Blizzard is not innovative

[PorkaMorka]

What Blizzard does isn't innovation (although they may have innovated in the past).

It's about taking games from already established genres and refining them to produce a better product than other developers.

Diablo 2 was just a diablo clone... refined to be better than most other diablo clones
Starcraft was just a generic RTS... refined to be better than most other generic RTS games
WOW was just an EQ clone.... refined to be better than most other EQ clones
Warcraft 3 was just a generic RTS... refined to be pretty good (sort of a let down here arguably)

No innovation whatsoever with their recent games. But just highly refined and polished products that please the fan base.

Innovation isn't necessarily a good thing, if you innovate theres a big risk of your innovations being dumb and ruining the game. Theres a lot to be said for perfecting established genres.

 

[Raapys]

Yah, that's what has made Blizzard so great. They take tested and working game concepts and put them into one of their own very well-made worlds, then polish it until it's of far higher quality( music, movies, few bugs, etc. ) than most other similar titles.

The problem with making something innovative is that there's a much bigger chance it's going to be a utter failure and thus ruin you, which is probably why we don't see any innovative high-budget titles these days.

 

[kingcomrade]

Explain to me how Diablo is fun yet its clones are not?

Explain to me how one thing can ever be better or worse than anything similar to it. I was under the impression that all things were equal.

 

[Xi]

I think one needs to define innovation before you can smear another, top end developer by being "disappointed."

1. something new or different introduced: numerous innovations in the high-school curriculum.
2. the act of innovating; introduction of new things or methods.

So if we are to believe Bethesda's or at least one of their developer's stances on "Innovation," they should have thrown First-Person out the window by now, and completely removed all similar game-play mechanics. They should have done this because creating a sequel leads to "old, tired methods"(Todd, 2008) and as such, the new games in a series should be entirely different and not represent the old game, at all.

Bethesda believes that to improve something is to try something entirely different all in the sake of innovation, while alienating a game's original fan base. I think this is why Blizzard is one of the most respected names in the industry, they just get it. Contrast them with a company like Bethesda who toss around more rhetoric and dis-information to persuade new users into their philosophically weak and ignorant marketing of "good game design."

Diablo 3 is a game being made for the fans. It has a fan base that is so huge, because of it's prior "good game design" that the developers only need to tweak, improve, and add new things to an already functional gaming experience. This is where Bethesda fails. They remove the best gaming mechanics, in the name of innovation, only to water down the experience their past customers are looking for. What old fan hasn't been pointing to Daggerfall as a masterpiece that Bethesda could have carried over more features, improved these features, and then added to them, instead of removing for the sake of simplicity and innovation?

Bethesda is just appealing to the most morons who will possibly buy their games, while Blizzard appeases its growing fan base by giving them the games they want to play without utterly removing the most solid, series defining, features of the older games.

Ashley Chung is just caught up in Bethesda's corporate Rhetoric. He somehow believes, and I will use the dictionary.com quote as an example, that innovation in a High School doesn't mean to focus on the most potential to educate.

 

[MetalCraze]

And that's because Mr. Fallout III Producer Ashley 'INNOVASHUN' Cheng says so.

Ashley Cheng: "uh oh we were crying about top-down being so stone age and how nobody does true sequels anymore, but blizzard doesn't raping sequels like we are now and we know that they will still sell more than we will - oh no my butt hurts."

 

[Brother None]

What Blizzard does isn't innovation (although they may have innovated in the past).

It's about taking games from already established genres and refining them to produce a better product than other developers.

I feel that a small history lesson is in order...

The seminal example of an innovative period is - of course - the Industrial Revolution. But what do you think happened there? Did you think Watt pooped out the Steam Engine fully formed? Or was it Newcomen that took an existing idea to make an ineffective single action steam machine, before Watt added concepts like the vacuum pump/condenser, and eventually a way of utilising steam power for rotary motions which led to its application into trains?

