seems as if WoW is/was the game for you, despite leaving it off of your list of favorite games. I wouldn’t touch WoW and its “polish” with a ten foot pole. It is a complete snoozefest. I played WoW years before it came out – it was called EQ (not to mention UO which I did not play). I would hazard that the majority of people who enjoyed WoW never played EQ or UO or even DAoC for that matter. I enjoyed EQ and DAoC despite their lack of “polish”. DAoC is a great example of a game that built upon previous games but added something NEW and innovative.

“I think there is room for innovation, just not innovation for the sake of innovation as a result of developers always wanting their game to be the bleeding edge trend setter. … I want them to keep experimenting too, but not until they’re ready. Age of Conan is a classic example of trying to be different for all the wrong reasons. Failures of that magnitude can be avoided if people take a step back and perfect (or come close/try) the foundation of what they’re trying to create. A little focus goes a long way. … Over the next year we’re going to see a lot of games release as “different”. They’re going to fail because they don’t have a solid identify, they lack focus, and they’re simply trying to reach out and pull in the crowd that is pandering for something “new”.”

The above statements are in response to Andrew’s disagreement. You back off as if you were never being overly zealous in your original statements. This seems contradictory to me, or better put, it seems like you are trying to gloss over your original statements and move away from your previously extreme view point. Your comments regarding AoC are in support of innovation that is focused and results in a strong foundation – I would agree with this! But this is not in line with the first statement I quoted.

I can’t claim to be beta testing 7 games, but I disagree that games “fail” becase they try to be too different. But instead of talking about “failure” in the market sense, I can only offer the reasons why I think I stopped playing certain games. It is a lack of significant difference, with respect to previous games, that makes them boring after a few weeks or month or two.

Have you ever played EVE? There is a game that is significantly different. Despites its other shortcomings due to lack of “polish” it managed to keep my interest peaked for a good amount of time.

“I find myself enjoying these games less because I can’t figure out how they’re to be perceived. I’m asking myself questions like: “What am I playing here?” and “Was this their goal?” and “Why did they do this?”. I can’t lose myself in the game anymore because it has become so superficial that I’m almost embarrassed to be playing.”

I have no problem with people using their brains – in fact, more people should – but I might suggest trying to relax and attempting to enjoy the game. You aren’t going to enjoy playing a game when you attempt to categorize and analyze it from the get go. I can definitely understand questioning certain mechanics (or the lack thereof), but it sounds like you aren’t giving yourself a chance to be entertained. And this is coming from myself, an EVE player, a game in which I spend the majority of my time thinking. The difference is as you said – you can’t lose yourself in the game. Whether this is a function of your role as a critic or the result of a boring game… who knows.

Oh and just to add, your latest series of nostalgic posts are meh. I definitely have the same feelings of nostalgia for EQ, but I know that I wouldn’t enjoy playing it again. It is useful to look back and examine what made games fun. This leads me to conclude that it isn’t completeness or polish or whatever you want to call it, unless you really think that EQ and DAoC were polished. The bottom line is that a mmorpg needs to evoke feelings – yearning, awe, surprise, anguish, fear, hope, pride, etc. How does a game accomplish this? Rewards and consequences for one… but what else? Who knows… but I hope someone finds out.

@Keen: Your next blog post should really be titled “The Fundamentals of MMORPGS”. I’d really love to see what you have to say.

All games uses something from past games.
Okay, your turn Keen.
Name a game that did not use anything from past games?

And that is all that “if it aint broke dont fix it” attitude
That way we would still be playing Ping Pong. Maybe with colour 😉

I agree that there’s alot of crap MMO’s out there, but I really dont think that copy cat is the way to go here. Alot of MMO’s could use more polish before they are released granted. But they dont need to copy more.

WAR failed in many ways. But not because they tried out new stuff. Sure the keep design could be better in some ways, but they are fixing that now. I never played DAOC so I cant say if it were better in that game, but some1 in here mentioned it. But thats the only thing that was mentioned.

And I cant name a game that had all the fundamentals from the start. I remember WoW in the beginning, a game which you seem to compare all other games to. Did it have all the fondamentals from the start? Not imho. I got to lvl 60 after a month with a bounch of my mates and there was nothing to do (Okay, you could farm some rep, do that 1 dungeon, and raid once or twice a week). There was a lot of class balancing issius.

i dont think that WoW succes was due to the fact that the copied from preveus games. They had the right player base and they launched the game at the right time. Blizzard have allways been known to deliver good games. And the ADSL was really comming thru at that time, so more ppl could play online games. And it was very easy to learn and very user friendly.
Imho they have not copied more than that many other games.

And if what you say is true, AION will be a huge succes. They dont do anything new, just stick with what works.
Somehow I just dont think that will happen.

