Innovation Has Never Been the Cornerstone of the Video Game Industry →
This opinion piece really revealed something for me.
I know it’s been said before that part of the charm of playing a living MMO are the changes that are made to the game as a whole: improvements to game balance or simply throwing out broken systems and trying something brand new. While some changes can be frustrating to the player base, on the whole they’re an accepted phenomenon and players are not only expected to adapt to the changes, but often feel as though the game world is evolving with time… which, in short, makes everything more interesting.
It occurs to me that titles in franchises have much the same effect, despite not being all part of one title: same, basic game play and premises overall, but with improvements and altered systems between each iteration. Not merely because the previous iteration was lacking in some way, but to give series fans something new to tackle.
(I guess this may be a no-brainer for some, but for me, it really is something of a revelation as to why players don’t appear to “get tired” of the same old game.)