"Innovation" is paraded around as this shiny big move thing, but innovation never worked like that and will never work like that. Innovation is generally small experiments that either go right or wrong. Diablo 2 did things right that Diablo 1 didn't and thus innovated on Diablo 1. Oblivion did things wrong that Morrowind didn't and thus innovated on Morrowind. Heck, in both cases the games did things right/wrong that nobody had been smart/stupid enough to think of, so both were innovative games.

That's neither a value judgement nor an asseveration of quantity.

's kind of stupid to pretend it is.

And Bethesda's "no first person, but where the innovation?!" is just even dumber.

 

[Xi]

If you read some of the responses to his blog, I think someone hits it on the head:

Did you want blizzard to develop another IP instead of developing another Diablo?

Mass innovation is something you do with new games, not with sequels. Not to say that you cannot innovate within a sequel, it just shouldn't be the goal to change everything so much. People are buying the game because they want more of the previous title with improved and polished "tired, old methods."

Is innovation just the new buzz word? Immersion, Innovation, Visceral, Simplicity, Stupidity, etc?

 

[Lemunde]

I'm sorry, I like Beth's games and all but he's clearly missing the point when it comes to Diablo. If you read or listen to any of the interviews you'll know that as much as Beth tries to make things different, Blizzard tries to keep things the same. They want Diablo 3 to still be Diablo. They want Starcraft 2 to still be Starcraft.

 

[IlkuWarrior]

Hell, Blizzard admits their not original:

Yeah, the goal is; we don't want to come up with something totally original, we want something people can relate to, that we can, as artists, designers and programmers, infuse with our ideas.

Source.

Not like it makes their games any less fun.

 

[Suicidal]

If not wanting to make a first person shooter out of their strategy game makes them not innovative then I'm glad they are not.

 

[Pussycat669]

If not wanting to make a first person shooter out of their strategy game makes them not innovative then I'm glad they are not.

Not always that bad of an idea though like in case of C&C Renegade. The multiplayer is still a blast even today.

 

[Unradscorpion]

If there's is no such retardation as level scaling and decent enough quests and dialogs, I'll go for FO 3 without hesitation.

If there is no such retardation as cutting off my prefrontal cortex and decent enough foot massage and a blowjob, I'll go for lobotomy without hesitation.

 

[Suicidal]

If not wanting to make a first person shooter out of their strategy game makes them not innovative then I'm glad they are not.

Not always that of a bad idea though like in case of C&C Renegade. The multiplayer is still a blast even today.

I should have said "making a FPS out of an RTS and calling it a sequel".

Something like Renegade is an ok idea, but it should be just a spin-off game, not a sequel.

 

[AzraelCC]

Here's a personal comparison of Blizzard versus Bethseda.

My 8-year old grade school sister, me (22 year-old gaming geek), and my 45 year old stepdad who's a chef all play Diablo II. I enjoy it for the hack and slash, character building, and hell difficulty. My step dad enjoys it for the loot-collecting and as a coffee-table game. My grade school sister enjoys it for pretending to be a kickass amazon chick. We all have fun. The first two instances show how well executed the gameplay elements are--intellectually and in terms of rewards and pacing. My sister serves as a great gauge for immersion in an action rpg.

I introduced both to Oblivion. The reaction was the same for both: they were bored. My step dad felt that there was nothing to do in the game. My sister kept asking me if the horse stopping in front of a bystander as if hitting a brick wall was what I meant when I explained to her a while ago what a 'bug' was.

The simple fact that Bethseda doesn't understand what pacing and rewards are to gamers (level-adjustment, generic loot), as well as their shallow understanding of what immersion is all contribute to their games being, simply, not fun.

 

[PorkaMorka]

I feel that a small history lesson is in order...

The seminal example of an innovative period is - of course - the Industrial Revolution. But what do you think happened there? Did you think Watt pooped out the Steam Engine fully formed? Or was it Newcomen that took an existing idea to make an ineffective single action steam machine, before Watt added concepts like the vacuum pump/condenser, and eventually a way of utilising steam power for rotary motions which led to its application into trains?