In Denmark we have this saying. its like this “You need to learn how to crawl, before you can walk”
Which is kinda the same thing you are saying. You need basics before you can do advanced. But really. You know crawling is safe and stuff, and if you try to walk you might fall on your ass. But still, do you really want to crawl the rest of your life?

Oh – and to call DoW2 “just a sequel” is ignorant beyond belief. Have you played that game either?

First, at no point was EQ1 the real model for MMO success. Not only was UO already well established when EQ1 launched, AC1 was also different and successful, hence that era being referred to as The Big Three.

You also dismissed EVE as being a niche game in a comment. If EVE is niche, than every game short of WoW is niche as well if we are going by active subs. EVE started as a niche title, but considering its at 300k+ subs now, it’s far outgrown that status. It is niche in much of it’s design, but that has more to do with the talent at CCP and the rest of the industry being unable to keep up than anything else. Most games are still trying to fit 200+ characters into a zone, while CCP is working on getting 3k (the usual total size of a server in WoW or WAR)

I think overall your view is being tainted a bit by the fact that you are playing so many betas of games that will ultimately fail. We can’t name names, but it’s not like the current crop of alpha/beta MMOs has a slew of winners in them, while some of the current betas can be called disasters. On the flip side, the previous crop of games (LotRO, WAR, AoC) have been improving steadily, so while we might not be entertained by a ‘new’ title, going back to something not full played is a nice option to have.

@Phillip – “WAR shouldn’t have had scenarios. It is a prime example of where an additional mechanic conflicted with a core mechanic. Mythic made WAR by trying to merge DAoC and WoW – complete and utter failure.”

I agree that Scenarios in WAR conflicted but I dont think it conflicted completely mechanically, I believe that it was more so poorly implemented.

Scenarios were just an option, I’m all for options in gaming. But at some point when people realized the potential of scenarios it became overused. At some point if u wanted to pvp it became the only option because so many people only wanted to “scene”. They should have made open world pvp more beneficial, and made scenes less beneficial. I’ve been in big pvp fights in War but they were far and few.

So fundamentally it was a good innovation in my book, but it fumbled on it’s implementation.

Honestly, i think part of the problem in the launch of some of these games is proper beta testers. Most people are getting in beta tests just to play something till the game u want is out. I’m just as guilty of it. Back in the day getting in a beta was a process. They questioned you, what type of machine you play down to your os, mem, proc, what type of gamer are you, what beta tests have u been in pror, and then they selected people that would benefit thier tests.

That isnt the case nowadays, if u pay fileplanet guess what! your in a beta!!! You may not have no intentions on playing the game when it comes out, so you actually trying to find bugs, find flaws, help make a better game isnt going to happen. You know how many times in beta’s that i’ve been in for 4 years i had to hear “This game SUCKZZZ!!! WOW RULEZZZ!!!” in game? Uneccessary to say the least.

#45″at no point did I say “the real model for MMO success” though, so that was pulled out of thin air.”

From your post: “When we look at the EQ model, back when it was the only real MMO model”

You sure you did not say that? Again, at no point was EQ1 the ONLY real MMO model. That EQ1’s model was the easiest to duplicate and mass produce is another story, one not related to this topic.

As for EVE, a large part of it’s success is indeed it’s innovation, things that even today other companies can’t quite replicate. Of course innovation is not the ONLY thing that made it a success, but that’s just back to the basic statement others have pointed out; a shit game is a shit game regardless of innovation, just like a good game is a good game on it’s own, innovative or not. That EVE is both a good game and continues to innovate in the MMO space is the reason it’s still growing 5 years later while everyone (including WoW) is bleeding subs after 5+ years (and for most games the timeline is far shorter than that)

As for your sample, you choose to limit it’s size and scope. If I was limiting myself to broken betas or rough alphas, I’d be depressed too. But unlike one-off titles, the MMO space is defined as much by what current games are doing as by what’s coming around the corner. That late 2009/early 2010 might launch a few DOA MMOs does not mean others in the space are not continuing to make innovative and better products. If anything, the upcoming failures will help the current products looking for a second shot (AoC and WAR in particular)

Well I know you’re not against innovation Keen, after all AFAIK you’re a Peter Molyneux fan.

I think, maybe I’ll try to make my own point here and see if it jives with yours:

– Not every MMO needs to be an MMORPG in the Diku-inspired vein, but if they are, they should keep the strengths already established from that genre. When your game joins a genre, it either has to pay its dues, or leapfrog them.

If I were to compare it with the RTS genre for instance, in the 90’s it split into basically two camps, or two forks as it were: Warcraft / Starcraft and Total Annihilation. A few games came close, but those set the “you must be this tall to ride” lines. A ton of similar games are barely remembered.

Right now, MMORPGs have one big genre, one big fork and it’s WoW. It’s possible to do well outside of that loop (EVE for instance), but if your game is within the big genre, it should meet the baseline.

