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[starsrift]

...is a topic that Adriaan Jansen of Abbey Games tackles in this article, in regards to Renowned Explorers: International Society (RE:IS).

Kind of an interesting idea; I'm not sure if it's true. I only saw a basic marketing push behind RE:IS as well, except for a handful of mid-range youtuber spots and an RPS article, but I don't frequent all the normal places of the internet, either.
I also didn't think that RE:IS was actually especially innovative, so much as it took a few different elements from different places and combined them well and added mighty amounts of polish. I guess I particularly found it interesting because it could seem to apply to the project I'm currently working on.

Anyway, love to hear other people's thoughts on the idea of being too innovative for success.

/ I will say that I thought RE:IS is a great little game, but then Reus (their previous title) made me a fan of the company, so...

[valrus]

I can't get this game and Curious Expedition straight in my head.  Until just now I thought I had already played it!

I wouldn't necessarily call it "innovative", but I've been grumpy about "innovation" lately so I won't hold it against him   But I can certainly agree they were working on an unsolved design problem ("how do these pieces fit together") and yes, that's more expensive and chancy than working in genres where many of the design problems are solved or at least known.

I thought Reus was pretty innovative, actually.  That was certainly them working on an unsolved design puzzle; I didn't, in the end, like the solution, but that's part of innovation, is that some people just won't like the result.  And Reus, as they say, was a bigger hit.  So maybe their n=2 experiment points in another direction: that their first game, which was more obviously strange and unique, did better than their second, which appears to mix up familiar genres into a product similar in theme to another recent game.

[gimymblert]

Innovation is a way to combat "exposition fatigue" as "surprise" is an element of enjoyment. However innovation alone don't guarantee anything, it must also fit a need and a fantasy to strike gold, it must capture imagination. Then it must be executed well, and execution also ties into knowing where the audience is. It's also that some innovation are only relevant indirectly, as they pose the basis for something more but don't entirely solve all the previous point.

[Dikkop]

It is interesting to note that you talk about the "cost of innovation" and then not mention the actual cost of the game, which was released for 17 bucks, which is a fair price for this game I would say. There is only one problem with it, since people do not have a reference to compare this game to, they are not willing to pay such a high price. Hypothetically, if the game would be released for 10 bucks, people would at least try this new innovative concept and you would perhaps be 43.000 * 10 bucks richer. This might still happen during an upcoming sale, but I think it explains why it didn't take off in the first place in a highly competitive market.

[starsrift]

Probably on to something, Gimmy. Jansen mentioned they weren't sure what the game was going to be exactly, so that probably makes it even harder to find the audience.

@valrus: I thought Reus was a cookie cutter city building game with a unique aesthetic. :/

[gimymblert]

Yeah a lot of people confuse innovation for "wacky" setting and visual, wacky being out of ordinary, sometimes it's all it takes but not everytime.

[ProgramGamer]

Isn't the definition of innovation literally to iterate upon an already existing concept in order to make it different? By that definition, can you not figure out weather or not their game actually is innovative or not?

[gimymblert]

It's a matter of degree, not all people agree. Would you argue that adding risk reward to reload in Gears of war was innovative or just iterative? Is asscreed 4 did the boat was innovative or additive? Some people think that changing the speed of the character movement in a sequel is "innovative" because it's "completely" change the flow of the game, is it innovation or just a variation?

[ProgramGamer]

Alright, then innovation is a surprising or impressive iteration?

[gimymblert]

depend to who, and it's more like the perception vs actual innovation. Just because you are being innovative don't mean you will be perceive as such, nor being perceive as innovative mean you are truly innovative, it's relative to what matter to who.

[ProgramGamer]

According to Dictionary.com, innovation is the act of "introducing new things or methods". It says nothing about iteration nor it being impressive, so I guess that was just misinterpretation on my part. Therefore, checking for innovation (by the book's definition) would be equivalent to asking the question "Does you game bring anything new to the table?".

[gimymblert]

If it bring something new, the new thing is surprising no?

But yeah the definition only work when you "perceive" newness, it's not objective.

For example if I make a gears of war clone where the new thing is fancy mustache to character is it innovative? I mean the mustache bring the character from fantasy cypher to daddy figure and completely change the identity mechanics with the character, daddyness therefore change how the player see the action of the game under a more protective term rather than a dominance term ... I can make up any "excuse" to highlight the validity and might be even be right despite trying to be bullshitting ... would you consider that "innovation"?

[ProgramGamer]

It wouldn't be good innovation, but it would qualify as innovation nonetheless.

If making a phone bigger and more expensive as a result counts as innovation, then everything else does in my book. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[gimymblert]

Be careful though, some "trivial" change can indeed completely change functionality. Wireless anything tend to drastically change usage for example. SO if bigger phone change functionality (for example readability of text in case of smartphone to tablet) then you have something interesting.

I prefer, instead of trying to define what's innovative or not with a clear boundaries, to see innovation as a "perspective" or a "lens" in which you assess personally things. It's not about IF it's innovative, but "how much".

[ProgramGamer]

So innovation is a spectrum with many dimensions?

[gimymblert]

I would say so, depend on where you look for innovation and how these parameter interact with each other. I mean if size impact functionality, that's at least two dimension that interact, but these are parameter of the given object.

But I don't like "spectrum" I use the word "lens" because I think it specify teh context in which you want to see things, it's not absolute. If you are interested in "pure fashion" functionality wouldn't matter, so bigger phone won't be evaluated in term of functionality. It's relative and contextual, intent and expectation matter a lot, hence why I introduce the notion of audience at first.

[valrus]

I didn't find the setting or trappings of Reus to be that innovative -- elemental gods is almost a videogame cliche, although I can appreciate that it's not often seen in this genre.  But taken as a city builder, I found it mechanically pretty novel, taking the continuous proximity functions of builders as a starting point and making that into a puzzle-boardgame based on discrete proximity functions, and then combining that with upgrade trees quite a lot more complex than one applies to "buildings", plus some elements of chance placement and a balancing acts between hostile civilizations.  That's not a well-explored design space the way (say) SimCity-style, Caesar-style, or casual-style builders are very well-explored design spaces.  

In Reus, working out the basics of the mechanics meant answering unknown design questions -- "Is one dimension enough?" "What are the primitives in the upgrade system?" "What happens when the player doesn't choose the location of the most important building?", etc.  In RE:IS, it looks like a lot of the design primitives already exist.  (Especially in the tactical battles; you've got units, they move around and attack, each thing's got an HP counter which decrements when attacked and can remove units from play... that's a VERY well-explored design space.)

This isn't to defend Reus as "innovative" in its conventional sense of "it's different and I like it", but I don't think it's a clever skin on a conventional city-builder, but a conventional skin on a kind of puzzle game I don't think anyone has quite tried before.  (That's where I think it goes wrong; I don't think the underlying puzzle has an interesting answer.)

[starsrift]

Very interesting!