"Innovation" is paraded around as this shiny big move thing, but innovation never worked like that and will never work like that. Innovation is generally small experiments that either go right or wrong. Diablo 2 did things right that Diablo 1 didn't and thus innovated on Diablo 1. Oblivion did things wrong that Morrowind didn't and thus innovated on Morrowind. Heck, in both cases the games did things right/wrong that nobody had been smart/stupid enough to think of, so both were innovative games.

That's neither a value judgement nor an asseveration of quantity.

's kind of stupid to pretend it is.

And Bethesda's "no first person, but where the innovation?!" is just even dumber.

I dunno, I think a lot of what you're calling "innovation" could also be called "refinements", and you could reserve the word innovation for inventing new genres or bringing in truly major new changes to the gameplay of an existing genre.

Was every new improvement to the steam engine truly an innovation? Or were a lot of them refinements of an existing concept?

Otherwise you'd have to term almost every game as innovative, because they'll all have their own little twists on the genre some of which are improvements and some of which are not. Can we really say Diablo 2 was innovative, without sapping all meaning from the word? It was at it's core just Diablo but with more and better. To me that says refinement.

In reality though, theres a lot of overlap between the words "refine" and "innovate".

 

[J1M]

Cancelling games that are bad and only releasing games once they are great is the only innovation that Blizzard needs to be the #1 developer in the world - and the market has rewarded them for it.

I'd also say they do more than that, Battle.net itself and their community building efforts is an excellent example, but one thing is enough to disprove the hypothesis put forth in the first post.

 

[Imbecile]

Innovation is overrated anyway. I'd just prefer that the game be good, really

 

[The Feral Kid]

Another proof that when dealing with Beth you're dealing with retards. Blizzard not innovative, that's why every other developer in the industry is copying them for having games that set the standard on their respective genre either that being Diablo, WoW, Warcraft, Starcraft. Heh, that's expected from a developer who thinks going FPS and making a post-apocalyptic TES game is innovative.

 

[bozia2012]

So if Blizzard would buy rights to PoP and release their next game as "Prince of Persia: Diablo" this would be innovative? :slowpoke:

 

[Imbecile]

Another proof that when dealing with Beth you're dealing with retards. Blizzard not innovative, that's why every other developer in the industry is copying them for having games that set the standard on their respective genre either that being Diablo, WoW, Warcraft, Starcraft. Heh, that's expected from a developer who thinks going FPS and making a post-apocalyptic TES game is innovative.

That doesnt make sense. Theres no logical step that says Gold standard = Innovative. It could be just that Blizzard grab the good ideas from lots of other games and make em that little bit better. Those games become very popular and then everyone else tries to grab a slice of the same pie.

 

[The Feral Kid]

Another proof that when dealing with Beth you're dealing with retards. Blizzard not innovative, that's why every other developer in the industry is copying them for having games that set the standard on their respective genre either that being Diablo, WoW, Warcraft, Starcraft. Heh, that's expected from a developer who thinks going FPS and making a post-apocalyptic TES game is innovative.

That doesnt make sense. Theres no logical step that says Gold standard = Innovative. It could be just that Blizzard grab the good ideas from lots of other games and make em that little bit better. Those games become very popular and then everyone else tries to grab a slice of the same pie.

That's rather shortsighted. Everyone borrows something from someone as there is nothing new under the sun. Difference is, that while Blizzard created something entirely different from anything around at the time by injecting these preexisting ideas with innovation and creativity, others had their work cut-out for them by Blizzard.

 

[shihonage]

We've all seen what happens when one attempts to make Diablo in first-person.

BENDY LASERS.

 

[Volourn]

"Innovation is overrated anyway. I'd just prefer that the game be good, really"

For an imbecile, you just posted something smart. WOWSERS!

 

[Jung]

Thought Fate was better in many ways, except the maps just alternated instead of getting progressively creepier.

 

[Lyric Suite]

BTW, do i still have time for a "in before Blizzard stole everything from Warhammer!!!"?