Game Innovation Voodoo

Game publishers no longer innovate, they acquire, leaving the risky innovation to start-ups and independents. Small publishers making big investments in AA games would rather fast-follow and replicate the design of the AAA hits. AAA game publishers meanwhile make incremental timid tweaks to their franchises. You can't blame them. No one wants to be responsible for tanking the company.

The problem for start-ups and independents making their first game is that they cannot capture significant market share by duplicating a game. They can put out their best quality, but competing feature for feature with an established AAA franchise with millions of manhours over multiple releases is a hugely expensive ask. It is nearly impossible without a company like Google, Amazon or Facebook funding it. We've seen how poorly their first outings have gone. Even if they successfully make a polished game, they get reviewed and branded as derivative. They miss out on a very important aspect of successful product marketing - the unique selling proposition or USP.

So this week, we're going to talk about innovation in terms of the USP.

Innovative Ideas Capture the Imagination

There's no bigger example these days than Meta. The coolness of the cyberpunk "metaverse" is what led Zuckerberg to invest billions of Facebook dollars and change their name to Meta, ignoring the fact that corporations are always the villains in the cyberpunk universe. Mark had the means and cojones to gamble big on the next evolutionary step for mankind only to see it stumble. He pissed off his board and investors who forced him to lay-off thousands of developers and aim lower. Now he's fast following the AI trend and somehow wanting to merge the two visions as he recycles his Meta-verse investment.

But Mark had vision, arguably not his own, and took a gamble on being first to market with it. This is innovation at its fiery chaotic core. It can inspire consumers and investors and make or break companies.

Innovation in games are those ideas that connect emotionally to the creators and consumers and get them excited. Ultimately, they form the basis of your USP. Let's break that down.

Unique

This is an original idea for a game design or feature in your game. Reality check! In games, there are no original ideas, just the ones that ship first or do it better. The latter are what many describe as inspired-by or fast-followed. Apple didn't invent the MP3 player or smartphone, they just made them better. To be the most unique, nothing else out there is quite like it.

This is why at some companies, innovation is rated as follows:

(1) Incremental - a tweak or twist on an existing developed idea;

(2) New to Company - a big idea new to the company but derivative;

(3) New to World - a big idea that no one else has done.

If you were to budget for innovation in your roadmaps, you might expect the costs as well as the risks to grow exponentially with the ratings.

Selling

How big a seller depends on how hungry the market is for the idea. There's no crystal ball that can tell you, so naturally people look at the current trends. If your ideation starts with this analysis, invariably your ideas will be more derivative. There's never any proof that a truly unique idea will sell until you market test it. Until then, all you got is gut and faith in your designers.

Combo Ideas - Often what is considered unique is the combination of ideas and themes. This has the potential to really stand out but it can also truly limit sales. A combo idea aims to expanding sales with a broader union of markets, but it can easily end up appealing only to the smaller intersection of players who like both ideas and divide your audience. Combined ideas can cut either way.

Licenses - Licensed properties from film and television may augment sales but their brand of uniqueness is typically just theming existing ideas. A Lord of the Rings RTS or Harry Potter open world game would definitely garner a lot of interest and sales, but that doesn't unto itself make it innovative. That falls outside the USP principle. It may be a good substitute for innovation. Rarely would any publisher take a chance of doing anything other than tried & true on an expensive licensed deal.

Proposition

The game gambles on a belief, a proposition that others will like the ideas too. How big a gamble is directly proportional to the amount of innovation in the game and how large the potential market is for it:

Big Innovation / Big Market - You could have the next billion dollar company or lose your shirt. This is the boldest bet.

Big Innovation / Small Market - You can be the big fish in the small pond, and it may get you the funding you need to do something bigger, or your game may meet mixed response and earn the dubious classification of "cult classic".

Minor Innovation / Big Market - This is the safe bet. You might do better than break even, but you're not going to be capturing much market share.

Minor Innovation / Small Market - Why bother?

Conclusion

Big companies typically go with the minor innovation on a big market to avoid spoiling a successful franchise, leaving only the smaller independent studios to innovate with anything big. Many of you right now find yourselves as outcasts from the bigger studios. As frustrating as that is, a bright side is that you can now do something truly innovative. As the saying goes "Go Big or Go Home". This is the risk and reward of game development.