I can point out numerous examples from Hollywood franchises. For instance, by the mid 90’s everyone thought comic book films would never be successful but, low and behold, along came some really well-made, good films like Blade, X-Men and Spiderman and they smashed the box office. We then saw a whole spate of successful comic book based films…. but they weren’t successful because of their genre, they were successful because they were *good* films.

I think the exact same thing applies to MMOs. Developers/publishers think that because WoW was successful, every game must be like WoW. They think because Farmville is popular, every game must be like Farmville. I think that’s nonsense. I think if a game is GOOD, then it will do well. Genre or media or whatever has nothing to do with it, it only matters if the product is well-made and enjoyable.

While I think combat is probably here to stay in most game based MMOs I think there is plenty of room for a broader range of activities, pursuits and challenges within virtual worlds. Hey if Farmville can bring in millions of dollars based on the simple act of planting a garden then I think that MMO should take notice.

But this apparently is where money can be made. Dung is fertile.

I do not think there was any guarantee besides the belief of the makers that their games would rock and sell well. Today studios are either timid (are the stakes/money involved higher?) or simply don’t have/dare to bring anything really new to the table. And then wonder when people go back to WoW or their other favorite MMO after a month.

Guild Wars was VERY rough at release. Respeccing was a pain, people did not all become pvp players in the endgame as the devs apparently expected and so on. But it was really something new, cool and different. It is still very popular, just check the charts which games people play (XFire e.g.).

Today I see more experimentation how to milk more money from the customer than new kinds of games. There is the old subscription model, the never (?) copied Guild Wars model, F2P with micro-transactions and the “Cryptic” model, box sale+subscription+micro transactions…^^

Maybe SoE gets bold and tries a completely new kind of EverQuest based on the Free Realms browser-engine?

Tangent:
By the way, if you want to see how trying to figure out what the customer wants can ruin a game, see Cryptic and Star Trek Online. The game is not a “classic” MMO and they really did not figure out how to make their ground missions a bit more fun so far. But they already copied the daily quest and badges idea. I think you can do that if you have people who love(d) your game and just play on like automatons for badges (WoW). The usual demotivated go-go PUG in the dungeon finder that just wants to get stuff done to get some badges – till they have every badge gear to … well raid what they could already raid before.

I think Cryptic’s Star Trek Online will become a fine example of devs asking their players and trying to find out what they want in surveys, copying more elements from other games even if they don’t fit that well and reacting to the *supposed* wishes of the playerbase.

To be told in the end that it all sucks…

Looking at WoW (and most Blizzard products), they very rarely innovate. As I said in a previous comment, I think Blizzard’s strength is in recognizing what works well then pulling elements into a game and polishing them to a fine shine. While there were a few usability improvements in WoW, it was obviously heavily influenced by previous games. You see this pattern with many Blizzard products, and they are one of the most successful developers today.

I wrote about the dilemma between innovation and polish before so I won’t rehash those arguments here.

I certainly do agree that true innovation comes from giving the customer what they didn’t know they wanted. The problem is that it’s much easier said than done. You have to go through a lot of flops before you find that magical bit of innovation that works. Even then, someone with bigger guns like a Blizzard might just come along and polish you into second place.

My thoughts.

Great article, Wolfshead. I think the crux is the line:
“Innovation is never driven by the consumer; the consumer always follows and never leads.”

To which I can only offer a hearty “abso-bloomin’-lutely”! There’s certainly a place for “me too” design inasmuch as it fosters iterative improvement, but the biggest leaps of progress are made by those who aren’t afraid to fail, and who go out and change things, rather than following the herd.

Tangentially, I saw “The 5000 Year Leap” in your reading list lately. What did you make of that? I can’t help but think that said book has a few innovations listed within. (I haven’t read it yet, but I intend to.)

I actually think that what we are going to see is convergence. The farming in Farmville is not that different from the resource harvesting in SWG. If the social games continue to pick up MMO-like elements, they will end up as rather “worldy” MMOs.