WAR and AoC are the bigger examples. They both had innovations that were good, but felt tacked onto something that didn’t measure up to the standards.

That a bit closer to what you’re saying Keen?

From reading his blog I get exactly what Keen is saying and fail to see how a lot of people totally missed the mark in this regard.Whether or not it has been edited since then due to the various objections to make it more understandable, I do not know.

Dunno whats hard to understand about
“Perfect your craft. Until you have perfected the foundation, perfected the fundamentals, you can’t possibly hope to move forward with innovation. Building upon a cracked or unstable/unpolished foundation will only lead to greater failures down the road.”

Seems quite clear to me :S

So what you are saying is that DF “perfected” their game enough to suit you?

What if they had perfected it a little less and you would have been unable to aim your attacks properly? Or instead what if the aspect of the game that you like would not have been working properly? Would you still have said that it is so innovative that you would keep playing?

I think everyone has different thoughts of what innovation means and that is the cause of the argument.

To me innovation does not mean the opposite of polish infact they have nothing to do with one another.

I agree with Syncaine and Keen to a degree on this topic. I think the underling point needs to be is that a game needs to understand what works best for what it wants to become, and use the best features that currently exist… THEN build upon that.

There are enough games out there that something matches up with what you are desiging. Take the best features from the existing games and then build upon that. Don’t build every feature from scratch and don’t omit a feature simply because your competitior used it.

Also it seems a lot of old console and single player games seem to think now the time is ripe for theirs IP to hit the MMO market. I think they think the tech is ripe that they will not have to change the single player experience that much and the masses will tolerate the delay and lag. I think they might be mistaken in the end though. Both with the tech and a lack of understanding how people operate in an MMO worlds vs a single player one.

Nobs, but then you wind up just making yet another copy with only minor differences in play, and people get sick of it quickly. That’s what being a WoW clone is, borrowing the best elements from WoW and adding very minor innovative touches, often borrowed from other games (FFXI’s job system seems to inspire a lot.)

You need to actually spend more time being innovative if you want to stand apart, otherwise you become like one of the many, many F2P Korean games which look and play nearly exactly alike, but then throw in some different way to level, or add something like letting your pets craft. Polish isn’t enough unless the innovation is sound, and I think Aion will show this in the western market.

I agree with your point 100%. I’ll try to stay away from the MMO debate on this one. We MMO players are a tough crowd when it involves people attacking our MMO. There is a form and function to everything. Function is what you want your product(game) to be. You can simplify a lot of things just by looking at their function. But you cant deny that a car that doesnt work has much less value than one that does. Doesnt matter if we are talking about VWs or Mercedez. If we have this game, where the animation and controls are clunky it wont matter if the game promises a feature that no other has.
MMORPG is a ganre that is time consuming, they are made so people escape and get lost in the gameplay, immerse if you will. That is why is of outmost importance to at its core make it work. Because if the gameplay lacks no feature will be enough to make me stay more than the customary trial month.
I hate dviating, but i will just close with a couple of examples outside MMOs. Mario vs Sonic, DS vs PSP, FF vs every other RPG. Those exapmples they get the core right, and that is why those are best sellers (And preferred by most of the people to boot).

Good point Ming –

Still can’t believe I let myself get caught up in the WAR hype.. For the first week playing the game I literally buried my head in the sand… “there is no combat lag, there is no combat lag…” How could they spew so much hype without having the most basic of basics in line.. unbelievable. Then again remember them talking about how player would be rewarded for non-linear thinking. HA!

I know alot of people still have much more hate for AOC, but in my opinion WAR was a much larger disappointment.

Thanks silverfly. To clarify a little though, I wasn’t trying to point fingers at WAR. The fundamentals of a single-player platformer game is different than the fundamentals of an MMO, so while the responsiveness of the controls is definitely a fundamental for platformers, an MMO as responsive as Mario is probably impossible, considering they have to deal with internet lag as well.

I’ll say that the games out or coming out at this point in time hold no interest to me in terms of MMO (ok SWToR I will play but only based on its IP, knowing hardly anything about actual game play). Even the fundamentals need to be shaken up. I would call something like quests a mmo fundamental, make em right and immersive, etc. But after so many quests in so many games, as soon as I enter a new game and see a quest giver, it almost makes me puke. Something new needs to be there, I don’t know what.

We need to have the failures in these ‘innovative’ games if we want to move forward, as long as I don’t have to play them. We need new fundamentals to come forth, then we’ll have innovation.

I think I agree mostly with what Keen is trying to say but I’m not convinced that even trying to work off what works in past MMOs is the answer. I think everyone is so obsessed with the current status of MMO games and there are so many, it will be hard to please the masses. I think if WAR came out at a time if there was no such thing as WoW it would be seen completely differently and oogled by all. But since it followed all the games it did and came out when so many others were out there, it didn’t have a chance. SWToR will probably succeed and I’ll be the first to play…but only because I have this obsession with Star Wars and a good cinematic always sucks me in (ala WAR, still love that cinematic) not because it has anything new and exciting.

A solid IP might get you off to a phenomenal start and might even keep you there awhile (I played WoW way longer than I should have based solely on my love for the IP) but something entirely new is going to have to come along to truly change the status quo imo.

Not even sure if any of that makes any sense but after reading 69 comments I had to say something.

My friends all look at me like a sinner when I tell them I miss exp grinding like in EQ. I would like the option of doing quests or grinding, why do games have to focus on one or the other?

My $0.05 (or “Why Keen’s point is valid, and a lot of people are missing the point…”):

1) Innovation is a good thing, but not essential to making a fun game. For example, UT3 can be said to be innovative, but QuakeLive is still hella fun to play…

2) Innovation solely for the sake of innovation is rarely a good thing. In the case of video games, if it’s not actually making the game more fun and interesting, then it’s pointless. Usually referenced when talking gameplay vs. graphics but equally valid here: “Gameplay is king.”

3) If an essential part of a game, e.g. game content or UI, is poorly implemented then any innovation will be marginalized (at best), or likely rendered moot. I.e. if a game’s playability (and thereby, fun) is reduced because a game developer focused on their new, nifty ideas and ignored everything else, then the innovation is wasted.

A perfect example of this is Age of Conan, which definitely had some great innovation, particularly with its combat system and visuals, but all the quality content was in the first 10-20% of the game, rapidly diminishing beyond that. (This was at release; I’ve heard it’s become better, but… too late for me.)

4) More to the point, people have certain basic expectations from their games, based on their experience playing other games. If those expectations are not met, then it really doesn’t matter how innovative a game might be. (E.g. I expect a straight-up, intuitive interface — if that’s lacking, there’s a good chance the game will quickly disappear into the trash bin, innovation-be-damned.)

5) Finally, too much innovation is bad; people prefer things that are familiar. For example, while it might be interesting — and certainly innovative — to do a Sims first person shooter, I really doubt that would be popular among those that play The Sims. =)

I think I’ve identified the source of our collective disagreement.

Keen’s supporters claim “It all makes perfect sense! Strong fundamentals, lots of polish, and a couple of innovations to put a cherry on top and you are a success.”

It does make perfect sense. But it only makes perfect sense because the terms keen uses are so vague and abstract as to be meaningless. It renders his advice useless.

Imagine you’re trying to learn how play guitar and your instructor plays a song for you and asks you to play it by ear, but when you fail to do so–you are a novice so you hit wrong notes and play out of rhythm–he just tells you “No. That’s wrong. Play the song correctly. Play the right notes in the right order. It’s so simple! How don’t you understand?” The instructor is giving you correct advice in that if you followed it you’d play the song correctly, but the advice is useless because it doesn’t actually help you play the song correctly.

It’s the same way with Keen’s advice: When you try to sit down and apply it, you will start to see that it just isn’t useful at all. He’s telling you to do things a certain way but you don’t actually have the capacity to do them that way–and even if you could, you have no way of actually making sure you are succeeding at any point.

So keen’s advice ends up breaking down to “Make good games!” Which is good advice in the sense that if you follow it you make good games, but it is entirely useless because it doesn’t actually help you make good games.

“They’re only meaningless if you don’t see what he means. Those of us who support his argument see exactly what he’s talking about.”

I see exactly what he’s talking about as well!

But have you ever designed a game before and had people play it? Have you critically thought about the game mechanics that you view as the “working” core of MMOs?

“here’s an inverse proportion between familiarity and innovation — the more a company tries to innovate, the less familiar the formula is. But if you try to over-innovate, inevitably something goes wrong in the structure of the design that screws it all up.”

And that is no different then failing to balance classes, have a solid PvP system, or have good raid content. There does not need to be innovation for “something [to go] wrong in the structure of the design.”
Failure does not occur “if you try to over-innovate”, failure occurs if you design POORLY. You can only “over-innovate” if you design poorly.

Poor design and innovative design are not at all correlated. There are far more poorly-designed bland non-innovative games than there are poorly-designed innovative games. Even the best games on the market can’t get the basics right–how can we even figure out what the basics are?

If you suggest we work out the basics before we innovate, we’ll get no serious innovation. (And it may be impossible to “work out the basics”.) If you suggest it’s OK to innovate in core game mechanics as long as we don’t “over-innovate”, you are doing no more than asking us to avoid designing poor games. There’s no way to tell when you’ve “over-innovated”. There’s no way even to tell “what works” and what is “perfected” enough.

Keen’s statement is useless. You can’t even reliably define his terminology. And he assumes that game design is objective.